It's Peace Corps - there WILL be drama!

So now that training is wrapped up and we're all at sites, things SHOULD calm down. To an extent. There are always challenges when you plop 40+ Americans down in new countries, away from friends & family, many for the first time. While our 3 night staging in DC went off without a hitch, our drama started right after on the plane ride to Albania.

I can no longer really sleep well on planes - even on red-eyes (unless I've saved up the miles to splurge on biz class/lie flat seats). However, on the flight to Albania, at one point, maybe not quite halfway through the flight, I'd managed to drift off a bit when I was jolted awake by the sounds of a kerfluffle. I looked around, glaring, to find the source of the disturbance, and saw that about 3-4 rows back from me, in the middle group of seats, several Trainees were gathered around a passenger (NOT a Trainee) who was having some sort of panic attack or something. As you can imagine, Peace Corps types are naturally drawn to "help" - and we had a cohort of Health Trainees, so naturally there was  lot of "assistance." Until someone finally said, "It might help if most of you stepped back to give this person some air."  Of course, in the moment, all I could think about was me me me and my ever-so-rare airplane sleep, but as it turned out the person was okay so I didn't have to feel TOO guilty about my selfishness!  lol

Once training commenced, it was actually fairly chill for a while. And, at the end of the day, we ended up losing NO ONE during training - which is a rarity. But, again, that doesn't mean we missed our share of drama.  Over the course of the 11 weeks of our language classes, for example, fully 70% of our group in Montenegro had at least one meltdown/breakdown in class. As you can imagine, 5 hours a day of language, while coping with a new environment, new home, different culture, living with strangers, spending all day long with a variety of folks you've just met - both locals and Americans, can be stressful. And 5 of the 7 of us Lost. It. in class at least once over frustration with the language (often triggered by other Trainees "just trying to help"), and/or breakdowns due to external factors (e.g., family issues back home). While I don't know the percentage for the Albania Trainees, I know from talking with some of them they had their own fair share of drama during language - particularly thanks to some, er, "large personalities" in their group ("Shut up!" "No, YOU shut up!" "You're a racist!" "You're a victim!" etc.).  

All but one of us missed at least one training day due to illness, with one being (briefly) hospitalized. But, honestly, it wasn't a lot.

Host family drama was pretty rare on the whole, but there was more than one "interesting situation:" Like when one Trainee (Albania) had to be moved to a different host family after his host brother (early 30s) got in a huge fight over the phone with his ex wife, and then proceeded to DESTROY his parent's living room in a psychopathic rage. Said Trainee shared pics of the destruction, which is not appropriate for me to share, along with an audio recording of the dude losing his shit and tearing up the house. To be fair, something like this could easily happen in, say, Appalachia, but when you're living abroad with total strangers, it can be a bit scary, to say the least. Luckily, the Trainee ended up sharing with another Trainee, with a very nice host family.

Another Albania Trainee had a host family desperate to find her a husband. One of the very first questions the locals ask here - in Montenegro & Albania - is, "Are you married?" And woe to you if you're not because then it's game on to find you a spouse! This trainee was chatting with the host fams one evening when they asked her if she'd like to go into town with them on the weekend. She readily agreed, thinking it was a chance to do some shopping, maybe have a meal out, etc. No such luck. They drove into town, dropped off said trainee at a park (I think?) for a "surprise blind date" with a local and then took off!  Happy ending where they hit it off and ended up getting married?? Um, no.

As for me, I managed to Break. My. Bed. one night. I had a pretty nice set up, as I've already shared, with an airbnb type set up above my host parents' house. The one down side was I had no comfortable "lounging" chairs - only some kitchen table type chairs that weren't comfortable for extended sitting to watch TV, read, play on my phone, etc. So I generally sat/reclined on the end of my bed for that kind of stuff.  Well, one night, I sat on the bed, leaned back to read, and then SNAP/CRACKLE/POP,  one of the wooden slat supports collapsed. I was SO. Embarrassed. Even tho I hadn't flopped down on it or anything. Too embarrassed to tell the host fams, so I put it on the Peace Corps Homestay Coordinator who is an awesome human being, he was very amused by it, and offered to "break the news" to my family to make sure there was no language miscommunication (my excuse in asking him to tell them! lol). Of course my host parents were very chill about it, teased me about not telling them myself, said it had probably been weakened by a tourist stay or last year's trainee (the infamous "fat policeman" who ended his service early).  And they promptly hired a local guy and his friend to come and fix it promptly.

