A little more about Makinsk

I can’t remember if I ever updated about my life here in Makinsk, but this sounds as good a time as any. I live in a home with Tatyana Pavelonvna, the psychologist who works at School #5, and that’s not just because she helps with the voices in my head. ;-) She is much more patient than my old host mom in Issyk was. I still don’t understand everything, but it’s easier and I’m a bit more motivated because there is a light at the end of the enormous tunnel that is the Russian language. Anyway, it’s her, her son Dema and Baba Vera, Tatyana’s mother. Dema is basically like my brother back home: obsessed with rock music, addicted to the computer and lacking in some maturity. But, I guess that should be considered standard for a 15-year-old. Baba Vera is kind of cool because she loves talking about Soviet times and the past. On the flip side, like old folks back home, she loves to talk about the various illnesses affecting her at the time. We live in a 4 room house that wraps around the central heating system that is the pechka, or a coal-burning stove that heats a central wall. When it’s baking, the house is hot, but otherwise it is cold.
I work at 2 schools now. The main school is School #5, which is a 15 minute walk from my home. It’s half-Russian language, half-Kazakh language, which gives it an interesting dynamic. It’s funny because some of the Russian classes have a lot of ethnic Kazakhs, but the Russian classes are much worse behaved than the Kazakh classes. Still haven’t figured out why. I have 4 teachers to work with, but mainly I work with Sara Amantaievna, who is very enthusiastic about the Peace Corps lesson plans. If she could just be a bit more forceful, I think she would be the model English teacher here. Guess that’s a project to work on. I haven’t worked with the other 3 that much, but they are young which is probably better than a bunch of old-school teachers who just work by the book. Unfortunately, that book is by a guy named Ayapova, and it is a monstrosity of a language book. There is no methodology and it repeatedly uses vocabulary that is over the students head. The other school is School #2 with Elena Yurievna who is a force of nature. In a nutshell, any stereotypes that you have ever heard about large, loud Russian women, that is Elena Yurievna. That’s not a slight against her because she is a very effective teacher and person to work with, but she is intimaditing.
The town isn’t small by village standards, but it is boring. Part of it may be the ridiculously cold temperatures. At night, it can get down to –35 and possibly –40 C, which is well below 0 F. But there’s a bank, a bazaar, some cafes and a train station on the electric train that goes between Astana and Kokshetau, which I can’t emphasize how important that is. It is very cheap to go in both directions and a lot of volunteers live on the train line, which allows us to all visit each other. I just need to make sure I don’t abuse that too much. Anyway, this is probably not as comprehensive as it could be, but that’s pretty much my life here.