November 7, 2012

There was no sense in denying that  I woke in dread of finding out that Romney might have won the election as the talking heads were discussing, as I went to bed the night before, that it was too close to call it a win for either party. So as soon as I drank my coffee and fired up the computer, a sense of relief came over me to learn that Obama would continue his mandate. I want to be clear in saying that I hold no big illusions as to his ability to get the country heading  in the direction that I’d like, but I still feel he’d be less destructive and divisive than Romney might have been.

I watched CNN while having breakfast just to hear the pundits give their take as to who voted for whom and why. It was really impressive to see the huge number of Hispanic/Latino voters that went for Obama as I had been afraid that his sanction of gay marriage  and lack of action on the immigration front was going to severely hurt his chances with those voters.

Elvira and her husband showed up to take me shopping for a 3-1 printer since today was a holiday, the celebration of the October revolution in Russia, and he was off. He was driving a rickety car, built in 1987 and inherited from his father, which seemed to be leaking fuel somewhere thus causing a nauseous feeling in my stomach the moment I got in. I rolled down the window and tried to make myself comfortable. We stopped to exchange money and then went to store where the husband seemed to know the IT person and I found an HP Laser jet printer that met my requirements. The company was not willing to issue me a receipt except what came from the cash register and I had to explain to them that I'd never get reimbursed by Georgetown based on that minuscule piece of paper. I then had to show my ID and wait around forever to finally get one with a seal and my signature.What a pain that was.

We dropped the printer at the apartment, and then they dropped me off at the Oxford University Press location where Zeinep had invited me to join her for another workshop so I could meet that trainer. They were having a coffee break at that time and I happily joined in. The trainer provided two sessions on teaching grammar and reading to young learners, neither topic was of much interest to me, but she offered some games and warm ups that I could replicate for my sessions. The trainer indicated she had offered her services to Forum in the past but had never heard from them. She promised to come on Saturday to the poetry workshop.

On my way home, I heard music coming from the Ala-Too Square and saw lots of people gathered there waving their flags and stopped a few minutes to take pictures, but there was little of interest to photograph as only a young man was lip syncing a song while parents walked around trailed by young children enjoying cotton candy and carrying balloons.

It was back to the house to try and prepare the materials for the workshop at the American Corner. I emailed Natalia three other handouts and tried to gather everything I might need for the occasion. I got the printer out of the box and discovered it was much larger than I had imagined it and took up much of the surface space on my desk. A lot of reshuffling was needed to make it work.

I had forgotten that I had agreed to go out to dinner with Dilnat and I was already in my nightgown when she called to say she was on her way to pick me up. At least I hadn't eaten yet and with much regret, I got dressed again and went downstairs to meet her. She came with her younger brother this time and drove for what seemed like forever to take me to a restaurant she promised served the best lagman in town. It was another cavernous place with no charm whatsoever, just rows of tables full of diners noisily slurping their noodles while busy servers scurried around making no effort to even smile.

Dilnat told me her brother, 17,  hadn't completed high school, had not interest in going to college and had stopped taking English classes because in his opinion people in Kyrgyzstan who get a college diploma would be in no better shape than he was without one because there were no jobs anyway. That's a pretty accurate statement, especially coming from someone so young, but rather cynical nonetheless. The food was pretty bad beginning with a soup that contained the entrails of a sheep and which I couldn't eat at all. I had a bit a salad, no dressing of course, and Dilnat didn't know what dressing was anyway, and some bread before my lagman noodles arrived, so I just picked at them a bit before asking the server for a container. She drove me home and I was happy to be in bed relatively early for once.

November 6, 2012

Had a difficult time falling deeply asleep just thinking I had deleted all of my cherished files in a moment of pure lunacy and extreme tiredness. I ran through a couple of free programs that promised to recover my files, but both wanted payment before actually revealing what they had recovered. I then found a tutorial on YouTube on a different free program that actually recovered some of my photos and is still in the process of scanning for other files. I want to remain hopeful that not all is lost.

I was due at the Russian Slavic University at 1:30 pm and needed to photocopy a warm up activity and the survey for them to determine what they wanted to see covered for the remaining seven sessions, so I got myself in gear and got on the marshrutka under azure skies and absolutely stunning views of the mountains. I gave Zarina the latest bill I had found stuck to my door, it was for water she said, and she promptly called my landlady who agreed to pick up the bill from her and had me pay only 500 soms out of the 1400.00 overdue bill that required payment today. I suspect she never got around paying the other one.

