School update

It seems strange when I think that I’ve been here three weeks. Feels waaaaaay longer. This week I went back to work, and slowly but surely I’m starting to get a routine of sorts going. Work is still not sorted out, but that will be an ongoing thing. I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but if the principals had their way, they’d be hiring at least four of me (limited by the management board). So, the problem is trying to figure out exactly what they need me to focus on because there’s so much for me to do. At the moment we’ve got a plan to work with until the end of the semester (January), which will buy us time to put together a better long-term plan that we can work with for the rest of my contract and beyond, whether I stay here or someone else comes in. It’s rather confusing on a lot of fronts. One example is not actually knowing exactly where I fit in the school. I’m part of the English department (I teach an IB English class and “English” is in my job title) but at the same time I’m not (I’m also supposed to work across all departments). Mostly I’ve been sorting stuff out with the school’s head of curriculum and secondary principal (who are a married couple). So far we’re working well together and I’m developing rapport with them (have found out they’re practising Christians who started out in the international teaching business as missionaries and have a lot of good Adventist friends).

So, this temporary plan won’t be implemented until we’ve had a chance to sit with the entire English department and tell them what I’ll be doing, which is due to happen Monday afternoon. As such, I had a lot of freedom with what to do over the past week. The international (American) middle school English teacher took advantage of having me there and for a number of periods I supervised her students while she took them out one at a time to do some reading tests (the results of which will actually be able to help me with my job further down the track). Another middle school English teacher is a few weeks out from starting her maternity leave and she’s been absent a few days, so I’ve done a couple of internal relief lessons as well. Both situations have given me a chance to get to know some of the kids a lot more. I was pretty horrified my first week at the general lack of discipline and order across the school, but things have improved this week. The kids are still typically noisy, but if I’m super strict they are manageable.

Not much else to report, but I’m slowly starting to get to know my colleagues. I have had a couple of chats with the IB Russian teacher, a local who has spent the past 20 years living in the US. In one of our conversations I asked her whether she’d be available to possibly tutor me in Russian and/or Azeri. We talked a bit about language acquisition etc., and today she sat with me at lunch, and as much as possible, we conversed in Russian (which is not that much considering her English is fluent and my Russian is very limited: “The soup is delicious” was about the extent that I got to).

Sorry there aren’t any photos with this post. I’m not really taking any at the moment. If things work out (i.e. the weather is nice and I’m not feeling really lazy) I’ll try to get some more over the weekend.

Love Annie

Two weeks in

So... I'm two weeks into about two years. I'm not sure how long I can get away with "first impressions" but so far I'm enjoying the city and I'm glad I made the decision to move here.

From Monday to Friday I went to work every day. The school is about 1.5-2 kilometres from my apartment. The weather was fairly miserable for my first few days, so I took the bus (a grand total of about AU$0.16 based on today's exchange rate) most of the time. However, when it wasn't raining I walked, and I'm planning to continue doing that as often as I can. Our work day is officially 8:05 to 4:05 (I have no idea why), with classes between 8:30 and 3:45. I spent most of the week observing other classes to get a feel for the school and to try to comprehend what I'll actually have to do. I'm currently the only "ESL" teacher at school — almost all students are learning English as a second (or third or fourth) language, but the English department is responsible for more literature-based studies. This is the first or second year that the students are being taught maths, science and history in English as well, and my job is to provide additional language support to help them cope with those classes. I'm still not certain how it's going to work. The head of curriculum told me on my first day that ideally they need at least four of me, so how they'll work out which students see me and how often is yet to be determined.

