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the us i have heard anecdotal reports that this is true but the person i replaced had two job offers in the us so take that for what it s worth caveats working abroad is not for you if you are seeking the traditional middle class american experience with children extended family in easy reach and steady reliable employment granted for many of us this simply isn t an option we can count on but the truth is that going abroad means being uprooted many times potentially and it means going long periods without seeing your parents or siblings or old friends if you go abroad you need to wrap your head around the fact that this isn t study abroad t his is going to be your life and if you have doubts it s best to grapple with them early on you shun hassles i mean i don t know anyone who likes being inconvenienced but moving internationally is a giant effing hassle in every possible way i have had to deal with more paperwork than it took to sell our house and most of it in a language i don t read well shipping a few boxes of personal items and research materials has been an undertaking so grueling and expensive that i question whether it was worth it probably not and airports man airports the takeaway here is that it s not going to be a glorious experience for everyone or 100 of the time but it s a career path that is very seriously worth considering as an alternative to stringing together adjunct work taking a 9 5 office job teaching a 4 4 lectureship with no opportunities for research or career advancement or even gasp a tenure track job in quite a few cases leave a comment the best money i ve spent in before russia soggy september edition september 25 2013 russia uncategorized moscow russia stuff i like survival guide ashley squires for the benefit of anyone planning to come here for business and or funtimes insulated waterproof north face jacket with hood according to the moscow times this is the rainiest september in moscow since they started keeping records and during the day the temperatures are in the 40s and 50s many russians maintain the same standards in outerwear that they do in footwear so if you need to aim for utility it s good to have something that looks pretty decent as well single regret i should have gotten a dark color rubber wellington boots from l l bean drainage on the streets is poor so it s helpful to be able to splash through puddles without caring ok that s an understatement it s ridiculously fun the hems of my work pants are grateful i keep my heels in my office i m glad i sprung for the insulated liners but unfortunately they are in germany with the rest of the belongings i shipped the oxford russian english dictionary app at 19 99 this is expensive for an app but it s a searchable bi lingual dictionary in your pocket that also has lists of case endings and verb conjugations it s a no brainer the moscow metro app it s free it s also the best metro system app i ve ever seen turbo scan app russia asstons of paperwork this app uses my phone s camera to scan everything to pdf it does multi page scans and the file compression is a lot better than most expensive scanners it s two bucks now is probably the time to mention that a smart phone if you can afford one is a major asset here i was able to get at t to unlock my iphone 4 i might post a tutorial on it later good bedding moscow is a big loud crazy city so you need a space that feels like a sanctuary and where you can genuinely get some rest plus i believe in investing in the place where i spend the most consecutive hours of any given day so i got the best mattress pad pillows and comforter available at ikea which delivers same day or day after anywhere in moscow for a nominal charge this also speaks to another aspect of assimilation if you are going to be in a different country semi long term say a year or more it s worth it to invest in things that make your space genuinely feel like home whether that s nice sheets or cooking supplies or frames for family photos you need to do things that psychologically reinforce the fact that you are here to stay and do your best to make it a place that you will want to stay electric tea kettle lucky for me a coffee hater russians are tea fanatics there are gourmet tea shops all over the place an electric tea kettle is considered a standard appliance whereas toasters and microwaves are not and comes in every furnished apartment i bought another one for the office brita pitcher i can t get a straight up or down answer on whether or not the tap water is safe to drink many say it s fine but a little googling will quickly tell you that like most substances on earth moscow water will give you cancer a couple of weeks ago they were repaving the parking area outside my building and cut the hot water line hot water is centrally provided not heated on site with a boiler when it came back it came back brown it s normal now it was probably just sediment that got into the line but it spooked me but good i have never been a germaphobe and roll my eyes at people who panic about this sort of stuff in the us but contamination phobias are apparently a normal part of culture shock most muscovites only drink bottled but i ve also been told that you have no way of knowing where the bottled stuff actually comes from the filter is more eco friendly anyway hma hide my ass vpn subscription for when i want to change my ip address for reasons like let s say netflix reasons view all 3 comments the past is with us september 24 2013 russia customer service expat life john mccain modernity moscow russia soviet union travel united states vladimir putin ashley squires the ceiling of the taganskaya metro station depicting the soviet flag on a blue background during my summer in boston i came across a couple of op eds by mary baker eddy on the goings on in russia at the close of the nineteenth century and i realized for just how long russia has served as a kind of foil for the united states even before the rise of the soviet union and the beginning of the cold war even before we became rivals americans looked to russia as the incarnation of old world tyranny standing in stark contrast to america s beacon of freedom and in the highly self serving op eds that putin and mccain each served up recently we see that that this condition persists to a certain degree when americans think about moscow i think the image they typically conjure up is the moscow of the 90s in much the same way that people who have never left the south or the midwest picture times square in the 80s when they think of new york city it s difficult to shake the stark imagery and manichean drama of the cold war when that defined our view of russia for so long but when i m standing in a subway car surrounded by people swiping away at iphones with ads for audi dealerships on the wall the only thing that really reminds me that i m not in the us is the fact that the ad is in cyrillic so dramatic has the change in this city been in just a couple of decades that i m repeatedly stunned by the fact that people exactly my age remember standing in lines with their mothers for bread and toilet paper russia is still a complicated place beset by inefficiency and corruption but it has also made some stunningly rapid strides in the direction of what many americans would call progress at least in terms of adopting western consumer culture stalin era apartment buildings viewed from my office window vestiges of the soviet era and of an even