Day 6: Placement Exams
The weekend comes to a close and today is Monday: my favorite day of the week. /s Today is the first day of school, which means that we will be taking placement exams to know what level of education we will receive during the summer. I wake up twenty minutes before my alarm and have time to take care of some business before going to school. Outside it was lightly raining, but the weather looked like it would clear up over the course of the day.
For breakfast we had corn flakes (they tasted like cereal from the Philippines), cheese, and tea. Assel was very kind and prepared a small bag that contained some snacks to eat during the breaks at school. We hurried out of the apartment and one of Assel's friends took us to the school. Traffic was pretty terrible!
After around thirty or so minutes, we arrived at the school and Assel ensured that I made it to the correct room, where all the other RLASP students were waiting. We all sat in a medium-sided room with large windows and the lights turned off. It was easy to hear the traffic outside and see people walking along the road. After some chatting with other students, the teachers came into the room with exams in hand. While passing out the exams, they explained that the test was for level 3 Russian, and not to worry about the difficulty of it.
This test was very difficult! There were a lot of words and grammatical structures that I did not know at all, but I marked up the questions that I did know and used eliminations to guess at answers. At the end, me and other students who completed our tests headed out of the room with the tests in hand and waited in the American center/lounge, where tea and some chocolates were provided for us.
Our group is the largest group on campus during the summer, because Kazakh students are already on break. The only Kazakh students who would still be taking classes over the summer would be those who failed a class and were retaking it.
In the lounge I talked with other students and we shared our first impressions of Kazakhstan and what it's like living with our host families. After a couple of minutes, a teacher came in and lead some of us out to other classrooms to do the oral interview. I was the first in a small group of four to do my oral interview, so I sat in front of about three or four teachers and handed them my written test.
They asked me a couple of basic questions: how long have I been studying Russian, why did I study Russian, is Russian useful to me in the future, etc. The whole interview lasted about six or seven minutes, and I answered the questions to the best of my ability while including as much information as I could. Before releasing me, they spoke to each other about putting me in 2 or 3, whatever that meant ))
I returned to the American center and continued to talk with the other students and eat snacks. After around ten minutes, our RD Harry came into the room and started talking about some important information to know regarding being in Kazakhstan. We talked about what to do in the event of an earthquake and some other things (we got the talk). Harry is a comical guy and was going crazy on the sarcasm throughout this orientation!
We received Kazakh sim cards, student cards for entering and exiting the university building, and a transportation card that only had enough money for one bus ride. As I had already known, my phone did not recognize the foreign sim card and would not work, meaning that I would have to get a new phone to use in Kazakhstan. This is not a huge problem, because I will be returning to Kazakhstan for the entire school year with the Russian flagship capstone, so a new phone will be useful for me not only over the summer, but also for when I return in about two years.
After the orientation, Harry took a group of six students to show them how to fill up the transportation and phone cards, and exchange money. The other 21 students went together to a Hard Rock cafe located about one block away from the school. Walking in such a large group definitely did not draw attention to us, and nobody stared at the large group of foreigners. At the restaurant, we all sat down at a long table and had a large lunch consisting of a soup, salad, and main course. I got mushroom soup, crab salad, and grilled chicken - all very filling.
With lunch finished, we headed back to the school to fetch our belongings and were free to do whatever we wanted to do. Harry was showing more people in small groups how to change money, fill up their transportation cards, and sim cards. However, I decided to have a friend show me how it's done rather than wait for Harry to show everybody. My friend Monika showed me how to exchange currencies and we headed off to the gym to do cross-fit. It was a long thirty minute walk and we dragged ourselves under the sun past the mayor's house, sidewalk construction, and finally to the gym. Along the way a bunch of teenagers passed us on skateboards, there are quite a number of skaters here!
