December 17, 2012

I feel as if I can no longer trust Google to provide accurate weather temperature for me in Bishkek. When I got up, it said the temperature was a frigid -6 and it was supposed to be snowing while a weak sun was shining outside despite the heavy clouds in the horizon. By mid-day, it claimed the temperature had risen to -2 in spite of its own forecast which stated it should have gone up to 14 degrees. As I ready myself to go to bed, it reads 1 degree. Ridiculous!

The streets and sidewalks were padded with the additional snow that had fallen over the weekend, but continued to be slippery. I had my Russian class by showing Ainura the Russian picture dictionary I had downloaded to my tablet, but which had been pretty much useless to me since it contained no transliteration into the Roman alphabet. We went through numerous pages with Ainura helping me read the Cyrillic letters, which was a bit difficult as the print appeared somewhat faded. We agreed to meet again on Wednesday.

I almost slipped on the way to catching the minibus and reminded myself to walk slowly and deliberately. When I got to the entrance to the Lingua offices, I ran into Natalia who was sporting a splint on her left hand. She related she had fallen the day before while doing her shopping, but apparently hadn’t fractured it. We exchanged some other bits of information and then said goodbye.

Neither Olga nor Gulnara were present yet for the next round of interviews, so I sat down to print some materials for the workshop tomorrow. I reminded Zarina to call my landlady and inform her about the continual noise issue at my flat and she came back to tell me there was a person in each building responsible for upholding the rules regarding what hours construction or remodeling could go on and she’d contacting this person to report it. The landlady said she was sorry I hadn’t spoken about it sooner. I don’t quite believe she’d be so diligent about this as she hasn’t shown much interest in anything I have reported before.

When I inquired about buying some samsis for lunch, Zarina told me the guy wasn’t coming in today but then came back to tell me a luncheon was taking place for a new group of trainees at a new restaurant called “Coyote Ugly” that had just opened on the first floor. She invited me to come along and then asked Aigul, the accountant, if I needed to pay separately, and Aigul said no. The salads were delicious, the white bread I didn’t touch and when the main course came in, a piece of chicken breast and white rice, I passed.

                       Having lunch at the new "Coyote Ugly" restaurant with a group of teachers

Gulnara and I interviewed four more teachers today, all women, and decided on the schedule for their micro-teaching sessions. I’ve never participated in these types of sessions except when I was doing my own presentations at FIU a long time ago. I’m looking forward to seeing them as some of the young teachers appear to really have a flair for teaching. Olga came in right before the last applicant and related she had fallen on the way to the school and had ripped her pants thus necessitating her going back home to change. She was physically all right though.

I left Lingua after printing some handouts and got into a marshrutka relatively easily, but pretty soon it was once again stuffed to the gills with passengers and couldn’t see out the window. Big and tall guys that should make an effort to move to the back as soon as possible to facilitate the exiting passengers, insist on standing by the door practically blocking any movement on or off. I need to study the possibility of paying for a taxi just to take me home as I usually don’t have this problem coming to Lingua, but going home only.

Woody Allen delighted me once again as I watched one of his earliest films, “Take the Money and Run”, where he plays an inept criminal who bungles every job, but finds a way to get out of jail quite easily. He’s a real genius when it comes to filmmaking.

December 16, 2012

Wish I could say that I had spent a quiet day at home simply going about the tasks that I usually relegate to Sundays for lack of much time during the week, but my upstairs neighbors appear to be engaged in some furious remodeling job and gave me no peace whatsoever all day long

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Out of pure frustration, I sent an email to Zarina asking her to please contact my landlady tomorrow to have her intervene in this situation since it has been ongoing since I moved here almost three months ago. It’s simply beyond my comprehension what they could possibly be building/rebuilding that has taken up this much time and for it to go on every single day of the week. I have given up entirely on taking a nap on the late afternoons for all the racket going on upstairs. I’m simply sick of it and have threatened to break my lease if need.

I read for a few hours the book “Losing Isaiah” and found it fascinating. I remember the book was made into a movie starring Halle Berrie and would love to see it in order to compare the two versions. Instead, I watched “The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert”, an Australian film that have been on my list of films to watch and I wasn’t disappointed as the acting was superb, costumes and make-up flawless, and the landscape of the Australian Outback simply breathtaking.

