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.