March 4, 2013

I got so distracted this morning attending to my emails and Facebook’s postings that I had to make a mad dash out the door to be at Lingua by eleven. The traffic was snarled for some reason and the stoplight at the corner of Sovietskaya and Frunze wasn’t even working, so I had to pray that the drivers would let me make it across to the school.

Anna was already there, but Natalia was running late. I asked Zarina for a box to place the applications once they were printed and sat down at the computer to put together a database for all the applicants showing whether their submission had been accepted, rejected or to be reconsidered depending on the overall quality of all submissions.

We went through the first twenty applications and found out that most of them didn’t address the topic of critical thinking and the teaching and learning of English and rejected them outright. The only one we accepted was from a member of Lingua and even that one needed to be tweaked in order to comply with the requirement. We agreed to meet on Wednesday and sometime next week if need be to go over all the applications.

Gulnara came by to say the staff was being treated to lunch to celebrate both the 12the anniversary of the founding of the school and International Women’s Day since the school would be closed on Friday. Natalia had to leave at one o’clock, but I had a bite to eat and chatted with Zarina who was doing the dishes in the teacher’s lounge. She insisted I take one of the takeout containers from the Chinese restaurant Peking Duck, and I chose the one containing eggplant and tomatoes.

Zarina informed me that only ten pre-service teachers had signed up for the series of workshops due to start tomorrow. I remained firm in my demand that we recruit at least twenty of them or just scrap the plan for I don’t want to bother teaching such a small group who could dwindle even further once we get started.

Once I got home, Gulnara called to say she was postponing the beginning of the workshops until next week. I sincerely doubt that one more week will do the trick, but I’ll have to wait and see.