Aktobe visit

(Quick review: In November I'm moving to a city called Aktobe -Ahk toh BAY- where I'll live out the rest of my PC days, knock on wood.)

Right after my last post, I left Almaty for something the PC calls "site visit." This is where I meet my point of contact from the university in Aktobe, and we go together to Akobe for a week of meeting people, seeing the town, etc. My counterpart, Aliya, is great. She's the Chair of the Department of Philology at the univ., and was born and raised in Aktobe. While I was there I stayed with her family and got a chance to get to know her. Aliya is a mover and a shaker- she has her PhD from the same univ. I've been working at in Almaty, and is very knowledgable about linguistics- which is great for me because I have all of these ideas and theories swimming in my head waiting to be put into practice, and she understands it all. And on top of it all, she's only 28, so we are on the same page about a lot of things and I think we're really going to be pals.

The university was all good news- it's a big school, but the different buildings are spread out all over town. My building (to my knowledge) just has the Depts. of Foreign Languages, Philology, and Translation & Interpretation.

One really cool thing about the system here is that instead of the professors all having their own offices, they all work and hang out in one huge office. So there is a vibe of real camaraderie because everybody shoots around ideas and gripes and news. Before I got there, Aliya warned me that our group of teachers are loud and animated. And she was right. I fit right in, and by the end of the week, I was entering the room kind of like how Kramer does it on Seinfeld, with a big, loud "Zdrastvuite!" (Hello!) and drinking cup after cup of tea while gabbing about this or that with various other teachers.

This was probably the best thing about the visit, because my biggest job while I'm here is to get teachers to be more motivated, empowered and creative, and my faculty seems totally open to it all and extremely excited that I'm there. (Stay tuned for a posting about 2 months from now talking about how the novelty wore off and everybody treats me like chopped liver.)

Anyway, I'll save the big description of Aktobe for a couple of weeks from now, because I didn't take my camera on this trip. I will tell you that it was a nice city and I'm stoked to live there. Stay tuned.