April 17, 2012

Another pristine morning with the mountains showing a light dusting of snow and looking closer than ever. I need to make an effort to join one of the Sunday hikes when a group of ex-pats walk up the slopes that skirt the mountains around the city. At the gates to the PedInst I noticed once again what appeared to be a reception committee made up of professors who apparently stand there making sure students are not violating the dress code. My interpreter group had been tasked with putting on a fashion show in order to demonstrate their ability to describe clothing and jewelry, but as usual, few of them had bothered to look at the handout with the vocabulary for this task. I asked them to use me as a model first so that they could later on describe what their partners were wearing. I was simply shocked to learn that in four years at the PedInst, they had never learned the names of the different fingers of the hand and couldn’t say on what finger I wore a ring. And so another teachable moment arose. They were unable to describe fabric, styles or even colors accurately.

The teacher group did relatively well with the list of homophones although once again few had bothered to look at the handout provided much less translated the more obscure terms contained in it. We moved on to play board games with different speaking abilities and grammar points and it was plain mayhem as these students are not used to be given free reign and thus are not able to restrain themselves and keep their voices low when arguing with their classmates. I have to admit that I’d rather have this situation that the dead silence I’ve observed in the other classrooms.

As I was leaving, Mr. Sadat stopped me to ask me how he could delete the speaking dictionary program I’d given him as it was not working properly and he wanted to reinstall it. My stomach was growling by then and I resented having to go into his classroom, wait to have him power up his computer and then go through the entire process of removing the program. Mr. Boronov promised to meet with me after the ETM to make up the three hours of professional development he’s missing in order to receive his certificate.

I got to the soup place and the attendant beamed at me and showed me I had left my travel mug there the day before. I was so happy he had put it away for me since I had emailed Takhmina thinking I’d left it at Caritas. The soup was still a bit too salty for my taste, but I tried to eat as much as possible.

Aziza emailed me requesting editing for one of her reports. My Internet connection is woefully slow these days and will not allow me to download the document, so I declined the request for now. The teacher in need of editing showed up one and half later than we agreed to meet and could not find my apartment while I was guiding him on the telephone thus forcing me to go downstairs to find him. He indicated he teaches graduate students at the PedInst and wants to publish his article in the newsletter or journal the institution publishes every three months. I did not want to alter the document too much so I just pointed out a number of sentences that were illogical and errors in punctuation and capitalization to which he’d reply: “You’re right. I forgot.”

Jamshed, who had attended the ETM in January representing Qurgonteppa, called to say he had found a job in Dushanbe and wanted to get together with me soon. He was in fact the person who gave my number to a guy who had called last night to inquire if I wanted to teach Spanish. I referred him to Dagmara as I wasn’t interested. Munisa called to claim she had been hospitalized all these days, something I don’t believe and thus I didn’t even inquire as to the nature of her illness, and wanted another appointment to go over her essay for the Fulbright scholarship. I told her I’ll be busy until the end of the ETM.