June 27, 2012

I slept relatively well, made coffee and sat at my computer hoping that Gulruhsor would not come knocking on my door to accompany her to the rehearsal the hokey pokey song. She didn’t, and at 7:00am I could hear the music pumping from the field next to my building. I was glad to see she had enough confidence to pull it off on her own. Parvina and Nigora came to get me for breakfast and we got the same rice pudding of two days ago, this time without even enough sugar, and since I had mentioned the fact that I didn’t care for cold boiled eggs, we got two fried eggs and the requisite hot dog this morning.

We had to wait for a while to get the chairs from the dining room to complete the set up for our classroom and then set out to get the students to describe a picture using the corresponding handouts. Groups then had a chance to read their description while showing their pictures. They were very proud of their work and I encouraged the other students to applaud their efforts. They played board games after that and I discovered that their favorite one was the board games that call for them to perform an action such as winking, whistling or skipping. Most of these actions were unknown to the students and their teachers, and so I was constantly being called to tell them what the word meant. When the student went around performing the action, other students hollered and clapped while laughing the whole time. I followed that with a modified version of a treasure hunt using the vocabulary for occupations. Again, the students were most enthusiastic and came up to me the over and over having made the wrong match, but willing to go on.

I was going to do one last game before lunch when the older teacher in the group told me it was enough as most likely I was extremely tired and if not I, then the students. I told her that wasn’t the case and she replied it must be my drinking coffee as opposed to tea that gave me so much energy for she was tired just from observing me. I wanted to say something to the effect that the difference was that I was passionate about teaching and they didn’t seem to be. For instance, it had bothered me to no end to see the one teacher who had taken part in the English Teacher Mentoring program, and who had a chance to travel to the United States for additional training, sitting down during most of our sessions just gossiping without helping out at all or providing any suggestions or ideas for the sessions. She skipped today’s sessions entirely claiming she had something to do at home or school. I skipped the last game, and the students were given additional time to work on the posters they were making for the display during the closing ceremony.

I cannot recall what we had for lunch, it was that memorable, but one of the student’s mothers came by with some watermelon and we were presented with three platters of it. I ate as much of it as I could before we went back to my room to plan for the next day as Nigora had informed us that we were going to have English classes for both the morning and afternoon sessions. The teachers had suggested having a session on environmental education and another on the educational system in the U.S.A. but I told them what the students needed was additional vocabulary instructions as they had difficulty in expressing even simple ideas. I showed some of the activities I had for that purpose and transferred them to a flashdrive for Nigora to take into town and make the corresponding number of copies.

Dinner was again lagman soup, a piece of chicken with mashed potatoes, and a buttermilk drink. I had two bowls of the soup and skipped the main dish altogether hoping I’d not get too hungry during the rest of the night. Nigora informed us that since it was a holiday in Tajikistan, Consolidation Day, a concert was planned around the front courtyard of the building beginning at 7:00. We went there and saw many of the elderly visitors sitting around a low stone wall enjoying the music from a three-piece band with some of the women dancing together. I started to dance the minute the band played something lively and was called by one the ladies to dance with her in front of the band. Never too shy to be the center of attention, I quickly jumped in and started to dance with her, which encouraged some of our students to join us and Ekram came in and danced with me in spite of having a twisted ankle from playing soccer.

I was having the time of my life when Nigora called me aside to say we were leaving and going back to the classroom for the students didn’t like to be looked at while dancing and wanted to continue the fun in private. It took forever to get the stereo system hooked up and functioning, but the music wasn’t the same and we never regained the momentum we had had in the outdoor courtyard. Ekram came to my room to retrieve the CD I had recorded for the opening celebration and told me how much he wanted to study to become an interpreter at the PedInst, but I told him that university wasn’t the best choice based on the quality of its teachers and told him to pursue his education at the Institute of Foreign Languages where there would be an English Language Fellow posted next September. He asked me for help with the process, but I really don’t know what is necessary for him to enroll.