$20 on Beijing to place

In the middle of each posting in the Foreign Service, they give you a list of the positions that will be opening, so that you can begin the process of "bidding" for where you will go next. The first two posts are given as directed bids. This means you give the person in the DC office the list in order of preference and explain what you are looking for or why your preferences are the way they are, and they take everyone's bids together and make a decision about where each person will be posted.

After the first couple, you are instead called upon to lobby -- in other words, you have to contact the post and explain why they should take you on in whatever position it is they will have open. They look at performance reviews and recommendations, all kinds of other things, and decide amongst the people lobbying for the position which one will be best. At least, I think that's how it works. That's more or less what I've had explained to me.

Of course, you can't exactly rely upon what has been explained as the "official" process.

We made our second bid a few weeks ago, and on our end, things worked exactly as we expected. They send us a list of about 60 posts that would be opening, we did some research, tracked down some reports of what the actual posts are like, talked to friends or coworkers who had been to them, and set the list in order. They tell you to put about a third as "high," a third as "middle," and a third as "low." Good for us, because there were about 20 places on the list that we really didn't want to go to, for various reasons, and about 20 places that would have been great.

On a side note, that actually resulted in a strange moment, where we realized that no matter where we ended up, even if it was one of our "highly" desired posts, we would still have a period of disappointment... there would be at least 19 places that we also wanted to go. Even if we got the number one on our list, there would still be this twinge of "Damn. We don't get to go to ______."

We also submitted a short narrative description of what we were looking for in our next post. Things like a more moderate environment than our current post (where the temperature swings about 130 degrees between the hottest and coldest day of the year), or an easier language (perhaps one we had already put some time into, like Spanish or Japanese). You might think that no one would say "I want to go to a dangerous, disease-ridden post," but there are people who would relish the chance at adventure, and the +35% or more pay adjustment plus multiple R&R opportunities can really be a good reason to try those places out.

We submitted, and then nearly vibrated out of existence for a couple of weeks while we waited to find out where they would put us. They tell you that your current post matters - if you are in a "high differential" post, i.e. one that is very isolated, dangerous or culturally unfamilar, then you will get your preference, and if you are in a "low differential" post, i.e. one that is well-connected, safe, and familiar, that you absolutely should not bid on another low differential post, because you will just be disappointed when you don't get it.

Now, I know that there are a lot of variables that go into the person or people in DC deciding where each person is going to be assigned, but this experience has me more or less believing that the entire bidding process is basically just for show, and they are really just throwing darts at a map to see where they assign people. 

Here's the initial disillusionment: nothing from the narrative explanation of where we want to go next was taken into account, as far as we can tell. And despite the fact that we are in a place with a comparatively high differential rating, we have been assigned to the post that was 19th on our list. Everyone we've talked to here got their top one or two. Now, I'm not actually disappointed, because we still got assigned to a post that we want to go to, and it's going to be great, but neither we, nor anyone we've discussed it with, can figure out how the decision was made.

It kind of seems like I'm splitting hairs, complaining about getting a post high on the list - maybe they thought it was close, and again, it was a place we told them we want to go...

But we weren't the only people in the process who got assigned inexplicably. And without getting into the personal details of those folks, some people got screwed hard, and some people got handed a second golden platter after the first. It literally makes no sense, if (and that is a doubly emphasized "if") they actually followed the process for assigning people that they had outlined to us. I don't think they did. The results don't match up with the explanation.

All of that is to say that if you end up joining the foreign service, do not count on the systems of bidding and getting post assignments to work exactly like you expect. You go where they tell you, and that's how it is. You could be fortunate, and go from one first world, Western country to another, despite the claim that that would never happen. Or you could be unlucky and somehow be shuffled around from third world hole to third world hole, despite the claim that that would never happen either.

That's the end of that rant, though. As I said, we did get a post we wanted: Beijing. And we have so many friends who have lived in China, who I'm sure are bursting at the seems about us ending up there, so we will have no shortage of help and visitors. My parents actually found out about this while they were hosting some new Chinese graduate students for a week before dorms opened up, and I'm sure that was a mess of excitement. It's going to be good.

I just wish we understood a little better why we ended up with that post. There are some people who have a reason to be upset, or to feel that the process was misrepresented. I feel sorry for their situation.

I drove more in the past month than I did in the preceding eight.

Here's some information about being in the Foreign Service that you might not be aware of:

At each post, State Department employees are provided with something called R&R. This is basically just plane tickets out of the country and back in, and you can either go to a specified R&R point (ours is Rome) or you can go back to the U.S. You have to use vacation days or some other sort of leave to take advantage of R&R, but one of the perks of the job is that they will pay for the trip (within reason - you don't get first class, unfortunately).

The number of R&R breaks you get depend on how terrible the circumstances of life are in your location. Some places get two, maybe three, over the course of the posting, and some places get four (for really horrible, locked-down, dangerous countries) or none (for first world countries that are at least as good as, if not better than, living in the U.S.) We get two in Kazakhstan, which is probably enough, since we can choose to travel, should we want to. Earlier this year, we visited a friend in Turkey, and later this year we are planning a trip to Germany.

We took our R&R a few weeks back, and stayed with my parents (since they have extra, mostly unused rooms). I would imagine that, for people who don't have family that they can stay with, R&R can be an expensive proposition. We were in the U.S. for five weeks; even staying at a hotel with weekly rates, that would be quite a lot of money. Fortunately, we were able to stay in my hometown for next to no cost, and it was close enough to Susie's family, our friends, and places of interest that we were able to do quite a lot without too much hassle.

We have been warned that R&R can be tiring, because you want to see a lot of people, and that often involves running all over the state or country, sticking to tight schedules, and generally stressing yourself out. After all, people only get to see you (and you them) once a year, so you really need to make the trip count. Fortunately for us, most of our friends and family were really busy or unavailable during our five week trip, so we had a lot of time to relax.

Hmm.

That was only a little facetious. Maybe I should try harder.

Living abroad presents you with a tough situation, in terms of being able to hang out with family and long-term friends. We can't always schedule our visits during big holidays (e.g. Christmas), so we will probably tend to show up when other people are working, doing their regular day to day stuff.* And if we do schedule a trip during a holiday, people will likely already have plans, or be traveling themselves. What this means is, unless special effort is made, we don't get to see people, even having made a trip halfway across the globe to do so. I had friends who were out of the country, busy with weird schedules, dealing with massive projects, or simply too far away to feasibly visit. And it kind of sucked.

I'm not trying to make anyone feel guilty. My purpose in talking about this is to explain to people who might be interested in the Foreign Service, or otherwise living/working abroad, how tough it can be in terms of your relationships. There were people that I miss that I didn't get to see, and mostly, it was no fault of theirs or ours. Even being available for five weeks didn't help. We were an interruption to the way things normally worked, and there wasn't much to do. Some people could probably have made a better effort, but most were just unable to see us.

That isn't to say that I didn't enjoy myself. We gorged ourselves on food. I may have mentioned in previous posts, but it bears repeating: Astana, Kazakhstan has next to no variety in its cuisine. The native Kazakh dishes are mostly plain meat grilled over fire along with overcooked noodles, and when there are restaurants with a bit more, there isn't much in the way of variety, and it's really, really expensive. Every restaurant has a chicken caesar salad. Every restaurant has some sort of ravioli, a "pepper" steak, and, of course, grilled horse meat. But in the US, the food is much more affordable, and much more international. We had Tex-Mex, Keba Italian, barbecue, sandwiches, authentic Japanese, every kind of fast food known to man, Keba, salads, seafood, fried chicken, and more Keba. We ate at cafes, restaurants, drive-ins... it was glorious. And unsettling to the digestive system.

