On my way to Almaty

Hi everybody,

Happy Peace Corps Day everybody (March 1st)! On this day in 1965, JFK made his famous speech of “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” and started Peace Corps. The very first country that had PCVs was Ghana, on the west coast of Africa. Anyways, this morning we had ambassadors from the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan, UK, and Georgia show up as well as numerous directors
of NGOs to help us celebrate and learn about the start of Peace Corps.

I have fantastic news! Today I found out that I was selected to a Pre-Departure Orientation Leader for the (Future Leaders Exchange) FLEX students. Basically what this means is that another volunteer and me well be preparing and orientating around 60 kids for their departure to the U.S. to study for a year. One of the best things about this, apart from the enormous amount of fun and hard work it will take, is that I get to travel to the FLEX PDO conference. The conference will be held in the middle of April in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The actual conference itself will be for three days and then I will have four days to travel around Almaty and hopefully the rest of Kazakhstan. Since I don’t speak Kazak, I guess that means that I will have to practice my Russian. I AM SO AMPED about this opportunity.

I was very surprised when I found out that they chose me to do the PDO because usually they pick volunteers that has been around the country for a while. I think one of the major reasons that I was chosen was because I have a lot of experience in
doing this sort of thing (Summer Welcome, Generation Ogilvy etc.) and the fact that I get along very well with the country director of the organization that runs the FLEX program.

I am excited and a little bit nervous about all of the work that I have ahead of me. I only hope that I can balance all of the work with the PDO as well as my work at the American Corner. I still have to tell my counterpart that I got the
position and let her know the amount of the work that I will have to do.

Hope to hear from you all soon. Please let me know what you are up
to.

Peace
Chris

Hi ho hi ho, its off to work we go

I am now officially Project Design Management Certified! Wahoo! So now that I have my PDM certificate I am able to start writing and working on grants and projects outside of my work within the classroom.

The other PCVs, counterparts, and myself have just spent the last two days learning how to design and implement feasible and sustainable community development projects. When I initially thought the so-called “Peace Corps” projects, I thought of the infrastructure building that many of our volunteers will attempt. For instance, one volunteer will be trying to build new toilets for his school due to the fact that the current ones are overused and overflowing. Another volunteer has the idea to create a solar water distiller that any home in her city can easily make, so that the number of poor water related illnesses within the community would decrease. In each of these cases there are very apparent and much needed infrastructure developments that are vitally needed within the community.

However, at my site, the city has a well-established infrastructure of services that the population uses. Instead of trying to seek out and find a vital infrastructure that HAS to be developed, I have decided to focus my efforts and projects on developing a natural resource that will serve Turkmenistan well for years to come creativity and critical thinking from the students.

Turkmenistan's education system is still based on the former Soviet model, which is primarily reading, transcribing, and dictation. While this gives students a work ethic that many teachers in the US would envy, it doesn’t exactly promote out-of-the-box thinking from the students. Instilling critical thinking and creativity in both teachers and students is the primary tenet of ever project and class that I will be doing here in Turkmenistan.

The major project that I will be working on outside of my normal site duties will be to write, publish and distribute a book on how to teach English in the classroom by using journalism. The vision of the book is to advance students critical thinking skills by attempting to instill in them a journalists' curiosity and examination of the world around them by giving them exercises and real life examples. The secondary goal of this project is to give teachers and students of English an instruction on how to develop newsletters and publications without materials (e.g. computers, printers etc.) After the book is developed and printed, I plan to do a train the trainers program that will give teachers and other PCVs an explanation of how to utilize the book in their classrooms and English centers.

The second project that I will be working on is an acting project. I have already started an acting club at the American Corner and almost on a weekly basis I am amazed at how much my students progress in becoming actors. At the beginning of the class, the students were pretty much doing what they thought was acting. They were making mushy faces and kisses when they thought they were in love, they were play hitting each other when they were supposed to be mad; while at the same time laughing their heads off. The first part of the project is simply to get materials and resources here that are designed for young actors and non-English speakers since there is a serious lack of scripts that can be utilized by my students. Once these resources are gathered, I plan on developing a traveling theater show that gives kids a chance to express their acting abilities to the community and country around them. The show has yet to be decided, but most likely the play will revolve around either youth development in a harsh world or human rights brought into question.

The final project that I will be working on is developing and implementing an Odyssey of the Mind (OM) competition here in Turkmenistan. If you have not heard of OM before please check out their website at www.odysseyofthemind.com Basically, it is a creative problem solving competition that rewards teams for the most out-of-the-box thinking rather than discouraging it. This project is designed to give students an opportunity to develop and advance their creative problem solving skills that we as Americans so often take for granted.

In addition to these projects, another male volunteer and myself in Mary are starting a young men's club. This club will be designed to give young male students a forum to discuss issues that affect them as young men. The club will be focused on issues on men's health, family and community development, leadership and life skills that they will need to become active and productive young men in their community.