December 15, 2012

After tossing and turning most of the night, I jumped out of bed before 3:00 am. Wish I hadn’t though for after making myself a pot of coffee and sitting down at my computer, I was confronted with the horrific news of another mass shooting event in the United States. I felt sick to my stomach to read that most of the victims had been school children at an elementary school. Our society is definitely is a sick one, and we’re heading into a downward spiral for sure.

I tuned in to the CNN and watched Piers Morgan interview members of a panel that included a moron who has written a book advocating that more guns in the society correlate with a lower crime rate. The idiot even had a smile on his face as he advocated his line that if teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School had been armed, the shooter would have been stopped before so many innocent lives were taken. I wanted to break through the TV screen and punch him in the face.  

I texted my Russian teacher and cancel the morning class as I had hardly slept and was in no mood to try and concentrate on learning anything new. Instead, I furiously read every article and post on Facebook regarding the tragedy as my friend Ann, in Jacksonville, FL, and others kept uploading new material on the web. What was disconcerting to me was the fact that a couple of posts seemed to hint at the fact that more than one shooter was present at the scene just as they had hinted when the Aurora Cinema massacre happened. I was too heartbroken already to even contemplate the notion that police or army trained soldiers could have been responsible for the killings instead of a lone shooter.

Google weather indicated the temperature was a bone-chilling -13 Fahrenheit when I woke up, and I could not even phantom what that might feel like. I had no choice but to bundle up and head to Lingua for the conversation club even though I was wondering if anyone would show up for it. It was a gray day and few people could be seen dashing around so the minibus had room for me. I guess that once the temperature goes below zero, it doesn’t really makes much of a difference. I still have to be thankful for the fact that there’s no wind here to take into account and that except for covering my nose and mouth with my scarf while waiting for the marshrutka, I was relatively comfortable.

There were only seven students for the conversation club and we played a couple of card games and talked about growing up. I reminded them that the school was preparing a Christmas program for the following Saturday and to tell their friends about it.

Something was going on next door at the bookshop sponsored by McMillan for as I was wrapping up my class, Gulnara, Zarina and other teachers came out of that room. I greeted them and left right away eager to return to the comfort of my own flat. Once home, I tuned in to CNN only to find out that they were still covering the event non-stop as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist because a tragedy had taken place in the United States. I turned it off and went back to the news online instead.

“Midnight in Paris” has now become my favorite Woody Allen movie. It’s got everything: great acting, a gorgeous setting, fabulous costumes and witty dialogue. What more could any cinephile ask for? I could watch this movie several times just to make sure I got every possible nuance from it. More important yet: it helped me forget today’s tragic event for a couple of hours.

December 14, 2012

It could be said that today was my first real test as to how I could withstand the below zero temperatures that are expected to reign between now and probably March of next year. When I got up, Goggle indicated the temperature was -2 degrees, or -18 Celsius, but when I checked an hour later, it had gone down to -8. I posited my choices of clothing for the day and wore two pairs of socks, my thickest leggings under my pants, an undershirt, sweater and sweatshirt under my coat. So glad to have the fleece muffler my friend Stephanie sent me last year as I could cover my nose and mouth with it while walking to and from the house.

The cold didn’t seem so bad until I had to stand and wait for the marshrutka, which could have only lasted some five minutes. I realized then I should have worn the other, thicker sweatshirt as I could feel the cold air penetrating through my back. The walk to Lingua wasn’t uncomfortable as the path there is completely in the open air and the sun was shining in all its glory by then warming us up a bit.

We started with the first applicant a little after ten and ran through four of them before taking a break for lunch. The guy who sells the samsis didn’t show up today and the staff had gone to the Halal Kitchen place without letting me know. I certainly didn’t feel like putting on all of my winter gear just to go out for a plate of noodles and decided to wait out my hunger until I got back to my flat. We interviewed two more applicants in the afternoon and agreed to finish the roster on Monday between 1:00 and 3:00pm.

My RELO emailed me asking if I could consider doing my workshop on the designing and uses of rubrics in the classroom instead of the grammar games I had offered to do to save me some preparation time. I did a quick search online and there seemed to bit plenty of resources to put together an 80-minute workshop, but that means starting from scratch. Sigh!

