Kazakhstani Lovin'

[CheBuds]

Hey Gents,

New Poster here, so be gentle with me --- or at least gentler than reddit, where asking this question spurred several creative epithets and death threats of questionable grammatical quality.

Anyways, I'm up for a grant to teach English in Kazakhstan, and I was wondering if any of you forum denizens know about what it's like to live there, where to go, and where not to go --- although I hear Nazarbayaev runs the kind of ship where repeat offenders rapidly lose the ability to count all the way up to ten using their fingers.

My Russian is rough, but I can read Cyrillic and my Russian improves after a few dozen drinks --- and the program offers free Russian lessons at "Kazakhstan's premiere university," which I can only assume gained that title by purchasing a second blackboard.

Either way, my other option is teaching English in Podgorica --- which I've already visited, and can comfortably refer to as "the city of a thousand trash fires."

So, I'd love to hear from anyone with firsthand experience, and thanks for helping out a young traveler.

[Darcy]

Whereabouts? Atyrau is kinda bleak and they don't like foreigners, but not in a dangerous way. Just rude. The pretty girls are in Almaty. Some of my co-workers have married Almaty lasses. Very pretty!

[CheBuds]

I mean, I've been telling people I'm Canadian for years. Tends to get a better reaction than admitting I'm from the U.S., or at least there's a lower chance they'll lecture me on exactly what my country may or may not have done to overthrow their democratically elected government.

And the posting was in Almaty, but I've decided on Podgorica --- with my sponsorship coming from the good ol' U.S.A. and the ability to pop around the Balkans, I think it's a better deal than being rooted in Almaty for the long haul.