School Days Part IV - The Bumps Along the Road

After our first day of school - the celebration of the first bell - the reality of having the kids in school kicked in.  Here are a few observations about the first two weeks of the kids' adventure in School number 75.

Nika, Lexa, and Sophie for the first day of school.  Lina goes later (see below!)

The Good
Our kids all have good teachers at school.  Our favorite is Lina's teacher.  She is a tiny little woman in her mid to late 30s (sometimes hard to tell - and I usually get in trouble if I try to figure it out :) who is no-nonsense with the kids, but she is kind and patient.  Lina needs that for her sensitive soul and because she is the only kid from us and our friends the Petersons who doesn't have another English speaking friend in class.

Lina in her class (second row in the back-wearing her sweater).

The 4th graders have a good teacher as well.  The twins started off with a pretty good teacher, but we found out that they were being moved to a new class earlier this week.  They already made a friend in their first class, and that friends' parents made sure that she was transferred into the same new class.  Their new teacher is even better than their first one, so we are happy with the transfer.  The twins' new friend has a father that works for the university.  He is one of the higher ups in the administration, so on the day they were moved he had his driver bring us both back to the university from the school.

The twins' original 1st grade class (1В).  Now they are in 1Ж.

Having the kids in school has also opened up our experience in Astana immensely.  We are meeting lots of new and interesting people and experiencing the types of frustrations and difficulties that the locals face.  The university life can be pretty sheltered and so we are grateful to have the experiences we are having - even if they are sometimes frustrating.

The Bad
Our school is a brand new school, and it is overfilled - by the time school started it was operating at twice it's planned capacity.  That means that our lives have been a bit hectic.  Nika (4th grade) starts at 8:00 a.m. She is supposed to go to school until 2:00.  The twins (first grade) start at 8:45.  They are supposed to go to 2:00 when they are on their full schedule as well.  Lina (3rd grade) studies in the second shift, so she starts at 2:00 p.m.  Her classes are supposed to go to 6:30.

This all depends on how many lessons each of them have, and because school is starting off slowly with some teachers not hired and trying to get everyone into the routine - including the teachers themselves - the lesson schedule is variable.  This means that we have three different starting times and three different ending times for the four kids that we have in school. Yulia spent the first week on the public bus taking them to and from school.  The bus itself is a quick ride, but there is quite a bit of walking to and from the stops and waiting for the buses to come.

The kids on their way to school on the public bus.

We also found out that the older kids will be going to school six days a week.  Adventure!

The Ugly
Last Wednesday night we went to a parents' meeting for Lina's class.  Her teacher had asked if we wanted to move her into a new class, and we said "no!"  We decided the best way to keep her in class would be to attend the meeting, so we went.  The style of meetings here is much different than in the US - much more chaotic with a lot of people talking and yelling over each other.  This meeting was calmer than the fourth grade meeting that we went to last Saturday.

One of the items of business was to form a parents' committee for the class.  This is kind of like a PTA for the class.  No one at the meeting volunteered to be on the committee for a few minutes.  Yulia finally raised her hand and said she would be on the committee.  Then she was elected to be the president.  A few other ladies said they would help out.  Then we collected the money that was needed to get the classroom items needed for everyone.

When we came home the texts started coming in.  The classes here use a messaging app on the phone called "whatsapp"that essentially creates a discussion board out of text messages.  The ladies from the class started fighting about the money, fighting about the priorities, and fighting each other.  Yulia was up until 4:00 am when she sent a text telling the moms that she would not be their president.  Her official duties ended at 2:00 p.m. when she dropped off Lina and turned the money over to a mom that volunteered to take over.  They all said that Yulia was too kind to have the job of president, but that wanted her on the committee.  It turns out that the mom who took over also works in the administration of the university.

It may have been the shortest PTA presidency in Kazakhstan, but everything felt a little easier after Yulia had resigned.  We are learning lessons.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel? (It's a Lada!)
We found a driver to take the kids to and from school.  Her name is Aizat, and she is awesome.  She started last Monday, and so we have one week under our belt of having a driver.  Her rate is very reasonable and we are happy to pay it.  It freed up Yulia to do something besides ride the bus to and from school all day - that has mostly been to help the kids with homework and to go to bookstores to try to find the books that the kids need for their class.  Yulia is definitely the busiest person in the house right now.

