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.