you know, like after a 5 mile run...

Today has been exhausting. Perhaps one of the best, most productive days in my three weeks at site, but definitely exhausting. First, here’s my weekly schedule for those of you keeping score at home:

Monday: [8am-1:30pm] 6 classes (3 groups of 9th graders)
Tuesday: [8am-1:30pm] 6 classes (3 groups of 11th graders)
Wednesday: [8am-11:30pm] 4 classes (2 groups of 8th graders)
[6pm-7pm] Tutoring at PDI
Thursday: [8am-1:30pm] 6 classes (3 groups of 10th graders)
[6pm-7:30] English club at the University (with Mike)
Friday: [8am-1:30pm] 6 classes (3 groups of 9th graders)
[6pm-7pm] Tutoring at PDI
Saturday: [8am-11:30] 4 classes (1 group of 11th graders, 1 group of 10th graders)
Sunday: [2pm-3:30pm] English club at Pedagogical College (with Forrest)

Note: The school does block scheduling where we have two classes back to back, only once a week (Except the one 10th grade class that comes twice). Every day Saule and I also spend about an hour to plan the lessons for the next day, whenever we can find the time or energy. Sometimes that means right after the last lesson (well, after the snack following the last lesson), and other times we work at her house, right across the street from mine. I will also work actual conferences once in a while at the P(rofessional) D(evelepment) I(nstitute), but I think that is only four major times a year. There is talk of starting an English club at my school, but that will probably have to wait until the start of the next term in January. I have been able to play basketball or go to the gym on some of my free nights, and I am working on making friends that play soccer so that I can get back into playing. I have a tentative pickup game set up for Sunday with some guys from the University, although they say they prefer playing outside “Because it is fun to slid around and fall down.” After my shoulder and ankle injuries of the last year, I don’t think I follow that philosophy anymore. I guess I’m just getting old. But I was talking about today…

I had a good talk with Saule last night about the types of activities I want to do in class, and how my job as a PCV is to encourage more speaking and interactive exercises in stead of the recitation and translation they frequently (and sometimes exclusively) do in class. I’ve been laying low for a couple of weeks in order to build my relationship with her before I begin suggesting changes to her well-established teaching style. As a result, we had what I consider our best lessons so far. We are in a unit about leisure activities, and today’s task was to finish talking about film and TV and move on to music. After reviewing words like to prefer and I like X better than Y because… we had something that actually resembled a debate. The students were given the choice between Romance and Action films and then moved to their respective sides of the room. Naturally all the boys went to the Action side and the girls to the Romance side, and they had to defend their choice. Of course it was fairly easy for some students and painfully difficult for others, but I felt really good about the results, something that I don’t get from most lessons doing exercises out of the book. Once we moved on to music, and had made a fairly extensive list of music genres, I pulled out the iPod and played “Guess the Genre” giving extra points to anyone who could name the artist. They got all Jay-Z and one group got Bob Marley. It was a long and tiring 6 lessons followed by an hour of planning for tomorrow’s lessons, but the ensuing exhaustion was one of accomplishment, like the soreness that follows a 5 mile run (man, I miss running). I came home for lunch around 3pm, and collapsed on my bed for an hour before preparing for my tutoring hour. After teaching 3 college girls about the use of the, a and an for an hour and making 1100 tenge (9 dollars) for the American library, I was ready to be back home.

I walk in the door to find my host mom asleep on the couch (did I mention she works a night shift at the post office in addition to working at the school?), and Spanish reggaeton playing on the stereo. Natasha woke up when I came in and, after greeting me, immediately headed to the kitchen to get dinner ready. Dinner was interesting. Yeah, I think interesting is the word for it. I think I liked it, but I’ll have to see how the night goes. We had sardine sandwiches: bread, mayonnaise, cheese, and little slimy fish from a tin can. Sardines definitely have a bad rep with most people, but they are loved and adored here. I had my first ones one the train during my first visit to Petropavlovsk, but this was taken to a whole new level. Every day is an adventure… in one way or another.