We were also able to do things that have become uncommon (or impossible) here. We saw a handful of movies in the theater, we drove to Atlanta and Savannah, we played more games than I could count, and... well, as much as I complained that it was hard to hang out with some folks, other people were available, and we spent time with them. I enjoyed being back where I felt comfortable and, since it was vacation, I didn't have any responsibilities.

The next time we do R&R, we won't go for as long. Five weeks is too much, not because I don't want to be outside of Kazakhstan as much as possible, but because that much time off leaves you with very little to do. We don't have a plan exactly for when we will be visiting the next time, but hopefully it goes a bit smoother. I will say that the travel was really good, because we had a layover in Frankfurt for long enough to get into a hotel, shower, and sleep for 8+ hours. Breaking a 15 hour flight in half and getting some rest in the middle is absolutely the way I always want to do it... even though I know we won't always be able to.



*For me, it was a huge trip with all kinds of fun stuff planned. For you, it was Tuesday.

Expect the Unexpected.

At the university, inside the main building, there is a small cafe that serves pastries of the Kazakh sort and coffee in a variety of forms. For whatever reason, it is called “French Cafe.” Normally, I eat lunch in the cafeteria, but sometimes the assortment of ground meat patties and raw vegetable sides don’t quite enchant me, or I’ve come to late and the tiny room they set aside for the faculty is already packed, so I walk across the atrium to French Cafe and order a sandwich.

Sandwiches in Astana are technically sandwiches, in that there are at least two pieces of bread with something between them, but they tend to score relatively poorly on the scale of deliciousness. To pieces of dry, toasted bread, with a mouthful of chicken sprinkled between them, and what sometimes seems like almost an entire tomato of slices mashed into the thing, in no way can compare to the variety of breads, meats, veggies, cheeses and sauces that you can find anywhere there is a proper deli.

That said, the sandwiches at French cafe aren’t terrible. And they are much better than a third helping of beef-chicken-steak in a week. They have two kinds, a “small” sandwich, which is two pieces of toast with cheese, tomato, and either chicken or tuna flecks, and a “club,” which is three pieces of toast with cheese, tomato, meat, and more tomato. I tend to stick with the former, as it has plenty of tomato for my tastes. One day they had slices of cucumber instead of tomato, which, I have to say, was a refreshing alternative to the norm.

Last Thursday, I decided to eat in French Cafe. I ordered a sandwich, as normal, and the cashier, as normal, asked “Small or large?” Here’s where the wheels began to come off. I replied “Small,” worrying that they had run out of bread entirely somehow, which did happen in one of my first experiences with the cafe, and running out of fundamental ingredients is fairly standard for this country. Reticent, she told me “No small.” Damn. “Only large.”

Only large.

You know, sometimes people tell you something, and it is so utterly bizarre, so mind-numbing, that you can’t process exactly what it means. I’ve described the two kinds of sandwiches to you. They have the same ingredients, but the “large” is just... one more piece of bread and one more slice of tomato. Imagine ordering a regular cheeseburger at a restaurant, and the waitress saying “We’re out of regular cheeseburgers. We only have double cheeseburgers.” What response is there? A person who makes such a statement is not in a mental state in which they could process an explanation about how they could simply not put the second patty on the bun.

I had the large sandwich.

Time is money. Or, at least, time is time.

After two months of work, I finally got my first paycheck. I thought I would celebrate by explaining how something like that could take so long.

I think a good place to start is how I was hired. I did a couple of in person interviews, with almost entirely different groups of people, and a few months later I was told that I would be hired. Nowhere in this process was the exact nature of the job explained to me, only that it would have something to do with helping the students write. All of the students here have to study, and be able to perform, in English (i.e. write papers, discuss topics in class, listen to lectures, and read extensively).  When I was finally able to sit down with one of the other "writing tutors," I found that the job was basically reading, editing, and discussing papers with students one-on-one to make sure the single year of immersive English they get doesn't evaporate.

I like the job quite a lot. I'm fairly good at fixing up grammar, but I tend to focus on helping the students organize their arguments, explain themselves better (by asking about a million questions), and annoying the hell out of students who don't actually want to get help, but they have to because their professor assigned it.

The University pays its employees by setting up a bank account, which normally wouldn't be too complicated, but my situation is unusual. Most non-Kazakh employees are hired while in their home countries, and are thus given a number of perks such as paid flights, special vacation options, living accommodations in Astana, and the like. I, on the other hand, was already in Kazakhstan when I was hired, and thus, I was hired as a "local." Basically, that means I get paid next to nothing and I don't have any real benefits. Also, it really screws up their system, because everything says I'm local, which should mean they don't have to hold my hand through everything, but since I'm not actually a local, they have to go through a ton of extra steps to get anything done.

What it boils down to is this: Every time I brought the administrative people something they told me they needed, it was either not quite what they needed, or there was something else they just discovered they would need because of some new, but obscure, law. I had to bring in three separate letters, signed, notarized, and on embassy letterhead, that proved I live where I live. The process was irritating at the best of times, but we're doing well on Susie's salary, so I didn't think much of it. I have a hard time imagining what it would be like if I was reliant upon the university for my living.

When everything was finally gathered and submitted, I was told that it would take up to ten days for the bank to open the account. Something I have discovered, in this land of frosty tundra and horse meat, is if they say it will take up to X days for something to happen, what they mean is that it will take a minimum of X days, probably longer, and you will probably have to remind them several times during the process or the job simply won't get done.

Of course, when I finally did get my debit card and fancy-shmancy PIN-generator key fob, it happened that we were no where near a pay day. So, there was an open account with a balance of 0 KZT. I was told that I could request that the university deposit my back pay immediately, but I was pessimistic at best about whether or not they would, and it turned out my pessimism was well placed. The account sat that way for almost two weeks. I had to email multiple people multiple times (going up the ladder because of a lack of responses) just to find out how much should be in the account. And after suffering through the complicated process of setting up my card and online banking, I finally got a terse email back explaining who I should be talking to... the first person I emailed (of course!), who had, in fact, never gotten back to me.

But the email included an electronic version of my pay stub, so I was finally able to cross check everything and relax.

I don't want to give the idea that everything went wrong and it was horrible all the time. In fact, for the most part, the process worked. It's just that it worked slowly, because there were far too many steps to justify, far too many speed bumps, and far too few people who were actually willing to do the steps that were a part of their job. We've all dealt with bureaucracies from time to time that screw things up and make us frustrated. Now, imagine that the bureaucracy you interacted with was post-Soviet, with all that that entails. Two months to get my first paycheck seems almost... rapid, when you really think about it.

At least I know it's a secure account. HSBC is about as stable as it gets; they can't even be held accountable for massive drug-money laundering. The sky's the limit with these guys.

*Actual beauty of Astana may not be included.

I have been hired to work at Nazarbayev University in Astana! Named after Glorious Leader Nazarbayev (who graciously doesn't demand everything be given some variant of his moniker) and set on the outside edge of beautiful* Astana (see? When he renamed Akmola, it didn't become Nazar City...), NU is home to literally tens of students. It is the most prestigious Kazakh university, though, and I know this because that's what everyone has to say about it.