Our last bit of drama actually occurred the night before swearing in, while we were in Podgorica. As part of the swearing in, a member of one of the host families speaks as part of the program. Unfortunately, said member was rushed to the hospital the night before for an emergency appendectomy! Talk about timing - although, imagine if it had ruptured DURING the ceremony/while she was speaking. THAT would have been a trip!  And, luckily, another family member of another Trainee was able to step in. And we're official!

So training is done!  Coming soon: reflections on my new site, my school, my new host family, etc.  And hopefully a pause on too much drama......ooops, school was canceled my second day here due to a called in bomb threat! Duh duh duh! Apparently, these happen on occasion - always a hoax, and "coincidentally" always occurring near the end of term!  Stay tuned for more exciting adventures in Peace Corps!  :) 

Disclaimer: Any thoughts, observations, opinions, etc. are of course mine and not necessarily the views of Peace Corps.

PC Flashback - Kazakhstan - My Host Mom Tries to Kill Me - August 1997

Miscellaneous notes/cultural tidbits as I wrapped up PST in Kazakhstan:

They actually sell lottery tickets here. I thought it'd be a hoot if I hit a jackpot here! I wanted to buy one when we were at the post office on a field trip, but the woman behind the counter said SHE couldn't sell me one because SHE is not the lottery person. When I just asked how much they cost, she still couldn't help me because SHE is not the lottery person. It was very Soviet. Had a similar experience at the post office on another day when a woman couldn't help us because she wasn't sitting in the right CHAIR. I mean, whatever.

Another “fun" culture tidbit: since they don't really have grocery stores here, you go to bazaars and meat markets for food. There's a big bazaar/meat market in Almaty (the capital) that's just amazing. It's really clean and doesn’t smell at all, but the quick way to identify the major meat sections are by the heads of the animals, So yeah, they'll have big horse heads hanging over the relevant meat section. Sometimes the skin is still on said heads, sometimes not. It's amazing how big a horse's head looks when separated from its body! Same thing with sheep's heads. No cow heads, though. But pig heads. But it's amazing – it doesn't smell in there.

My host mom was upset to hear I’d be going so far away; she was hoping I’d get the TEFL spot here (ugh!). She’s already cried once, so I can imagine what Saturday will be like. Sigh. She’s really nice – all my friends are jealous. Unfortunately, to punish me for leaving, she fed me some poisoned meat the other day and I was REALLY sick for a couple of days. But seriously, I don’t know HOW I got sick, but it was most likely from some meat one day. Anyway, it was definitely my lowest point since I’ve been here, as I was spewing from both ends and I basically wanted to die. My host mom felt bad and was crying outside the bathroom door while I was spewing, and she kept saying, "Don't tell Peace Corps! Don't tell Peace Corps!"  But of course I had to coz I missed the counterpart conference and the PCMO had to come and give me some stuff and I am finally feeling better today. Just in time for that 30+ hour train ride to Leninogorsk. Bleh.

After my sickness, I’m now terrified of the meat here, which is bad news coz I’ve discovered the secret of Russian cuisine: meat & onions and some kind of dough, then fried or baked or boiled. Oh, and potatoes and cabbage and beets. And dill. They WORSHIP dill and put it on everything – they even use it in their flower arrangements! I would kill for some Mexican food – or Chinese/Hunan, or Italian, or BBQ. 

We ended up losing 3 folks during training – not too bad, as per the usual averages, we should have lost 5.2. Paul (the older guy) I told you about. Naomi & David Hall left within a couple days of each other. Naomi just wasn’t coping well at all, and I figured she’d bail. David was pressured to “resign.” He has some serious "issues" and was basically sleeping his way through Kapchagai – and with a wife back in the states! When he tired of the local girls (including his host sister!), and started hitting on fellow PCTs, that was pretty much it. The guy was a slimeball, so no big loss.

Your small world story about the prisoner was interesting coz just last week I had another one. I got a letter from my friend Jill in San Francisco and she was telling me that her sister mentioned she works with a woman who has a son in the Peace Corps and guess where he is? Kazakhstan, with the Kaz 4 group! She sent me his address and name and I had just met him the month before coz he came to Kapchagai w/some other current PCVs to give a talk on daily life here! Also, it turns out he’s in a city close to where I ended up being placed! Isn’t that wild? So yes, indeed, it is a small, small world we live in.

Disclaimer: Any thoughts, observations, opinions, etc. are of course mine and not necessarily the views of Peace Corps.

