Job Discussion Forums

[Aramas]

Looking at ads for Russian TEFL jobs I can't help but be reminded of real estate ads like 'handyman's dream', etc. Several terms keep cropping up and I'd like to know if I have the correct cereal box magic decoder ring.

Industrial city - Dismal, soot-blackened, syringe-littered, post-nuclear shytehole in which there is no hope and no escape.

Rapidly-growing regional centre - A shanty town in the middle of nowhere, populated with oil-workers and Ukrainian whores.

Russian-style apartment - A broom cupboard in a decaying concrete bunker in the neo-brutalism style, situated in the midst of hundreds of identical decaying concrete bunkers. Public areas tastefully decorated with racist graffiti, passed-out junkies and drunks, dead cats and urine. Hot and cold running muddy water sometimes, and all the soul-destroying desolation and despair you can stand - and more.

One-year Business visa provided so that you can travel around Russia - You will be working illegally and we evict you from your rabbit hutch for the summer, so that we can rent it to itinerent crack peddlers.

$300-$500 a month - $300 a month - when we pay you, which isn't often. Up to an additional $200 a month can be earned by spending your time between classes standing on street corners in a skimpy outfit.

Centrally located school and several satellite branches - You will spend more time trudging through industrial ruins and across frozen steppes than actually teaching.

Medical cover - We reimburse you for aspirin and bandaids providing the injury occurred while actually teaching.

25-30 hours a week - 30 hours of actually teaching (ie forty 45 minute classes), and another 30 hours of sitting around freezing your nuts off between classes or travelling to satellite branches.

Internet provided - There's a p133 on the secretary's desk with a 14.4 kbps modem and an intermittent ~1kbps connection.

Join a dynamic and highly qualified team of foreign teachers - One of the other teachers is a psychotic, alcoholic former rocket-scientist from Bhutfuhkistan.

We arrange student outings to nearby resorts and places of interest - Most of your weekends will be spent babysitting for free, which is probably a good thing, since the boiler in your apartment block hasn't worked since 1957, and you will have a sore neck from curling up in the fridge to keep from freezing to death.

Are there any others I should know about?

[expatella_girl]

That's gotta be the funniest post I've ever seen in here. Congratulations.

Yeah, you can probably safely assume any free apartment that comes with a teaching job is going to be of the Roosky broom closet variety. And there's probably a nosey Russian babushka in the deal too. But free is free, eh?

Medical care is socialized, so that part is true too--provided you bring to the clinic your own latex gloves, bandages, disinfectant, and a *gift* for the doctor. But hey, in America you're paying premiums and co-pays and deductables. Maybe it's not such a bad deal here.

In provincial areas if you have free housing, $300 to $500 a month will get you through. In the cities, no way. Most Russian towns I've seen are centrally heated with hot water run through all the buildings to jungle temperatures no matter what the weather outside, so there's no chance that you'd freeze. There is the little problem of them shutting off the hot water system for a whole month in the summer for maintenance though. During this period of time the Russians like to eschew the effort to bathe and eats lots and lots of pickled garlic. It becomes a very fragrant culture here.

I live in Moscow, but I've liked all of the smaller towns and cities I've visited. People are nicer, there's a sense of community that's missing here. I think urban blight may be worse in America in many cases. I also think public transportation here, even in rural areas, is much much better than America. You can easily survive without the expense and headache of a car.

I will say this for certain, much of the news and PR we've seen in the States about Russia have been exaggerations or sometimes, outright lies.
The wholesale environmental degradation they like to trumpet so loudly, isn't true. I don't know everything, nor have I been everywhere in Russia and the Ukraine, but the stuff they fed us on TV was carefully orchestrated to make this area look like a devastated hell-hole. It isn't. In fact I think Russia is an immensely beautiful country, in many ways moreso than America.

Your standard of living here may here may be different than what you're used to, but that doesn't mean it's ghetto. Just a different style of housing, of food buying, of getting by. I'll admit we live better than the average Russian, but I like it here. The only time I get homesick is when I start thinking about chili cheese dogs.....

[Henry_Cowell]