E.L.T.

First, I’d like to apologize for the insane about of typos included in the first two posts. I was in a rush and not operating under the best of circumstances. They were typed while I was rushing in between two classes, they were copied from my digital camera’s LCD screen as my flash drive still doesn’t work (yes I took a picture of a Word document), and I was paying for the internet at the time by the minute. Plus, I never realized how much I relied on Mozilla’s spellchecker until it only checked for Russian. So, please accept this apology and consider it to be retroactive. I do care about both grammar and spelling, they have just moved down the priority list for about 2⅓ years.

Let me explain to you a little bit of what I have been doing for the past two weeks. My first ten weeks of PC (Peace Corps) are at a “site”, near the city of Almaty for my P.S.T. (Pre-Service Training). I was placed in a city called Issyc with about a third of the other volunteers in my class. PC Kazakhstan implements what is called community based training which means my PST consists of Russian language training and English teacher technical training. The English teacher training involves some teaching theory, the observation of English classes and finally we will end up conducting lessons on our own. So far though, English has not been the focus while Russian has overwhelmingly. In fact, I feel PST has earned a new name: E.L.T. or Exhaustive Language Training. Peace Corps is an acronym factory so this would fit both their standard communication procedures and their operating procedures; I feel I have been assaulted with language instruction. At this point, information overload is an understatement, but I’ll admit there is a real sense of accomplishment. Last week, we had days with six hour Russian classes plus some technical training and PC policy stuff mixed in-between. This week, we had a little more technical training, a little less policy stuff and I started attending personal hour long tutor session. This morning we had one final cruel addition, our first lesson in Kazak. It was overwhelming, but it will be nice to have that foundation in a country that grants immense respect to American Kazak speakers. Overall, Russian is much more difficult than Rosetta Stone led me to believe. Since arriving in country I have discovered that not only are verbs conjugated as they are in Spanish, French and most romantic languages, but nouns and adjectives have their very own cases as well. Just two weeks in though, I feel have a basic understanding of how things work. The trickiest part is the noun and preposition relationship, a different preposition referencing a noun means a different ending for that noun. Less confusing explanation: in Russian the word girl will have two different pronunciations in the following sentences. The girl is beautiful. I was charmed by the girl. It’s a process to grasp, so on another note I am happy to say that I’ve been here two weeks and can effectively read the Cyrillic alphabet. Peace Corps says to focus on your successes and not your insecurities. Cheers to that new alphabet.

Lastly, I want to express that I REALLY want to post about living in a Post-Soviet country. But, I can’t help but have some trouble collecting my thoughts. As a result, writing coherently on the subject at this point is not an option. Just know that the Post-Soviet world fascinating. The Soviet Union definitely built my apartment building, and the twelve other perfectly identical buildings surrounding it.

Oh, and my host dad was a Soviet soldier in the 80s.....
That should explain my shifting thoughts.

До свидания!*
(Good Bye!)
*pronounced Da Svidanya