Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-124
Daniel Ach served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan from 2004 to 2006 as an English teacher. He had Russian language training while living with a Uyghur family. Ach taught English (as a co-teacher) in the village of Tarhanka. He felt his job was to be a catalyst for change, moving the education system away from rote learning and towards more constructivist learning styles. He struggled to befriend the men in the village due to different social norms. Readjusting to the U.S. was also hard as he had grown accustomed to a slower pace of life in Kazakhstan. During his service, Ach began dating a Kazakh woman that he met at a conversation club and they later married. They have both been back to Kazakhstan to visit. At the time of the interview, Ach was working at the University of Texas as a study abroad program advisor. Interviewed and recorded by Margaret Nott, June 20, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).