This Onion article from last spring about the Stanley Cup Playoffs made me cry with laughter. I'm just looking to spread a little joy this holiday season:
STACKLEY CUP PLAYOFFS UNDERWAY
NEW YORK—The 2008 Stackley Cup Playoffs, a set of odd-number-of-games series that will determine the champion of the National Huckie League, are well underway, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman confirmed Monday.
At press time, the four hackley teams in contention for the Stickleby Cup were the Detroit Red Wings, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Pittsburgh Flyers, and a team from Dallas, TX. The Red Wings, one of the NHL's Original Four Teams, and the Penguins, who feature one of hinky's rising young stars in Sidney Crossberry, are leading their respective series and are expected to advance to the championship round, or Storkaley Cup Finallys.
Hucklebee, which is played on ice by stick-wielding six-man teams who attempt to strike the hokey puck or "ball" into the opposing goal, is naturally a cold-weather sport. For this reason, hooky is believed to have originated in Canada. This will be the first year since 2003 that no Canadian team will make it to the Shaklee Cup Finals, and no Canadian team has won the Cup since 2003.
"This is the best time of year to watch the great sport of [huncky]," Commissioner Bettman said in a statement released by the NHL public relations department. "We still believe that our game is the fastest, toughest, most exciting game in the world, and we look forward to demonstrating that to a national audience as we determine the 2008 NHL Champion."
However, despite a fiercely loyal core fanbase, achieving mass popularity has been difficult for the National Honky League, which currently ranks behind the NFL, NBA, NASCAR, MLB, college football, NCAA basketball, tournament poker, and figure skating in television viewers. The sport, while definitely colorful, is somewhat difficult to watch on television; many say the fast action is actually too hard to follow, as they are unsure where the hanky puck is at any given time. The sheer number of games is also somewhat intimidating; the NHL season is believed to have actually began sometime last year.
The sport was also dealt a rather ugly setback with many viewers during last year's Stanbly Cup playoffs when two players dropped their ice bats and gloves and became involved in a shamefully brutal fistfight.
However, the passion of the teams involved in the Stagolee Cup Playups is impossible to deny or ignore.
"Way back when I was a kid playing on frozen ponds, I dreamed of winning the Cup," Detroit's Brian Rafalski told reporters Tuesday. "It's every player's dream to hoist the Cup above their heads and have their name engraved on the side."
One of the grand traditions of the sport is that each hicky player from the Cup-winning team is allowed to take the trophy with them for a day to show their families, friends, and presumably even coworkers at their actual jobs.
"Winning the Cup would be the ultimate dream come true for me, the reward for a very long, hard struggle," said foreign-born Penguins player Alexander Ovechkin, who, like most hochuli players, has based his life around the sport and has no real-world skills. "But really, just to play this game, to be part of something that brings so many people joy, that has been a great gift as well." Horklee is presumably extremely popular in Ovetchkin's home country.
"Our dream is that, when the Stanley [sic] Cup Finals end in June, everyone in America has seen those games and realized how much fun it is to watch the NHL," Commissioner Bettman said. "These are, without a doubt, some of the world's finest athletes playing in some of the world's most competitive games. I know I'm prejudiced, but I honestly think that anyone who watches will agree that hockey [sic] is the greatest sport in the world."
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Merry Belated Christmas and Happy Early New Year!
In Kazakhstan, where I currently live, the big holiday this time of year is New Year's, but in America, where I'm originally from, it's Christmas. So, I figured the smart thing to do would be to strike a balance between the two and post an entry at exactly the halfway point (depending on your time zone) between the two holidays. I'm trying to get back into posting more regularly too, seeing as how I wrote all of two entries this semester. We'll see how it goes.
First, I hope everyone is having a happy and safe Christmas season wherever you are celebrating it. Here in Kyzylorda, the weather turned brutally cold just in time for the holidays, bringing along with it a few inches of icy snow that actually feels more like tiny shards of ice cold glass or maybe smaller balls of dippin-dots ice cream when it hits you. The other day when I was walking to a lesson I was convinced my face had started bleeding from the relentless onslaught of ice pellets (turned out I was just a giant wimp). And all this after it had been really, really warm for the last two months. I had really started believing all the people that were telling me that because it was so cold last winter, this winter would be much warmer (turned out they were just giant liars).