Let me know what you all think

Let the games begin

A quarter of a century old! Wow, when you say it like that..just kidding. Its official I am now 25. My birthday (feb. 21) was very nice, I got a number of presents from my students, new host family, and of course had to have some celebratory drinks with the other PCVs in Mary. It was very nice to have everyone in the community be able to celebrate my b-day with me.

I am back in the capital for our project design management conference for the first time since I left my first home family.

Its amazing to hear some of the stories that the volunteers have had in the past two months since they have been at site. Some have been stories of adventure, some have been stories of uneccessary drama or actions, but most of the stories have been of great times that we had apart from one another. There is a strange but comfortable feeling that I have with the other volunteers now, like the slight yet comfortable chill that raises the hair on your arms as you step outside after an autumn rainshower. For a majority of us, we have settled into our lives at our sites quite comfortably, the culture shock for the most part is now is a distant memory. Despite the fact that every once and again something happens in our daily lives that we shake our heads in disbelief and our fists in frustration, for the most part we have now are beggining to truely become members of our community. So what does it mean to become a part of a community in Turkmenistan? Well...

My new host family is great. I am living in an apartment in the city which, most days, I only share with my 14 year old host brother. This is due to the fact that the family has a house in a village just outside of Mary and my little brother goes to school in Mary. My new host mom and dad are great and stop by the apartment three or four times a week to help out with the cooking and just to see how we are doing. The family also has two brothers that are now studying foriegn languages in universities in Ashgabat. In addition, my apartment is just a 20-25 minute walk to work. So much like my living situation in DC I get to have a lot of exercise everyday. One of the most amazing things that I have found in moving as an American in Turkmenistan into a new community is the almost overwhelming number of new invitiations and requests that you receive from the Turkmen. There are those that want to know if I have met Brittaney Spears, undoubtedly there are teenagers that want me to explain the meaning of a 50 cent or Eminem song (Candyshop by 50 cent and Mockingbird by Eminem are now the local favorites), there are those that want me to take them back to America with them, but the most fascinating and common request that I have had is the request for me to teach the sons and daughters of neighbors and friends English. It may seem very logical for me to say, "Absolutely tell them to come on by," seeing as though I am an English teacher. The interesting part of this exercise happens when you tell them that they have to do work and heaven forbid do homework. It seems that there is a myth of learning English from an American can be done completely by osmosis. The students and people that truely do want to learn the language because they want to succeed are a breathe of fresh air. Unfortunately for a very few they look at the English language as a golden ticket to prosperity. In some ways I agree with them, but to be the conduit of that myth is sometimes frustrating. It's not frustrating because I dont want to help them, it's frustrating because I feel like I am being used a bit. But then again, why shouldn't I be viewed in that way, I am an American male that is teaching English in a country that is pretty close to as far away from the US as possible.

Despite these momentary doubts of self-esteem, I could not be more excited or content in my work situation right now. I am still teaching my clubs once a week: debate, journalism, acting and softball. Two weeks ago we had a scrimage with about 20 kids. The game started off really fast with both of the teams racking up the runs. At the end of the second inning the score was knotted at 7, and one of the best players we have, Anton, stepped up to the plate. He let my first pitch go by as it was outside. The second pitch he smashed a hot ground ball that headed straight for me. I prepared to scoop up the grounder, but just as the ball was in front of me it hit a rock and ended up in the one place that no man wants to be harmed. The moment it hit me, I didnt think of the pain that was shortly coming. Instead my mind flashed back to me playing Little League baseball during coach pitch. I saw myself as a short, skinny kid with rec-specs, running toward first base as I saw out of the corner of my eye my dad crumpled on the ground due to a well placed line drive of my own. So instead of being mad and in pain, I came up limping and smiling at the knowledge that literally it all comes full circle.

The weather here in T'stan or at least in Mary this week has been absolutely perfect. It is in the mid to high 60s during the day and down in the high 40s to 50s at night. Unfortunately, because of the amount of work that has come my way the past couple of weeks I have not had that much time to enjoy it.

I would like to take this opportunity to give a big congratulations to my cousin Gabe Schirm. He was selected out of 10,000 contestants to be a travelling journalist with five other people for the Travel Channel. He will be travelling around the Pacfic Rim for the next 13 weeks. You can check out the actual details at www.travelchannel.com but from what I hear the show will be airing on the travel channel on Mondays at 6:00pm Pacific time. Who knows you might see me make a cameo appearance if I get a chance to meet up with him in Thailand.

Thank you all of you that have sent letters, cards, and packages this way. It means a ton to be able to hear from everyone back home. So please keep them coming. I will try to make one more post about the projects that I am planning to do in the coming months, before I take off back to my site on Sunday so stayed tuned. And please let me know what you think of these postings. If you do send me a comment please make sure to have your email attached so that I can send you a response back.