So when the IT guy was getting ready to leave my apartment after setting up my Internet (hooray!) he said, "See you tomorrow." I assumed that he'd just forgotten that it was Friday, so I said "Tomorrow's Saturday." He didn't seem to get it. "You're working tomorrow?" I asked. He nodded matter-of-factly. "I don't work on Saturdays," I said. He seemed surprised.
I asked him if there was a weekend. He said Sunday was the weekend. That's not a weekend, that's a day!!!!
I had already known that my Kazakh teacher and some other teachers come in on Saturday. But now I suspect that really, everyone except us foreign teachers comes in on Saturday. To do what? Sleep in the teachers' lounge? Some students come in for extra lessons on Saturdays. But why drag them in for Kazakh lessons and not for English or math, the more important subjects? (OK, I'm not at all suggesting that they do that and then force us foreigners to work on a Saturday.)
To top it all off, the next day was Halloween. Of course, they don't celebrate Halloween here either.
Friday morning I had asked my fifth graders if they knew what holiday Saturday was. They vaguely knew about Halloween, but said that they don't have it here. They then asked for the words kids say when they go door to door. I said, "Trick or treat." They asked me to write it down, so I wrote it on the board. Some students then copied it into their copybooks! I erased the words, thankfully, because not long after that some parents came in to observe. What am I teaching these fifth graders in math?! How to go trick-or-treating! (And how to add four 2-digit numbers in your head--oh, wait, they already know that!!!)
So of course, no Halloween. No Saturdays. No holidays for teachers. Valerie and I both checked the notes we had taken when we had been asking questions about the job, considering it. Both of us had specifically asked about breaks! And we had been told there was a one-week holiday between terms! No mention of the holiday being only for students (and not even all students, as some are being called in for tutoring).
Since the majority of Kazakhs are non-practicing Muslims, and the Russians are Russian Orthodox, there is no break for Christmas. I think that the Orthodox Christmas will fall during the break between the 2nd and 3rd terms.
Christmas will fall on the last day of the 2nd term, on a Friday. Since all of the foreign teachers, save Valerie, are Catholic (and Valerie is non-practicing Christian), we have decided to ask off Christmas. Or, in my case, to simply state that I will not be working on Christmas Day. They took away Halloween, I don't care about Thanksgiving, but they will not take away Christmas.
So... the local teachers come to work at 9 am--I think they have to be there by 8:30, like us, but, like us, they often arrive barely in time for the first lesson--they have to work until 6 pm or later, they have to work weekends and holidays. And most of them have far less teaching hours than us foreign teachers! So what do they do with all this extra time they're being forced to work? Why, sleep in the teacher's lounge, of course!
What a contrast to Germany and France, where leisure time is a fundamental right. I had thought Americans were workaholics.
However, the one advantage to all this working is that the supermarkets are open late, on weekends, and some are 24-hours. Unlike France and Germany, where even in a big city it can be a pain to find an open grocery store on a Sunday.
That's the only advantage I've found so far...
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