November 25, 2011

I baked the persimmon tart I had promised my students and had no difficulty carrying it to the campus. Invited Pariso to come to the classroom and have a slice. Tahmina had informed me that Pariso should be the one contacting my landlady to get a letter of recommendation. When she came into the classroom, she admitted she didn’t know what a tart was and had never heard of the fruit persimmon that my students had indicated they’ve been taught to believe were dates. I asked Glaso to cut the slices and noticed that no one was eating. When encouraged to do so, I was informed it was their custom to wait for everybody to get their slice and then counted 1,2,3 and started eating. Students wanted to know what was in the filling, but it was difficult to describe a mixture of milk, cream, cornstarch, egg yolk, vanilla, and sugar.

                                                   

                                                                   Persimmon tart

During my second class, the teacher who occupies the same classroom in the morning, and who wasn’t too happy to hear he’d have to share it with me, walked in supposedly to retrieve some papers. He tried to tell me jokingly the other day that the classroom was his second home to which I replied sardonically that he had a very small house indeed. My students were in the middle of practicing a dialogue and were all talking at the same time as it’s expected. This teacher looked at the group exasperatedly and said: “They are learning air.”. I said: “Pardon me, the students are practicing a dialogue.”. He insisted the students were learning air as in “nothing”. What a jerk! I really had to make an effort to restrain myself and not reply in kind. This is the same teacher who walked in while we were eating the tart and wish me: “Have a bon appétit.”

While waiting for Elisabeth to arrive so we could go together to Sandy’s open house, the dean came by to check that all windows were closed and lights turned off. I asked to speak to him and relayed the incident emphasizing the lack of professionalism exhibited by this teacher by making such comments in front of the entire class. The dean agreed with me that such conduct was not acceptable and promised he’d talk to the teacher in questions.

I sat in the courtyard and watched as the cleaning lady and her daughter, who has a limp and hardly appears to be over twelve, tried valiantly to sweep and corral the falling leaves as new piles formed in the just cleaned pathways. There were municipal crews on the other side of the streets engaged in the same activity. Elisabeth was half hour late, nothing unusual, and we set out to find Sandy’s house through a series of narrow streets lined with the typical impenetrable gates. We came to a huge mansion with a sign on the gate that read: UNAID Dropout Prevention Program. Elisabeth immediately mentioned that the house must have been built with drug money.

Sandy lives in another three-story house with resplendent hardwood floors, three piece bathroom, full-size washer and dryer, a cook and a nanny. We were served steamed dumplings with an Ukrainian relish, bags of different croutons, and some sweets that looked entirely unappetizing. I was delighted to hear there was hot apple cider to  be had for beer, wine or juice didn’t appeal to me as my hands were freezing.

There were no introductions made, no music and little mingling. Damian and his wife, a Chinese-American woman about to publish her first novel, gave a ride home.