Hanging in there:)

Thank God for my adult English club! The kids in my school are terrible. I really feel like I should write a personal letter to every teacher I’ve ever had with whom I had poor relations and apologize profusely. Kyrgyzstan is a country in a very strange transition. It is extremely poor by Western ‘standards’, but is one of the wealthier countries in all of Central Asia. Subsequently it also suffers from all of modern societies social ills; namely very passive and just down-right bad kids in school. I hear a lot of stories from other developing countries about the students there being “eager to learn”, or “walking 10 miles to and from school” just to get a basic education. In America I feel like a lot of kids would rather spend their days playing videogames or sports with their friends because American society is so comfortable they truly don’t know how lucky they are. Kyrgyzstan suffers from the same problem. Although their society is about 200 years behind America in general, there’s enough modernity to distract its youth and give them a false sense of security and inevitability. Due to this, and the fact that in this country if they don’t pass into the Lyceum (good High School) in the 8th grade they can pretty much immediately lose all hope for a higher education, most of them genuinely don’t care. So I guess it’s modernity’s social ills coupled with an education system still modeled after the now-defunct, yet still-in-use (just one of many contradictions in this continent) Soviet style that’s been providing so many little pains in my ass for the past few weeks! Sorry for the bitching, but these kids just don’t appreciate the fact that they have an education system period, and it’s hard for me to watch them piss away what future they could have on a daily basis. Wow, and I’ve only been teaching for three weeks…two more years of this could get interesting!

On another note: I am again the “no-strings-attached” James (or “Joey” as my friends Natalie and Tiffany lovingly call me:)) that I was coming into this crazy adventure. Yup, that’s right o’ loyal readers ye, Becky has flown the coop…or to use the technical term, “ET’d”. ET stands for Early Termination, not the lil’ brown Spielberg alien…although that’d be awesome if Peace Corps was in on that secret! As much as I already do miss her, she decided to quit for her own reasons and that’s enough…eh, c’est la vie!

Also, in case you’re curious as to why I posted another blog so soon after my two-fer last time, it’s because I’m in Talas city again this weekend! Thank bloody God that it’s only a 45 som Marshutka ride from my city to Talas…I think I might actually do this every weekend! A bunch of us Talas volunteers are throwing down on a ‘flop’, or shared apartment for us all to use any time we come into town for any reason. Subsequently my friend Kristen and I have decided to kick it there tonight watching Season 1 of Deadwood and drink vodka while making delicious Americanish food. It’s going to be one hell of a night…and considering the time difference, rest assured that by the time you read this, it was one hell of a night!

Well, there you go. I couldn’t very well use the Internet/pay to use the Internet without providing my friends, family and other interested parties back home with a little update, now could I? Although the first paragraph was a bit of a diatribe, rest assured that I am still having a blast here and have even begun to lay the groundwork for my epic plan mentioned in a previous blog posting. Sure as it’s about to get to negative-fucking-freezing here I’m going to master this language enough to give my kids the ol’ “сенин апасын айтып!”…yeah, that’s “I’m going to tell your mother!” in Kyrgyz:) Then again, it never worked for me so…ah hell, I’m screwed!