Despite seeing Afghanistan out my window, UCA-Khorog is a very Western-like experience. The campus is brand new and I'm in a faculty apartment with all the modern conveniences plus 24/7 maintenance, security, and housekeeping services. Also a cafeteria, indoor gym, and twenty other faculty to keep one another company. More than half the faculty taught here last year and, along with the staff, have been most helpful in showing the newcomers around.
The school has about 120 students spread over three years (Preparatory, Freshman, Sophomore). They're mostly from Tajikistan, some from Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, and a few from Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, and Syria. Prep students have been here for a week going through orientation. They're well-spoken, polite, funny, and seem anxious to do well in school. I'll meet the older students next week when classes start.
The school promotes a liberal arts education and has a very strong Student Life program for out-of-class activities. Every night there is an activity of some sort - tonight I'm joining a "World Cafe" where students talk about Climbing Mountains, both literallly and figuratively, to achieve their career goals in the context of the university mission -- sustainable development of mountain societies.
This is a nice change from my past 8 years as administrator, which was the whole point of coming here. Plus the chance to see absolutely stunning mountains. Lying in the heart of the Pamir Mountains, I'm surrounded by granulite gneisses deeply incised by glacial meltwater streams. Peaks @ 14,000' and valleys @ 7,000'. One cool thing is that when they built the school, they created their own stone quarry to make flagstones and patio tiles. So all the building trim and especially all the walkways (indoors and out) are made of spectacular gneisses, granites, and hornfels displaying megacrysts, porphyroblasts, and mylonitic fabrics. Very cool.
I'll start teaching in a couple of days.
