in almaty

it is sunday morning here and i am still in almaty.  despite my lack of optimism... it has turned out to be a quite good trip. most educational conferences turn out to be rubbish but i really enjoyed the presentations and made some good connections with some teachers and directors from other qsi schools in central asia.

i also sent a good deal of time being recruited by the director of the international school in albania. (although albania is in europe and not central asia... she attended the conference as a presenter). jennifer and i know her from last year when she worked in almaty. next year she will have a couple of elementary positions open and a math/athletic director position. so if we decide to stay overseas... it could be a good option as being in europe could be pretty amazing. from albania you can drive to greece. take a ferry to italy. or take a quick plane ride directly to the rest of the continent. it seems a bit early to start thinking about next year as this year has just started... but in the next month the school is going to ask us to turn in our request for next year. if we tell them early... we are more likely to end up with a better offer (kiev, bratislava, malta, etc) than if we wait. plus... they offer a pretty large bonus to teachers to committee early. it isn't paid until you come back... but it is something to plan for. more on our thoughts for next year in a later posting. we have not even been here as a family yet and i am more looking forward to that than anything else.

anyway. almaty has been good. the best part has been hanging out with the other teachers from bis. we haven't spoke about it much before... but our relationship with the teachers from the school has been horrible. as a group they are very cliquish, negative and backstabbing. i know that sounds harsh... but it is true. our response was to distance ourselves from the school community (at least the teachers) as much as possible. that just made it worse. i don't want to rehash what jennifer and i spent countless hours and nights talking about last year... but needless to say we were pretty unhappy with dynamics at work.

that seemed to change on this trip. the worse offenders are gone. there are some new teachers. and the old teachers who remained have seemed to mellow out. maybe it was just the wine and it will return to "normal" once we return to the school. but regardless... i enjoyed myself hanging out with them and am hoping it means a fresh start.

(jennifer - i know you probably can't believe you what you are reading... so feel free to slap some sense into me when you get here next weekend. next weekend!)

they are all off exploring for the day while i stayed behind at the pre-school where we stayed. i am taking off in about an hour to go and meet chris (friend from the us embassy in bishkek) who is in town visiting his girlfriend. we are going out to lunch and then i am riding back to bishkek with him.