I got into the minibus almost right away and a young woman yielded her front seat to me. My leftover lentil soup tasted divine once I reheated it and toasted some flat bread to go with it. Watched a quasi documentary on CNN, African Voices, about a woman whose parents were assassinated while she was studying in the United States and who returned to Nigeria to instigate change in many areas of society. What a brave soul.

“Requiem for a Dream” must be one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen about the drug culture in the United States. I had to avert my eyes several times to avoid looking at the most revolting or scary scenes. This director, Aronosky,  is one to keep one’s eyes on for he has produced a masterpiece here.

December 13, 2012

A light snow was still falling when I woke up this morning and the temperature had dropped to a chilling 9 Fahrenheit. I packed all the materials I’d need for the afternoon presentation and headed to Lingua for my participation in the selection committee for pre-service teachers. Only Gulnara, Leyla and I took part in it and interviewed four candidates today with more to do tomorrow. All candidates were women, of course.

              A municipal worker sweeping the snow from the walkway to the Children's Library

Once the interviews were over, I printed a couple more handouts for the workshop and then headed to Fat Boys, a restaurant that caters to ex-pats mostly, to wait for Laira. I was extremely disappointed when I walked into the place to discover that they allowed smoking and the place just reeked of cigarettes. We decided to stay put anyway knowing we’d never patronize the place again. My omelet had no flavor and the sautéed potatoes I ordered were just slices of the vegetables that had been refried and came in just lukewarm. Even the coffee was awful and although I asked for hot milk on the side, I was brought cream that was cold instead.

Laira and I finally had a chance to catch up with the details of our respective lives and she gave me some tips on places to shop for food-related items. She’ll be leaving for Switzerland next week to spend the holidays with her in-laws, but promised to stay in touch when she gets back. Best of all, she told of a Japanese woman who teaches Zumba from her house in the early morning hours. Right now, those hours conflict with my Russian lesson ones, so we’ll see how I do it to be able to take part in it. She only charges 100 soms or a little more than $2.00 per session.

We said goodbye and I headed to the Arabaev University just as the snow began to fall more copiously. The session went quite well as the teachers really got into the speaking activities and reported that they should be able to incorporate all of them into their teaching repertoire. We had a lively debate on the issue of students laughing when their classmates made mistakes while speaking. While I advocated that laughing was good as long as it was shared class wide as all students were bound to make mistakes along the way, the teachers all indicated their training had inculcated in them the rule that no laughing could take place as it would undermine the student’s self-esteem.

                             The view from my apartment complex

I found a marshrutka the minute I stepped into the curb and made it to my flat relatively fast. I tried taking a nap, but wasn’t successful and watched TV for a while, had some lentil soup for dinner and worked on other materials for my subsequent presentations. 

December 12, 2012

Slept fitfully once again whether as a result of the white wine or the disappointment at the lack of turnout for the book club meeting. I guess I’ll never learn to stop being so hopeful about initiating these kind of activities for which the people around me seem to have little or no interest even when outwardly they claim to do so. Rebecca emailed me claiming she hadn’t felt well the night before and had gone to the doctor and didn’t have my phone number in her new cell so as to call me and let me know. I believed neither assertion.

The scene outside was right out of a Christmas card with the entire city blanketed by a heavy snowfall that was still falling while the temperature continued to plummet. I bundled myself as best I could and went to my Russian class where Ainura and I discussed mostly food items for which she didn’t even have flashcards. She did say she went looking for them, but found none so I wondered how she did her Peace Corps language training in the absence of any visual aids.

Traffic was snarled with the heavy accumulation of snow on the ground and it took me forty minutes to get to Lingua. Zarina immediately came to ask me if I could be part of the committee selecting the candidates for pre-service training on Thursday morning and I informed her I had already agreed to meet with Laira at that same time. She implored me to try and change it for a later time as they desperately needed to have another person on the committee. I called Laira and she agreed to meet after eleven.

I worked on my presentation on teaching collocations until it was time to go to the Forum offices for yet another meeting regarding the book proposal. I was there exactly at 3:00, but no one was around and the office was locked. Willoughby came by a few minutes later and we chitchatted in the hallway until Elvira showed up and got the key to open the office. Nurkys, the Peace Corps education program coordinator, also came to the meeting to talk about how that organization had already done a lot of work on adapting textbooks to the local culture.