I've also been given a Year 10 class with two students. The school offers the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program to senior students (Years 10-11 here), and students need to study a Language A (primary language with literature studies) and Language B (second language). Prior to my arrival, the school offered English B but only Azeri A and Russian A. However, there were two students taking Russian A who were struggling too much with the course, so admin decided to open a new class for them to do English A. Both kids are expats — the girl is from Turkey, and the boy is Bulgarian but has spent most of his life in Vietnam. The IB program is rather challenging, and neither of them currently has the English level they really need to cope with the assessment, so it's going to be a pretty massive job getting them to where they need to be. They're lovely kids, and I'm thrilled (albeit a little terrified) that I get to teach IB already. It's been a long-term career goal of mine, but it's one of those things that you need experience to get hired by an IB school but you can't get experience until they hire you blah blah blah. The English B teacher has previously taught this course, so he's going to help me out as I figure out what I'm doing :)

The school has a mix of Azeri and foreign staff. There are apparently a few more Aussies and Kiwis at the primary school, but at the upper school there are only a few of us who are not Americans. Everyone has been friendly and welcoming, but seeing as I arrived for the final week of the first term, they were also rather busy. The students in the younger grades (where I'll mostly be teaching) were a shock to the system after Kazakhstan (we had angels who were as far from stereotypical obnoxious teenagers as you could imagine). There doesn't seem to be a strict discipline system in place, and the students are very very very very very very very very talkative. In loud, echoey classrooms.

Anyway, I made it through the first week. My second week here just happened to be the term break, so I've had a week to explore and find my way around the city a little. I went to church on Saturday, after getting the address from a friend of a friend, and really enjoyed it. It's gigantic compared to Kyzylorda. There are a few people there who speak English, including an Indian guy who's been in the country for 15 years, and he's pretty much been given the job of translating for me. He, his wife and their two boys live not far from me, so they've also offered to pick me up, saving me from what would be about an hour on public transport each way. I was invited over to the home of a local family for lunch, and had a good time. It gave me a bit of insight into the culture (I get the talkativeness at school now!) and I feel like that I'm already starting to make friends.

For the next couple of days I checked out a couple of local malls. There were a few things I was chasing (including a waterproof/windproof jacket), but I've found that shopping here is a little stressful. Firstly, there is pretty much no written Russian (in Kazakhstan if it wasn't in Russian they had both languages), so I can't rely on that to find my way around. Secondly, in a number of shops I literally had staff following me around. Like, you start going through a rack of clothes to see what sizes they have, and they have to help you. Because you can't do something that simple and easy by yourself. Walk somewhere else in the shop... they're still behind you. I discovered yesterday (after getting cranky while I was in town) that the simple Azeri app I have on my phone has the translation for "I'm just looking" so that is going to be my first Azeri sentence (my first word was "respect" but it's used here to mean "bribe").

I've been sticking to buses rather than taking the metro as a way of familiarising myself with what's where (also, the closest metro is still a 10-15 minute bus ride away). Google maps is very helpful with that. If I take the bus in the opposite direction from school, it takes me a little further out of town for a few minutes before going down a crazy hill and ending up driving right along the coast. Today was the first properly sunny day since I arrived (correction: properly sunny couple of hours) so I took advantage of that and walked around a little between National Flag Square (second tallest flag pole in the world) and Crystal Hall (home of Eurovision 2012 or whenever Azerbaijan hosted it). If it doesn't rain tomorrow I'll go for a walk again in town near Fountains Square or Old Town.

Anyway, that's about it for now.

Love Annie

Let the Azerbaijani Adventures Begin!

I am hopeless at keeping any type of blog going, but I figured I'd at least try to start everything here again for now for those wanting to follow along with my new adventures in Baku.

I arrived at about 3pm local time and was driven across town to school and my apartment. I'm exhausted while writing this so sorry if I'm not coherent...