Not a lot new I can add at this point. I recently secured a "Peace Corps Volunteer Resource Room" in my school's building, where I'll be able to store the boxes of English books I received from Darien Book Aid (in Connecticut), and where I'll be able to have a much more structured work schedule, perhaps with actual office hours when the semester starts up later next month. I'm also in the process of trying to secure multiple weekly teaching hours with each group at the school, something that the administration has been unflinchingly opposed to, mostly because right now the school has too many teachers and not enough students/hours to give, and also because the PCV's weekly lesson is viewed as an "extra lesson" in terms of the hours allotted by the syllabus, and so giving the volunteer two lessons would be too much as it would take away from the content of the actual syllabus. This is what I was told by my dean this week. The thing is, even though I don't like it, I understand it better now, and we kind of had a breakthrough this week where we finally understood each other's point of view. This new-found mutual understanding might have been helped along by the fact that my PC regional manager made a phone call to him this week saying that if I wasn't given more hours with each group the school might not receive another PCV after me. Either way, I'm hoping it will work out in my favor, but I'm prepared to deal with it if it doesn't and work harder at thriving in the system I'm stuck in. Last semester I was too lax with the students and didn't demand enough from them; although we had a lot of useful speaking practice during the lessons, and they generally seemed to enjoy the lessons, I didn't really attempt to give them grades, mostly since I had tried to do that in the previous semester and gotten extremely fed up with the futility of trying to give them grades. Well, I plan on trying that again, hopefully without getting so frustrated. It just would be a lot less frustrating if I could see results of my work more easily; right now the results aren't so easily visible, even with the one group I saw multiple times a week, because I was still working at the mercy of the teacher who had given me the class and thus was not in total control, as I wanted to be.
Ok, enough about that. I spent Christmas this year with the two new volunteers from the nearby village and one of my students, whose family is hosting one of them. We hung out, watched A Christmas Carol, exchanged a few gifts, and mostly just relaxed. It was a nice Christmas, though certainly not the same as being back in America with my family, which I'm really looking forward to doing next year.
And tomorrow begins the parade of New Year's parties - one at the university, one at a friend's house, another one at the university-owned restaurant, and then finally the real thing on New Year's Eve. I'm planning to host a few friends from Shymkent, a city about 8 hours to the south, and we will "meet" the new year together, as they say here.
One other thing- I was starting to think I was going to escape Kazakhstan without experiencing the sheep's head dinner, and I was a little disappointed about this. Well, I didn't escape. The other day I was invited to a "betashar" party, which is where the new bride covers her head with a large white cloth while all the guests are individually asked to make a small contribution in exchange for a promise of lifting the cloth at the end so everyone can see the bride. It's an interesting ritual, and I later found out that these donations actually go to the emcee - the guy who is playing the dombyra (2-stringed guitar-like instrument) and "inviting" guests to donate - whereas I thought they went to the bride's family, who put together the whole huge party and feast. I was a little disappointed to learn this later, but I guess that's how these guys make their money. Anyway before the ritual we all sat down to a giant feast, and I was at the table with all the respected, older men (I'm not implying I've attained the stature of an old, respected Kazakh man here; I'm just a foreigner, and they LOVE foreigners here. Unless that foreigner is Uzbek). So they set down the sheep's head just a couple feet from me. I had actually seen this once before, but it was during training and we were with our language teachers who were able to explain why we might not be that into eating eyeball or taste bud. So this was the first time I experienced this totally on my own. I'm lucky it happened at this point in my service and not much earlier because I've just recently gotten to a point where I feel relatively comfortable speaking Kazakh. Anyway I was more or less coerced by the colleague who brought me into a) cutting a piece off the face, from just under the right eye, b) eating it, and c) eating a piece of the roof of the mouth. I wish I could tell you how they tasted but I basically just swallowed them hole, since I figured puking on the table might not be well-received. It was a little unsettling, the whole thing, but I tried to keep reminding myself how many poor animals I've contributed to the slaughter of through my almost daily consumption of meat over the last 26 years. That was how I was able to get the pieces down, anyway. In spite of all this, I have no plans to become a vegetarian at this time. Maybe down the road, when I have more alternative ways of incorporating protein into my diet (read, when I'm back in the US).
Well that's all for now. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!
First, I hope everyone is having a happy and safe Christmas season wherever you are celebrating it. Here in Kyzylorda, the weather turned brutally cold just in time for the holidays, bringing along with it a few inches of icy snow that actually feels more like tiny shards of ice cold glass or maybe smaller balls of dippin-dots ice cream when it hits you. The other day when I was walking to a lesson I was convinced my face had started bleeding from the relentless onslaught of ice pellets (turned out I was just a giant wimp). And all this after it had been really, really warm for the last two months. I had really started believing all the people that were telling me that because it was so cold last winter, this winter would be much warmer (turned out they were just giant liars).
Not a lot new I can add at this point. I recently secured a "Peace Corps Volunteer Resource Room" in my school's building, where I'll be able to store the boxes of English books I received from Darien Book Aid (in Connecticut), and where I'll be able to have a much more structured work schedule, perhaps with actual office hours when the semester starts up later next month. I'm also in the process of trying to secure multiple weekly teaching hours with each group at the school, something that the administration has been unflinchingly opposed to, mostly because right now the school has too many teachers and not enough students/hours to give, and also because the PCV's weekly lesson is viewed as an "extra lesson" in terms of the hours allotted by the syllabus, and so giving the volunteer two lessons would be too much as it would take away from the content of the actual syllabus. This is what I was told by my dean this week. The thing is, even though I don't like it, I understand it better now, and we kind of had a breakthrough this week where we finally understood each other's point of view. This new-found mutual understanding might have been helped along by the fact that my PC regional manager made a phone call to him this week saying that if I wasn't given more hours with each group the school might not receive another PCV after me. Either way, I'm hoping it will work out in my favor, but I'm prepared to deal with it if it doesn't and work harder at thriving in the system I'm stuck in. Last semester I was too lax with the students and didn't demand enough from them; although we had a lot of useful speaking practice during the lessons, and they generally seemed to enjoy the lessons, I didn't really attempt to give them grades, mostly since I had tried to do that in the previous semester and gotten extremely fed up with the futility of trying to give them grades. Well, I plan on trying that again, hopefully without getting so frustrated. It just would be a lot less frustrating if I could see results of my work more easily; right now the results aren't so easily visible, even with the one group I saw multiple times a week, because I was still working at the mercy of the teacher who had given me the class and thus was not in total control, as I wanted to be.