Students here do no get a 12th year of school, at least not currently. I think their ministry of education is trying to change that, but the result of not getting a 12th year is that they have an extra year of college that helps serve as a transition. During this year, the students are put through a (presumably) rigorous intensive English program to try and get their skills up to par, but after that year, they are assumed to be functional or self-sufficient enough to manage without classes. When that system fails to get the students to where they need to be, that's where we will come in.

 I will be a writing tutor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, which includes the economics and international relations departments. Of course, I don't have much of a background in any of those things, but I do have a background in academic writing, paper editing, and working with students to improve their skills. It's not a perfect job, but it is a job, and it's something I'm good at.

Most of what I will be doing will be the forty-five minute "tutoring" sessions, in which a student who signed up at least a day in advance will come and we'll talk about their assignment. It's not an editing session, although I'm some will include that. It's going to be focused on improving their arguments, sorting their structure, and helping them take their ideas (which they probably have thought about in non-academic Russian) and translating them into an acceptably written English paper.

We also are going to be doing seminars that are aimed at improving English writing and study skills. They'll cover general topics, like how to create thesis statements, how to organize the argumentation in a paper, or how to cite sources properly. We've got to come up with the topics... it's a very new job in a  very new school in a very new university. Everything is in dire need of being created.

From now until May, I'll be busy with that! I'm excited, and not including the cafeteria food, the temperature, the bleak office, the students, and having to work, it looks like this job will be quite enjoyable.

Here's a blurry photo I took of the place before the sun had officially risen. The entire campus is basically housed indoors, because being outdoors in Kazakhstan is frostbitingly stupid:

Here's the view from where I'm sitting in my office. Computer and phone and the like will be there soon:

And the view from the window:

Three down.

I haven't updated this blog in a few weeks because I'm starting to make myself busy. When I'm not busy, I get restless and I think of things I want to tell people about. When I am busy, I forget that I have a blog at all.

I've been offered a job working with students at the university here, assisting with their English writing and speaking skills. I have several things that I need to acquire, official paperwork and clearances and such, some of which have to be mailed over on the slow boat, but when those come in I'll be able to start work. It won't pay very well, but it will be enough, and it won't be the world's greatest job, but it will be engaging. It will certainly give me an opportunity to hone my editing skills, and another thing to list on my resume that still lacks any sort of teaching certification.

I've been doing a lot of reading and writing of my own. It's much easier to get books here than video games and card games, due to our Kindle account, so I've started tracking down some things that are below the normally high bar I set for what kinds of books I'm willing to read. I knocked out one book in a week, and I've got another ready to go. I may end up reading after I'm done with this post, but I may also catch up with some other blogs I've been following.

I'm beginning to experiment with videos and audio podcasting, which could end up being a lot of fun. I've also been outlining and writing chapters and short-stories that I'm going to piece together in a novel. That's my hope anyway. Even if that doesn't work out, I will have something to keep myself busy. It's surprising to me how productive I can feel without having any responsibilities. Maybe a lack of responsibilities is what I needed.

We've spent a lot of our free time with friends here, mostly just watching movies or eating dinner. Kazakhstan is a remarkably boring place, due to the isolation and weather, so we don't really get out a lot. There isn't much to do. There certainly isn't anywhere to go. I don't really care for what I've seen of it. It will be nice next year when we are able to get out of here for a while and visit people in person. And maybe have some tacos.

That's where I am right now. Winter has fallen heavily on Astana, with a foot or more of snow covering anything they can't reach with a snow-shovel. The snow sucks. It's certainly not an environment conducive to learning to drive a manual transmission car. But we've made it about three months now. That's one eighth of the way through. At some point next year we'll start to find out where Susie will be posted next. That will change things significantly.

Don't speak Russian? Bring carrots.

Susie and I live in a large and expanding collection of apartments known as Highvill. According to the plans, Highvill will eventually take up somewhere around two blocks of city space, and include restaurants, grocery stores, offices, gyms, and whatever else you can imagine. Right now, though, it's less than half finished, so I would imagine it's pretty tough to get stores to commit. There are a couple of extremely expensive restaurants (although I'm starting to think what I view as "expensive" and what the Kazakhs view as "expensive" in a restaurant is completely different), and currently there is only one small grocery store. There isn't a whole lot else. I think I've seen some offices, but it's pretty empty. A lot of this part of town is.

We live fairly close to Novella, the grocery store, so it's convenient for us. Especially so, since we can actually not have to leave the building to get to it. The apartments are build above and around interior parking decks, because leaving your car out in the intense cold during the winter is asking for problems. And luckily for us, this means that when the weather is inauspicious, we can take the elevator down and walk through the heated, covered, and insulated deck and go into the back entrance of the store. It's open from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, so almost any time we realize we need something basic, like milk, eggs, bread, cheese, or drinks, we can run down and get it. They don't have the selection of a full grocery store, and they suffer from the same supply issues that most stores around here do, but they tend to keep most things in stock.

The staff recognizes us at this point and speaks very little Russian with a lot of gestures in case we need something. There are three or four clerks in the store at any given time, running around doing whatever it is people do at a very slow grocery store. There are also people I've come to designate as managers or owners. They do not have the smock-like uniform of the clerks. In fact, they are almost always dressed quite nicely, much nicer than American store managers. It's unsettling, to be honest. They were black or pinstripe suits and stand like guardians over the whole place (when they aren't sequestered in the hole in the wall office that is wedged near the back entrance. They never smile and sometimes have rapid, fierce conversations with the clerks about what they should be doing. Which, it seems, is sometimes nothing at all.

A week ago, we needed some smaller items, and after I managed to lock myself out of the apartment and walk to the embassy to borrow Susie's key, I made my way (back) to the store. We were planning on having salad, I think, but I wanted to pick up other stuff since you never know what they might have. I had my headphones in, listening to some podcast, since the walk to and from the embassy is boring without something to distract from the featureless, muddy stretch of roadside between Highvill and there. I grabbed a cart with one hand, and headed for the stand of sketchy fresh fruits and vegetables they had. Most of them were dirty; they don't really wash produce here, which is problematic because their local produce is inevitably covered in filthy water and pesticides. We have to take care to wash them with warm water and soap. It's especially bad with carrots, which they pull out of the ground and drop straight on the shelves.

Because of the dire state of the fresh produce whenever we've seen it, we have up to that point in our time here avoided it, sticking to canned and frozen. But a salad calls for fresh! So I was there to get carrots. I was there to try, anyway. I didn't imagine it to be much different from the U.S. Having done it now, it's not much different. But in foreign countries, small differences are amplified. Especially when you do something stupid.

I rounded the corner to the produce aisle, and at the other end of the shelves stood one of the Novella mafia. We made eye contact and we nodded to each other, neither of us caring to try to speak in the other's language. I took one of the plastic bags from the roll that had been unceremoniously dumped on the onions and started eyeballing the carrots to figure out which of them I wanted. My mistake was that my hands were too full, bag in one, and the other hand that should have been available was weighed down by the basket that I had hung at the crook of my elbow. I grabbed for a carrot and got the first one in the bag. It was trickier than I had expected, because of my hand situation, but I managed.