I have to admit that I simply detest attending meetings where people just ramble on and on about whatever pops into their head instead of having an agenda dictating exactly what is to be covered and having a time limit for such meeting. I still had a splitting headache and being in a small, cramped room just listening to people talk made me restless and sleepy. I started to yawn nonstop and my mind began to wonder as to how long it would before I could get a decent cup of coffee.

Willoughby had informed us that the embassy would be sending a template for this project next week, and I just blurted out the idea that we could postpone discussion of the topic until we saw the template and knew exactly what they wanted to know. She didn’t take kindly to my remark and instead replied they were discussing some very relevant matters. I begged to be excused from the meeting as I had already being there for one hour and it didn’t seem to be about to end anytime soon. Elvira looked pained by my request, but Gulnara understood.

The cup of coffee I had the minute I walked into my flat had the desired effect as my headache subsided a bit and then I was able to redo the presentation on speaking skills as I couldn’t find the last version I had prepared for the Russian Slavonic University. Snow continued to fall right up to the time I went to bed.

December 11, 2012

The fog was thick enough to obscure even the top of the buildings around the courtyard presaging the snowstorm that have has been forecast for tonight. I got dressed to get to the bakery and the supermarket to get a few more things for the evening’s meal and could tell the minute I stepped outside that the temperature had dropped considerably. On the spur of the moment, I decided to try my credit card at the ATM inside the Narodi Supermarket and viola! soms came out flying from the machine for the daily limit of 8000. I was so relieved not to have to bother my sister to contact the bank on my behalf.

I rode the marshrutka to the underpass, collected the laminated materials and then proceeded to the Arabaev University so I could put together all the materials for the session on grammar games. I had emailed Jyrdal earlier attaching all the handouts, but she hadn’t acknowledged their receipt. This is one practice in Kyrgyz society that is driving me up the wall as no one seems inclined to respond to emails at all.

The young woman staffing the resource center allowed me to work at one of the tables and then called Jyrdal confirming all handouts had been printed and would be brought up to the center a few minutes later. This young woman then told me she was a graduate of the Lingua program and had graduated from the Kyrgyz International University where my Russian teacher had been her teacher as well. Small world, indeed.

Twelve teachers showed up for the session, and in spite of the crowded conditions seemed to enjoy the activities and asked for both the presentation and handouts so they could replicate the games in their own classrooms.

Coming out of the building, I notice the first snowflakes coming down and I went straight home thereafter as both Willoughby and Elvira would be coming by earlier to discuss the book adaption proposal and I also wanted to start cooking right away. When Willoughby showed up, she informed she’d decided not to spend the night as she needed to travel out of town the following morning and would need to be at home to do the necessary packing.

We had a glass of white wine, which was not too dry, and then joined Elvira to discuss the project. Willoughby informed us that a Peace Corps volunteer had already started the book adaptation plan and she even had the materials in her flashdrive. We both copied them to our computer and flashdrive and agreed to meet tomorrow to continue the discussion.

Gulnara, from Forum, showed up with three of her students who work for that language school, Express Learning, I had laughed at when I first saw their sign. They were a bit miffed when I mentioned I had taken a photo of their sign and posted it on Facebook expressing my amusement at it.

                                Willoughby, Elvira, Bermet, Gulnara and Saadat at our first meeting

No one else showed up for the book, not even Rebecca, the co-host, and she didn’t even bother to call with an excuse. Needless to say, no one from Lingua showed up either. We had soup with flat bread, the fruit bars Willoughby had baked, coffee, tea and wine and then repaired to the living room to discuss the format of the book should there be other opportunities to hold it.

Willoughby agreed to hold the one in January and three books were exchanged as neither Gulnara nor Elvira had brought a book that could have been donated. Gulnara expressed her gratitude for the idea of a book club where teachers could talk about reading, but admitted she had no time for such activity and was hoping that the younger teachers, unmarried and childless, would be the one to keep the club going.

Elvira offered to give Willoughby a ride home when her husband came to pick her up and I went to bed exhausted.