Reactions/observations so far:

• City is much greener than Kyzylorda. Like a million times greener. Apparently the government makes an effort to keep things looking fresh and pretty.
• Speaking of green, the school is next door the botanical gardens (except that the only entrance to the park is probably a good 500m walk around the block).
• Traffic (driving skills) is... well, worse than Australia, but compared with Moscow, Kyzylorda, Almaty etc., I DIDN'T THINK I WAS GOING TO DIE! 
• My apartment is on the 10th floor (there's a lift thankfully) and it's possibly the fanciest place I've ever lived in. It's also huge (one bedroom but all rooms are really big). Probably 15-20 minutes to walk to school. 
• I'm not sure about my shower. It's one of those ones that has the massage jet things but it doesn't work brilliantly. 
• There's a reasonable-sized supermarket on the ground floor (entrance around the other side). I had a few random things provided in the apartment, but toilet paper was not on that list, so I had to go down and check it out. I'll probably still have to shop around for a few things I'm after, but overall it's a decent range (I got rice bran oil! I never ever saw that in Kazakhstan and that included shopping at some of the fanciest supermarkets in Almaty.)
• Oh... I'm going to be picking up one IB class immediately, rather than having to wait a year or two so that makes me really happy. 

Can't think of anything else. Have internet but not local sim yet, so can still be reached on my Aussie number via whatsapp, viber, facetime etc. It's just after 6pm now so I think I'll eat something and then crash. Photos in the next few days. 

Is chaos the new normal?

In the past two weeks, there has been a lot happening here. I finished my annual medical checkup, which may have included a few local people yelling at me for "cutting in line" (I'd actually been in the line, been sent off to do something else, and then returned), and has left me with the determination to take as few sick days as possible, simply because sick day = going back to the clinic.

We also had to make our final decisions about whether we wanted to renew our contracts. This chat happened for me the same day as the yelling situation, and I had decided firmly in the taxi on my way back to school that staying for another year in Kyzylorda was simply not an option unless I either wanted to go completely insane. I wanted to keep some options open, so I said that I wanted to transfer to a different school in Kazakhstan.

That all happened two Tuesdays ago. On the following Monday, meetings were set for all staff staying to sign their contract renewals. Until two of my colleagues (including my closest friend here) were told that, even though they had requested to stay, their contracts weren't being renewed. The official reasons given to both were practically identical and frankly rather suspicious seeing as no concerns had been raised prior to this meeting. Our interpretation (which was hinted at by our international vice principal) was that the director was very unhappy with these colleagues for signing a letter regarding the holiday pay dispute. Only six of us ended up signing that (I was one). Three of us had asked for transfers. Two wanted to stay. The other's position was being made redundant, but he was wanting to stay/transfer into a different department (he's been teaching art but is also qualified for English). This guy was fed the same complaints as the two being fired at the end of the year, but was told that unless he fixed the problems in three weeks, he's going home then. Needless to say, it all came as quite a shock.

In the wake of this, I and the other two requesting transfers were expecting the worst for ourselves, but I was surprised to get an email on Wednesday from HR in Astana asking for my updated CV, to be forwarded on to a school in Almaty for a vacancy there. I actually interviewed with their international VP this morning, and it went well. I really like this IVP's attitude, but it seems like the management problems I struggle with in Kyzylorda are practically the same there. So, if I'm offered the job, I have a lot of praying and thinking to do about whether or not it's worth staying for another year.

The other "excitement" for this week happened on Wednesday morning, when I was getting ready for school. I picked my glasses up off my dresser after doing my makeup, and one of the wings just fell off. Broken hinge. I messaged my aunt in Australia, and she's ordered a replacement part for my glasses. I got a friend to help me tape them back up, but on Thursday I went into what is considered one of the two best opticians in town, to see if I could order a temporary backup pair. My prescription is rather complicated (I have progressives amongst other things), and getting the exact prescription wasn't an option, but I have something that's kinda close enough, which set me back a grand total of 84AUD. My real glasses cost close to a grand, and I've realised that I'm a complete and utter diva when it comes to glasses. This new pair feels cheap and tacky. They don't fit properly, and even without wearing mascara, they constantly get smudged from my eyelashes. I'm actually wondering whether it'd be better to walk around with a pair of taped-up broken glasses instead of these. I'll stick it out for a few days still before I make a final decision on these, but I can't wait for this replacement part to arrive from Australia. (Lesson learned - have a backup pair of glasses. In the 20 years I've worn them, I've never had a pair break, but I've always had my last pair of glasses accessible in the event that this happened. I just forgot to pack them to bring to Kazakhstan.)