At the gym we got a tour of the equipment that we could use and the programs offers. The equipment had some nice technology and they offered not only cross fit, but also boxing, zumba, and hip hop dance! However, cross-fit didn't start for another one and a half hours, so we had time to kill in the gym. While waiting for cross-fit to start, we met a really tall person who started to talk to us about travel in America. He was nice and we chatted until cross-fit
Cross-fit was so difficult and I felt so tired afterwards. We started off with some running around the course, and then we did a warm-up of squats, which got tiring really quickly. After this, we did four reps of three minute exercise where we did 21 front squats and then as many pull-ups as possible until the end of the three minutes. I did 11, 8, 8, and 7 pull-ups, but my exercise was on easy-mode: I didn't have any weights on my bar and I used a green band to help me do the pull-ups. After cross-fit ended, Monika and I had a small conversation with a different Kazakh, who did cross-fit with us.
We then walked to a mall and I got a new Samsung phone that works in Kazakhstan. There was a promotion going on and I ended up getting internet along with the phone for a month. However, the sim card and the internet card were different and required me to switch between them to allow service for either internet or for speaking on the phone. Furthermore, the phone was automatically set up in Russian, so it took me a second to figure out how to download the necessary apps that I needed for conversation and navigation. Even worse - my phone was about to die! We tried to fill my transportation card so that I could take the bus home, but the machine was broken, saying that it was "verifying data" and wouldn't allow me to fill the card, so taking the bus didn't seem realistic for today. Because I had trouble using the internet and downloading apps, I couldn't use 2GIS to find directions to return home. What a nightmare!
Monika stayed with me until I was able to contact my host family to find the best way home, and then Adilbek helped me contact a taxi driver to take me home. I just gave my phone to the taxi driver and kind of forced the earphone piece into his ear and then the taxi driver told me the price and continued to drive. We rode for a long time, and after about 45 - 55 minutes, I was in my neighborhood. I then found some familiar landmarks and made it back home safely.
There, I felt a bit overwhelmed - there was a lot of stuff going on, I had trouble getting back home, and my body was so tired from the heat and my first day at cross-fit. However, Assel was very understanding and helped me not be too hard on my self. After all, it was my first day out on the city and there was a lot of new information for me to process.
I set up my new phone and figured out how to transfer data, contacts, and chat from my old phone to the new phone, and then headed off to bed. It was a long day filled with a lot events and I was ready for some sleep. Tomorrow we start our four days with our teachers and actual classes.
For breakfast we had corn flakes (they tasted like cereal from the Philippines), cheese, and tea. Assel was very kind and prepared a small bag that contained some snacks to eat during the breaks at school. We hurried out of the apartment and one of Assel's friends took us to the school. Traffic was pretty terrible!
After around thirty or so minutes, we arrived at the school and Assel ensured that I made it to the correct room, where all the other RLASP students were waiting. We all sat in a medium-sided room with large windows and the lights turned off. It was easy to hear the traffic outside and see people walking along the road. After some chatting with other students, the teachers came into the room with exams in hand. While passing out the exams, they explained that the test was for level 3 Russian, and not to worry about the difficulty of it.
This test was very difficult! There were a lot of words and grammatical structures that I did not know at all, but I marked up the questions that I did know and used eliminations to guess at answers. At the end, me and other students who completed our tests headed out of the room with the tests in hand and waited in the American center/lounge, where tea and some chocolates were provided for us.
Our group is the largest group on campus during the summer, because Kazakh students are already on break. The only Kazakh students who would still be taking classes over the summer would be those who failed a class and were retaking it.
In the lounge I talked with other students and we shared our first impressions of Kazakhstan and what it's like living with our host families. After a couple of minutes, a teacher came in and lead some of us out to other classrooms to do the oral interview. I was the first in a small group of four to do my oral interview, so I sat in front of about three or four teachers and handed them my written test.
They asked me a couple of basic questions: how long have I been studying Russian, why did I study Russian, is Russian useful to me in the future, etc. The whole interview lasted about six or seven minutes, and I answered the questions to the best of my ability while including as much information as I could. Before releasing me, they spoke to each other about putting me in 2 or 3, whatever that meant ))
I returned to the American center and continued to talk with the other students and eat snacks. After around ten minutes, our RD Harry came into the room and started talking about some important information to know regarding being in Kazakhstan. We talked about what to do in the event of an earthquake and some other things (we got the talk). Harry is a comical guy and was going crazy on the sarcasm throughout this orientation!
