Job Discussion Forums

[william wallace]

nothing to say

[expatella_girl]

Some Russians are tall. Some are not.
Lots of people think the women here are all beautiful. I often find them pale and pasty. But they do put on the dog, that's for sure. Russian men are....often.....unhandsome, impolite, unsanitary, arrogant. And those are the nicest things I can think to say about them.

There are a lot of 'intellectuals'.

There is a huge demand for qualified experienced English teachers here. The pay can be good. It can be middling. But there's no lack of work.

Rents in Moscow are ridiculous and going nothing but up. $800 a month will get you a soviet one room apartment within reasonable Moscow locations. The whole visa/registration problem is a nightmare. Especially the registration, especially in Moscow. One cannot generalize about a huge country like Russia, but one thing is for sure, Moscow surely is a very expensive city. Period.

Cold?! It's not been above zero farenheit here in a month and I don't have hopes that things will improve any time soon. This has not been a fun winter. Nope.

[jpvanderwerf2001]

Double-posted.

[jpvanderwerf2001]

Re: Russian women. In my opinion, some of the reasons western men (myself included) think Russian women are beautiful are as follows:
* They make themselves up (and how!) to do ANYTHING: go to the market, go to the gym (!), go to learn English...
* They generally stay thin, or at least until they've conceived child(ren)--good genetics help towards this (and most won't eat after 7pm). Of course this means that the majority of them smoke like chimneys.
* Their attitude. In the West their attitude would be considered old-fashioned: stay at home, the man is (at least outwardly) The Man, cooking, cleaning, et al.

The men, in my opinion, are unattractive; but moreso because of their attitude/machismo than anything else. Oh, and they won't wear colors (which is not manly enough), so their fashion is suspect. There's also this concept of a Real Russian Man, but I won't get into it.

No English teacher will ever be as rich as the New Russians, unless it comes from inheritance. They are SUPER rich. You should, however (and if you desire), be able to hang out in many of the same places they do on a teacher's salary (at least here in V-stok).

Agree with expatella girl on the demand. And you can get as many private students as time allows.

I'm an American and I teach spelling, grammar, etc. I don't know that there's a preference one way or the other. Just be native and qualified and it'll fly (perhaps it's different in the west of Russia).

Rent is not cheap here in V-stok (well at least not Ukraine cheap), though it isn't in the same league as Moscow of course. My place is $500/month, near the center, has two rooms, and is fairly "western".

Intellectual conversations are common if they consist of at least one of the following topics: Pushkin, cold weather, the benefits of Russian cuisine/vodka, how America caused the downfall of the USSR. Otherwise, and I'm generalizing, I've found that Russians know less about the outside world than even *GASP* Americans!

Crime most certainly exists, though I haven't (knock on wood) been privy to it. Just using common sense goes a long way, as with anywhere.

If you sign a contract with a school here, I would highly suggest you have them find you a flat before you get there, and if not, make sure that the school covers fees for agencies (they are ridiculously expensive).

Good luck!

[Brooks]

generally my students preferred having an American　teacher.
Maybe that was because I taught a TOEFL class, among other things.
The books I used, though, tended to be British.
By and large, I could find stuff from British publishers, but rarely from the USA.

[jacquelinekerouac]

Just returned from Russia (Irkutsk, with no experience in other cities). I'll echo the general attitude toward the men by saying that many of the ones I met were knuckles-dragging-the-ground GORILLAS!!! I sat on a six-hour flight to Moscow next to one such man who could not keep his hands to himself. I have a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do and it's the first time I've ever really felt the need to use my skills.
I had male friends who were quite decent in terms of manners and hygiene (all married, naturally, because what Russian woman would let those commodities go?) but my general impression of the men was NOT that. I got engaged just before going to Russia and so had no interest in dating any, but the expats I know on that circuit were generally not satisfied.
RE: the women, as you'll see in Europe and in non-European Russia, the cities and life in general is more conducive to walking than the US and it seemed to me that most of the food I ate was higher quality, so it's understandable that the women are thinner. And the younger women are often attractive. I did not have the impression that Russian women aged well. I'm not talking about the Babushkas, of course, since it's understandable that the hardships of the last 50 years would take their toll. Those in their late thirties often looked MUCH older than their age would indicate. Were the Yeltsin years really that bad? The stereotype that the Russian woman is the perfect anti-feminist was not as severe as I expected, mainly because the women I befriended were very much the "take charge" type--however, in my part of Russia gender roles were so much in place to the point where my landlady was always telling me to get my (male) flatmate to do things like change a lightbulb or move fairly light furniture. It's a sad day when I can't change my own lightbulb, but apparently if you can get a man to do it, you should.
Regarding "intellectual" conversations, start insulting Putin in a group of middle-aged men and you'll get a political conversation soon enough. Being a young American woman I had a lot to laugh at and little to worry about, but that might not be everyone's experience. Proceed with caution. But I must say I thought the teenagers I taught were actually well-informed about the world around them, more so than teens in the US or in other places where I have lived.
RE: qualifications and experience, the only way they will hurt you is if you start asking for more money than the employer wants to give. My experience was that there was room for negotiation, but not a lot. If you don't have them, in a locale like Irkutsk, where native speakers were few, far between and not usually there to teach English anyway, the rules are less strict. I can't imagine the situation is at all like that in European Russia, though. As is the case in many places, many Russian students believe that if you can speak it, you can teach it.

[jacquelinekerouac]

Oh, I almost forgot. The Siberian winter does live up to its reputation. On Dec. 1st the thermometer nose-dived to below -25 Celcius and probably won't dream of coming back up until April. But enjoyable is the way Siberians make the most of it, and I think most people go expecting that, anyway.

[Brooks]

in Irkutsk it wasn`t humid and in the winter it was sunny so it wasn`t as cold as I thought.
Go up to a place like Yakutsk, now that place really gets cold.

Jacqueline, where were you working in Irkutsk?
I taught at Irkutsk State Technical University.

[william wallace]

nothing to say

[canucktechie]

[william wallace]

nothing to say

[canucktechie]

I don't want to give the impression that I disliked all of the Chinese students. Some were quite nice.

However a lot of them seemed to have a "lets put one up on whitey" attitude and liked to knock me for irrelevant things like my drawing skills (!!!).

My class pictures are quite revealing. In the Russian class pictures everyone is smiling. In the Chinese, only a few.

Chinese also have a lot of false chauvinism and are always talking about their 5000 year old culture, when in fact their own cultural activities seem to consist of karaoke (a Japanese import) and disco. At least Russians know their Pushkin, Tolstoy, etc.

Russians are very fun and friendly people and I enjoyed my classes very much.