February 9, 2013

It was a frosty morning with the sun hidden behind thick clouds. Mercifully, the trolley came up almost as soon as I reached the curb and took me to the Children’s Library in a jiffy. Willoughby was already there and we set out to clear the space so I could bring the tables from the back of the room to the front so teachers would have a surface to write on. For the first time, Gulnara was going to be absent suffering from a bad cold.

We had a turn out slightly higher than usual but I was dissatisfied with my presentation from the standpoint that I had no surface to display the pictures as not even the whiteboard was magnetic. I had called Elena to please bring me a roll of masking tape and did what I could to display the pictures and the caption for one of the activities. Teachers seemed to like it nonetheless and once again, there was not enough time to carry out all the activities I had planned.

One of the members had offered a master class in the art of making felt objects for just 50 soms. This contribution was then to be donated to Forum. Only four teachers stayed afterwards and I felt that the activity had been planned too hastily and hardly advertised.

Willoughby and I went to lunch before I had to report to the conversation club at Lingua. I confided in Willoughby how unhappy I was about conducting this class for such a small number of students and such a young group of learners who had little in terms of experience to share. She felt that I should not be obligated to do something I truly dislike since I wasn’t getting paid anyway.

There were only eight students, one of them new, and I tried to get them to talk about Valentine Day’s and even though they knew in theory what the holiday was about, they had little to contribute to the topic since most of them are not yet actively dating and thus they don’t purchase gifts, take dates out or do anything romantic on such day.

To complete the lesson, I had to make use of my photos to get them to do another speaking activity until the time ran out. I made up my mind right there and then that I would request that Lingua stop using me for this purpose as I really don’t have anything in common with these students and find it very hard to relate to them. I feel that the Peace Corps volunteer, being much younger than I am, is much more suitable to continue with the club in the future.

I stopped at the convenience store to buy water, milk and juice and then went home to catch up with my email until the hammering started back up when it was past six. I knocked on the neighbor’s door and she opened it to plead with me to give her just one more hour to finish what they had started. She reminded me that when my landlady renovated my unit, it took two long months of constant noise to get it done.

I had agreed to go with Willoughby to go the ballet and to host her for lunch first, so I defrosted the lamb chops and marinated them for the following day.