The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News December 3, 2004

Two alums share Peace Corps experiences

There are many programs for Oberlin seniors to prepare them for life after College, but some Obie graduates already know what they want to do. There are at least one or two graduates from every class who go into the Peace Corps program and travel abroad, bringing U.S. education to the rest of the world.

Susie Armitage, OC ’04, is serving as a Peace Corps Trainee in Ukraine. She has already been there for two months and is currently nearing the end of her Teaching English as a Foreign Language training program. 

“I majored in English at Oberlin and took two years of Russian, which is helping me immensely,” Armitage said.

The official language of Ukraine is Ukranian, although Russian is very widely spoken, especially in certain regions of the country. Armitage will be working at a secondary school in Izmail, in the Odessa region in southern Ukraine.  Her job will be to teach English to students from 7th-11th grades and also to work on an English Club where students can come to practice their English outside of class. 

“I also hope to get involved in HIV prevention initiatives here, since the HIV epidemic is growing in Ukraine,” she said.

The training program is a community-based one. There are 105 new TEFL trainees in Ukraine now; all of them arrived in late September this year. They are living and training in separate communities in smaller towns in the Kiev region. Armitage currently lives in a small town called Ukrainka, where four other Americans are trained. All the trainees live with host families.

“That is one of the greatest parts of training and also the most frustrating,” Armitage said. “Most people I know like their host families, but it is difficult adjusting to the lack of privacy and living with another family.”  Minor frustrations aside, the first two months of her training are going very well. 

“The language is not as much of a problem for me because I had great Russian instruction at Oberlin,” Armitagesaid. “My skills continue to improve through immersion in the host family and having to do business in town.”

In her words, the people from the town recognize the volunteers because the volunteers often have to complete “field trips” or “mini projects” in the community in order to practice the usage of their language. For example, sometimes they have to go to a shop and ask what their hours are, or ask someone how to get to the hospital.

“They know me at the post office since one day I bought all the airmail envelopes they had,” said Armitage.

This is another aspect of Peace Corps service that one has to get used to, in her opinion; they call it the “fishbowl” phenomenon. It is reflected in the fact that, as a foreigner, sometimes one receives a lot of unexpected attention. She said that it tends to be positive, springing mostly from curiosity. 

“For example, the Peace Corps trainees in Ukrainka were in a newspaper article locally, and the next day the babushkas [old ladies] in front of our teacher’s apartment were asking us where we were from and stuffing our pockets with walnuts.”

In addition to learning Russian, Armitage is also learning how to teach English.  The Ukranian education system turned out to be one of the biggest challenges for her, since it is so different from the American one.

“In Ukraine, education tends to be more formal and authoritarian,” she said.  “There is less emphasis on original thought and speech, and more on memorizing a learned text.”The textbook that the state provided her with is also very difficult to work with, as the texts are hard and not exciting.  What the system is missing in her opinion is all the group work, games and interactive activities she is used to as means of learning a foreign language.

“It is definitely a big change teaching in this educational system, having come straight from Oberlin,” Armitage said. “At Oberlin, I was encouraged to ask questions, to figure out why. It’s just not the same here, and the students generally don’t say ‘why?’ or ‘I don’t understand,’ although the educational system is beginning to change.”

Armitage also shared that her first impressions of Ukraine and the people there could be quite controversial.  

“One thing I am learning is not to judge people so quickly,” she said. Even though the “Ukrainian society is generally less ‘smiley’ than American society, and it sometimes even seems like the people one meets on the streets are rather unfriendly, they are different once one gets to know them.

“When you step inside their homes, they shower you with kindness and generosity, and borsht, and piroshki and tea,” Armitage said.

Emily Zeugner, OC ’00, already finished her Peace Corps’ term in Kazakhstan and is back in Boston, working on her M.A. in Journalism. Her experience in Kazakhstan, though, changed her way of thinking.

“I guess one thing I learned at Peace Corps was that the American way is not always the right one,” she said.

Zeugner left for Kazakhstan the October after she graduated. After the initial training in a small village with a host family, she was moved to Kokshtal, which is a village very close to the border with Russia.

“During training they taught us how to teach English and other subjects — most of us were really young, just out of college and we didn’t know how to teach,” Zeugner said.

She also observed the differences between the educational systems in the U.S. and Kazakhstan.

“Teaching is hard, some days you walk out of the room and you are very happy about yourself and other times you walk out thinking ‘everybody hates me,’” she said. “It has the highest highs and the lowest lows.”

Zeugner graduated Oberlin with a major in anthropology, but she also took a few Russian classes and spent a semester in Russia, which proved to be very helpful during her stay in Kazakhstan.

“One other girl and I were the only ones who could communicate a little with our host families; all the other volunteers were treated like babies because their host families were worried about them.”

“But Russian is a hard language,” she added. “Also in small communities people are not so open to foreigners who don’t speak their language and are not always very patient with you while you are trying to find the correct word for something you want to say.”

She actually taught in Russia for one semester to sixth graders and she enjoyed it very much. What she was most proud of however was running the Girls’ Club, in which girls from eleven to 16 years old gathered together and talked about women’s issues and women’s empowerment.

“Sometimes we would get together and make origami or just talk. We had a lot of fun. A few times we had older women who would join us. Before that they never knew things like why they got their period.”

Zeugner said that Oberlin prepared her for the Peace Corps by allowing her to see many different sides of the world. She also met her boyfriend at the Peace Corps, another example of how experience brings people together.

“We would never have been together, we are so different,” she said.

Zeugner was also in Kazakhstan on Sept. 11 and her camp was the only one that did not evacuate from the area, although they were on red alert for very long time after that.

“I am really glad we didn’t leave, but for a week we thought we would be leaving and it was a really weird time,” she said. “After that it became much more strict, so I was there for a major change.”

The funniest story Zeugner had was about the series of the worst haircuts ever.

“We got drunk on vodka one night and decided to put our hair in pony tails and cut it,” she said. “Don’t ever do that!”

After that she had to go to a local hairdresser, who would always experiment with her hair, after that blow-dry it and put spray on it.

“I loved going to a hairdresser, because I never knew what was going happen next.”
 
 

   

The Review News Service: News, weather, sports and more, in your ObieMail every Sunday and Wednesday night. (Click here to subscribe.)