Adventures in Teaching - Practicum

So a couple weeks ago we did our  "practice teaching" (i.e., Practicum) where PC arranges with a couple of local schools to let us teach some of their classes over two weeks.  We each taught 8 lessons, paired with another trainee, and then each observed 3-4 lessons of our peers to provide feedback alongside the program staff.

I lucked out and was paired most often with sweet, chill Elaine, but I also taught at least one lesson with 3 other trainees, as well. I did have to do a 1st and 3rd grade class, but only one time each thank god (lol) and did one 4th grade class, which I enjoyed, then two 5th grade classes, one 6th and an 8th and a 9th. I just do better with older kids and those lessons went the best. Here we all are at the school in Bar where we taught the older kids:

But, funny thing, the 2nd grade class I did (with Elaine) is apparently THE most difficult class at the school due to behaviors, and having 3 special needs kids in the class (with no paras).  But for some reason, they were actually really well behaved the day we taught. I think partly it was due to Elaine's "grandmotherly" presence, and partly due to us not knowing ahead of time it was a "problem" class and I worked to engage the really disruptive girl - who sits at the front at a small round table with another challenging girl and a smart girl.  "Sarah" was taken aback by me treating her like all the other kids and meekly sat saying nothing until about the 4th time I tried to engage her and then she whispered out some of the vocab.

Fast forward a week.  Parker & Rob "get" to teach that same class and I "got" to observe. It did not go well. Sarah was out. of. control. Spent most of the class running around the room, being disruptive, bolting from class a few times, knocking on the door when out and then running away, etc. The other kids know she has issues and often try themselves to get her to stop, but it devolved to a point where they were all chattering away and goofing off with one boy who sits behind Sarah just full on slapping her across the face to try and get her to calm down! THAT finally elicited the regular teacher stepping in, while poor Rob & Parker gamely tried to keep the rest of the class engaged and finish the lesson. At one point, Parker was just PLEADING with the kids, "Please listen to me!  PLEASE listen to me!"  I actually got a significant headache just OBSERVING.  But the Peace Corps staff said how lucky they were to have had that experience so they could know the worst that could happen!  lol

In the 6th grade lesson I had with Rob we were teaching healthy and unhealthy foods. We were each going around the room with tablets showing kids random pics of food and asking if they were healthy or unhealthy. I showed a solid, solemn looking boy a pic of a can of Coke and asked, "Is it healthy or unhealthy?" and he looked me right in the eye and deadpanned, "It's unhealthy and I don't drink Coke because it's made in Israel and they are bad." I was like, "Whoa, good English!" gave him a fist bump, and moved on.

Elaine taught that same class later in the week with Parker and I was observing. As the kids were getting settled, a girl came up to me in the back and asked, "What is that old lady's name?" and I lost my shit. She was all confused at my laughter and said, "What? I want to know. I like her. I want to give her a hug."  Elaine was quite amused when I shared after and she mentioned she got a lot of hugs from kids.  Awwww!

In the 3rd grade class I taught with Harper there was a Russian boy on the spectrum--speaks no Montenegrin OR English, only Russian--and likes to occasionally roam around the class, rearrange the chalk, pics on the wall, etc. We were given a heads up about him so let him do his thing as long as he wasn't disrupting or distracting, but at one point, he made for Harper's phone on the teacher's desk while she was in back helping another kid. Without even thinking, I asked him in Russian what he was doing and he responded, "I want to listen to some music" and I said, again in Russian w/o really thinking, "Why? No. Leave it alone" and then it dawned on him that I had spoken Russian (his regular teacher only knows Montenegrin & English) and he startled, looked at me, narrowed his eyes, and then slowly backed away and sat down and behaved the rest of the class.  Ha!

Ironically, one of our most successful classes - a 5th grade lesson I did with Elaine - got us some disapproving feedback from the local teacher who harrumphed, "They had too much fun with the exercises you gave them and they won't remember the vocabulary, just that they had fun!" When she left, the PC Program Staff Managers/Observers said we were lucky to get that "local taste" of how they think lessons should be boring and are only successful when they end in tears and that the lesson we'd done was actually a most excellent example of how to engage kids while also getting them to learn, and they would be giving some feedback of their own to said teacher later.

Finally, as mentioned, the 8th and 9th grade classes were my favorite. I have a better rapport with older kids, and like in Kazakhstan, boys don't see male teachers here so otherwise normally checked out kids pay more attention - and after the lesson I got several selfies requests with students and the teacher raved.  We'll see how things go at site and am hoping I'll get mostly older kids. Think good thoughts for me!

Disclaimer: Any thoughts, observations, opinions, etc. are of course mine and not necessarily the views of Peace Corps.