Ok, enough about that. I spent Christmas this year with the two new volunteers from the nearby village and one of my students, whose family is hosting one of them. We hung out, watched A Christmas Carol, exchanged a few gifts, and mostly just relaxed. It was a nice Christmas, though certainly not the same as being back in America with my family, which I'm really looking forward to doing next year.
And tomorrow begins the parade of New Year's parties - one at the university, one at a friend's house, another one at the university-owned restaurant, and then finally the real thing on New Year's Eve. I'm planning to host a few friends from Shymkent, a city about 8 hours to the south, and we will "meet" the new year together, as they say here.
One other thing- I was starting to think I was going to escape Kazakhstan without experiencing the sheep's head dinner, and I was a little disappointed about this. Well, I didn't escape. The other day I was invited to a "betashar" party, which is where the new bride covers her head with a large white cloth while all the guests are individually asked to make a small contribution in exchange for a promise of lifting the cloth at the end so everyone can see the bride. It's an interesting ritual, and I later found out that these donations actually go to the emcee - the guy who is playing the dombyra (2-stringed guitar-like instrument) and "inviting" guests to donate - whereas I thought they went to the bride's family, who put together the whole huge party and feast. I was a little disappointed to learn this later, but I guess that's how these guys make their money. Anyway before the ritual we all sat down to a giant feast, and I was at the table with all the respected, older men (I'm not implying I've attained the stature of an old, respected Kazakh man here; I'm just a foreigner, and they LOVE foreigners here. Unless that foreigner is Uzbek). So they set down the sheep's head just a couple feet from me. I had actually seen this once before, but it was during training and we were with our language teachers who were able to explain why we might not be that into eating eyeball or taste bud. So this was the first time I experienced this totally on my own. I'm lucky it happened at this point in my service and not much earlier because I've just recently gotten to a point where I feel relatively comfortable speaking Kazakh. Anyway I was more or less coerced by the colleague who brought me into a) cutting a piece off the face, from just under the right eye, b) eating it, and c) eating a piece of the roof of the mouth. I wish I could tell you how they tasted but I basically just swallowed them hole, since I figured puking on the table might not be well-received. It was a little unsettling, the whole thing, but I tried to keep reminding myself how many poor animals I've contributed to the slaughter of through my almost daily consumption of meat over the last 26 years. That was how I was able to get the pieces down, anyway. In spite of all this, I have no plans to become a vegetarian at this time. Maybe down the road, when I have more alternative ways of incorporating protein into my diet (read, when I'm back in the US).
Well that's all for now. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!
Friday, December 5, 2008
Why Are You Still Here?
(I originally typed this on Dec 1 but didn't get to internet until today, Dec 5)
I'm writing this month from sunny and still remarkably warm Kyzylorda. Actually just today it got cold, but what do you expect from the official first day of winter, according to the people of Kazakhstan? For the last couple of weeks though it's been really warm. So warm I haven't even had to wear a hat or my heavy winter coat. This is a big switch from last year at this time when I was bundled up everyday like the little brother from A Christmas Story, though thankfully I could usually get my arms down.
So a lot has happened since the last time I posted an update. Apparently that's the way it goes when you go two and a half months between entries. I'll start with a story from school.
Last week I did an activity with my students that I thought of off the top of my head in a desperate attempt to get my first-year students talking, that ended up going really well. (It's amazing how you can plan a lesson for 3 hours that bombs and then have an idea in the span of a split-second during class that ends up being really successful.) I told them that I was thinking of moving back to Almaty - not totally untrue either, even if only a fantasy - and split them into two groups. One group had to convince me to go ahead with the move, the other to convince me to stay, and I started in the middle of the room and moved gradually to one side or the other depending on the reasons given for each. This got even my quietest groups shouting over each other, which was great, seeing as how it's otherwise impossible to get a word out of them most of the time. Anyway the day after one of these lessons in which the Almaty group had won, I was walking down the hall when one of my students yelled from behind me "Mr. Chris....Why are you still here?" After my initial confusion I realized what she was talking about, but I couldn't help but notice how much that question resonated with me in a real sense. Even though a lot of my lessons are going fine, lately I've been feeling like I've had very little impact here, and mostly because I'm completely handcuffed by the university's rules prohibiting volunteers from teaching their own courses. I still see all but one group for only 50 minutes each week, which, even when the lesson goes great like the moving activity did, is so laughably inadequate that it's starting to get maddeningly frustrating. I've had countless discussions with people here about this, including other teachers in my department and the former dean, and I was surprised to learn that no previous volunteer has ever asked for the kind of schedule change I am. But then I realized one reason for this is that before I came, most of the students were still studying according to the "traditional system," which meant grades of either 2, 3, 4 or 5 and classes 80 minutes long. They've recently switched to a new "credit system," in which students receive grades comparable to those given at American universities, like A, B, C, D, and F according to a 1-100 scale, though the scale is a little (a lot) kinder here. Anyway now they only study for 50 minutes each lesson, whereas in the past volunteers had 80 minutes with each group, and it's obviously a lot easier to complete a productive activity in that amount of time. So, long story short, the frustration has been building inside me and the last couple of weeks I've realized I've been a lot more irritable. This is also partly because some students constantly ask to be excused from lessons, don't come to lessons, come late to lessons, do work for other classes during the lessons, and are generally completely disrespectful in ways that make me want to throw sharp objects at the back wall just past their heads. That's probably an over-exaggeration, but you can probably see how when these things happen, a small piece of me dies inside as I realize I'm having even less impact than the allotted 50 minutes per week allows me.