A few last Observations about School in Kazakhstan
Math here is really advanced.  Lina and Nika are doing algebra-type math in 3rd and 4th grade that I didn't encounter until 6th grade. There is a lot of memorization (Lina is having drama right now about memorizing a poem).  This is a good thing for young brains and we fully support it.  School is also structured in a way that puts more responsibility on the kids here at an earlier age.  They keep journals of their homework and assignments and their upcoming classes.  They have different schedules for different days and it is up to them to be prepared.  First grade starts out very easy.  The twins have it good to start out.  However, by the second half of the year, first grade is very advanced compared to what the kids would be doing in the states.

The first graders in the school entrance.  So far so good, but it's going to get harder!

School Days Part III (First Day of School)

Yulia got a call from the twins' teacher on Friday afternoon (August 30) that there would be a parents' meeting at the school at 7:00 p.m. that day.  We arranged with Jon that he would come with us so that he could get information for his son who is in the same class.  At the meeting we were told that the first graders would have their "line up" (Линейка) on Monday, September 1st at 9:00.  We needed to be there at 8:30.  After the line-up a few classes, not ours, would have a short lesson as a demonstration for the day's special guest: President Nazarbayev himself!

Monday was a holiday in Kazakhstan (Constitution day was celebrated) and so I didn't have work.  Yulia's mom had arrived the day before on the train from Krasnoyarsk, so we had an entire contingent of folks to go to the festivities.

Waiting at the bus stop on the first day of school - the twins in their uniforms!

The three amigos on their way to "the line-up"!

Riding the bus to school - It was nice and empty on the holiday.

Walking from the bus to school

There were a lot of people at the school.  There was a girl handing out balloons to all of the kids in attendance, especially the first graders in their uniforms.

The twins with their balloons. 

1V (1В) Class sign and the twins with their balloons.

It was quite chaotic getting everyone lined up with their classes and keeping the parents in the background.  That was coupled with the extra presidential security made for a bit of a crowded space in the school's courtyard.

One side of the courtyard, parents in the background behind the kids and next to the wall.

 The ceremony was quite simple and nice[1].  The older kids danced, there was a ribbon cutting by one of the younger kids to open the school, and a first bell of the year rung by a first grader being led around by an 11th grader (senior here).

First grade girl ringing the first bell (Первый Звонок) being led by a senior.

As part of the ceremony all of the children released their balloons.

Seniors doing a dance number.  The boys were not super enthused (are most boys ever super enthused about forced dance numbers?)

Getting ready to cut the ribbon to open School 75!

All in all it was a pretty good way to start the school year.  Our only complaint was that we didn't get to hear a speech by the President.  Apparently he came to the school and walked around during the short lessons after the ceremony.  

The twins and James with their teacher, K. Ulkhanovna.

The main thing was that the school was opened.  It was actually ready on the 1st of September and our kids were ready to get started.

Leaving the school after the ceremonies were over.  School 75 is open for business.

________

[1] They announced during the ceremony the following statistics: 

1. There were five new schools opening in Astana that day.

2. Of the nearly 1 million residents of the city, over 100,000 are school-age children

3. The school had been built for a capacity of 2,000 students and there were nearly 4,000 signed up already.

My Commute to Work

One of the things I love about working at NU is that we live on campus and my commute is very short.  After living the last year in Las Vegas and dealing with traffic every day, a quiet walk to the office is a slice of heaven.  I took these pictures on my morning walk with Yuki.

View toward sports complex from the front of our apartment.

 The first part of the walk is through construction right now. It is to walk around some road and utility work near the sports court and next to the new business building that is going up right now. [1]

Looking down the straight (to the East) toward campus.  Campus is on the left.  To the front and right are the dorms.

My office. It is right through the glass doors ahead.  It is the building on the left.  

In the winter atrium door won't open, so I'll have to walk to the front of the university to enter.  That is until the business building is finished and the atrium is extended.  Then my commute will be all indoors after a quick 50 yard walk to the business building.
________

[1] You can see throughout this post that construction is a reality of life on campus.  We'll have to do a post on construction soon!

Subotnik - Civic Cleaning Day

The weekend before school started we got an announcement in our email - the university was going to hold a subotnik (субботник).  This is a holdover from the old Soviet days when everyone would pitch in and clean up a building, school, factory, the streets, etc.  We decided that we would be good citizens and help out.  We really feel like we are part of the community and we need to help build it and to help it grow.

