October 17, 2011

Corrie called at 4:00am to let me know she was on her way from the airport. Since my building is not visible from the road, I agreed to wait about fifteen minutes and walk there with my flashlight to signal the taxi driver. I then found out I had gotten the wrong size batteries for it. It’s a good thing Nancy had left behind a little solar-operated one attached to a key chain. The taxi driver managed to see me, helped Corrie with her luggage and got tipped handsomely. We talked a little while I made coffee, which Corrie does not drink, and then she went to catch up on her sleep. She accompanied me to the PedInst for my meeting/observation with the teacher who’ll become my counterpart. 

We first stopped at the cafeteria across the street to order soup and bread and for me to get Corrie, who speaks Russian, to read the menu items for me. Both our soups were extremely salty, a noodle one for me and barley one for her, but filling. We managed to find Pariso’s classroom with the help of another student and joined a class in progress. Students were asked to read a dialogue in pairs, two people discussing which foreign languages they spoke, while Pariso stood next to them and corrected every single mistake while making some of her own. There was never any praise when students got something right and plenty of rebukes when they did something wrong. The book in question contains no illustrations and seems to have been published some fifty years ago. At the end of the lesson, and for no apparent reason, Pariso asked the student to start the 20 questions game with only the girls on the right asking most of the questions. She kept chastising the guys on the left for their lack of participation.

This was a grammar class back-to-back with a five minute break in between. For their second class, students answered one of the questions in the textbook by writing it first in their notebooks. A lot of Tajik and Russian was used to clarify points and she ended these explanations by asking: “Have you understood?” To which everyone said yes, of course. At the end of this lesson, Pariso had the students start a chain letter game with no apparent topic and they obediently uttered a word for the next student to start his/her based on the last letter of the previous word. Some of the students apparently couldn’t catch what was said and kept asking the teacher to confirm what the last letter was. She seemed to get a bit impatient and asked to listen carefully and stop asking for confirmation from her.

Pariso has her own classroom with some nice posters on display and small tables that could be rearranged for small group or pair work. She promised to have a key made for me. When I inquired about a faculty bathroom, she took me to the same foul smelling place I had already found on my own. She could not understand my point about privacy and not being willing to pull my pants down in front of my female students. She believes there is a bathroom for the faculty, but she has never been given a key. I found out today that she teaches at another place in the morning and doesn’t even have time to eat lunch between classes. The resource room the British Council had donated sits locked and unused and she didn’t know who had a key for it. We’ll have lunch tomorrow prior to my first class so she can clarify other issues for me.

We took the #1 bus headed into town to meet with Caroline, but this one turned right into some unknown street and I had to quickly signal the driver that we wanted to get off right then and there. I could see the presidential palace in the distance and could use that landmark as a point of reference. It was a very long walk to Caroline’s place.

We went to pick up my outfit at the dressmaker and was sorely disappointed. The tunic went almost to my ankles and the pants were too short. I just looked like I was almost nine months pregnant. With Corrie’s help, I explained I wanted the tunic shorter and the pants longer while also taking a couple of inches on each side of the tunic. The dressmaker seemed miffed at my requests.

We invited Peter to join us at my place after dinner for dessert as the chocolate cake he had brought on Saturday remained untouched. We had a cold dinner at F1, I don’t know why, and went up to my place where Caroline made tea for the two of them and we had cake. Peter indicated he was still at the gym and should not be expected to join us. His loss!

I was already in bed reading when my neighbor Mariam called to ask me to come and visit with her. I explained I was in my pajamas and ready to go to sleep and promised to stop by tomorrow.