December 20, 2011

I spent another day at home perched on my window watching the goings-on of my neighbors now that all the leaves from the trees have fallen. I saw a young woman talking on her cell phone from her porch. Was she talking to a boyfriend in secret? There must be at least a foot of snow on the ground and more continued to drift from the trees. People don’t seem to be daunted by it as children march to school and adults continue with their every day chores.

                                                             Snowy street view

A truck, two men and two shovels sanding the main arteries of Dushanbe

Tajik men usually shake the snow from the trees probably to prevent them from breaking from the weight.

I was so glad that at least the power didn’t go out as I enjoyed a long bath, did my hair, gave a thorough cleaning to my kitchen and did laundry that had accumulated for a couple of weeks. I watched the movie “The Great Debaters” and found it superficial, self-congratulatory and a complete cliché. Since Denzel Washington is one of my favorite actors, I tend to watch anything he’s in, but this film didn’t make me care for his character as there was no depth to it. There’s no insight as to what made him become a college professor and something as incongruous as a union organizer on the side. The same can be said for the rest of the characters and the movie doesn’t even show how Denzel goes about training his students to beat Harvard or what happened to this college and its winsome team after that. The movie got the usual Hollywood treatment with women that are young, thin and beautiful and men that are strong, handsome and articulate and, of course, a happy ending.

I texted Pariso to try and confirm that the lock had been changed in classroom #12, but she hadn’t checked into it and hadn’t had a chance to speak to the dean. The vendor for the whiteboard called me, in Russian of course, to inquire as to its delivery, but I couldn’t say when it might take place.

I got the approval to buy a space heater for my classroom. Hooray for that!