Pa Nos
September 1 is a special day in Kazakhstan. Throughout the country it is the first day of school and is known as Knowledge Day, an opportunity to celebrate the start of a new school year. But I’ll remember my first … Read More
The 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of JFK
It’ll be 50 years this Friday since John Fitzgerald Kennedy, better known as JFK, the 35th President of the US, was shot and killed while in a motorcade in Dallas TX. I’ve known for quite some time … Read More
DST: Yay or Nay?
With the nearly nationwide return this past weekend to Standard Time (I say nearly because not all states or territories observe Daylight Saving Time) I got curious once again about this scourge of school children everywhere. I’ll start … Read More
The Application Process, Part III: At the Sanitorium
Some thirty Kazakhstanis and four Americans were in charge of our training in a village near Almaty, home of Kazakhstan’s international airport. But first, we had to get there. The Peace Corps brought us to Washington DC … Read More
The Application Process Part II
We knew we’d be able to come home whenever we wanted, theoretically. The Peace Corps does not want volunteers who don’t want to be there. It’s not the army, after all. In practical terms, though, it would be … Read More
The Application Process, Part I
“Flexibility, patience, and a sense of humor characterize the successful Peace Corps volunteer,” or PCV, as the recruiter actually said, using the acronym that would soon became part of our everyday vocabulary. He may have been referring to … Read More
The Teacher’s Lounge
The teacher’s lounge turned out to be a narrow room in the back of Room 46. Long and narrow, with windows at one short end, it was the size of the coatroom in my fourth-grade class at … Read More
Difficult conversations
In the Peace Corps, my official job was Teacher Trainer: I taught English at a teacher’s college. A few of my classes were taught in concert with a local teacher. Over my two years I team-taught with five different teachers. One … Read More