March 17, 2012

I got a call from Toj at 7:00am informing me that he was already at the Opera Ballet Theater waiting for Corrie and me. I told him I was just finishing my coffee and would need at least half hour to get ready. I texted Corrie and she confirmed she’d make it by 8:00am. The ride to Qurgonteppa was quite pleasant even though it was overcast and even sprinkled at times. There were quite a teachers waiting at the American Corner by the time we got there, but no electricity, which had been absent since the previous evening. Toj fired up the generator which created an infernal noise and forced us to keep the door closed so everyone could hear me. My voice is raspy since my cough hasn’t subsided entirely. I went through my presentation on grammar games and the teachers, along with university students planning on becoming teachers, had quite a few laughs throughout the two hour session.

Tojiddin had informed us that lunch was on him as this time as his wife was home and had cooked for us. Amin, whom I had met on FB through Beth, the former ELF at the PedInst, had come to the session and joined us for lunch, too. He teaches English through an American NGO called Millennium and has been fortunate enough to win a visa through the State Department sponsored lottery. He’s scheduled to depart in May and plans to settle in Paramus, NJ.

Toj lives in a run-down apartment complex very close to the American Corner and related that his apartment had been given to him by the President of Tajikistan after the president attended one of his classes and was impressed with the highly energetic teacher who had been to the United States under the TEA program. I was dismayed to find out that he had married his wife when she was only 16 and they already had four children under the age of five. The poor woman, and Toj’s sister, had prepared quite a spread for us, and of course, they stayed in the kitchen the whole time we were there.

                                     Sumptuous spread for lunch at Toj's house.

                                      Amin, Tojiddin, Corrie and me.

The afternoon session featured fewer attendees, but Corrie carried on with her presentation on easy writing tasks for beginner students. I think I’m going to poach a few of her ideas to try them out at the PedInst next week. The taxi driver was scheduled to pick us up at 3:30pm and so we lingered a while longer chatting with the college students and the one teacher who stayed behind badgering her students to converse with us. I got to show them at least two other games I had had no time to cover and also got them to understand the difference between the uses of “will” and “going to”. All in all, it was quite a productive day. Toj asked us to come back next week as the teachers will be back from their Nav Ruz holiday.

Corrie and I caught up on all the happenings while she was on vacation in Uzbekistan and I learned she has found a roommate and will be moving out of her apartment at the end of the month. The driver stopped to let us get some local flowers on sale by the roadside and insisted on paying for a pair of them for each of us. He said tradition has it that women rub the flowers over their eyebrows so they continue to grow as pretty as the flowers he referred to as a tulip, but which looked more like an iris.

I begged the driver, through Corrie of course, to drop me off close to my apartment as my bladder was in desperate need of being emptied and he complied. He even asked if we wanted to be picked up at the same intersection next week, to which we were more than glad to agree. Corrie told me there was a Saint Patrick's Day party at one of the embassy's employee's home and I was welcome to come, but I wanted nothing more than the quietude of my apartment.

Finally back home to relax for a bit. I watched a very sad documentary on RT about a couple of babies being switched at birth and how that destroyed a family entirely. Hard to believe that these mistakes are still taking place around the world.