New Year, New Problems

Diaries and blogs alike are both therapy, or considered to be therapy. So, now comes the time to lie down on the proverbial couch and launch on a diatribe that I have unleashed on plenty of other volunteers. In brief, it has been an uncomfortable first month.

September 1^st is the first bell. It’s not really a day of school as much as a ceremony. There’s singing, dancing, speeches, speeches and more useless speeches. The day after is where the rubber meets the road. I had the pleasure of a new teacher, Nazgul, who just so happens to be Sara, my counterpart’s, sister. She’s also as green as a teacher can be straight out of college. That also means that she’s 20, which in my opinion is a bit too young and immature to be teaching students. Anyway, there’s also a new zavuch (vice-principal). To sum this up and not go into new detail, Sara left without so much as saying a word to me, leaving me very sullen and feeling betrayed and abandoned. Add to that the fact that of the new zavuch is so inept that we still don’t have a schedule (as of this writing on Oct. 8^th there is still no schedule). So I have no schedule, a teacher who cannot control classrooms or make a coherent lesson plan, and I simply feel that I’ve lost my mind. In short, I’ve been fairly unhappy.

It’s also a pain because students don’t remember anything from last year and seem to be very unruly. Now, unruly students aren’t the end of the world, but the set-up of Kazakhstani schools makes discipline very difficult. There is no detention, no suspension; bad grades don’t matter because students are always passed to the next grade. The reason for this is that discipline and the grades are the teachers’ domain. So, any disciplinary actions taken outside of yelling at the students are looked at badly by the department of education. Did I mention that they have a very quick finger to fire teachers? A school up in Kokshetau fired 60% of their teachers over the summer because they didn’t think they were doing a good job. So, even if the students are the problem, you can’t really do anything about it, besides failing them for the day, but only for the day.

I did move into a new place. I now live with Yuri Ivanovich. It’s kind of nice, even though he treats me like I’ve never lived in Kazakhstan; he’s a very nice man. He’s a geologist with a gold company and has a 15-day-on, 15-day-off schedule. So, half the month I have the apartment to myself. This doesn’t mean I’m completely alone. Yuri’s father and mother, Vanya and Valya, stop by every once in a while, as do Nikita, Maxim and Lena, his son, daughter-in-law and grandson. So, it’s halfway between living on my own and with a family, which is more pleasant than I thought it would be. They’re quick to make sure I have plenty of potatoes and that I know how everything works in the apartment. Nikita usually runs around asking for nyam-nyams (dried pears from Yuri’s cottage). There will probably be more tales to come. As for now, that’s enough complaining for you all. Since the beginning of school, there hasn’t been much interesting outside the frustration at school, so I’ll take leave for now and keep searching for the light at the end of the tunnel.