March 20, 2013

I was up before seven to insure my availability in case the couch surfers needed help finding the Lingua driver, and they did. When they got to my flat, they had a cup of coffee and indicated they had slept on the plane and had breakfast at the airport and all they wanted to do was look around the city before proceeding to travel to Almaty by land.

I took them to the Osh bazaar first, making sure to pick up some Korean salad along the way for the lunch at Lingua, and then to the Ala-Too Square where Sven took numerous photos using his new IPhone 5. We then walked behind the presidential palace and came across an amusement park with a variety of old, somewhat decrepit rides that were being gussied up for the celebration tomorrow.

I then took them to see the Opera Ballet Theater and made arrangements for them to be picked up again in front of Lingua so their driver could take them to the bus terminal at one. I went to Lingua to enjoy another fabulous lunch with a variety of dishes provided by the teachers and plov supplied by Gulnara. My salad turned out to be way too salty for my taste.

Matthew and I sat side-by-side at the computer room and he acknowledged being an unreliable person but still wanted to help me design a cover for the resource booklet in the near future. I then emailed Willoughby asking her to join me tomorrow at Ala-Too Square to see what the city had prepared for the Nowruz holiday.

The afternoon session went very well, and Gulnara came in to hand out the certificates. There wasn’t enough room to take a group photo with all 31 attendees, so Zarina recommended taking three separate shots instead. Many of the pre-service teachers asked to have individual photos taken with the cell phone. I reminded Gulnara I’d be gone for an entire week and left the building.

The sun was still shining outside and it was relatively warm. Two girls were sitting on the bench at the bus stop carrying what appeared to be costumes for tomorrow’s celebration including felt hats. Willoughby had called to say she’d stopping by to download a file as her computer was having difficulty doing so. We chatted for a while and then I got a phone call from Sven, the couch surfer, informing me they hadn’t been able to cross the border into Kazakhstan because their visa wasn’t valid until tomorrow.

I invited to come back to my flat and spend the night. Willoughby spoke to them for bit in German, and then she left her flashdrive with me since the file would take over three hours to download. I had to leave the computer on overnight as I was too tired to stay up until eleven. Sven wanted to take me out to dinner, but turned down his invitation since I had eaten already and just wanted to rest. I recommended they go to the Vanilla Sky coffee house across the street, and they did so.

When they got back, I handed them towels and they rearranged the furniture to be able to sleep on the two chairs and the one sofa and I quickly went to bed simply exhausted.