Salut and à Bientôt

Salut, Yes, I did literally jump out a window, but I’ll get to that later.  In the middle two weeks of June, I conducted my English summer camp. It ran 4 days a week, from 10 am-noon at my school. I hung a large poster in the hallway advertising it, and Baktygul sent a picture of the schedule to the school teachers to in turn send to students in WhatsApp groups. Little did I know that I would be getting a lot more students than I had anticipated. One student asked if they could bring their friend from Frank’s old school three blocks down the road, and I said yes, assuming it would just be a 4th grader and their one friend. Come Monday, my first day, 40 students flooded my classroom, ⅓ coming from the bigger school. My club skewed younger, which I had thought about but didn’t expect. Older students have more commitments at home, and less motivation to study and practice English. 9th and 11th grade were preparing for exams anyway. My students were mostly 3-7th grade students, with ev...

Salut, The beginning of summer felt like it came early, as the blendings between spring and summer felt blurry. University ended in early May, but my classes didn’t end until the end of the month, so it felt like a haze almost, my friends back home graduating, while I remained at work. I have already hashed out the end-of-the-year bell ceremony and whatnot.  That last weekend of May, I spent most of the time packing for my first summer vacation. After the previous bell ceremony, myself and the teachers ate at a cafe. But the next day, we all went to Jalal Abad city for a bigger toi celebration, which was hosted by the alumni I mentioned in my last post.  The next day, the morning I was going to leave, I spoke to my host father, and he was quite frank with me about the money situation here. He has lots of money to build a new house (the construction workers are finally gone by the way !) which he gets from Russia , but he lamented the societal pressures to spend money on celeb...