February 19, 2013

Instead of the snow that was forecast for today, I woke up to blue skies and the temperatures went to up the low forties. It definitely didn’t feel like February around here except for the crusted mounds of dirty snow still decorating the sidewalks and some streets where the sun doesn't really hit the pavement.

Construction on the store downstairs must have been in full swing for the hammering and drilling started early and went on until I left for the university. It didn't matter that I wore my earplugs and played music in the background, the noise could be heard above all of that. Sigh, sigh.

I encountered these structures behind the Bishkek Humanities University, and wondered if they are the equivalent to our storage units in the States.

The session on teaching academic vocabulary went relatively well as most teachers were not familiar with the use of graphic organizers for students to manipulate vocabulary or the activities of open and close sort. As in many other settings, the teachers themselves didn’t know the vocabulary contained in the worksheets and were terribly embarrassed to admit it.

It was a delight to walk back to my place while basking in the definitely warm sunshine and just doing a lot of people watching. Once at home, I sat down to work on yet another presentation for Thursday on ways to teach listening, which I’d like to do in a slightly different way from the one I presented at the winter session last month. The construction noise went on unabated.

I had leftovers for dinner and watched a documentary by Oliver Stone on American history and all the lies that most folks accept as the truth about the United States and its long line of lying presidents. Not much was new for me here, just the numbing certainty that most citizens in that country refuse to accept the truth and would rather live a lie that accommodates their supposedly Christian faith and the mandate to be a beacon for the rest of the world.