May 29, 2013

The first thing I did this morning upon waking up was draft a long email to Johanna relating the fiasco of my trip to Naryn and my impression that the trip had been organized, not so much for the benefit of the teachers, but to allow Gulnara to visit her brother on our dime while bringing along her pal, Asel.

I cooked some cream of wheat for breakfast adding all of my favorite spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger, along with a generous tablespoon of vanilla. It tasted divine and I almost ate the entire portion which was intended for two days. Off I went to Lingua to meet with Anna for yet another session making changes to the CATEC program.

I had noticed that my flashdrive had refused to open in Naryn and subsequently at my house, but was hopeful that I had saved the work I’d done last Friday on the computer at Lingua and that perhaps their tech person could repair the flashdrive. Once at Lingua, where a bunch of kids were playing on the computers, I discovered to my dismay that I hadn’t saved the documents to the computer.

In a panic, I asked Zarina to contact their tech person for I thought Anna would kill if she knew all the changes were gone and we had to start all over. She had recommended that I email her the new version upon finishing it, but I had simply forgotten.

The tech person came in, took a look at the drive and in a mournful tone declared that he felt nothing could be done as apparently it had been dropped in water. I denied such occurrence, and he took it to his office to see if any of the files could be recovered.

Anna came in and immediately set out to make the changes to the program herself as she only had 1.5 available before her classes began. We made the changes to the program handout, but I still need to modify the titles of all the presentations to make them uniform. What a chore!

I got an email from my sister notifying me my mother was still in the hospital while the doctors tried to find out the why of her abdominal pain.

On my way home, I stopped at the convenience store across the street and bought water and a few prepared dishes to supplement the pork ribs and vegetables I had cooked that morning. I had added the jar of homemade sauce Willoughby’s landlady had given her and she’d passed on to me. The final dish was the most delicious I’ve prepared here so far as I had added eggplant and cauliflower to it. I practically licked my fingers when I finished eating it.

Willoughby had sent me a few suggestions on the e-book format and a few mistakes she’d caught. I set out to correct those, but never got around to working on the answer key as that’s one task I’m not looking forward to tackling.

Johanna replied to my email lamenting the outcome of the trip to Naryn and agreeing with me that she’d have never approve the expenses for all four of us to travel there. I later learned from Willoughby that she’s hosting a barbecue at her house on Sunday and wondered if I had been invited. I hadn’t and wasn’t surprised at that either.

I took a break from the computer to continue reading the book “Daughter of Fortune” and almost finished it before sleep overtook me.