I was highly aware of the guy standing there, watching the foreigner try to juggle carrots. That made what happened next all the more embarrassing. The second carrot I grabbed dislodged one of the ones above it, and it began to fall. Bag, carrot and basket were unwieldy enough that I couldn't grab it, so I did the only logical thing and tried to catch it with my foot. Looking back, of course that wasn't logical. I realized it wasn't as soon as I did it. I can't catch much of anything with my foot, let alone a rogue carrot. So, instead of catching it, I kicked it hard into the shelf and it bounced to the floor.

I looked over at the manager, and he just kept staring, not giving any hint of what he thought I should do. So I picked up the carrot, and seeing that it was dirty anyway, just like the rest of the precarious stack, I put it back. I thought, "It might even be cleaner now."

With the two carrots I intended to buy in my little vegetable bag, I tried to move on to the next section of the store. But I was stopped by the dark-suited man. I felt the panic rising in my soul. I kicked his carrot to the floor and then put it back. I defiled his produce and his store... I'll be banned for life if I'm lucky. He pointing at the carrots I held and in the direction of the rest of the carrots. My headphones were in, but I didn't any of the podcast I had been listening to. I yanked the buds out of my ears, trying as hard as I could to look like I had no idea what was happening. It's unsurprisingly easy to do when you actually have no idea what is happening.

I had no idea what he said, but he took the carrots and walked over to where he had been pointing. And then past it. To the scale that you use to weigh fruits and vegetables and get a price sticker for the clerks to ring up your purchase. He punched a few buttons and it didn't work, so he called over another worker and they put in the appropriate information. Then he handed the carrot bag, complete with price stuck to the outside, and smiled, gesturing that I could be on my way.

Weird experiences are the norm when you aren't in your home country. Well, that's not exactly right. It's more like this: weird experiences are the norm everywhere, but in your hometown, you know what to expect. You've had the experiences and they don't surprise you. Even going to another city can upset your mental sense of balance, and suddenly something that you would be easily able to manage becomes complicated, and your natural impulses just make it worse. At least in this case, I learned something very useful about Astana: if you throw around their root vegetables, they will kindly treat you like an idiot and do things for you. What I need is a sack of carrots to carry around, so that whenever I get lost or need assistance, I can kick one to get someone's attention. That's the lesson, right?

Three banquets a day -- our favorite diet!

I have mentioned before that people over-prepared us with regards to how difficult it is to find familiar foods in Astana. It seemed to make sense; good and affordable produce, recognizable cuts of meat, American brands... we're fairly isolated from other countries and the harsh climate significantly limits what is produced in the borders of Kazakhstan. Despite this, we haven't had nearly as much trouble as we first thought.

There are lots of different kinds of fruits and vegetables, fresh and frozen. Some of it isn't as cleaned and processed as the stuff we get in the U.S., but we've found carrots, peppers, lettuce, cabbage, potatoes, beans, corn, tomatoes, bananas, apples, pears, peaches... the list is far more extensive than what we were able to get easily in Japan. Right now there are fresh produce open markets in the city that have locally grown foods at fairly cheap (and negotiable) prices, plenty of imports from closer to the Mediterranean, and there is a weird variety of frozen vegetables that tend to heat up pretty well. They are a bit unpredictable; one week there will be big bags of frozen mushrooms, a bag with a variety of sliced peppers, and green beans, and the next week (when all of that has been purchased) we will have cauliflower, mixed carrots and broccoli, and brussel sprouts.

I imagine that once the Winter season sets in, these things will become more difficult to find and the price will rise, but I've talked to some people here who have said that they never entirely go away. This is a country of meat and potato meals, but in the stores and at the Embassy, where I eat on a nearly daily basis, there has been a pretty good spread of vegetable and fruit options.

Meat is a bit stranger. Maybe it's my untrained eye, but I don't really know how to tell the difference between good and bad meat, and even with the help of some talented Russian speakers who have been here for a while, it can be a little hit or miss. The best meat here is tougher than U.S. meat, be it beef or chicken (even pork or turkey), and the worst meat is... really quite bad. We tried cooking up some ground beef about a week into our time here and were so disgusted with the bits of bone, connective tissue, and gristle we found in it that we tossed it out half-cooked and tried other things that evening. We have had some good success with chicken breasts and steaks, and we've ordered a meat grinder to make our on ground meats. We also make do with some frozen meat. We found turkey "meatball" patties in the frozen section of the grocery downstairs, and there are a very popular meat dumpling that are easy to find and cook.

Although it's difficult to find sandwich bread, there wouldn't be much of a point because there aren't really any sandwich meats. There are some sausages and salamis, but I'm not really sure how well they would supplant roast beef and cold cuts. Regardless, we were warned that fresh bread is hard to get a hold of here, and that turns out to have been a misrepresentation as well. Every grocery has a fresh baked section with many kinds of bread, including pre-sliced varieties, and we are discovering some of the local styles such as a large flat bread (almost like naan) and tiny pieces of sweet bread (a little like biscuit dough), among others.

Thankfully, our meals are not all things that we have to cook ourselves. Many are, many more than we were used to in the U.S., mainly because we don't have an easy way to get around in the city yet. As I mentioned, though, I eat at the embassy about once a day because the food in the little cafeteria there is good and cheap. They have a mixture of Kazakh traditional foods (dumplings, pilaf, borscht), interpretations of American food (chicken sandwich, french fries), and international dishes (teriyaki beef, "Mexican"chicken, curry). They also make bread, cake, and other deserts. It's nice being so close I can walk over for lunch, and very rarely am I disappointed.

The first night we were here, we went out with a bunch of people to a restaurant called Line Brew. I think they brew a beer on site, thus the name. The food was pretty good, if a little expensive, but that tends to be the standard here. Susie and I had fantastic steaks, and even had a chance to try the Kazakh "horse meat cooked on a hot stone." They bring a stone that has been in the fire to the table with raw horse and you cook it yourself. It was nice. I haven't had any since, but I would eat it again. Outside of that, there is a mall with a sizable food court and there you can find the city's only Hardee's! It's basically like American Hardee's with a menu that is more limited in scope. You can get cheeseburgers, jalapeño burgers, curly fries, etc. Across the court from there is a KFC which mostly serves fried chicken sandwiches and wraps, but it tastes like KFC.

Yesterday Susie and I tried a new place that people recommended, in no small part because of the English menus (I forget the name). There were several kinds of sandwich and salads, and we both really enjoyed the meal. The sandwiches were huge, packed with stuff, and for around $20 we both had a more than enough food. It is nice to be able to do that, to find places that we are comfortable ordering and eating. Living abroad is stressful, wandering around cities without speaking much of the language is frustrating, and having a significant variety of food and restaurants is a major comfort that we did not have in Japan. I know there will be places we end up that are tougher than this, but hopefully we get more experience and better skill with adjusting.

On a final note, there are a couple of different chain burger restaurants to eat at in Astana. I mentioned Hardee's, but there are also some Kazakh-based chains. What you won't find is a McDonald's. Apparently, glorious leader Nazarbayev doesn't like them and doesn't allow them. So, that's something.