Enough venting. Plenty of good/funny/interesting/just plain weird things have happened since the beginning of the semester. Under the "good" category, I went back home in October for Kevin's wedding, which was a blast. I got to see a lot of you all which was awesome, and thanks also to Kevin for timing it perfectly so I could see Game 7 of the ALCS through the decisive Game 5 of the World Series (in the airport terminal just before boarding - seriously couldn't have been more perfect timing). On that note congrats to all the Phillies' fans reading this - 2 of you, at last count - on your world championship. Even though as an O's fan I was living vicariously through the Devil Rays - and yes to me they still are and forever will be the DEVIL Rays - I am happy for my good Philly-fan-friends (not to mention a little jealous if we're being honest, and we are).
Sticking with the baseball theme, what's the best thing about the offseason for Orioles' fans? Probably that they can't lose any games during the winter (though if any team could find a way to pull this off....they'd be among my top 3 or so guesses). Alas next season will start and the losses will start piling up again soon enough. No use in pretending otherwise, Chris.
I have a feeling that a lot of blog-worthy things have happened in the last couple of months that I'm just not thinking of at the moment. I'm hoping that a few will come to me if I keep typing. Ah yes- before I left for the US we gave a practice TOEFL Test to about 22 interested locals. The TOEFL Test is the test foreigners need to pass in order to study at most American universities, and it is by no means easy. I'd call the reading section a watered-down LSAT - easier, for sure, but for foreigners it's really a challenge. Even native speakers have to read the texts carefully and think hard to answer a lot of the questions. Anyway, we gave this practice test thinking it would be an easy first step in our latest idea for a community project - creating a local translators group that could supply interpreting help to foreign visitors, for example people adopting or people just visiting Kyzylorda completely on their own (this never really happens but hey, it could someday). It ended up being a pretty sizable pain in the арс, especially because we kept the signup period open until the night before, meaning we had 22 50-page tests to start printing less than 24 hours before the test. This became especially problematic when my brand new printer ran out of ink 8 pages in. Thankfully we didn't panic(<---not true) and were able to scramble around town the morning of and make all the copies, but we cut things awfully close. It was also a pain getting the room we needed at the university reserved, which reminds me of another ridiculous thing.
Back in September I think I mentioned that a few of my students expressed to me their sincere interest in learning baseball. Obviously this kind of talk is music to my ears, so I set up a "baseball club" to meet twice a week. We had a couple successful meetings, though never with more than 3 people at a time, which made it less baseball than 1-on-1-on-1 whiffle ball. Anyway even with the low turnout these were going well enough, until the university security guards one day refused to give me the key for the спорт зал, or gym. When I asked why, it was because they were told by somebody - they were unable or flat refused to tell me who - not to give the key to anyone, including the dean. After several weeks of trying in vain to figure out what the hell was going on, I finally was told that the school rents the gym - which is inside the university building - from a private company. Regardless of this, which in itself seems ridiculous, I could vent for pages/hours about how ridiculously stupid it is to restrict access to a completely empty and mostly unused gym, but I'll spare you all the time and save myself the subsequent rapid rise in blood pressure. And there might be some rationale behind the whole thing, but these days I'm generally not in the mood to give people the benefit of the doubt. Suffice it to say, as far as I'm concerned it makes absolutely no sense and is completely and utterly devoid of reason. For the time being I've given up, mainly because for awhile each day I'd ask and each day it would just make me angrier and angrier. Also to be fair people weren't exactly knocking down the door to play either - a few times I had to hook in stragglers - "Oh hi Aigerim from 05-1, what are you doing back at the school at 4 p.m.? Oh you're going to the library? Why don't you come play baseball with the three of us in the gym instead? Oh you can study later. And it's okay that you have high heels on, it's just whiffle ball."
Back to the TOEFL. Mostly it went fine. Grading the tests also took a lot longer than we'd expected, and we hadn't realized beforehand that it wasn't logistically possible to have a speaking section and finish before midnight, since we would have had to listen to 22 people all at different times, so we ended up turning it into a writing section, which was of course less than ideal. But all in all, it was fine. Only three students became certified "Contact Club Translators" available for hire based on their scores, but this wasn't a big surprise considering how difficult the test is.
