I don't usually have enough Internet time to get as thoroughly caught up on the Orioles as I'm accustomed to. Thankfully, a quick glance at the headlines from the Baltimore Sun's Sports Page was all I needed to be reminded I'm not missing anything.
March 22, 2008
Hit by pitch, Millar suffers cut on finger
Game recap: Cardinals 7, Orioles 4
March 21, 2008
Guthrie works through rust in loss to Cards
Millar to go fourth as O's cleanup man
Millar just getting warmed up
Game recap: Mets 7, Orioles 0
Ray Frager: O's expectations dim despite bright spots
Keeping Trembley happy, one diet soda at a time
March 20, 2008
Loewen's return painful to watch
Game recap: Cardinals 12, Orioles 3
Guthrie makes pitch as Markakis' caddie
Childs Walker: Outfield plays shallow in '08
March 19, 2008
Game recap: Twins 4, Orioles 2
Two likely candidates vying to be 5th starter
March 18, 2008
O's face roster of decisions
Those Fantasy Guys: Previewing the Orioles
Postcard from Florida: Road to nowhere for O's?
March 15, 2008
Trachsel struggles in O's loss to Marlins
O's reconnecting with storied past
Game recap: Red Sox 7, Orioles 4
Postcard from Florida: Saturday night's not so all right
Depth a concern for pitching-starved O's
Hoey 'going to be fine'; return date unknown
Left-hander Loewen likely to miss start
Peter Schmuck: Throwing in towel on Cabrera
Game recap: Mets 6, Orioles 2
March 12, 2008
Game recap: Orioles 2, Cardinals 2, 10 innings
So onto a happier topic. It's spring in southern Kazakhstan, and a bunch of volunteers are gathered in Shymkent for Nauryz, the Muslim New Year. The holiday was yesterday, March 22, and we went to a hippodrome to watch horse races and kokpar, a game like polo where players vie for a dead goat carcass. Unfortunately I missed this event, but a few people got video that I'll be watching soon. There was also as much plof (like rice pilaf) and shashlik (like shishkabob with only meat) as you could eat. Some of it was being given away for free, some was really cheap, and all of it was really good. The weather here is unbelievable as well. Temperatures probably are in the 70s here. A lot of volunteers have come from the north where it's still in the -15 to -20 range and snow is still falling. This just drives home the point: Kazakhstan is a big country.
I'm in the middle of a 10 day break from teaching, which includes a few days here in Shymkent and then an in-service training conference in Almaty that goes until March 29. It's a welcome break from teaching. The teaching is still going fine, but there is a huge difference between each class. The fourth year students just finished their classes, which is too bad because they were some of my favorite groups. But hopefully I'll get some helpful ideas from this conference in Almaty that will help me in the class.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
Spring Has Sprung
Today I’m writing from a science-defyingly warmer Kyzylorda. It’s been a stunning turn of events- two weeks ago it was still too cold for the Kelvin Scale to register a reading, and yesterday I went outside in my t-shirt and shorts. The other day I’m pretty sure it was well into what would have been the 60s in American Fahrenheit. Global warming or radioactive fallout from decades of Soviet nuclear testing? Anybody’s guess! (The winner grows a third arm from the top of his head- think how useful that could be.)
So ne bolda since the last time? My daily schedule, which started the semester pretty empty, is gradually filling to the brim. Today I gave my first “module,” or test, as we call it. I was laughed at by one of my yeriptes, or colleagues, when I typed the module out and titled it “Model,” but I swear this is how they pronounce it. They laughed and I said “Oh, mod-ULE” like that, emphasizing the second syllable, which only drew more laughs and a comment something like “haha you say it funny.” But there were so many counts on which I was in the right here that it just wasn’t worth arguing. For instance, we don’t call them models or modules, we just call them tests and quizzes, so they’re wrong there. Second, they pronounce the incorrectly translated word incorrectly. Third, they then laugh at my correct pronunciation and at my mistake, which - get this - is based on their incorrect pronunciation in the first place. So that bugged me. But, you can’t win ‘em all.