Ryan had emailed asking me to arrange for a taxi for his arrival on Saturday as I’ll be tied up at the American Corner until noon. I asked Zarina to ask the same taxi driver who had taking me around to look at apartments, and he agreed to do it for 700 soms round trip. That’s certainly a bargain since the airport is about thirty-five minutes away. I spoke to him later on, and he was quite pleased with the deal.

Went downstairs for a regular bowl of lagman noodles to have a bite to eat before going to the workshop and had it while talking to Gulnara and Aigul in the teachers’ lounge. Matt was also around and I told him the virus had shown up again in my flashdrive at the Lingua computer. He recommended I buy a new one and get rid of the one I have now.

I was supposed to find the university based on the fact that it was right after the river on Chuy Avenue, but I could see nothing like it from the marshrutka. When the driver turned right, I knew I was lost and trying to ask the locals only got my farther away from the Humanities building I was looking for. In exasperation, I called Anna and arranged for a taxi to take me back to the right building. The river in questions was more like a creek with no water even running in it right now, so no wonder I passed right by it in the minibus and it didn’t register at all.

This university’s facilities were not any better than the ones at Kyrgyz National University even though some of the rooms looked larger and brighter. We had to walk up to the fifth floor and into a room that once had Venetian blinds and at least sported a small whiteboard doubling as a projector screen. Anna only accompanied me for a few minutes, making sure I found the bathroom before I got started, and then left to tend to her own class.

There were sixteen teachers at the end out of a possible twenty-three she had recruited initially. I tried to get my PowerPoint started, but the Mac laptop someone had offered for the occasion refused to open the flashdrive with its collection of viruses and the IT person had to be called in to salvage the situation. In the meantime, I gave the teachers a warm up activity and then the survey of needs to determine what they wanted to see for the remaining weeks. One teacher, an older one at that, read the list of sessions and said she didn’t understand what I was offering as she had never heard of pragmatics or Bloom’s taxonomy. I countered by asking her to sign up for those sessions so she could find out what they were about.

We talked about classroom management, but then again just in a limited way as these teachers have the privilege of teaching ridiculously small classes of 8-16 students which is definitely more manageable that our 32-35 set up. Even then, they still had problems with cell phone usage, excessive talking, texting, coming in late or leaving early and the like.

Anna came back in time to help me pack up and showed me the way back outside. I got into a marshrutka and had to ride standing the entire way back to my flat, that was after standing another two hours delivering the presentation. I decided right there and then that I needed to arrange for a taxi to transport me to this far flung place from now on and have Georgetown reimburse me for the expense. It is really ridiculous on my part to try and ride the minibus, especially standing, when I have to carry numerous handouts.

I completed the report for Natalia on the workshops just completed at KNU and also emailed her the handouts for the presentation on Thursday. Layra, the Dominican woman I had met last week at Sierra Coffee, texted to ask me to lunch on the same day. Zeinep called to tell me we were on for the workshop at Oxford University Press tomorrow at eleven. What a hectic week, indeed.

November 5, 2012

It was definitely cold outside as I waited for the marshrutka go over to the American Pilot School. Some of them went by fully loaded, but I still made in time to see the beginning of the training session. Only four teachers were present then and eventually the group rose to eight with two of them absent because they had been required to work on some voting project by the school administrators. The object of the lesson was to have the teachers practice discussing and debating controversial topics, but most of them lacked the verbal skills to present their points of view with any degree of eloquence.

My phone rang and I stepped out in the hallway to talk to Natalia who wanted to inform me she was arranging to have me teach a large number of teachers, between 75-100, a session on games they could use in the classroom and that was taking place this Thursday. I told her I’d not have enough time to prepare materials since Wednesday is a holiday. She offered to make all the photocopying at the embassy if I sent her the materials right away.

I finished the first session with Zeinep and shared coffee and biscuits with the teachers who were freezing in the room while I was going bunker from the noise coming from the gym directly above our heads where students were practicing basket shots. I took my leave after the break and headed to Lingua where I sent out the invitation for the housewarming party I’ve been meaning to throw for a few weeks, but hadn’t found the right date. It’s going to be on November 17 between 4:00 and 6:00pm to give everyone a chance to stop by for a little while.

Judson didn’t show at one as he had promised last Friday, and I mentioned it to Matt who was sitting right next to me. He said Judson was a flake, but was always online and he could check with him on my behalf. The jerk replied he had not promised me to come and had instead provided all the help he could via email. That’s someone whose number is getting deleted from my list of contacts and whom I hope never to meet in person.