What else has happened? Oh yeah, America has a new president! Congratulations to Barack Obama. I don't want to get into divisive political issues, but I will say I was extremely happy and proud when I went to the internet on the morning of November 5 and saw the New York Times headline: "OBAMA." It put a hop in my step going back to my building, and it was the only topic of conversation for the rest of the day. Political leanings aside, I don't think I've ever been as proud to be an American as I was on that day. And how thankful I was to be able to spend that historic day in a foreign country, to see firsthand the reactions of non-Americans to such a historic election and get to share the moment with people of another country, who clearly had a stake in the result. People here generally grasped the significance of America electing a black president, as they have a working knowledge of our ugly racial past, but more than that they almost unilaterally expressed to me their happiness that someone other than Bush was coming in. (In the run-up to the election, only one Kazakh person told me he wanted McCain, and many told me they thought McCain would be a continuation of Bush, if that gives an idea of "how the world would have voted"). Many people asked me why Bush was leaving, and I explained about the (bloodless coup) term limits. Actually right when I got back to the school that morning after checking the internet, one Kazakh teacher approached me and said "How's your Kazakh these days?" Telling him it was okay, he then proceeded to ask me a lot of hard questions that would have been difficult for me to answer in English, let alone in a language that lay virtually untouched during 70 years of Soviet rule. For example, "How are things going in Iraq?" "Why did America go into Iraq?" "Will Obama start more wars?" and after telling me the only reason we went into Iraq was oil, "Iraq has a lot of oil. Kazakhstan has a lot of oil. America invaded Iraq. Should I worry that America will someday invade Kazakhstan?" At first the obvious answer to me was "Of course not!" We're so mired in two unpopular wars that something drastic would have to happen for our leaders to plunge us into another one at this point. Not to mention most Americans don't even know Kazakhstan is a real country yet, and the political situation here is stable enough that Kazakhstan is probably among the last on America's list of "next countries to invade." But then I thought about it for a second and changed my answer to say that it wasn't going to happen in his lifetime (he's about 60). "Yes, but is it possible? I know I don't need to worry, but I'm asking because I worry for my children," he said. Then I thought more about it and realized that if someone in Iraq had asked this question to a foreign visitor, say, 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, they might have had the same initial reaction I did. So then I said that yes, it was possible. It's interesting the effect giving this kind of answer has - on the person giving it. Of course I wasn't coming literally face to face with war casualties or seeing things up close in that way, but when you're trying to be honest and straightforward and you feel you have to tell someone in a foreign country that yes, it's possible that your country might one day invade their country, endangering the lives of your children and grandchildren, the whole picture can become a lot clearer in your mind, and it did in mine. Being abroad, especially at the current time, has taught me one thing - how much much of the rest of the world is at the complete mercy of America, and not just its foreign policy. From the global impact of our economic "situation" to Kazakhstanis' concern about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to their tracking of the election, for almost a year before Election Day, even to seeing two middle school age boys walking down the street listening to American rap music and shouting "TALK IS CHEAP MUTHA F***KAS!!!" has made clear how far America's reach can be.
I was also, before I came, a little afraid of a perceived worldwide anti-American sentiment. But I've been surprised at how easily and naturally people here separate the regular citizens of America from the ruling class. They know, for example, that just because you're from the US doesn't automatically mean you agree with everything your government is doing. Perhaps it was naive of me to think, or fear, that that might be the case, but either way I've been relieved to find it's not.
Wow, what else? This has been a slightly heavier entry than most of my past ones. Rest assured there have been plenty of lighter moments recently, but for some reason they're not есиме тусип жатыр, or literally "dropping into my mind" at the moment. Ah, a belated Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! We celebrated a few times here with different groups of students before having a celebration with all (now 5!) of the volunteers in our oblast. All in all it was a good Thanksgiving. And Halloween - that was spent in a hotel in Amsterdam following the news of a 24-hour delay on my connecting flight to Almaty. So the Thanksgiving celebration was a lot better. I think for Halloween I just watched the news in Dutch - actually even less exciting than it sounds.
Ok before I wrap this one up, one quick anecdote from yesterday. A local school teacher had tracked me down at work a few days earlier and asked me for help with an open lesson project "according to the internet regime." I was thoroughly clueless as to what exactly she needed me to do, but I told her I'd do it. (Partly I just wanted to meet this "internet regime.") So she ended up calling me on Sunday and telling me to come down to the main building at the university, and to bring an American flag if I had one. Luckily I had brought back a few foam ones from the US, so I took one of these with me. When I got there I realized what was going on: this teacher was doing an open lesson about American holidays and wanted her students to interview me via Skype, presumably to show how technologically advanced her (open) lessons are. So I got there and they sent me to sit at the computer in the adjoining room. They then took my small foam American flag and glued it to the wall behind me with gluestick. It was becoming apparent that they were going to pretend I was in America, when in fact I was 30 feet away and in the same building. Ok, that's cute, I'll go along with it, I figured.
