April 6, 2012

I set up my alarm to wake me up at 6:00 just in case as I had to be at the PedInst at 8:00am. My tree greeted me with new shoots coming out of the tufts I had been watching for the last couple of days. It was the same thing for the shrubs around the building which seem to have sprouted overnight. The institute seemed extremely quiet as many of the classrooms were empty. I ran into Zoir in the hallway and he opened my classroom for me. I had a new group of interpreters today and thus had to go through the usual introductions and games to get acquainted. I had 12 out 20 students and no one could tell me where the rest of the students were.

                                 Visible growth on the tree outside my kitchen window.

I had the teachers for the second class and there’s a very pregnant student in it. I asked about her due date and we practiced the question until the obligatory questions about how many children I had came up. When told that I had had one and closed the factory immediately, they hollered and hooted and I was delighted that at least they got the joke. One student wanted to know why people in the States only had one or two children. I told them that according to the latest statistics, it takes about $122,000 to raise a child from infancy to 18 and it didn’t include a college education. Multiply that by 7 or 11and few couples could do it. Their response was that the government of the U. S. should do like Italy, Germany or Russia and offer a subsidy to families with many children. My response was that we weren’t concerned about a lack of population growth due to the high levels of immigration we have.

The dean came in to say hello and inform me that Tahmina had notified him of my need to be absent for three days to coordinate the spring ETM toward the end of the month. Apparently someone had enough sense to realize the seminar is not going to run itself. He inquired once again about the certificate of attendance for the seminars at the American Corner, but I know that Corrie has done nothing about it. They still need to be printed and then taken to the embassy for the appropriate signature. I’ll try to get mine done by the end of next week to avoid a similar situation

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I walked home stopping at the little market along the way to buy ingredients for a salad and the supermarket for other items needed for dinner. It was then time to do some serious cleaning of the apartment which had been somewhat neglected since I haven’t had any company for a while. I then took a long bath while reading “Makeda”, a novel Stephanie sent me recently, and which proved to be addictive.

Elbek came in his class and we finished the beginner’s book. He’s now to start on Headway 1. I’m very proud of how much progress he’s made since we started on January  24 as he so prudently had written the date on the inside cover of his book.

Umed, the teacher from Bactria that wanted to obtain additional teaching materials from me, agreed to come along with Ryan and join us for dinner. Only the two of them showed up as Dagmara was really sick with diarrhea Ryan told me. Umed had seconds of my black-eyed peas and rice and my stewed beef with carrots and potatoes. Ryan brought juice and ice cream.

                                            My Tajik-style salad

I was able to learn a lot from Umed as he’s quite fluent in English and could explain the rationale behind some of the actions taken by local Tajiks. For instance, he told me that when dancing, only the shoulders and hands move, never the hips. Can you imagine me trying to dance with such restriction? It’d be simply impossible. That would be like asking a bird to fly without using his wings. He described what a typical funeral would be like and how he has to keep his opinions to himself when it comes to the observation of Islamic rituals as the country is turning more and more conservative and leaning toward fanaticism. It was half past ten before we actually turned to the matter of copying materials into his portable hard drive and he decided to leave it with me until tomorrow since we’re both attending Yoomie’s farewell party.

I noticed though that he had a sizeable collection of movies in the drive. I’ll copy any of them that might look interesting.