April 2, 2012

I had the most perfect morning as I walked to the teachers’ training center. Too bad I had to wear my dress boots as I haven’t had the time to pick up my other shoes from the cobbler. I started by defining “Speech Acts” for them, giving a list of such acts and telling them we would be focusing on the act of giving advice to other people. I was trying to replicate Corrie’s activity where students are timed as they speak on a particular topic, chosen at random from a list on the board, through the rolling of a die. It was like pulling teeth as many of the teachers didn’t even know how to use the timer function on their cell phones to begin with, and then complained that the task was too difficult as they couldn’t think in English fast enough not to have to pause or hem and haw.

Zhulejo came in to tell me the teachers will be doing three weeks of observation at a nearby secondary school, and I didn’t have to come in until April 30 when there would be a closing celebration with food, music and dance. I told her I wouldn’t mind participating in the observations so I too could gauge the strengths and weaknesses of the teachers there.

At the PedInst a similar situation developed. The students claimed not to have a timer or didn’t know how to locate it, but at least I could hear then laugh as they tried to speak on a topic for as long as possible.

After I had my bowl of soup, I ran into Oigul and confirmed we’re going to visit Farzona’s village this Sunday and I offered to pay for the taxi fare as neither one of them works. She’s going to find out where the taxi departs from so we can make that the meeting point.

The teachers’ training session went quite well as we first played a modified version of a treasure hunt where they had to match the job description to the title and then “Where Am I” to practice yes and no questions. Many of them came to me to ask what a hardware store was and they had never heard of a bank teller. The topic in their conversation booklet was music and when I did a round robin to find out what their preference was, they divided themselves into classical and pop until someone younger mentioned Fifty Cents. I decided to list other styles of music, including reggae, and no one had ever heard of Bob Marley, dreadlocks, Haile Selassie or Rastafarians. I promised to bring a picture of Marley and a CD with some of his songs for them to hear it. The devout Muslim, Mr.Duloev, indicated he didn’t like any kind of music. I wasn’t the least bit surprised by his comment.

I told the teachers that since we’d finishing on Wednesday, I’d be bringing in the teaching materials the embassy had given me and that they’d be available on a first come, first served basis. I’m hoping to clear my living room of any excess books, CDs and DVDs, but couldn’t promise that everyone would get one item.

As I was walking to catch a mini-van, I ran into Tohir, who had been calling me practically non-stop and I had declined to talk to. He was on his way to his classes at the Polyglot Institute and asked if he could tag along while practicing his English. He has another telephone interview lined up with the ICRC for mid-April and needs helps with it. Since the PedInst teacher training session will be over this Wednesday, I agreed to meet with him next Monday and rehearse. He didn’t want to take the mini-van and asked if I didn’t mind walking home with him. It was such a gorgeous day that in spite of not wearing really comfortable shoes, I agreed to do it. When we approached the mini-Mac mansion that is being built for one of the president’s daughter, Furkat at Caritas had pointed it out to me, I stopped to take a photo and a panicked Tohir told me he’d continue walking as he was afraid he could get in trouble. I took two photos and caught up with him later as he apologetically explained that the president’s family had their hands in everything that turned a profit in the country and that if a person opened up a business and it was successful, anyone of his relatives could come in and take it from him. The president has seven daughters and two sons and his siblings have equally large families that demand cars, houses and businesses to run. A real pity.

Someone had cleaned the gutters in front of my building and left neat piles of leaves, plastic bottles and other debris nearby. When Elbek came in for his class, I asked him if the neighbors in the building had done the work, but he had no idea. He did confirm that really poor people sent their children to knock on our doors so we could give them food, especially bread, late in the afternoon. I had heard the knocks on my door, but unable to understand what they wanted, had been reluctant to open it.