Irons in the Fire

What am I good at? Since it's a rhetorical question, I'll specify: What am I good enough at to do professionally? I grew up around teachers; my parents and their friends tended to fall into that category. Since I graduated from the University of Georgia, the only job I've had is to teach. I taught English formally and informally in Japan. I tutored college-level math at Indiana University before snagging an Associate Instructorship that let me teach Japanese. While I finished up my thesis, I was teaching Japanese part-time at a local high school, which I suppose helped propel me to a full-time job teaching it at a middle school in Atlanta. I'm good at teaching, being a teacher. I've spent more of my life in classrooms than almost anywhere else, and now, temporarily unemployed, I'm looking for opportunities around Astana, Kazakhstan to use the skills I've honed over the past seven years.

Of course, there are aspects of teaching that I'm not happy with, things I don't like or don't want to do. I don't like having to be a disciplinarian. To give an obvious example, middle school is absolutely not on the menu. I did not get along with middle school students while I was teaching full-time, and I did not get along with them while I was substitute teaching. Even the best kids on the best day were still soaked through with hormones, optimistically cruel toddlers in oversized bodies. Actually, "cruel" is probably too much... they wish to be cruel, but they aren't smart enough to do so effectively. Regardless, we do not get along, middle schoolers and I... not when I am their teacher, at least. Some people find teaching middle school great. One of my friends and mentors while at the middle school was amazing. She related to the kids and had fun with them, inspired them, made them interested. She ended up teacher of the year the year after I left, and she deserves it. I did not, and would not.

On the other hand, when I am in a classroom with high schoolers or college students, it's an entirely different situation. I know how to engage them, they know how to behave without being strapped to their chairs and made into little wind-up citrines, and we both can communicate with each other without one side compelling the other to shriek. I loved every day of teaching at high school. The kids were better, the speed was better, the responsibilities I could give them were better. Even subbing was fairly good, with the occasional speed bump of some kid deciding to succumb to his ex-girlfriend provocation and get in a fist fight with her, or make Thursday into "Don't Do What The Sub Says and Instead Disrupt All Of The Other Students" Day. I almost never felt like the students genuinely disliked me though, they just sometimes felt indignant that a sub wanted them to do anything at all. As a side note, that always turned out humorously for me, because as a sub, I don't honestly care if you decide not to do the work you were left, mess around in class, or call me names. Just don't make it personal. I have recourse with the administration and the teacher I am subbing for (imagine their pants-wetting terror they faced when I called the teacher on the number they left and put it on speaker phone), and 99% of the time I know the kid's name even if they think I don't. It inevitably turned out worse for them, and there was never a larger grin on my face than when some kid I hardly recognized passed by the door to whatever room I was in that day, stopped and said "Hey, you got me in trouble!" Not me, man. You got you in trouble.

I like the part of school where I get to explain and discuss and open up entirely new avenues of thinking and looking at the world. I know that for some people, especially those who aren't teachers, that sounds corny. I'm happy being corny as long as I get to do that stuff. Which leads me back to the general idea of this post... I want to be a teacher. I'm good at it and I like it, which isn't something that everyone can say about their job. Even when I'm not teaching, I'm thinking about what kinds of cool stuff I could do if I were. I read articles about great teachers, I look at blog posts where people talk about cool projects and teachers. If it weren't a job, it would be a hobby.

Only a few things stand in the way here. The first is that I'm not a certified teacher anywhere, so I always imagine that people look a little askance when I talk to them about working at their school or in their program. I know in a lot of ways that doesn't make a difference, but if it prevents my hiring, it prevents my hiring. It has been the only thing standing between me and a career for a couple of years now, and with our living outside of the United States, it's much trickier to figure out how to get that certification. The second thing is that the opportunities here are much smaller in number than in the United States. There are a small number of international schools with a small number of openings in each year, and at any given post, there might simply be no opportunities. I've gotten in touch with four schools so far, and it's looking mostly grim.

All hope is not lost, though. There are a couple of partial positives on the teaching job front that might lead to more (but not quickly... nothing here seems to move quickly). I've run into a couple of people who have volunteer opportunities that might be used as stepping stones to further work. I'm also in touch with a couple of universities with online programs that could potentially help me to get certification, which would probably be worth the effort and further student debt. I'm doing what I can.

Buildings and Monuments Everywhere: It's like a capital city in Civilization!

We've been here in Astana for a little over a week now, and that has given us a chance to walk around (a lot) and see our area of the city. Astana isn't exactly a large city, positively tiny compared to the sprawl of Atlanta, but it's large enough that walking isn't exactly a feasible way to get around the city; with our apartment on the southeast edge of the city, if we want to go anywhere or do anything, we have to walk a couple of miles minimum. It will be even tougher in the winter when temperatures get down to -30 and below, but so far we have a lot of people who've offered to drive us to the different stores, and since the weather isn't bad yet, walking is still a possibility.

Our apartment is basically on the equivalent of the National Mall in Washington. From our balcony, you can see the presidential palace right across the river.

It's that massive white one with the blue dome on the left. Past that (to the right) are two gigantic mustard bottles, right out of The Phantom Menace, and a bit further is the Bayterek (the tower with a large golden ball at the top). I'll get to some better pictures later on.

Before I do, though, I want to point out some things about the above picture and most of the rest you'll see from me in this country. Astana is a very, very young city at only 14 years since it was made the capital of Kazakhstan. The president wants it to be huge, beautiful, and built before he dies (and at 72 years young, you never know when that might happen). Because of this, there is construction work going on every hour of every day. Here's the view from the back of our apartment:

Everywhere you look, there are massive cranes being used to put together massive, amazing buildings. It is undeniable that they look great, inside and out. What is a bit more questionable is whether they are actually great. Everything is done with speed and beauty primary, so what gets left behind sometimes is quality. We were told a story about a building that absolutely had to be finished, so they slapped it together, opened it up officially with all of it's amazing looks, and then they spent the next couple of months taking the facade of the building, putting the insulation in, and replacing the facade. The maintenance guys at the embassy can't stop complaining about how everything looks nice to cover up weird pipes, sketchy wiring, poor fittings, and any other of a number quality issues.

That being said, we haven't experienced any significant problems, so much like some of the other things we've been told about Astana, it might be a bit overstated.

Back to the point of this post: cool buildings and monuments! Right outside of our apartment is the back half of the national mall, and there are some really cool things over here:

This is the Pyramid of Peace and Reconciliation. Apparently there is a 1,500 seat opera hall, a restaurant, and conference rooms aplenty inside, but I don't know that I really want to go in there. We saw a couple of wedding parties going in and out of it this past Saturday, so it does get used. It is surrounded by a huge park with trees and flowers stretching out in all directions, apparently forming a giant bird if seen from above. Keep an eye on that tall, white monument with a bird on it in the background.

Flowers! Everywhere. We're right at the end of these guys' lifespan, but apparently in the warmer parts of the year, they spread them on even thicker, especially out near the Bayterek and in front of the presidential palace. (Notice the cranes in the distance. There were about 10 we could see from this spot.)

Speaking of, this is a view from the foot of the pyramid towards the palace. If you look closely, you can see those big golden mustard bottle buildings. Way past it is the rest of the mall and the Bayterek. To the right of where I was standing is our apartment:

Cranes!

This is the pyramid again. That pathway is large enough to drive a couple of cars down side by side, for reference. Also, keep those two little white spires on the left of the picture in your mind.

On the other side of the pyramid, there is a big arrangement of fountains on the ground. The water kind of goes everywhere, but it looks very nice. There's that bird on a stick again!