Can this month be over already?

This place and my health are not good friends. I'm at the point where I'm swinging between anxiety and fury at the thought of having to deal with our medical clinic.
I was supposed to go in each evening this week for a 20-30 minute massage, followed by a 250ml glucose drip. I only did one evening of the glucose drip (I know that all the carbs we eat turn to glucose in the body, but when I eat little to no sugar, that much straight into my system is a bit too much). I gave up on the massages after three days, when the young male masseuse became a little too flirty and familiar for my comfort. Along with this additional "treatment", I was supposed to complete my annual medical check. Kazakh labour code requires a yearly check which includes blood and urine tests, a chest x-ray and ECG. I did the tests and x-ray last week when I was home sick and already heading into the clinic to get my sick leave papers organised. I had forgotten about the ECG, so on Monday when I was in for the massage, I asked about that. I had to wait to Friday: the ECG technician apparently only operated until 5pm, and I'd need to see a doctor afterwards for the final results, and Friday was the only day that they had appointments available and when I could get away from work early.
Friday afternoon rolled around, and I collected my x-ray on the way to the clinic. Once I'm there, I sat around for almost an hour, as the English-speaking receptionist had asked if I could wait while she filed some paperwork (off premises, it turned out). At about three minutes before 5, I used Google Translate to ask another receptionist if I could just do the ECG already, so she took me up. I got the ECG and went back down to the ground floor, presumably to wait to see the doctor to get the final stamp of clearance. But no, apparently I also need to see a "woman doctor" (pap smear, maybe?), which I couldn't do then. I simply do not understand the logic (or incredible lack of logic) of the people in this city/country. Why couldn't they have told me that I needed this extra step LAST WEEK when I was in there 3 or 4 times? I now need to go back yet again on Tuesday morning (no free time on Monday), and risk having to skip half a class to do so. This time of year is insanely busy for me and I have very few consecutive spare lessons; it takes 15-20 minutes by taxi each way from home/work, not to mention the cost (which is actually dirt cheap if I convert into dollars, but still an inconvenience).

February 4

So... I just posted the last of my entries from my European trip... I wrote the posts about 3 weeks ago and basically left them as they were,  just adding photos after I sorted through the 1000+ that I took. One reason I think it took me a while to get them all done was that I have needed to not remember the holiday for a bit. Confusing I know, but I've been rather miserable and looking back at the photos would have depressed me more about being back here.

I've mentioned some problems at work - we have a pay dispute going on at the moment that is creating some unpleasant tension among the international team. I've done my best to keep my personal and professional lives separate, so I don't think anyone from work has any knowledge of this blog nor knows details to search for it, but just in case, I won't explain what's going on, except to say that this has pretty much been the final straw for my decision to leave here as soon as I possibly can.

The school year will finish May 25th, but we'll be expected to stay for 4 weeks of summer school after that, meaning I'll be free from the end of June. I'm in the process of job hunting, but that usually requires me finding some really interesting jobs, bookmarking them, writing about 5 sentences of a cover letter and then taking a break and watching a TV episode or 17 and not coming back to them. I've always hated job hunting (apparently, that's human) and my current state of mind is not exactly conducive to selling myself. What I really want to write is: "Dear __________, I really really really really really want to work at your school because I hate where I am now and please give me the job!" Not quite what HR people are after :(

At any rate, my goal, which has always been the long-term plan, is to get a job in Europe somewhere, ideally Germany, Switzerland or Austria. However, EU jobs are not easy to come by for non-EU citizens due to the pesky process of obtaining work permits. If nothing pans out over here or anywhere else, I'll come back to Australia and find a job there again. I hadn't thought I wanted to work in Australia again, but you have no idea how enticing and wonderful it is to have legal rights and avenues of mediation and dispute resolution.

