Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Hi Everyone,

I cannot tell you enough how the simplest things here are not easy.

I tried to talk to my parents tonight through Skype. I was going to do it at a place with wireless because if you do it there you pay money, but at least you get a drink or food for the money in addition to the internet connection. You aren’t just paying for the computer use and connection, which is what you do if you are at an internet café. This, of course, backfired. At 10 am their time, and 8 pm my time, my parents and I were supposed to be on Skype. I thought if I gave myself 15 minutes I should be able to figure the connection out. Unlike the US, you can’t just select an unsecure wireless connection and be on the internet. You have to select the unsecure connection and then enter in a ton of numbers for your ISN and DSN pathways, and for the place I went you also had to enter in a user name and password.

The place I went to had instructions to do this, but I guess it was for another version of Microsoft because they didn’t make sense. They also didn’t make sense because they were in Russian. But, the commands on the computer were all in English. So I just figured I would follow those. But no, that didn’t work. You have no idea how disappointing it is to take the time to arrange a time to talk and then have it scattered because you can’t figure out how to connect to the wireless internet. It really puts a damper on your night because you were looking forward to talking to the person that you made a phone date with.

And the drink I paid for wasn’t what I was expecting. Surprise, surprise. I ordered a chocolate milkshake. In the States they include ice cream. In Costa Rica they include ice cream, at least in the city. Here, it is just chocolate milk. Again, disappointing.

So, that is how my last hour was spent.

Other than that the day was fine. I find it amazing how much the time of day affects my students. I have two sections of the advanced film study class – one in the evening, one in the afternoon. The evening class is vivacious, interested, interactive, etc. But the afternoon class is hell. They are dead, not participatory, and even I feel a little dead. I can’t really blame them. But it is so much nicer to teach the students in the evening section than the afternoon one.

After class we had a new teacher orientation and dinner, which was nice. They had salmon! Where the school got, no one knows. But it was delicious. I tried horse tongue and meat. It was ok, but not my favorite. The meat had a more normal texture than the tongue.

In the early afternoon I went to the Green Bazaar again with another teacher. She showed me her favorite vendors and introduced them to me, so that was very nice of her. The vendors were friendly and some even gave me a discount. So, overall that was a good experience. I also bought a nice “big” (normal size) yellow towel. I can now take showers and dry off properly. Before the towel, I was using an old shirt.

The biggest thing about this trip was the fact that I took public transit back to school all by myself. You are probably thinking, Amanda is such a baby. She can’t even use the bus system. But I dare you to use a bus system where there are not any maps, are not any internet resources to tell you what to take, you have no idea how to stop the driver so you can get off, everyone speaks a different language than you and the only way for you to get on the bus is by hopping on the slowly moving bus. Sorta like how Dad used to joke around with us about getting in the car while it was slowly moving. This is that in real life. And this is not the easiest thing when you are carrying lots of food.

Anyway, I now feel like I can handle the market by myself. I just need to learn the numbers. I can definitely handle the public transit system though. Anyway where you go on a bus it is about 35 cents (40 tenge). So, it is very affordable.

I found out where Joey will be teaching. The head of the school is very nice. Her name is Zhazira and she gave me the location of the women’s club in Almaty. I plan on trying to find the club location this weekend. The school is nice, but somewhat small. It is on the third floor of a mall. Good classrooms and they have computers. So that is all good. I think the place will be nice to work at.

I was paid for teaching 11 days today. I found out where the US Embassy is and plan on going to register there on Friday, if it is open. If not, I will go do it next week. We have the rest of the week off. It is a holiday for Thursday and Friday of this week – Constitution Day(s).

While I didn’t buy a cell phone, I now know a good place to buy one. It is near the market, so I can not only walk around the market at a leisurely pace, but I can also see the cathedral down there and buy a cell phone. So I have a good day trip planned there. And with my new found skill in public transit, I can test out my abilities. I just hope buying the cell phone isn’t a horrible experience.

Not much else that I did today. Plan on reading a little tonight and then seeing whatever festivities are going on tomorrow. Don’t know what that will include. For the weekend, I might try and go somewhere with James, but that isn’t planned yet and I don’t think it will be planned unless I do it. Or I can go on a tour with the school. Right now, I think that sounds like a great idea.

Anyway, I’m off to bed. Night night!

Amanda