Gulnara approached us to ask who could volunteer to cover for Olga, who teaches the advanced level, and who was having some kind of family issue. I agreed to it since Matt has offered to cover the conversation class on the way of my housewarming party. I then went downstairs and bought fried lagman for b our lunch and we had it together in the teachers’ lounge. We were both in agreement that if Romney was to win the election, we were better off staying out of the United States for good.

I managed to salvage the files from my flashdrive and learned a new acronym in the process as Matt indicated I had “FTD” or “flashdrive transmitted diseases”. Before I knew it, it was time to teach Olga’s class which turned out to be the same one I had taught for the Columbus Day session and where at least three of the students take part in the conversation club. Chynara had made a photocopy of the corresponding pages in the textbook and I took a quick look to find out it was about technology and more specifically the new cell phones.

Getting on a marshrutka after six appears to be quite a tortuous affair as most of them came by already stuffed to gills and people tried to cram into them anyway. I was able to board one relatively empty only to see it take in more and more riders, so I had to do what is routine by now and get off when I a few blocks from the apartment and walk the rest of the way.

I tried to recover my files from the portable hard drive in the same way I had done at Lingua with my flashdrive, but it didn’t work and it appears as if I have permanently deleted all my files and more importantly, all the movies I had stored in it. I was simply crushed.

November 4, 2012

I was most uncomfortable all night with the heat on and the windows closed although I had chosen to go to sleep in just my underwear. It’ll probably take several days to get used to having heat in the apartment.

It started raining mid-morning and I was grateful for the rain hoping it would put out all the fires that were polluting the air and making difficult to breathe for me. Elvira texted me saying she wanted to come by a little later as it was too cold to do it so early. I had no intentions of going anywhere, so I said yes.

She came around two o’clock and I hadn’t even noticed that I had had no lunch yet as I was so engrossed in putting together a presentation on teaching collocations and was looking for some images to illustrate certain points. She’d had lunch and is not a coffee drinker, so I just offered her one of Larissa’s apples and set out to reheat more leftovers: white rice, black beans and the black mushroom and beef dish from the Chinese restaurant. It was quite a feast.

We were able to finish the table summarizing the teachers’ surveys and emailed the results immediately to everyone who had asked for a copy. It was then time to work on her proposal to the U.S. embassy so she can accompany me to the South of Kyrgyzstan for another series of training sessions at the end of March or beginning of April. I really don’t know how she’ll be able to get away from her teaching duties at the American University of Central Asia and her family, husband and two children, for almost two whole weeks.

I had managed to access all my files on both portable drives, but the solution is a temporary one and need to take other steps to finalize it. I hope to print the instructions tomorrow at Lingua and then do it when I get home. Snow is expected tomorrow and I’m supposed to go the American Pilot School at nine. I’ll have to wait and see for I don’t really have the right clothing to go out there in a heavy snowstorm.

As a way to relax a bit after so many hours spent at the computer, I watched the movie “East of Eden”, the classic drama with bad boy James Dean. 

November 3, 2012

It was almost impossible to glimpse a piece of blue sky this morning as everyone in Bishkek seemed to be engaged in the process of burning all the autumn leaves accumulated over the last couple of weeks. I walked to the Kyrgyzstan National University to observe Nargiza’s class and could barely breathe for all the fires burning around me. Once I got there, she asked to step into the chairman of the Foreign Languages School and introduced me to him. Her class wasn’t in that building and we needed to board a marshrutka to get there in a flash.

We arrived at a building under remodeling whose front entrance had been barricaded with bricks and we had to walk toward the rear entrance and through iron grill security doors before reaching a tiny cheerless classroom with barely four benches and a small blackboard shiny from years of erasures. She only had six students to start, all females, and no audio/visual equipment of any kind except for her own laptop to play the CD accompanying the textbook.

When Nargiza attempted to get the students to do pair work, it was obvious they had never done any and were puzzled by the idea of having to switch seats with their classmates and work together for an answer. I gave her points for trying this out while I was present. Three more students showed up and she scolded them in front of the others. With 25 minutes left in the class, she abruptly asked me to talk to the students and answer any questions they might have, but I had no intention of talking about me for so long and just had them do an activity where they wrote three adjectives about themselves, put them in a bag and then tried to guess who wrote each piece. They were happy, and we were able to leave on time for her next class back at the Chinese Language Institute.

Nargiza only had two students for this class and just gave them a task to do while I gave her feedback on her previous lessons. She is a very conscientious teacher and thus wrote down all my recommendations while acknowledging such as things as talking too much, not allowing enough wait time for students to answer and completing the students’ sentences before they had a chance to finish.

