December 10, 2012

Most of the snow had melted as the weather had been relatively balmy over the weekend thus enabling me to walk very fast to meet with Ainura for my second Russian lesson. She had brought in some handmade flashcards with objects in it for me to recognize or learn, and I couldn’t believe that a commercial set of such flashcards couldn’t be found readily available in the bazaar. I already feel as if I’m making progress for my vocabulary is expanding exponentially.

I had received a text message during the lesson from Gulnara at Lingua and when I called her back, she asked if I could possibly substitute for one of her teachers who was ill today. This teacher had two back-to-back classes from 4:00 to 8:00pm. I wasn’t really excited about the prospect of teaching for four hours straight, but didn’t want to disappoint the students and said yes.

After dropping off some additional materials to be laminated for tomorrow’s session, I went to Lingua to work on some new presentations I’d like to offer in the future such as one on humor in the classroom and the other on doing away with the reliance on the textbook so classes can be more flexible and fun for everyone. Adina came in to ask me to draw a name for the Secret Santa contest and I drew Nargiza’s, which was great as I think I know her and can easily buy a present that would be suitable although the 200 soms might pose a barrier to such selection.

Natalia sent me a message indicating that the PAO, the same guy who had never gotten back to me about the Thanksgiving dinner, needed to talk to me before 5:00pm. I replied I’d be available until 4:00pm, but he never called thus leaving me to wonder if I was in hot water for some reason.

The first class I subbed for had only eight students, all teenagers, and the two hours seemed to drag. The second one was livelier as there adults in it and the topic in the textbook was a bit more interesting. I guess I find it harder to substitute here because I’m not familiar with the textbooks, all published in the U.K., and couldn’t even operate the CD player as it had some round buttons to navigate that I had never seen before.

Gulnara had said she would pay for a taxi to take me home when I was finish and I was really glad for that as I was hungry and tired by 8:00. Natasha helped me get into a taxi and I was home in less than 15 minutes. I had some of my leftover pumpkin soup and went to bed early.