This is a legendary legend of what I think was a phoenix that laid the gigantic egg that is precariously balanced on top of the Bayterek, and on either side of it are MORE oddly shaped buildings. The left one is a concert hall shaped like a dog bowl. The right one is... something... shaped like a bread basket.

Remember those two white spires? They belong to the largest mosque in all of Eurasia. It's pretty big. I haven't been inside... I don't know what the rules for that are. See that tiny black speck on the dome of the place? That's a guy. I don't know what he was doing up there, but he's got a rope and he's dangling from the crescent moon. To the left of this picture is where the U.S. Embassy is, but I didn't want to take pictures of it. There is a menacing Kazakh guard at the front gate covered with body armor and carrying some sort of assault rifle. I don't want to upset him.

Lastly, if you walk about 30 or 40 minutes from our apartment, you can get to the actual "in-the-city" part of the national mall. Here's a shot of the presidential palace from the OTHER end of the mall:

I walked out there one day early on, apparently for the only two hours it rained that week, so the pictures are a bit (or extremely) fuzzy and gray. You can see all of the flowers and the mustard bottles for location reference, though.

And right behind me is this guy:

The Bayterek. You can go up there and take pictures, and we probably will some time. It only gets busy on Saturdays. The last thing I will point out is the big egg-shaped thing on the left of this photo. I don't know what it is, but just behind it is a pretty nice mall with lots of stores and a huge food court with a Hardee's and KFC. We may have been there a couple of times already...

Overpreparedness

Although we have only been here a few days, I think that we were fairly well prepared for Astana, Kazakhstan. Susie and I have even discussed that we might have been a bit over-prepared. Of course, it is our first post in the Foreign Service, and like any place, things are going to be different. You need to know about the weather, availability of food and other products, cultural norms and customs... and it’s been fairly easy to find out whatever we have wanted to know. But you have to keep in mind who is telling you the information and what their experiences are, despite the difficulty in doing that when you haven’t met them. Every bit of information comes from someone who has different experiences from you and no matter how similar they might be, they won’t know exactly how you think.

When we were finding out information about living in Astana, it was emphasized again and again that the supply management of stores, especially grocery stores, was haphazard and prices for things (especially imports) were very different from what we were accustomed to in the U.S. In a given store, they might have a big shelf of sauces from America one week then the next week it has been replaced and you won’t see those same products for a month or more. Fresh foods like vegetables are even more unpredictable. They just buy what they can when they can, and “seasonal” takes on an entirely new meaning. The entire place is run like a closeout store.

That said, Susie and I lived in rural Japan for two years. I know that our experiences don’t apply one for one, but we know what it is like to be in a place where you never know what you can get. People here pine over peanut butter like it was as rare as gold (and not without reason, because it’s priced like gold when you can find it). But even in large cities in Japan you can’t find peanut butter. People complain of sticker shock when it comes to American foods and fresh vegetables, but so far, our experience in Japan was tougher. At least here you would recognize the vegetables they have. We sometimes wandered through the produce section of our Hok Food Market without seeing anything that seemed familiar. Worse, we would look up some things in our dictionaries, thinking that they might just be unusual in the U.S., only to find out that the translation didn’t help at all. We will never forget the almost entirely uninformative “Devil’s Tongue” entry in our dictionary.

We’ve been able to get apples, bananas, frankfurters, beef, bacon, eggs, sliced bread, carrots, lettuce, coke (of course!), frozen vegetable mixes, frozen pizza, and apparently in town there is a KFC and a Hardee’s. Some of it isn’t exactly the same as what we are used to, but even the things that are a little off are available, which is more than you could say for the middle of nowhere, Japan.

Our feeling of preparedness does come with one significant caveat, though. We are living in what is unquestionably the coldest capital city in the world. I know we have mentioned this to our families, but for anyone who doesn’t know, Astana holds the world record of forty degrees below zero in the winter. The marines in the embassy have shirts that call it the coldest post in the world, and when an eagle scout and U.S. marine with years of outdoor survival experience tells you it’s uncomfortably cold, you get a sense of how serious this is. We were made aware of the weather possibilities before we came out here, thankfully. We bought some intense cold weather gear in Washington. (On a side note, we got it extremely cheap. Down jackets go on clearance in 100+ degree summers.) We have boots and polypropylene long underwear on its way. We’re going to find fur-lined hats and gloves shortly. But we are still intimidated by the weather. Astana cold is overwhelming, soul-crushing and dry. We need to buy lotions and vaseline, balaclavas and goggles... it’s not going to be easy. 

The only consolations are that we’ve lived in some very cold places before, so we have that experience, and people here agree that past a certain point, your body just doesn’t register the temperature being any colder. We won’t have to spend much time outside, but we just don’t know how bad it will really be, and it has got me worried. I suppose that making it through this will be good, though. They literally can’t post us anywhere that will be colder! We will have hit the limit, so any other place we go will be warmer.

At least I have these Mega Bacon potato chips to comfort me while I await the coming Winter.

What's a good word for "scary, exciting, and overwhelming"?

I've had the experience before of being about one week out from moving abroad, and it can be a bit distressing. The last time, I was moving to Japan with basically no idea what I was going to encounter. This time, it's a bit better, because I have talked to a few different people in Astana and been able to ask lots of questions, but as our departure time draws closer, nervous energy starts to wind its way through everything I do.

We're almost as prepared as we could possibly be. In the past couple of weeks, we have put so many orders in to Amazon for clothes, shoes, electronic accessories, chargers and guitar strings that I would imagine the folks at the warehouse take periodic swims in the money they've made. We've sorted our pack out, done rough calculations of what consumables (e.g. hot sauce and mouthwash) we will need, made and worked through extensive to-do lists, and Google Streetview-ed our new town... but I just can't shake the feeling that there is more we could do.

I know there is, actually. That much has been made clear. A few weeks ago, I went to a spouse seminar at the Foreign Service Institute just days after the Generalist class (the other group that Susie is not a part of) had their Flag Day and found out where they were posted. The spouses were abuzz; they hadn't even had a chance to initiate contact with their post, and suddenly they realized how much they had to do before they left. Most of what we talked about that day was what everyone needed to do before they left. But first, as is done with so many seminars, we went through the class one person at a time, stood up, said where we were going and what we were looking forward to. We also said when we were scheduled to leave. After the first half-dozen or so people had done their introductions and explained that they were worried they wouldn't have enough time, they were leaving in July... I could sympathize, but I realized that it was August, and that they meant July of next year.

The air got sucked out of the room when I told them "We're leaving next month on the 13th." I was one of two or three other Specialist spouses, and we all were surprised by how much time the other people were getting, and how little our time seemed in comparison. They were panicking that they would only have 12 months to get ready, and I hadn't even begun to worry about how little time we got. It just seemed like "Not a lot of time, but plenty to do everything we need in."

Well, now that it's down to just over a week of time before we leave, I'm beginning to feel the pressure. Not really of needing to get things done. There are things we will surely miss, mistakes that we'll make, games and clothes we'll pack in the wrong boxes, but I know we've got most of it under control... it's more of an intense feeling of impending change.

When I moved to Japan, it didn't hit me until the night before I flew out. It hit me hard: I would be away from my family for the first time ever. I would be away from Susie. I didn't know anyone where I was going, I didn't know how I would get around, what my job would be, and I had never really spoken Japanese to anyone without knowing that they could speak English with me if I failed. It was intimidating, to say the least.

