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^^^^^ Brilliant avatar-post combo right here. Also, sup Kyrgyzstan PCV. I served right next door to you guys in glorious nation of Kazakhstan. Eat any sheep heads yet? Brief, unsolicited reflection on Kazakhstan: I think that my fascination with Kazakhstan is anchored in two main things. The first is nerdy excitement about the Russian language, Russian culture, and the former USSR. (The train engines all have a red star on the front. AWESOME. It's like I'm in that one Goldeneye level.) The second and deeper thing, though, was feeling deeply affected by people's sense of loss after the breakup of the USSR. It sounds like hyperbole, but I really don't think I met anyone there who, if they were old enough to remember it, didn't miss the USSR.* (People in their early 20s or younger didn't seem to have much of an opinion, presumably because they were small children, if they were even born at all, when the USSR collapsed.) One of Peace Corps' doctors there told us on several occasions that we should never take it for granted that we have a home country, because his didn't exist anymore. gently caress, it's making me tear up just remembering that, because god drat if the dude didn't love the Soviet Union. I think we've all internalized to some degree the idea that living in the USSR was an abject hell, but nobody I talked to in Kazakhstan thought that way. People miss free apartments and the ease of finding employment, for example. My first host mom (I had one host family during training and one at site) and I were talking about Yuri Gagarin, and she said to me, "During the Soviet era, we were great, but now, no one even knows who we are."** I asked another friend, who was about 29, to describe her childhood in the Soviet Union, and she had only positive things to say. Finally (comedy option), my second host mom said that the Soviet Union made better chocolate butter and that Soviet toilets flushed better. But she also said that there was a much stronger sense of community in the Soviet era, and that people knew and trusted their neighbors more than they do now. (Some of this is surely a rose-colored vision of the past, but still, people wouldn't view the past that way if there weren't positive things to base it on.) I'm sure that this "We miss the USSR" sentiment isn't the same everywhere (I'd assume the Baltic countries and Ukraine, for example, have different attitudes), but I definitely encountered it in Kazakhstan. Anyway, my service was difficult, especially the merciless, brutal, monochrome winter, but I'm still so, so glad that I went. Absolutely no regrets. I'd say it was unquestionably the most formative experience of my life so far. Perhaps most significantly, when I think about the huge difference in quality of life between the US and Kazakhstan, it doesn't feel abstract - it feels how it would feel if those circumstances were affecting my own family. That sounds really loving cliché, but it's the best way I can think of to express what the country means to me after my service. *This could be partly because I was in a heavily russified area. My impression is that people in the less Russian-influenced and more ethnically Kazakh south of the country place a higher value on reconnecting with their Kazakh cultural identity. **It's true. My grandmother alternated between thinking I was in Russia or Pakistan. Another volunteer's grandparents mailed him a card with this hilarious address written on the envelope: Volunteer name Peace Corps office address Almaty Kazakhstan RUSSIA P.S. Photos.  Compare the above picture of gray, bitter Siberian winter to my host family's warm, comfortable living room:  Probably much nicer than the living standards in most Peace Corps countries. We had electricity, running hot and cold water, effective heating, and even DSL (averaging about 250 kbps down). Zombie Kohlhaas fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Oct 16, 2009 |
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Oct 16, 2009 04:52
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Hey, we also had rice with rocks in it, so it wasn't complete Posh Corps. 
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Oct 17, 2009 01:14
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Thesaurus posted:Also, what are the chances of getting a teaching job at a university, "University English"? http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learn.whatvol.edu_youth.univ As I understand it, if you have an English MA (or some other humanities MA), you'll almost certainly get sent to the Eastern Europe/Central Asia region, because I think these are the only Peace Corps countries with uni English programs. Edit: I heard from one source that all uni volunteers in China have an MA in English education, but I heard from a few China RPCVs that that's not the case.
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Dec 13, 2009 01:33
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Two posts up: I knew at least 3 Russian majors who served with me in Kazakhstan. That's just anecdotal evidence, of course, but there can't be that many Russian majors applying to Peace Corps, so it appears to me at least that PC likes to capitalize on that skill. Dunno about the Fulbright thing, though. Edit: Oh yeah, and you can totally state your preferences. Just be sure you also add "...but I'm flexible and willing to go where I'm needed," assuming that that's true. Military: I don't think it's an issue of distrust, but rather just that Peace Corps doesn't want to leave any room for host countries to suspect that Peace Corps is an arm of the US military or of our intelligence agencies.
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Dec 22, 2009 18:46
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