At the start of the interview the students introduced themselves as Baghzhan and Akmaral, both 8th grade students. The interview went fine, and when we finished I told them that their English was very good. "And you guys are only in 8th grade?" I asked. "No, we're in 11th. That was a lie." And they all laughed, including the teacher. This didn't really bother me at the time, partly because they were so friendly and full of questions, but as I thought about it more it started to gnaw at me. We've seen this kind of thing time and time again here: teachers not only not reprimanding students for dishonest behavior, but actively engaging in, participating in, and even provoking it. So I've come to this most recent conclusion regarding the Kazakhstan cheating epidemic: people everywhere are naturally going to do dishonest things, whether it's in the US, Kazakhstan, Romania, Brazil, wherever. But I've noticed here that one difference between here and the US is that my students generally feel no shame when they cheat, and thus it's just standard accepted practice. Why is this? Are people here naturally more dishonest? No, I think it's that on a much larger scale than in the US, teachers here don't instill in their students that cheating and lying are wrong. Example: teachers here that don't allow their students to cheat are regarded as "strict," as in, "Mr. Chris why don't you let us cheat? You are so strict!" Wow, okay.
I could go on and on about problems with the current structure of the educational system here, from kindergarten on up through university, but I won't.
Well, if you've made it this far, you deserve a prize. Remind me in about 10 months and I'll get you something cool from the bazaar for when I get back. I should really try to write shorter and more frequent entries, but I figure this one makes up for the last two or so months of silence. Plus it was pretty therapeutic for me. Well, till next time, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (and Happy Valentine's Day?). Be safe everyone.
I'm writing this month from sunny and still remarkably warm Kyzylorda. Actually just today it got cold, but what do you expect from the official first day of winter, according to the people of Kazakhstan? For the last couple of weeks though it's been really warm. So warm I haven't even had to wear a hat or my heavy winter coat. This is a big switch from last year at this time when I was bundled up everyday like the little brother from A Christmas Story, though thankfully I could usually get my arms down.
So a lot has happened since the last time I posted an update. Apparently that's the way it goes when you go two and a half months between entries. I'll start with a story from school.
Last week I did an activity with my students that I thought of off the top of my head in a desperate attempt to get my first-year students talking, that ended up going really well. (It's amazing how you can plan a lesson for 3 hours that bombs and then have an idea in the span of a split-second during class that ends up being really successful.) I told them that I was thinking of moving back to Almaty - not totally untrue either, even if only a fantasy - and split them into two groups. One group had to convince me to go ahead with the move, the other to convince me to stay, and I started in the middle of the room and moved gradually to one side or the other depending on the reasons given for each. This got even my quietest groups shouting over each other, which was great, seeing as how it's otherwise impossible to get a word out of them most of the time. Anyway the day after one of these lessons in which the Almaty group had won, I was walking down the hall when one of my students yelled from behind me "Mr. Chris....Why are you still here?" After my initial confusion I realized what she was talking about, but I couldn't help but notice how much that question resonated with me in a real sense. Even though a lot of my lessons are going fine, lately I've been feeling like I've had very little impact here, and mostly because I'm completely handcuffed by the university's rules prohibiting volunteers from teaching their own courses. I still see all but one group for only 50 minutes each week, which, even when the lesson goes great like the moving activity did, is so laughably inadequate that it's starting to get maddeningly frustrating. I've had countless discussions with people here about this, including other teachers in my department and the former dean, and I was surprised to learn that no previous volunteer has ever asked for the kind of schedule change I am. But then I realized one reason for this is that before I came, most of the students were still studying according to the "traditional system," which meant grades of either 2, 3, 4 or 5 and classes 80 minutes long. They've recently switched to a new "credit system," in which students receive grades comparable to those given at American universities, like A, B, C, D, and F according to a 1-100 scale, though the scale is a little (a lot) kinder here. Anyway now they only study for 50 minutes each lesson, whereas in the past volunteers had 80 minutes with each group, and it's obviously a lot easier to complete a productive activity in that amount of time. So, long story short, the frustration has been building inside me and the last couple of weeks I've realized I've been a lot more irritable. This is also partly because some students constantly ask to be excused from lessons, don't come to lessons, come late to lessons, do work for other classes during the lessons, and are generally completely disrespectful in ways that make me want to throw sharp objects at the back wall just past their heads. That's probably an over-exaggeration, but you can probably see how when these things happen, a small piece of me dies inside as I realize I'm having even less impact than the allotted 50 minutes per week allows me.
Enough venting. Plenty of good/funny/interesting/just plain weird things have happened since the beginning of the semester. Under the "good" category, I went back home in October for Kevin's wedding, which was a blast. I got to see a lot of you all which was awesome, and thanks also to Kevin for timing it perfectly so I could see Game 7 of the ALCS through the decisive Game 5 of the World Series (in the airport terminal just before boarding - seriously couldn't have been more perfect timing). On that note congrats to all the Phillies' fans reading this - 2 of you, at last count - on your world championship. Even though as an O's fan I was living vicariously through the Devil Rays - and yes to me they still are and forever will be the DEVIL Rays - I am happy for my good Philly-fan-friends (not to mention a little jealous if we're being honest, and we are).