This one isn't going to be nearly as rough, but last night the same sort of unease began to creep upon me. I'm not going to be here anymore. I'm going to be there. Not on vacation... living there.

It's staggering.

I have BEEN to the warehouse!

When we got packed out, they took basically everything we own (except for what we could carry in a few suitcases), packed it into a truck, and drove away with it. Some of that was stuff that we would want here in D.C., like clothes and such, but a lot of it was sent to deep storage. We don't need our furniture here, for example, so they kept that in a huge storage facility in an undisclosed location (a.k.a Hagerstown, Maryland).

Today we went to sort through what of the stored items we want shipped to us in Kazakhstan, and due to our circumstances, we took some of the stuff out of storage to be air shipped to us, instead of ground shipped super-slowly (taking upwards to three months, and possibly more).

Here's what the warehouse looked like:

For reference, since there isn't one, those crates are at least 9 feet tall. When opened, you could easily walk inside without crouching. It took two to hold every thing that Susie and I own, except for our couch and easy chair. One of our friends had three crates. Another of our friends had at least 8, somewhere in the range of 14,000 pounds. The warehouse guy was a little overwhelmed by that one.

Monuments!

Susie and I went on a night-time trolley tour of the larger D.C. monuments last weekend. That's the best way to do it, in my opinion, especially in the summer. Walking around to try and see them all makes you hot, sweaty, tired, and irritable, even if you are wearing some sort of moisture wicking under-layer. I grabbed some pictures while we were near the National Mall and on the tour.

The most patriotic of Washington Monuments:

View from the Trolley:

The Legislative Branch:

Jefferson:

Washington, reflecting in what is currently, due to construction, the Reflecting Drainage Ditch:

Big Lincoln:

Vietnam Memorial:

Korean War Memorial:

Civil War Memorial:

The only non-president/non-military memorial (and gosh is it a big one):

You know, these guys:

We haven't done a lot of sightseeing in Washington because it's such a pain to get to the tourist parts of the area without a car. We sometimes get out to the town on weekends, but most of the time we have to stay around here by necessity. During the day, the shuttle to the nearest metro stops running from 9:00 until 3:00, so if I want to get anywhere, I have to walk. But we have finally been able to get some good photos and interesting trivia. If you come to Washington, you should definitely do a trolley tour. They do all of the difficult stuff for you: drive you around, explain everything you see, and point out where the trustworthy bathrooms and refreshment stands are.

Language Learning, Part 2: Curse of the Mummy's Granodiorite Stele

In the last post, I talked about some of my experience with learning languages outside of the State Department. I thought I would break my thoughts up into do posts, because this one will be more interesting to the people who don't care about what I've done in the past. Here's what we can do now:

The State Department has access to the full complement of Rosetta Stone, and from the Rosetta Stone company, you will never here the end of it. "The U.S. State Department uses our product!" It's a little deceptive, though. When the State Department wants to train someone in a language, they use a classroom with an amazing teacher to student ratio (something like 1:5). The students spend six or more hours each day practicing in class with native speakers, and supplement with homework assignments, projects, and presentations. This training goes on for months, and never during that period does Rosetta Stone get used. They can't always offer that kind of training to their employees, but when they do, it is as ideal as it can get.

If they can't offer you that (and, based on Susie's job and other various issues, they can't offer us classroom Russian training), they have tutoring and distance learning classes, and sometimes classes are available at the consulate or embassy post. Again, these don't use Rosetta Stone. From what I can tell, these involve studying your way through a text book, working on assignments through the internet, and a periodic phone tutoring session. Plus, because the students are (or soon will be) living in a country where the language is spoken, you have the perfect degree of language immersion to dramatically improve your skills.

So, where is Rosetta Stone in all of this? Well, I have access to it online, to do with what I want. I can run through all the levels of Rosetta Stone Russian in whatever way I see fit. But it is entirely separate from what the State Department wants and makes available. Why? Because Rosetta Stone is uniformly, undeniably, and laughably bad for learning a language. If any of you have tried to learn through Rosetta Stone, I'm sorry. It's awful and won't be much help (if any) when you have to actually speak to someone in the target language.

Most people can't afford $300 or more dollars for a computer program, so here's the rundown as I have experienced it. Rosetta Stone tries to teach everyone like a child who is learning their first language, which is, linguistically speaking, absolutely nuts. No one who uses Rosetta Stone is using it to learn their first language, which means that, unlike babies, we have access to a never ending supply of life examples, vocabulary, minute distinctions, and logical understanding. We do not learn like children, and it's absurd to think we should. The program is language independent, so it relies on repetition of pictures and the target language to try and imprint the language on you. This could be alright... but if you have a question or don't understand what is happening, you are out of luck. The things you are "taught" are piecemeal and random, starting with things like "boy" and "run" (anyone ever see a "Dick and Jane" book?), and wholly irrelevant to what stuff I will need to be able to say when I get to Kazakhstan. I need to be able to direct a taxi, order food in restaurants, understand prices and products in a grocery store, and any number of other things that have nothing to do with me explaining in broken Russian that a boy runs or a girl eats or a man reads. My experiences, and yours, are greater than those of a child, and adults need to be able to speak differently than children do.

Rosetta Stone does not teach you how to speak. It centers around flashing words, pictures, and sounds and having the user match them in a multiple choice fashion. You do not learn to communicate and you do not learn how to create or expand you knowledge. You learn to match words to things that can be pictured and vice versa. There is next to no feedback about your abilities with matching words and pictures, and you never get to practice in context, just repetition, repetition, repetition. It's a glorified and very expensive set of flash cards.

I spent about an hour using Rosetta Stone before I became so frustrated that I stopped, and I will not be picking it up again. Should you ever think about learning a language, let me recommend against it. This is coming from a linguist, a language educator, and someone who has studied four foreign languages and who will study many more in his lifetime: Rosetta Stone is bad, and the people who promote it should feel bad. I am an expert in this! If you have ever used Rosetta Stone software, or are currently using it to try to learn a language, I would strongly recommend trying other things. Rosetta Stone is useless and possibly worse than useless.

If you want to learn a language, of course the best way is to immerse yourself. For people in the Foreign Service, this is forced upon you. For people who aren't, hopefully there is a way. Eventually, I would recommend it to anyone who is learning any language. If you learn Spanish in a classroom, from a tutor, or just by studying by yourself, take an extended trip to Spain or Mexico. Find a way to spend several weeks or months surrounded by the sounds of the language, having to use it for anything you want to do. Put the television on in the background whenever you are doing anything. It's amazing the difference even a little bit of time makes. I know it's not possible for everyone, and let me be completely clear that immersion is not, in and of itself, a way to learn a language. You will still have to study and practice, it's just that being in an environment where you must study and practice to do even the most basic of things is better than sitting at home or in a classroom.

I've been tracking down websites and books for learning Russian, finding online message boards and groups that I might be able to practice with, downloading apps to practice vocabulary and spelling. The best part about these resources is that they are free, or next to it. I understand that software like Rosetta Stone is a major undertaking, especially with new features like voice recognition, but it is massively expensive for what users get out of it. So many people want to provide language learning tools and assistance without breaking your bank, and we have the internet to thank for their ability to do so easily.

Learning a language is a major effort, but the only way to get the most out of it is to prepare and get a solid footing before we begin. With the internet connecting so many people all over the world, there are more resources available than five years ago. More available than even one year ago. I'm hoping that these resources will make it work for Susie and me (and you). You just have to track some down. Luckily, there are even people who have already done that for us!