We received Kazakh sim cards, student cards for entering and exiting the university building, and a transportation card that only had enough money for one bus ride. As I had already known, my phone did not recognize the foreign sim card and would not work, meaning that I would have to get a new phone to use in Kazakhstan. This is not a huge problem, because I will be returning to Kazakhstan for the entire school year with the Russian flagship capstone, so a new phone will be useful for me not only over the summer, but also for when I return in about two years.
After the orientation, Harry took a group of six students to show them how to fill up the transportation and phone cards, and exchange money. The other 21 students went together to a Hard Rock cafe located about one block away from the school. Walking in such a large group definitely did not draw attention to us, and nobody stared at the large group of foreigners. At the restaurant, we all sat down at a long table and had a large lunch consisting of a soup, salad, and main course. I got mushroom soup, crab salad, and grilled chicken - all very filling.
With lunch finished, we headed back to the school to fetch our belongings and were free to do whatever we wanted to do. Harry was showing more people in small groups how to change money, fill up their transportation cards, and sim cards. However, I decided to have a friend show me how it's done rather than wait for Harry to show everybody. My friend Monika showed me how to exchange currencies and we headed off to the gym to do cross-fit. It was a long thirty minute walk and we dragged ourselves under the sun past the mayor's house, sidewalk construction, and finally to the gym. Along the way a bunch of teenagers passed us on skateboards, there are quite a number of skaters here!
At the gym we got a tour of the equipment that we could use and the programs offers. The equipment had some nice technology and they offered not only cross fit, but also boxing, zumba, and hip hop dance! However, cross-fit didn't start for another one and a half hours, so we had time to kill in the gym. While waiting for cross-fit to start, we met a really tall person who started to talk to us about travel in America. He was nice and we chatted until cross-fit
Cross-fit was so difficult and I felt so tired afterwards. We started off with some running around the course, and then we did a warm-up of squats, which got tiring really quickly. After this, we did four reps of three minute exercise where we did 21 front squats and then as many pull-ups as possible until the end of the three minutes. I did 11, 8, 8, and 7 pull-ups, but my exercise was on easy-mode: I didn't have any weights on my bar and I used a green band to help me do the pull-ups. After cross-fit ended, Monika and I had a small conversation with a different Kazakh, who did cross-fit with us.
We then walked to a mall and I got a new Samsung phone that works in Kazakhstan. There was a promotion going on and I ended up getting internet along with the phone for a month. However, the sim card and the internet card were different and required me to switch between them to allow service for either internet or for speaking on the phone. Furthermore, the phone was automatically set up in Russian, so it took me a second to figure out how to download the necessary apps that I needed for conversation and navigation. Even worse - my phone was about to die! We tried to fill my transportation card so that I could take the bus home, but the machine was broken, saying that it was "verifying data" and wouldn't allow me to fill the card, so taking the bus didn't seem realistic for today. Because I had trouble using the internet and downloading apps, I couldn't use 2GIS to find directions to return home. What a nightmare!
Monika stayed with me until I was able to contact my host family to find the best way home, and then Adilbek helped me contact a taxi driver to take me home. I just gave my phone to the taxi driver and kind of forced the earphone piece into his ear and then the taxi driver told me the price and continued to drive. We rode for a long time, and after about 45 - 55 minutes, I was in my neighborhood. I then found some familiar landmarks and made it back home safely.
There, I felt a bit overwhelmed - there was a lot of stuff going on, I had trouble getting back home, and my body was so tired from the heat and my first day at cross-fit. However, Assel was very understanding and helped me not be too hard on my self. After all, it was my first day out on the city and there was a lot of new information for me to process.
I set up my new phone and figured out how to transfer data, contacts, and chat from my old phone to the new phone, and then headed off to bed. It was a long day filled with a lot events and I was ready for some sleep. Tomorrow we start our four days with our teachers and actual classes.
Hello again son, seems you have a super busy day. Glad that your host father help you out to get you home safely :-)
ReplyDeleteGood luck for tomorrow's first day of class! Thanks for sharing again ...
Love,
Mama <3