Day 15: Corpus Collosum

Hi Suzie! Please talk to us, we have lots of questions! Hope to hear from you soon...

This weekend was delightfully cultural. Keri and I both felt as though we had finally migrated away from tourism and were just, well, living! It was wonderful to integrate into the culture and feel comfortable with it instead of petrified and unsure. On Saturday, we did have quite the getaway. My mentor teacher Nina and her husband picked us up at a mall just five minutes’ walk away from our host stay (it’s called Mega, we go shopping for groceries at the PAMCTOP, or Ramstore, inside of it all the time) and took us to a little place called the English Book & Coffee Store. I’ve adored this cultural immersion, I really have, but this place was a slice of heaven. Mostly English speakers, the first real coffee I’ve seen around here that’s not “instant”, and an older American woman who owns and runs this little library-like place with comfy booths and broccoli quiche. Twas amazing and exactly what we needed. Also, the woman who owned it was part of a mission I was given at the beginning of my trip! I was trying to be friendly to a nice older couple on my airport shuttle and found out they were going to be on my flight to Frankfurt; they were on their way to moving to Turkey indefinitely. They said, after extensive conversation, that they had a friend in Astana named Martha who owned a little coffee shop and if I ever saw her to tell her “Tom and Pauline said hi”. It had always been in the back of my mind, so it felt good to accomplish my mission J After that, we walked to the Artume indoor bazaar and met the Kruger family to look around. Found out some interesting Kazakh superstitions though... we were waiting for the Kruger’s to arrive and decided to sit on the floor until we did. We got a lot of interesting looks, especially from young men and older women. We asked Shari, Tim’s wife, why that was and she looked at us with wide eyes. She said that it’s a common medical belief that if you sit on the floor you will freeze your ovaries and kidneys. Apparently everyone was staring at us because we were voluntarily making ourselves infertile. Well, sometimes learning is hard and awkward!

After Artume, we had pizza with the Kruger family and decided to walk the 2 or so miles home. We were in a new part of town and wanted to explore, so it made sense! It was wonderful to feel so self sufficient. We were able to ask questions and have people understand us, it was awesome. On Sunday, after homework and rest, we went to a local ballet production of Swan Lake with our host family and beforehand went to a Kazakh friend of our host mom’s for dinner. It was great, we asked questions about family culture and the Soviet Union, and ate the first good manti I’ve had since coming here (still made me sick though... fourth time in a row, but it would be rude to refuse. Fun stuff). The culture here seems to have an iron exterior since smiling at strangers is considered foolish, but when someone knows you or knows a friend of yours than they do everything they can to make you feel welcome. It was wonderful! P.S. Our host family situation is much much better. Our relationship with our host mom improves every day and although we don't always agree with her parenting we know we'll be fine through the rest of the trip. So yay!

Today I taught a lesson in the math hour for my second graders. It was really scary, I’m not used to that age group! And I know that every child is a culture of one and as diverse as they come, but haven’t really dealt with diversity on that scale before. I was told that the lesson was going to be regrouping and I had the weekend to prepare; thank goodness, because I had to relearn the addition tricks for 2nd graders! I thankfully had an “aha!” moment and thought of a new addition trick I called the “Dragonfly Trick”. It involves breaking the tens down on one side, the ones down on the other and combining them in the tail. You’ll see the lesson plan and worksheets J I felt okay about it, of course it didn’t go as I expected and I wished I had done things differently. I will be debriefing with my mentor teacher tomorrow before classes start (she had to jet right after school) and will have a better brain about the experience. It just helped me to realize how difficult it can be to keep all the cultures represented in a classroom in mind when planning a one hour lesson. I tried to scaffold it down by modeling first, having the whole class work through it, have partners create problems for each other and solve together and finally independent practice with a worksheet. The big thing I realized, and I know for all age groups but in a different way with these 7 year olds, how much of teaching is classroom management. The big issues I had weren’t necessarily confusion, they were “I don’t want to work with so and so” or “quadruple digit numbers are so much cooler!” I learned a whole new breed of patience today, and I think it was both humbling and good for me. Anyway, after hearing from my mentor teacher I will have more to report on.

So basically I went about my normal day, went to my ELL class and traipsed up to Mr. Burkey’s middle school classroom to distribute the chocolates I had forgotten to bring on Friday for my Jeopardy winners. I’ll be staying there in the afternoons for the rest of the week and it sounds like Mr. Burkey is very willing to share his classroom, so we’ll see what happens! Off to bed now though, can’t believe the last day is a week from tomorrow... oy, how time flies when you’re learning!

Chels