My first module went more or less as I expected it would- countless obvious attempts at cheating by the students and me coming dangerously close to losing my patience but managing to keep it together. I’lll go out on a limb and say my 4 years at Washington and Lee were not good preparation - at least from a classroom management standpoint - for teaching in Kazakhstan. For example, in response to the constant interruption of “Teacher may I go out” I made a rule saying “If you have to leave class, don’t ask, just leave.” But I’ve learned you can’t really do this because some students will just go to the cafeteria or go home. And you also can’t assume students will, if they cheat, at least do it so subtlely that the teacher won’t notice. I hardly took my eyes off the students for 50 minutes, and still there was endless whispering, even when I would make direct eye contact with them, and obvious sharing of information.
Now I’m not going to say that during my 18 years of formal schooling I never snuck an occasional peak at a neighbor’s paper or wrote the quadratic formula on the inside of my eyelids (think how easy school would have been if this had worked). But I would have never had the gall (stupidity?) to continue blatantly cheating after the teacher has given repeated warnings directed both at the class and at me personally, and is standing less than two feet away looking directly at me. After I took this particular student’s notebook, he finally seemed to get the point, and pretty much just gave up on the test. We had had a guest lecture from one of the other volunteers in the city, Cho, who works at the HIV/AIDS center, and one of the questions on the module was “name two ways to prevent getting AIDS.” So it wasn’t surprising to see that this student had copied an answer to this question on the outside of his notebook, but it was surprising that the only words he was able to scribble down were, and I quote, “not to use condoms.” So we’ll be having an AIDS Review lesson next week.
I feel like I’ve already learned a lot in just the 10 or 11 weeks I’ve been teaching here. One thing that stands out is how different each class is. You can give the same lesson to 9 different classes and some will go extremely well while some will bomb. It’s also interesting how some of the students are absolutely some of the nicest people I’ve ever met and I want to bring them back to America with me, and then some are completely rude and disrespectful. For example, students sometimes say “Teacher, may we go out” and then they just go to the cafeteria, or they often say at the beginning of an activity “oh that won’t be interesting, let’s do something else,” or I’ll just have finished a long talk about cultural sensitivity and someone will say, immediately after I’ve finished making what I think is a pretty important point, “Chris can I take a picture with you?” or “Mr. Chris you have chalk on your jacket” or “Mr. Chris how long will you live in Kyzylorda?” (2 years! I swear I’ve told them this 100 times.) Admittedly some of these are more funny than rude. But then from other students I’ve heard “Oh Mr. Chris you have a cold, let us prepare the lesson topic for next week,” or “you’re always standing, why don’t you sit down? Don’t you get tired?” I know in all my days as a student I never had this much concern for my teachers’ well-being.
Anyway, Saturday is Women’s Day in the Republic. Apparently there are two separate holidays, one of which is used to celebrate one half of the population and the other to celebrate the other half (Men’s Day is in May). Many here are flabbergasted that in America we don’t have a holiday dedicated to all women, and instead celebrate only mothers on Mother’s Day. I think this partly explains/is partly explained by the fact that on holidays here, people don’t say “Happy ___-day” or “Best Wishes” but instead say “Congratulations.” From what I can tell, individual achievements are less important here, so it’s not so hard to earn a “congratulations.” For example, all I have to do is wait until May.
I really need a walking laptop I can just type on as I walk. I swear I think of the best ideas for blog topics as I walk around the city, and then by the time I sit down to write I forget everything. So this is all I could think of for the last couple weeks, but I’m pretty sure a lot more has happened, I just can’t think of it all. Rest assured my life here is more interesting than my lack of a short-term memory makes it sound.
So ne bolda since the last time? My daily schedule, which started the semester pretty empty, is gradually filling to the brim. Today I gave my first “module,” or test, as we call it. I was laughed at by one of my yeriptes, or colleagues, when I typed the module out and titled it “Model,” but I swear this is how they pronounce it. They laughed and I said “Oh, mod-ULE” like that, emphasizing the second syllable, which only drew more laughs and a comment something like “haha you say it funny.” But there were so many counts on which I was in the right here that it just wasn’t worth arguing. For instance, we don’t call them models or modules, we just call them tests and quizzes, so they’re wrong there. Second, they pronounce the incorrectly translated word incorrectly. Third, they then laugh at my correct pronunciation and at my mistake, which - get this - is based on their incorrect pronunciation in the first place. So that bugged me. But, you can’t win ‘em all.