I had to get to Lingua for my conversation class, and Nargiza helped negotiate the price with a taxi driver who actually had a meter in his car. I got to Lingua with only five minutes to spare and a very hungry stomach. Zarina gave me a couple of biscuits and proceeded to copy the handouts for the class. There were sixteen students this time with many new faces among the old faithful. I had them do the “We both….” icebreaker and then summarized the findings on the board.

Next, they had a chance to work with a partner in answering questions about adolescent behavior in Kyrgyzstan. We only had time to tackle the first three questions and I reminded them to bring it back in two weeks so we could finish the topic properly. In the meantime, Nazira sent me a text message notifying me she was not able to make it for our coffee appointment, and I can’t say I was disappointed for I was in need of a proper meal and some rest.

Before going home, I stopped at the grocery store and bought my usual: water, juice and milk and heated up my leftover Chinese food for a delicious repast. I even had a piece of apple pie baked by Larissa and then a cup of coffee.

Elvira called to say she’d be coming by at ten on Sunday. I have no plans to go anywhere as it’s expected to be raining all day. I decided to color my hair today and was shocked to find that the towel holder was very hot and couldn’t believe that the heating system could have been kicked off on a day when the temperature had reached almost 70 degrees. I walked to the three other radiator units in the flat and found all of them were on. I had my windows open and an acrid smell was pouring in from the smoke, so I closed them.

I was aghast to discover that both my flash drive and portable hard drive had been infected by a virus probably for taking them to other people’s computers. I spent the evening reading up on Google on how to get rid of the virus and recover my files since I’d have been distraught to find out they were forever gone. The instructions were lengthy and since I don’t have a printer at hand, difficult to follow. I’ll talk to Judson on Monday on ways to remedy the situation and prevent it from happening again.

November 2, 2012

I was able to get myself in gear and showed up on time for the training session at the American Pilot School where Tatjana was conducting a double session to account for the Eid holiday last week. Only nine teachers had showed up during what is called the fall break when students are sent home for nine days so teachers can catch up with paperwork regarding attendance and grades. The session was a lethargic one as the trainer would assign a task for the teachers to do in pairs or groups, but would give each teacher an individual handout so that everyone worked individually instead of as part of a team and she then retreated to her desk and computer to surf the Internet apparently. She’s still not using a timer or a watch to keep track of how long each task should last.

We all went to the resource center for a coffee break as the school’s cafeteria was closed for the break and we shared biscuits, bread and coffee while I answered a few questions from the teachers who finally had found their voices. Tatjana thought I was to be present for their presentation on ways to access the Internet sites offered by the State Department for continual professional development, but I told her I wasn’t sure about that and would check with Natalia over the weekend.

I then took the marshrutka to Lingua to get there on time for my meeting with Judson. Sophiat was there once again and learned today that she’ll be teaching the lower levels at Lingua with Adina being her mentor. The latter was occupying “my” computer again, and I had to ask her to vacate the space before 1:00pm. I got started on the mailing list, having finally figured out how to add the names from the one supplied by Forum, and when a quarter of an hour had gone by and Judson hadn’t shown up, I called him. He apologized profusely saying he thought he had sent me a message asking to postpone our meeting for another day, perhaps Monday and I agreed. I had not gotten such message from him.

Meanwhile, Ryan sent me message informing me he had finally being granted his visa and had an entry date of November 7 with a return date of the 12. I was simply elated for the temperature had dropped to 25 this morning and I could have used a pair of gloves. He still wants to travel to the lake region and thinks doing so after my presentation at the Forum gathering is perfectly doable.

Zarina had given me two Advil tablets for the terrible headache I was experiencing, but they did little to quell it. When I was done with the mailing list, I left Lingua hoping to be able to ride a somewhat empty minibus to my apartment and succeeded. I took a short nap and then made myself a cup of café con leche feeling much better thereafter.

I had contacted a couple of local women through the Couch Surfer’s website and one of them had replied after almost a month. I called Nazira and we agreed to meet tomorrow for a cup of coffee after my conversation class at Lingua.

Elvira called to say Natalia had instructed her to write up yet another grant by November 8 to obtain the required funding so she can travel with me to the southern portion of the country come spring. Since I’m completely booked for Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday is a holiday, we agreed to meet at my flat on Sunday morning to get it done.

For my dinner, I mixed the beshbarmak dish, overcooked noodles and horsemeat, with the spicy mushrooms and beef from the Chinese leftovers and then had enough for two separate meals. I definitely don’t like the flavor of the horsemeat and the texture of the noodles is certainly off putting. I have to concoct a veritable excuse for not accepting to eat this dish ever again.