Sticking with the baseball theme, what's the best thing about the offseason for Orioles' fans? Probably that they can't lose any games during the winter (though if any team could find a way to pull this off....they'd be among my top 3 or so guesses). Alas next season will start and the losses will start piling up again soon enough. No use in pretending otherwise, Chris.
I have a feeling that a lot of blog-worthy things have happened in the last couple of months that I'm just not thinking of at the moment. I'm hoping that a few will come to me if I keep typing. Ah yes- before I left for the US we gave a practice TOEFL Test to about 22 interested locals. The TOEFL Test is the test foreigners need to pass in order to study at most American universities, and it is by no means easy. I'd call the reading section a watered-down LSAT - easier, for sure, but for foreigners it's really a challenge. Even native speakers have to read the texts carefully and think hard to answer a lot of the questions. Anyway, we gave this practice test thinking it would be an easy first step in our latest idea for a community project - creating a local translators group that could supply interpreting help to foreign visitors, for example people adopting or people just visiting Kyzylorda completely on their own (this never really happens but hey, it could someday). It ended up being a pretty sizable pain in the арс, especially because we kept the signup period open until the night before, meaning we had 22 50-page tests to start printing less than 24 hours before the test. This became especially problematic when my brand new printer ran out of ink 8 pages in. Thankfully we didn't panic(<---not true) and were able to scramble around town the morning of and make all the copies, but we cut things awfully close. It was also a pain getting the room we needed at the university reserved, which reminds me of another ridiculous thing.
Back in September I think I mentioned that a few of my students expressed to me their sincere interest in learning baseball. Obviously this kind of talk is music to my ears, so I set up a "baseball club" to meet twice a week. We had a couple successful meetings, though never with more than 3 people at a time, which made it less baseball than 1-on-1-on-1 whiffle ball. Anyway even with the low turnout these were going well enough, until the university security guards one day refused to give me the key for the спорт зал, or gym. When I asked why, it was because they were told by somebody - they were unable or flat refused to tell me who - not to give the key to anyone, including the dean. After several weeks of trying in vain to figure out what the hell was going on, I finally was told that the school rents the gym - which is inside the university building - from a private company. Regardless of this, which in itself seems ridiculous, I could vent for pages/hours about how ridiculously stupid it is to restrict access to a completely empty and mostly unused gym, but I'll spare you all the time and save myself the subsequent rapid rise in blood pressure. And there might be some rationale behind the whole thing, but these days I'm generally not in the mood to give people the benefit of the doubt. Suffice it to say, as far as I'm concerned it makes absolutely no sense and is completely and utterly devoid of reason. For the time being I've given up, mainly because for awhile each day I'd ask and each day it would just make me angrier and angrier. Also to be fair people weren't exactly knocking down the door to play either - a few times I had to hook in stragglers - "Oh hi Aigerim from 05-1, what are you doing back at the school at 4 p.m.? Oh you're going to the library? Why don't you come play baseball with the three of us in the gym instead? Oh you can study later. And it's okay that you have high heels on, it's just whiffle ball."
Back to the TOEFL. Mostly it went fine. Grading the tests also took a lot longer than we'd expected, and we hadn't realized beforehand that it wasn't logistically possible to have a speaking section and finish before midnight, since we would have had to listen to 22 people all at different times, so we ended up turning it into a writing section, which was of course less than ideal. But all in all, it was fine. Only three students became certified "Contact Club Translators" available for hire based on their scores, but this wasn't a big surprise considering how difficult the test is.
