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
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
No comments:
Post a Comment