older russia exist everywhere there are the few remaining statues of lenin for example and the utilitarian apartment buildings but the remnants that stand out to me are the ones that more directly impact everyday life you can tell for example that customer service is a recent concept here both because of it s absence in some places and its almost aggressive presence in others russian service workers vacillate between the almost overwhelming enthusiasm of the japanese and the hostile aloofness of the french the employees at one grocery store chain all wear crisp green and white uniforms and they take your fruits and vegetables from you and weigh them on the spot before you go to the checkout counter many gas stations are full service and if you decide to browse the selection of mugs in starbucks chances are a very cheerful employee will be right there to tell you all about them within seconds elsewhere you will have to physically grab a customer service representative to get them to take your money one time after finishing a restaurant meal i asked for my check and watched my waitress nod and then walk off to take a smoke break waitstaff for whom a 10 tip is considered highly generous routinely ignore you which means you can sit and socialize for hours without feeling like anyone is trying to turn the table around but also means that you may sit there forever before you get your credit card back of course that s if they take credit card cash is the standard here even for very large transactions many cashiers will ask you to provide exact change and a few will still get very irritated with you if you don t have it an attitude left over from a time when currency was scarce in fact my most hostile encounters with russians have involved quibbles over change the worst was at the food court of a mega mall and then there is the paperwork every transaction that involves the russian government requires everything besides a blood sample actually you need one of those to get a work visa and a letter from your first grade teacher things that seem like they should be simple turn out to be really complicated and vice versa to get an apartment you need to have a lot of cash in your hand and the ability to sign your name there is no credit check or tax return requirement the landlord just needs to like the look of you i just assume this means that they get to break your thumbs if you re late on the rent however getting a bank account getting a bank to allow you to give them your money requires two forms of id a notarized translation of your passport verification of employment and a bunch of other stuff i can t remember right now we are trying to get our belongings through russian customs which requires a letter from my employer i need to prove i m employed to bring my stuff in the country why exactly and a notarized power of attorney to allow the moving company to pay the customs officials for me to get this document notarized i waited in a notary s office for an hour and a half while it was passed around to three different people and while they found a translator who could make sure i understood what i was signing even though i prepared the document in the first place aside i should note that bureaucratic nonsense is alive and well in the us as well and can appear just as irrational judging by the letter i had to sign in order to prove that l ashley squires and laura ashley squires are the same person a step that was apparently essential to the sale of my car in the state of texas also the us also puts foreigners through an unbelievable amount of bullshit but this is my little complaint corner right now the way to cope with it in either country is to be patient have a sense of humor and pray but the secret of this kafkaesque nightmare is that very little of it actually matters all these papers you need are merely boxes that someone in some office needs to check and it s unlikely that they actually pay attention to what s in them but you need to do them correctly because one day someone might and that will of course be at the moment when the consequences are the worst for you but elsewhere the lingering evidence of the old russia is simply puzzling and amusing occasionally it s delightfully so the building i work in is a soviet era office building one of those structures that was built quickly and has quickly fallen into disrepair as is typical in moscow the public areas lobbies hallways etc are dilapidated while offices and classrooms are fully renovated in the modern style it still has a stolovaya a cafeteria where lunch would have been provided to employees but where you can now buy a very inexpensive meal at the entrance are two security guards who stop no one from walking in the building and a woman whose ostensible job is to issue passes that no one bothers to ask for anymore she sits all day looking at an empty visitor notebook like a character from a pynchon novel there used to be guards on every floor who would give you your office key and take it from you when you left for the day this still exists but only on the nineteenth floor which incidentally is where my office is every day i ask for the key from a man who has probably been working there for 40 years and whose job it is to take it off a hook on the wall and hand it to me when he s not handing out keys he watches internet videos this is actually a russian workplace custom that pre dates the soviet union in dostoevskiy s crime and punishment there is a floor guard who fails to notice anything when raskolnikov is murdering the landlady while it can occasionally feel like evidence of backwardness this litany of customs and procedures and personnel that probably had a point that expired some time ago is really evidence of just how rapidly russia has and is still changing this country s national literary tradition didn t take off in earnest until pushkin in the nineteenth century and in just a couple of generations it produced tolstoy and in less than a generation it has gone from bread lines to starbucks this makes it often frustrating and even frightening but it also makes it rich and exciting and dynamic one of my russian colleagues said that she left the us to return to moscow because the stability and samey ness of life in america just got boring and i can see what she s talking about but truthfulness this historical dynamism this pursuit of chance at a breakneck pace and all the messiness that comes with it is something that russians and americans share 0 000000 0 000000 one comment so far the us model writing center in russia september 17 2013 pedagogy tales from the writing center uncategorized educational models efl elf esl new economic school pedagogy russia russian faculty teaching writing center ashley squires the new economic school in moscow is a rather unique place created in 1991 by a group that included a russian technocrat an israeli economist and george soros its ideals are fundamentally internationalist designed to train the best and brightest from russia and other cis nations in economic theory send some of them to the us or western europe for advanced degrees and bring them back to become the business and academic elite here in their home country for that reason by the time they graduate students are expected to be fluent in english and fully acculturated to academic norms in the west for that reason nes has deliberately sought out foreign faculty and foreign educational models even the russ...
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