Language Learning, Part 1

We're moving to Kazakhstan, where the official language used for business and most interaction is Russian. There is a Kazakh language, but when Soviet Russia took over, that got mashed down and everyone had to speak Russian. Most everyone does now, and my impression from the little bit of info on the internet is that the younger folks in Kazakhstan prefer it while the older folks prefer Kazakh.

I took a half-semester of Russian in college. I was majoring in linguistics, and studying Japanese at the time. There was a bizarre requirement for linguistics majors for which I had to have four semesters of a main language (which could be anything) and two semesters of a non-Indo-European language, i.e. a language that was not really related to English ancestrally. The point of that requirement was to open the horizons of people studying languages. If you only studied Spanish or French, which have a lot of phonetics, vocabulary, and syntactic structures in common with English, then you would never really understand how much variety there is in human language. I applaud that aspect of the requirement, and to be honest, I think it should probably be a requirement of everyone...

The point, however, the reason why I call the requirement bizarre, is that I was already taking Japanese as my main language. Japanese is as non-English as you can get. The basic sentence order is different, the writing system is entirely unlike English, there are very few words in common, and the ones that are in common have been new additions in the past 60 years or so. Japanese is a perfect example of the kind of non-Indo-European language that the requirement was supposed to force people to learn about. But the fact that it was my main language meant that it didn't meet the requirement for the two semesters of a non-IE language. The requirement should have been four semesters of one language, two semesters of another, and at least one should be non-IE. Instead, I ended up going for Korean, which is as similar to Japanese as any two languages can be.

I wasn't getting much experience outside of that realm, though, which missed the entire point of the requirements while fitting snugly in the bureaucratic "letter of the law" side of things. The grammar was remarkably similar, lots of similar words (both languages having lots of imported words from Chinese), and even pronunciation was similar. I did enjoy learning both, but I felt like there was more I could do. I had a couple of friends who were taking Russian at the time, and I (foolishly) thought, "That sounds interesting." I got in touch with the professor and asked if I could be a late add to the class. I was already familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet, having subconsciously absorbed it by working with so many transliterated newspapers in the library periodicals department, so I figured starting a week or so late wouldn't be too much trouble. He said it would be fine.

It turns out that it wasn't much trouble at first. By this time I had a pretty solid technique to memorize words, verb forms, noun forms, and the like. But as time went on, I had more and more trouble. I was in my third year of Japanese, so things were beginning to become fairly complicated and daunting, and with Korean in there as well, I was having to work in three different writing systems, memorize three different words for everything, and avoid trying to jumble it all up on tests. I clearly had taken on too much, and it was unpleasant. Some people might say "That's obvious, studying three languages at once is dumb." My only response is that studying three languages at once like that is entirely possible although difficult, and I just didn't want to work that hard for something that I didn't need to do. It's not a lack of ability that did me in, but a lack of dedication. I wore down and eventually dropped the class.

Now, having lived in Japan, the Japanese paid off somewhat. You never realize how much of a language you can't use until you are dropped off in the country and have to make you way around. The Japanese I was able to use got me around, and the two years living there ramped up my fluency in ways that years of studying both before and after did not. I never did go to Korea, though, and I doubt that I ever will, although with Susie's job, you never know. I have forgotten basically everything I learned about Korean, too (Go, go, university requirements!). The same goes for Russian, which I studied less than any language I have ever studied. Forgotten!

I wish I had been able to do more, especially now that I am headed to a Russian speaking country. I'm re-familiarizing myself with the alphabet and getting some basic vocabulary going. I've ordered a couple of books from Amazon that should help, and Susie is finding what options the Foreign Service can offer. We're hoping to get a general grasp of some useful stuff before we go, and get some training in the language when we get to Kazakhstan. We'll be there for two years, and lots of other places use Russian. If Susie can pass a proficiency test with the right level, it makes her more likely to get those posts, and raises her pay when she gets them.

Learning Russian will be an enjoyable experience, I'm sure. Learning languages in general is one of the most exciting parts of the Foreign Service for me. I'm already having anxious dreams about getting out into Astana and having to interact with people and use what little language I have to get along. But it's not just that it will be an adventure, it will also give me a new skill. If I don't come back from Kazakhstan speaking Russian, I will have no one to blame but myself. And if I do come back speaking Russian, how awesome will that be? Where will we be going next, and what will I learn to speak there?

In the next post, I explain what our options for learning languages are, both good and bad.

What Am I Doing?

Every morning, Susie gets up and heads off to her professional training where she learns all about her job, living overseas, maintaining security and whatever other double-secret information the State Department deems is necessary, whereas I have no professional responsibilities and no real schedule. Susie zips back and forth between the Foreign Services Institute, which is more or less a very well guarded college campus, and Main State, the official government headquarters of the State Department, sitting through seminars, preparing for her job in Kazakhstan, emailing important people and making lengthy lists of what we have to do in the next six weeks. And yesterday, I didn't leave the apartment.

I don't always stay inside the entire day, so that was meant more as an extreme contrast rather than an accurate summary of what my life has become since moving to Washington, but the fact remains that I do not have nearly as much to do as she does, and what things I do have don't carry nearly as much weight, difficulty, or stress as hers. This isn't likely to change much when we get out to Kazakhstan (or any other country that we will be going to in the future). I may be able to find work, especially with my background in language learning and education, but I may also not be able to. I'm perfectly fine with this, although I know that there are a lot of other spouse/family members who aren't, and other people out there in the world who even thinking about not having a job makes them crazy.

I've been told that there is some opportunity for American teachers in Kazakhstan, but being able to get and hold jobs is reliant upon being able to speak Russian, which, of course, I cannot do (yet). There might be a way to tutor English or do some odd work at the consulate, but those are both reliant upon being at the post and happening upon the jobs. It may end up that I don't have anything to do in terms of work, but worry not! Susie's salary is plenty for the both of us, and who knows what opportunities we might encounter.

Because of this unsure state of being, I've been thinking a lot about how to fill my time. This isn't the first time where I've had months to sit at home while Susie is off working. When I was at Indiana University and when I was teaching, Summer meant not working, filling my time with studying, practicing guitar/ukulele, working on long term projects like my Master's thesis, or goofing off online. I tried to make sure I had a reason every day to leave the apartment, especially as time went on, because it can become grating to sit around all day. Those experiences showed me that it is important to hold yourself to a schedule and try to be productive. That's not to say that I did or do hold myself to a schedule, nor is it to say that I try to be productive... just that I do feel like it is important to do so.

Unlike those previous periods of time where I wasn't working, though, this one is different. The biggest difference for me is that those were temporary, and this one could last a while. Again, I'm not upset by this eventuality, and neither is Susie. But we do both feel like it's important that I find things to do on a regular basis. One of my plans is to blog our experiences, which will be happening here. Hopefully it becomes more interesting. I've also begun working on a novel, something small and punchy, the kind of thing I would want to read. I'm going to go into full on language learning mode with Russian (the business language of Kazakhstan), because there is no better way to learn a language than be immersed. And every time I see someone doing something on television or in a movie (cook, ride a horse, run, play music, etc) I think, "Maybe I could learn to do that."

What would you do, if you had all day to work on it, and no pressure to do anything else?