Day 41

The children and I had a good day.  We had a lesson with more than two children as we visited friends and had a joint art lesson. I see how great homeschooling could be with just a slightly larger network.  It was good to share ideas and fun just to be with friends.  Finished nicely by a fun play in the snow (it’s been slightly warmer this week so is more bearable to play outside for a while). Rebekah feeling under the weather so girls snuggled on the sofa while Matthias enjoyed a fun Skype with his cousins comparing lego models!

Ali

 
A day full of meetings, deliberations, presentations, excitement and frustrations. And I’m not just talking about asking a local in my pigeon Russian how to get to the Post Office, when I don’t know any other word other than kashmar. There was some disturbing local news, but it is difficult to discuss it in this setting, so will have to think of another way round it.

Had to give a research presentation, open access to anyone within the university. Of course it’s difficult to know what level to pitch it at and it took 15 minutes to introduce me. So had to cover a lot of ground in a lot less time. Thankfully hardly anyone fell asleep and got some good feedback and a few potential PhD student candidates as a result. Now there comes a lot of hard work trying to see if NU can support the research development program so that we can do some research here. Otherwise it’s going to be time spent full of good intensions and not a lot else.

Was talking to one of my colleagues who was here at the beginning of NU and now heading back to the USA. It’s difficult to unravel the political and economic scene in Kazakhstan as to how stable NU really is. Naturally, it is harder to get definitive statements out the benefactors as to whether they believe NU will survive. Apart from staff, there are a lot of students whose academic careers hang in the balance. But with the first cohort about a year away from graduation, there is good reason to believe the undergraduate programme will be successful. Establishing research will require significant capital and time. Both are possible, yet there are no guarantees. It is a curious game we play, continuing on as though everything will be delivered with half an eye on the horizon awaiting the moment when they deign to tell us “it’s time to go home”.

Ray