My first module went more or less as I expected it would- countless obvious attempts at cheating by the students and me coming dangerously close to losing my patience but managing to keep it together. I’lll go out on a limb and say my 4 years at Washington and Lee were not good preparation - at least from a classroom management standpoint - for teaching in Kazakhstan. For example, in response to the constant interruption of “Teacher may I go out” I made a rule saying “If you have to leave class, don’t ask, just leave.” But I’ve learned you can’t really do this because some students will just go to the cafeteria or go home. And you also can’t assume students will, if they cheat, at least do it so subtlely that the teacher won’t notice. I hardly took my eyes off the students for 50 minutes, and still there was endless whispering, even when I would make direct eye contact with them, and obvious sharing of information.
Now I’m not going to say that during my 18 years of formal schooling I never snuck an occasional peak at a neighbor’s paper or wrote the quadratic formula on the inside of my eyelids (think how easy school would have been if this had worked). But I would have never had the gall (stupidity?) to continue blatantly cheating after the teacher has given repeated warnings directed both at the class and at me personally, and is standing less than two feet away looking directly at me. After I took this particular student’s notebook, he finally seemed to get the point, and pretty much just gave up on the test. We had had a guest lecture from one of the other volunteers in the city, Cho, who works at the HIV/AIDS center, and one of the questions on the module was “name two ways to prevent getting AIDS.” So it wasn’t surprising to see that this student had copied an answer to this question on the outside of his notebook, but it was surprising that the only words he was able to scribble down were, and I quote, “not to use condoms.” So we’ll be having an AIDS Review lesson next week.
I feel like I’ve already learned a lot in just the 10 or 11 weeks I’ve been teaching here. One thing that stands out is how different each class is. You can give the same lesson to 9 different classes and some will go extremely well while some will bomb. It’s also interesting how some of the students are absolutely some of the nicest people I’ve ever met and I want to bring them back to America with me, and then some are completely rude and disrespectful. For example, students sometimes say “Teacher, may we go out” and then they just go to the cafeteria, or they often say at the beginning of an activity “oh that won’t be interesting, let’s do something else,” or I’ll just have finished a long talk about cultural sensitivity and someone will say, immediately after I’ve finished making what I think is a pretty important point, “Chris can I take a picture with you?” or “Mr. Chris you have chalk on your jacket” or “Mr. Chris how long will you live in Kyzylorda?” (2 years! I swear I’ve told them this 100 times.) Admittedly some of these are more funny than rude. But then from other students I’ve heard “Oh Mr. Chris you have a cold, let us prepare the lesson topic for next week,” or “you’re always standing, why don’t you sit down? Don’t you get tired?” I know in all my days as a student I never had this much concern for my teachers’ well-being.
Anyway, Saturday is Women’s Day in the Republic. Apparently there are two separate holidays, one of which is used to celebrate one half of the population and the other to celebrate the other half (Men’s Day is in May). Many here are flabbergasted that in America we don’t have a holiday dedicated to all women, and instead celebrate only mothers on Mother’s Day. I think this partly explains/is partly explained by the fact that on holidays here, people don’t say “Happy ___-day” or “Best Wishes” but instead say “Congratulations.” From what I can tell, individual achievements are less important here, so it’s not so hard to earn a “congratulations.” For example, all I have to do is wait until May.
I really need a walking laptop I can just type on as I walk. I swear I think of the best ideas for blog topics as I walk around the city, and then by the time I sit down to write I forget everything. So this is all I could think of for the last couple weeks, but I’m pretty sure a lot more has happened, I just can’t think of it all. Rest assured my life here is more interesting than my lack of a short-term memory makes it sound.
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