February 4, 2012

When I stepped outside my building, I saw the highest accumulation of snow so far after two days non-stop snowing. At least it was fresh and fluffy and posed no trouble to walk on it as I made my way to the trash bin to dispose of my malodorous trash. It was hard though to make it all the way to the American Corner and I only made it there with five minutes to spare. Corrie then asked me to go the Paikar supermarket nearby to get plastic cups and spoons as her supermarket didn’t have any.

Alleyway leading to my apartment building

My apartment building at the bottom of the alleyway.

Corrie’s topic was speaking activities and she had lined up the teachers as pairs facing each other in three rows even as more teachers showed up. I helped out by providing chairs, informing newcomers of what she was doing and passing out slips of papers for the corresponding activities. She included such activities as conducting an interview, ranking personal qualities, participating in a job interview and a board game. Although Corrie hasn’t seemed amenable to sharing teaching materials, I asked her anyway to share her resources so I could them at the teachers’ training center. To my face at least, she agreed to do so. Nancy and David were waiting for us when we were finished as I had invited them to join us for lunch thereafter.

I was unpleasantly surprised to be buffeted by strong winds as we made our way to the Prague Restaurant, only about two blocks away, under the relentless snow. Corrie, who wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, was soon exhibiting a red nose and fingers. The restaurant was completely empty, nothing new there, but was tastefully appointed with exquisite hardwood furniture and posters from Prague, a city Nancy had visited in the past. Corrie was able to read the menu and I ordered lamb along with French fries. It must have taken at least 1.5 hours for us to get our meals and David’s moussaka was just a pile of ground beef with some slices of tomatoes covered with grated cheese. For once, my dish was quite tasty, although not spicy as I had ordered it, and the fries relatively warm and somewhat crispy.

                            Nancy, David and Corrie at the Prague Restaurant

Nancy regaled us with her tales about being in the Peace Corps in two different countries and bagging her husband, David, in one of them. While David embodies taciturnity to an extreme, Nancy had no qualms in telling us she had joined the organization so she could go to bed with men, young or old. “I was a slut then”, she commented. David didn’t even look at her.

Playground

                                 
                                                        Playground

Corrie accompanied me to the printing place inside the post office where they are working on creating a business card for me, and which came in with no capital letters for institute, but they were closed on this Saturday. Next, it was Megaphon to pay for my Internet service and Corrie inquired as to whether they still had the special offer where I could buy a new modem and get a month free. The same attentive woman who usually waits on me confirmed this fact and requested my passport, which is still at the Indian embassy, and in its absence, accepted Corrie’s.

I stopped at the supermarket to buy provisions for the weekend and treated myself to a piece of smoked salmon. There were no fresh vegetables except for green, yellow and red peppers sold as a trio. I only bought what I thought I could eat in a week since I’ll be leaving next Sunday for Nepal.

When I inserted the new modem in the computer, it told me it didn’t have any money in that account. After much fiddling with it and removing the old program, shutting down and restarting the computer, I gave up. I called Corrie who tried calling the company, but it was close to 5:00pm and had no luck. It occurred to me to call Elbek so he could read the message in Russian I kept getting and he came in thinking we were going to have a regular class. He felt it was prudent to call on his uncle, who works for the competition, to come and take a look. Akram got on the telephone and was able to access the call center where after much waiting informed him something was wrong with the modem and the technical department would need to intervene, but not until Monday. I really felt deprived and somewhat at a loss when not able to go online.

I did finish reading “Kitchen Confidential”, wishing though for it to go on even longer. I relished every page of it and know it deserves a re-reading to do it justice.