What else has happened? Oh yeah, America has a new president! Congratulations to Barack Obama. I don't want to get into divisive political issues, but I will say I was extremely happy and proud when I went to the internet on the morning of November 5 and saw the New York Times headline: "OBAMA." It put a hop in my step going back to my building, and it was the only topic of conversation for the rest of the day. Political leanings aside, I don't think I've ever been as proud to be an American as I was on that day. And how thankful I was to be able to spend that historic day in a foreign country, to see firsthand the reactions of non-Americans to such a historic election and get to share the moment with people of another country, who clearly had a stake in the result. People here generally grasped the significance of America electing a black president, as they have a working knowledge of our ugly racial past, but more than that they almost unilaterally expressed to me their happiness that someone other than Bush was coming in. (In the run-up to the election, only one Kazakh person told me he wanted McCain, and many told me they thought McCain would be a continuation of Bush, if that gives an idea of "how the world would have voted"). Many people asked me why Bush was leaving, and I explained about the (bloodless coup) term limits. Actually right when I got back to the school that morning after checking the internet, one Kazakh teacher approached me and said "How's your Kazakh these days?" Telling him it was okay, he then proceeded to ask me a lot of hard questions that would have been difficult for me to answer in English, let alone in a language that lay virtually untouched during 70 years of Soviet rule. For example, "How are things going in Iraq?" "Why did America go into Iraq?" "Will Obama start more wars?" and after telling me the only reason we went into Iraq was oil, "Iraq has a lot of oil. Kazakhstan has a lot of oil. America invaded Iraq. Should I worry that America will someday invade Kazakhstan?" At first the obvious answer to me was "Of course not!" We're so mired in two unpopular wars that something drastic would have to happen for our leaders to plunge us into another one at this point. Not to mention most Americans don't even know Kazakhstan is a real country yet, and the political situation here is stable enough that Kazakhstan is probably among the last on America's list of "next countries to invade." But then I thought about it for a second and changed my answer to say that it wasn't going to happen in his lifetime (he's about 60). "Yes, but is it possible? I know I don't need to worry, but I'm asking because I worry for my children," he said. Then I thought more about it and realized that if someone in Iraq had asked this question to a foreign visitor, say, 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, they might have had the same initial reaction I did. So then I said that yes, it was possible. It's interesting the effect giving this kind of answer has - on the person giving it. Of course I wasn't coming literally face to face with war casualties or seeing things up close in that way, but when you're trying to be honest and straightforward and you feel you have to tell someone in a foreign country that yes, it's possible that your country might one day invade their country, endangering the lives of your children and grandchildren, the whole picture can become a lot clearer in your mind, and it did in mine. Being abroad, especially at the current time, has taught me one thing - how much much of the rest of the world is at the complete mercy of America, and not just its foreign policy. From the global impact of our economic "situation" to Kazakhstanis' concern about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to their tracking of the election, for almost a year before Election Day, even to seeing two middle school age boys walking down the street listening to American rap music and shouting "TALK IS CHEAP MUTHA F***KAS!!!" has made clear how far America's reach can be.
I was also, before I came, a little afraid of a perceived worldwide anti-American sentiment. But I've been surprised at how easily and naturally people here separate the regular citizens of America from the ruling class. They know, for example, that just because you're from the US doesn't automatically mean you agree with everything your government is doing. Perhaps it was naive of me to think, or fear, that that might be the case, but either way I've been relieved to find it's not.
Wow, what else? This has been a slightly heavier entry than most of my past ones. Rest assured there have been plenty of lighter moments recently, but for some reason they're not есиме тусип жатыр, or literally "dropping into my mind" at the moment. Ah, a belated Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! We celebrated a few times here with different groups of students before having a celebration with all (now 5!) of the volunteers in our oblast. All in all it was a good Thanksgiving. And Halloween - that was spent in a hotel in Amsterdam following the news of a 24-hour delay on my connecting flight to Almaty. So the Thanksgiving celebration was a lot better. I think for Halloween I just watched the news in Dutch - actually even less exciting than it sounds.
Ok before I wrap this one up, one quick anecdote from yesterday. A local school teacher had tracked me down at work a few days earlier and asked me for help with an open lesson project "according to the internet regime." I was thoroughly clueless as to what exactly she needed me to do, but I told her I'd do it. (Partly I just wanted to meet this "internet regime.") So she ended up calling me on Sunday and telling me to come down to the main building at the university, and to bring an American flag if I had one. Luckily I had brought back a few foam ones from the US, so I took one of these with me. When I got there I realized what was going on: this teacher was doing an open lesson about American holidays and wanted her students to interview me via Skype, presumably to show how technologically advanced her (open) lessons are. So I got there and they sent me to sit at the computer in the adjoining room. They then took my small foam American flag and glued it to the wall behind me with gluestick. It was becoming apparent that they were going to pretend I was in America, when in fact I was 30 feet away and in the same building. Ok, that's cute, I'll go along with it, I figured.
At the start of the interview the students introduced themselves as Baghzhan and Akmaral, both 8th grade students. The interview went fine, and when we finished I told them that their English was very good. "And you guys are only in 8th grade?" I asked. "No, we're in 11th. That was a lie." And they all laughed, including the teacher. This didn't really bother me at the time, partly because they were so friendly and full of questions, but as I thought about it more it started to gnaw at me. We've seen this kind of thing time and time again here: teachers not only not reprimanding students for dishonest behavior, but actively engaging in, participating in, and even provoking it. So I've come to this most recent conclusion regarding the Kazakhstan cheating epidemic: people everywhere are naturally going to do dishonest things, whether it's in the US, Kazakhstan, Romania, Brazil, wherever. But I've noticed here that one difference between here and the US is that my students generally feel no shame when they cheat, and thus it's just standard accepted practice. Why is this? Are people here naturally more dishonest? No, I think it's that on a much larger scale than in the US, teachers here don't instill in their students that cheating and lying are wrong. Example: teachers here that don't allow their students to cheat are regarded as "strict," as in, "Mr. Chris why don't you let us cheat? You are so strict!" Wow, okay.
I could go on and on about problems with the current structure of the educational system here, from kindergarten on up through university, but I won't.
Well, if you've made it this far, you deserve a prize. Remind me in about 10 months and I'll get you something cool from the bazaar for when I get back. I should really try to write shorter and more frequent entries, but I figure this one makes up for the last two or so months of silence. Plus it was pretty therapeutic for me. Well, till next time, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (and Happy Valentine's Day?). Be safe everyone.
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