Nazarbayev University is on a beautiful campus that is under construction in a lot of places.  We'll have to do a post about construction a bit later.

Late afternoon view of the NU.

Yulia went to the hospital to pick up lab reports, so the girls and I went to volunteer.

Working to pick up weeds and garbage at the front of NU!

All five us working hard!

 We were assigned to get weeds from the sidewalks.  Sidewalks here are typically made of bricks or other stones rather than concrete, so weeds easily get in between them and grow.

The successful work crew!

School Days - Part II

In our last school days post we ended the story with our visit to the new school.  The two young women who were running the application desk were different from the one we had met the day before.  They were surprised that we were registering four children at once.  They asked our address and we told them. They asked where we were from and we told them.  They said that they needed to talk to their director, so one of them got on the phone for a minute. They spoke for a few minutes and then said, okay.

[ We later learned that our helper from the International Scholars Office had called the ministry of education.  Apparently they called the director, and very shortly after that we had been invited to meet with her the next day!  It is sometimes nice to be on the right side of a power balance.]

We're in - Now What?!?

We were in!  Now all we had to do was take care of all the things we needed to do to actually register the kids for school.  The first step was to fill out an application for each of the kids.  This was done in the old Russian fashion of handwriting an application based on an example that they had taped to the table.  Yulia did this for all four of the girls - she didn't trust my handwriting to inspire confidence in our kids by the school.

After we wrote the application (заявление) we were given a list of things that we needed to bring to enroll the girls in school.  This list included a medical passport, an individual tax identification number (like a social security number) for the girls, birth certificates, a proof of residence and proof of work for the parents, and uniforms.

The HR staff at our school (The School of Humanities and Social Sciences) helped out by applying for the individual tax numbers for the girls.  The first step in that process was to notarize their passport information and to register them with the government here.  Since they are under 14 they didn't have to do that when we first arrived, so we had to do the extra steps.  That was an afternoon for me with someone from the school helping.  We got on top of the medical issue the next Monday.  That required a great deal of going back and forth to the hospital for various appointments with all the different specialists, translating the children's shot records into Russian, and collecting urine and stool samples at home. The blood sample they took at the hospital.  Overall the girls were good about the process and were very brave.

The girls show off their bandages after giving a blood sample.  They earned ice cream as a reward for their bravery!

The school required uniforms, but they weren't available yet.  We were given a number to call on Sunday (August 9) to find out where and when the uniforms would be available.  We were told that they would be ready on Tuesday at 10:00 at a store on the other side of town (at the bazaar).  We found the bus route to the area and on Tuesday took the bus to get the uniforms.  We found the store, but the kid that was running it pointed to all the boxes in the hall and said - we have the uniforms, but we aren't ready to start selling them, yet.  We'll start selling them on Thursday morning at 9:00. He learned that we were from America and said that he studied in Vancouver for 5 years a few years back. He was really glad to use his English with us.

Thursday morning we went back - and it was quite wild.  We were almost the first ones there, which was good.  We had to get uniforms for all four girls - and it was quite a process to find and try on all the different components.  The sizing is different from America, so we had to guesstimate and then verify.  We left the store a few hundred dollars lighter, but glad that we had gotten the full uniforms.  They had not ordered enough uniforms because they were not expecting as many kids to sign up for the school as did.

Through all the process we were not sure if the school would be finished on time for school to start on 1 September.

Finishing up the main courtyard - School 75 less than 2 weeks before class begins.

Inside the School 75 less than 2 weeks before classes were scheduled to start 

All of the medical and other paperwork took a while to get together so we didn't turn in all of our documents until  the 19th or 20th of August.  We were by far the last parents to complete the process, though!

We were the first ones in our school to send the kids to a local school.  My friend, Jon, and his family moved here from Moscow, arriving a few weeks after we did.  They decided to send their two oldest to the local school as well.  Another of my colleagues' husband is from Kazakhstan and her daughter had attended local school before.  She decided to send them to the local school as well.  We were about a week ahead of both of them and so Yulia became the expert on the process of enrolling the kids in the schools. She went to the hospital with both families to show them where and how to get started and to get uniforms as well.  It was nice to be helpful.  Jon's daughter is in Veronika's 4th grade class, and his son is in Sophie and Lexa's 1st grade class.  So only Polina is alone in class.  She will probably be the first to learn Russian!

Overall we felt as ready as we could be - the kids were enrolled, we had their uniforms, and we were ready to begin.