Hey all,

Actually I have known about the blogs about this school albeit a little too late. I was working there from September until my "escape" a few days ago lol. EVERYTHING that is written as far as personal impressions and the benefits ( if you can call them that) are true. The place is extremely unorganized and just thrown together. The classes are mixed between intermediate and people that do not know 5 words in English, There is no examination of students levels before being thrown into a class that is already 20 minutes into it's session.

The pay is a joke and PLEASE PLEASE if you for some reason are considering going to teach in Uzbekistan do your research! You will get paid in stacks of local currency (soms) which amount to basically nothing because when you want to leave you will need to convert it all back to dollars which is officially illegal to do, but students will help you get what you need on the black market. The official exchange rate as of today is $1=2,197 soms, but you will not get that rate. The rate you will get is the black market rate which was $1=2,860 when I left so essentially you are making elephant shit in those terms. In the 3 1/2 months I worked there I left without making a dime..literally I spent all of it to escape.

The owner preaches IELTS IELTS IELTS, but in reality I had 8 classes and 4 were IELTS. I was also told that I needed to essentially build the ESL program from scratch (for the snotty nosed verb to be classes) since he had very little material which I had to do on my 1 day off per week (Sunday). You are promised to have 7-8 students per class in a small room with a rectangular table with 8 chairs, many times I was given 9 students for extended periods of time at all different levels for example I had a general speaking class with 8 people (9 for 3 weeks) and could only communicate with 2 of them as the others could not speak lol.

The owner Feruz is a money hungry authoritarian figure who likes to puff his chest and remind you (if you have forgotten at some point) that he is the boss. He's 26 and very naive as far as the world goes outside of his beloved Uzbekistan. One other issue that is rife there is corruption. Upon getting my work visa there you also need to get stamped by the local district police which should be routine right? I was told it would take 2 days max to get my passport back, it ended up being 11 days because the "boss" had to negotiate a bribe for the police to do their job and stamp my passport which he told us cost him a shiny new computer monitor and a printer :-). It was only after me getting fed up with them playing politics with my passport and threatening to bring in the U.S. Embassy in on the issue that my passport was mysteriously returned the next morning (not that I think the U.S. embassy could have helped in any way).

The hours are long, the pay sucks, the school is highly unorganized ( all material is kept in his little office locked up with no access to it so after the 30 students or so finish talking to him after each class we are able to get our material for the next class) you literally have no time to do anything else ( almost 4 months there and never been around or outside Tashkent at all until I left) So this blog about this school is not meant to slander in any way, hopefully it enlightens you if this guy contacts you to work at his school!! BEWARE TEACHING COMMUNITY!