December 24, 2011

Another day without water. I managed to get to the American Corner for Corrie’s presentation by walking on the streets next to the parked cars and avoiding the still snowy and icy sidewalks. We got ten teachers for the workshop on using songs in the classroom; a higher turnout than I had expected. The room was freezing as the wall unit installed at the American Corner seems to be there for purely decorative purposes and puts out no heat whatsoever. Corrie incorporated a couple of Christmas song to the repertoire and even got the participants to try their hands at writing their own songs.

Although Christmas is not officially celebrated here, the city puts up what they call a "New Year's Eve Tree"

Christmas' trees, albeit artificial ones, can be bought at several stores along with their corresponding ornaments. 

I can’t see myself conducting a similar workshop for as an acquaintance once said I seem to have a tin ear for music and couldn’t carry a tune if someone hand it to me in a bucket. I only recognized two of the songs she used and even then I couldn’t sing along. This session concluded the cycle for this year and the participants will get issued a certificate if they were present for three of the four workshops. We then went to lunch at the F1 cafeteria, mostly so I could use their pristine bathroom. The food was the usual blend of bland, watery and overcooked vegetables, this time over spaghetti as the only rice dish available had chicken in it. I’ve refused to eat chicken here unless I know its provenance ever since I saw the mounds of frozen chicken parts being sold at the market and being told they came from the States loaded, of course, with antibiotics and hormones.

                                               A moment of levity during the workshop

I had picked up the package my sister Esther had sent me and after lunch, Caroline and I walked to my apartment for a cup of coffee. She’s decided to move into Elisabeth’s old place and share it with Hillary, one of the Fulbrighters. I don’t believe this is a suitable partnership as Hillary likes to party and is a social butterfly while Caroline could almost be called anti-social. We discussed her desire to leave the program as soon as the January conference, which she is orchestrating so the embassy doesn’t have to request an English Language Specialist, is over or after the NELTA conference in Nepal in February. She’s unable to pinpoint what it is that bothers her so much about being here and even cried while trying to articulate what it was she was intended to do with the rest of her life. She claims to be done with teaching ESOL/EFL, but couldn’t say what could be another area of interest for her to pursue. I really hate to see someone that lost.

I sent an email to Yoomie letting her know I’d not be participating in the Christmas brunch at the Hyatt on Christmas Day for I considered 165.00 somoni for one meal in this country to be almost obscene. That’s almost $40.00 that could buy groceries for more than a week. She replied by saying I was entitled to treat myself once in a while and to at least consider going to her house for cocktails and a gift exchange in the evening. I haven’t been shopping and hence have nothing to exchange and the thought of trying to navigate the icy streets to her frigid apartment at night is not an appealing one, so I’ll pass.

I had a container of yogurt and some leftover beans for dinner. I watched “Gone, Baby Gone” and found it a bit too gruesome for my taste. Parts of the sound were not synchronized to the faces and it was hard to tell what was going one. That’s what you get when you copy movies, I guess.

I finished reading Julian Barnes’ masterpiece, “Flaubert’s Parrot” and remained deeply impressed by his erudition, wit and sense of irony. I then got started on “The Bean Trees” by Barbara Kingsolver, a hilarious novel that made me laugh to myself many times. Not a bad way to spend Christmas evening.