I put together a survey for the teachers at the Slavic University so they can choose what type of topics they’d like to participate in for the next eight sessions and typed up a table listing all the PowerPoint presentations I’ve finished so far and those that are still a work in progress. Not bad for just a day’s worth of work. I rewarded myself by watching the movie “Fried Green Tomatoes” based on a book by Fanny Flagg I had read years ago. I had certainly forgotten the gist of the novel, but the movie was suspenseful enough to keep me interested and the performance by Kathy Bates was superb.

November 1, 2012

Had a productive morning to do the pile of dishing crowding the kitchen sink, had a sort of apple pie for breakfast, baked by Zarina’s mother, and packed my lunch before heading to Lingua. Natalia called to say she’d be bringing the certificates of completion to the Kyrgyzstan National University by two. I had a chance to begin my first expense report and took all receipts with me to scan them at the school. I do need to buy my own 3-in-1 machine to be able to do these things from the flat.

I found Idina sitting at my designated computer once again, and next to Matt, and she pretended to make a move to another one. I informed her I was only there to retrieve my flash drive, still attached to the CPU, and scan some documents in the teachers’ resource room. I wasted my time scanning them for the machine had the instructions in Russian and even with Nargiza’s help, I still didn’t select the proper saving format and they were illegible. I’ll try to have someone help me a printer this weekend for sure.

Gulnara and Larissa were in the teachers’ lounge when I went in to have my lunch, and Gulnara confided one of her teachers is seriously ill and she’d like to find a native speaker to take over her classes, and wanted to know if I knew of anyone. Of course, I haven’t run into any other teacher here so far except for the Peace Corps volunteers. In fact, today I got the CLO newsletter published by the embassy for the first time and learned there’s an International Women’s Club which charges about $50.00 for their annual membership. I’ll think about it as I’m not sure it’s worth it.

Riding in the marshrutkas have a become quite a drag as I’m getting queasy from the jerky movements of the drivers trying to pass each other or maneuvering around reckless drivers and because there’s usually no ventilation except for the driver’s window. I was sweaty mess by the time I got to the KNU campus for my last presentation. I waited outside for Natalia to arrive with the certificates since she didn’t know where we met. One of the teachers arrived with her colleague who told me how sorry she was to have missed the previous sessions for even though she worked with Gulnara she had not been informed about it.

Gulnara arrived with Nurkys, my previous Russian teacher, who swore she’d be willing to teach me classes in the morning and not in the evening when both of us would be completely tuckered out. We’ll see if she follows through on her word and comes by next Monday morning. Natalia arrived with the certificates and had a few words with the teachers before leaving behind the children’s songs CD and copies of the Forum magazine.

My presentation on motivating students was basically a summary of what we had covered the previous three weeks and basically said the teachers needed to be enthusiastic about English, involved the students in how the classes are run, and give them a lot of choices to avoid routine and boredom. It was touching when one of the teachers said they now knew exactly what to do as they had my example to follow from now on.

Gulnara had a few words to say at the end and presented me with a miniature map of Kyrgyzstan as a token of their appreciation. The teachers were handed their certificates and a group photo was taken for the association’s record. Teachers were reminded that they still needed to comply with the requirement of having me present for at least one class observation.

Gulnara insisted on taking me out to dinner to Faisa, but I told her I’d had a heavy lunch and it was only 4:30 and what I really, really needed was a good cup of coffee and not the instead instant variety available nearby. I convinced her to accompany me to Sierra Coffee where we ran into Willoughby, the PCV, and while she was introducing Gulnara to somebody else, I started a conversation with a man who told me he was a fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I was approached by a woman who looked African-American and sported short curly hair. She wanted to confirm that I was Ercilia as the embassy had told her long ago that someone from the Dominican Republic was joining their staff and she was also Dominican. I couldn’t believe it and said to her in a joking manner that there wasn’t enough room in such a small country for two Dominican women. We laughed and she gave me such a tight hug that I was left breathless. In short, she’s here with her Swedish husband who works for an NGO from that country, has two darling daughters and is a stay-at home-mom.

She needed to run to pick up her daughter from the international school she attends, but promised to send an SMS that evening with her telephone number. Gulnara watched our exchanged in amazement as well and could tell that I was elated to have someone that I could related to for the first time in a long time.

I walked home and picked a piece of flat bread from the Muslim bakery along the way. Found out that my laptop had picked up a virus and would not respond to any commands. It took forever to get the system to get rid of it.