So, apart from the staff tension, work has been so-so. My application to attend a TESOL event in the UK in April was rejected by administration, partly because the international teachers are not allowed to do any type of external professional development, which really annoyed me. The curriculum is as weird as ever. Our 12th-graders have just finished a unit on "Psychology and Observation" and we're now moving on to "Carbon Dating". No joke. I'm an English teacher and I'm supposed to teach carbon dating. Then something I can't remember and then a unit on maths. Another factor influencing my decision to leave. The one joy has been my 12th-grade Critical Thinking classes. I've got half a dozen or so students preparing to take Critical Thinking exams for university entrance, so I actually get to use my brain for a couple of hours a week. I should mention that I like all my kids, but the subject matter is not always appealing which dampens my joy for teaching.

In spare time I've been catching up with church friends or hanging out with colleagues and partners, but mostly just relaxing at home. I mentioned on Facebook that I loved watching "Mozart in the Jungle", and this week I've finally gotten around to watching "Sherlock", and kicking myself for not watching it sooner.

Anyway, I'll leave this here.

Lots of love,
Annie. 

Tallinn

I have wanted to visit Tallinn for years. When I first lived in Russia 13 or so years ago, I was told by numerous people that Tallinn (and Estonia) was the most beautiful of the three Baltic capitals, and I'd have to say now that I agree.

Old Town in Riga is basically just a section of the city with older buildings and cobblestoned streets, but in Tallinn, there's actually a wall around a large chunk of it (kind of like a kremlin, I suppose). And it felt more ancient, as well. The apartment we stayed in almost felt like it was a medieval building converted for modern use. We also had fresh snow there, and again it was freezing (-15C before including the windchill factor). We only ventured from Old Town once, to eat at Estonian Lido (not as good as the original in Latvia, but we were much wiser this time round), so I can't speak for the rest of the city, but Old Town is very tourist-oriented along with housing the government building and numerous embassies. It seems that Estonians have wool, felt, linen, amber and wood products. Vlada and I went a little crazy after discovering the knitted Moomin scarves and mittens, but didn't end up getting any. It was a very pretty town, but it was so cold out (and Vlada's knee was really painful by this stage as soon as it hit the cold) so we stayed in a lot more in restaurants (blinchiki!!!) and museums.

Idyot Sneg! (Russian for "It's snowing!" - one of my favourite sentences in this language)
Also, I had an absolute blast travelling with these two.
I realised that I don't think I've spent this much time with Pete in one place since he finished school. 

Also, my favourite part was that our apartment had a sauna. It meant that I've been able to finish the holiday on a very relaxed note, and am as ready as I can be to head back into the chaos that is work at the moment.

Moomin knitwear for kids! 

(I've written the bulk of all these posts during a 10-hour layover at the airport in Moscow, with the plan to add photos as I download them from my camera. I mentioned in an earlier post that I was really happy to escape Kazakhstan for a while, and to be honest, there were a few moments in the first half of the trip when the thought of going back in 2-3 weeks' time was putting a dampener on the actual holiday. I'm definitely more at peace about returning now, but I'm still not thrilled about the prospect. There were some actions and decisions made by certain people/departments that a number of us were unhappy about, including one of my favourite colleagues being fired two days before the end of term. In addition to that, I found out from another friend on staff that I had offended most of my department after one person read and shared a joke/comment on Instagram about my being excited about returning to "civilisation, aka a place where non-dairy milks are an option". And it's not the first time my Aussie humour/sarcasm has been taken literally. So basically, there have been a ton of small things that on their own would have been fine, but when they add up together, it becomes a bit overwhelming, depressing and frustrating when living and working there.)