April 3, 2013

The apartment felt icy cold when I got up this morning, but at least it appeared as if the sun would come out today. I really had to drag myself out of bed for the early morning meeting with Anna and even forgot to take something to eat for breakfast. When I got to Lingua, I finally remembered to exchange the tengue notes I still had from the trip to Shymkent back into soms.

Zarina was the only one in the office at that time and she greeted me with her usual beautiful smile. I had promised to bring her the list of participants in the workshops sponsored by Lingua so she could type up their emails for me, but in my confused state of mind, I had brought the wrong folder with me.

The Internet connection at the usual computer where I do my work was off and tried as she may to find out where the problem was no connection could be established. Anna and I had to go into the resource room where the computers have a Russian keyboard and work as slow as molasses in January.

After many discussions about the number of plenary speakers and the length of each workshop, coffee break and lunch, we were able to put together the skeleton of a schedule that I sent to Jennifer for her perusal and approval before we meet again to put together the program. I felt so tired that I couldn’t stop from yawning and as soon as we were done, I headed back home.

There was no trolley in sight, but the marshrutka came by right away and I got on deciding on the spot to stop at the cafeteria on the corner of Manas and buy enough food for all three meals of the day as I didn’t have the energy to go shopping  for groceries and then cooking. I bought the local “hamburger”, made  with shaved slices of beef and a variety of garnishes, a shawarma sandwich and plov for another day.

I was famished and started to eat the hamburger on the way home and even had a little bit of the plov, still warm, while catching up with the news on CNN. I then took a long nap ignoring my vibrating cell phone as I knew I wasn’t going back outside for anyone or anything.

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on a presentation on how to teach grammar as I was so disappointed with the job Asel did at the seminar. I have yet to see anyone trying to tackle grammar at any seminar I’ve been to. I still need to tweak so as I have way too many slides for any one presentation.

Jennifer replied late in the day indicating we had lined up too many plenary speakers, precisely my comment to Anna, and needed to pare down the number. She also inquired about the raffle that was to be held and when. I told her I knew nothing about that as it didn’t belong within the category of academic matters we were dealing with. Anna replied with the same response and asked other members of the committee to answer the question on our behalf.

I took a stab at the Forum’s newsletter spring issue, but quickly gave up as I didn’t have all the information I needed and Willoughby had promised to work on reducing the size of the photos so downloading the newsletter wouldn’t take so long.