Crazy Day

Every day here is new and crazy so let me tell you about last Tuesday (6/2). The night before I had arranged to meet up with habitat for humanity people and travel with them to their worksite. This was the last day they would be working in Khujand. I met them at 7:45 am near my house. I rode in a van with them out to the outskirts of town where these 10 or so American volunteers were helping to build 258 houses. I was at the site for about an hour and even got into the act when I joined the bucket brigade passing concrete for the foundation of a new house. These volunteers had only been in Khujand 6 days but my students quickly found them and made friends with them.
Then it was off to my university for two classes. One was English practice and the other grammar. I can't remember exactly what I taught but i think in grammar class we moved on to or were discussing "subject" and all the different ways to express a subject such as subject as numeral, pronoun, gerund, subtantivized adj. etc.
Then after class as I was walking through the corridor at my university when I saw some foreigners. I asked where they were from and they said the U.S. I had forgotten that a teacher trainer was coming to my university on this day. So I went to the dean's office with Vivian and Frank from Massachusetts to get acquainted. I think I was a bit abrupt but I don't think they minded too much. I made up for it the next day by having lunch with Vivian and really taking some time to talk and listen to her. I find myself being abrupt sometimes because so many people want to talk to me and I'm so busy that chit chat is just not happening. I'm like a New Yorker I think or something. Anyway Vivian gave a jam packed by people 1 1/2 hour teacher training at my university. i couldn't stay because i had to go to discussion club at the American Corner but i guess she said some great things and even had to kick out a teacher for talking on her cell phone! Vivian is an English Language specialist hired by the state dept. to travel to various countries and conduct trainings. She normally is a community college professor.
To the A.C. to have a good discussion club. One of the topics we talked about was terrorism and what it is and why people do it. But we also talked about what famous person students want to meet. I let the kids choose all the topics I rarely if ever choose any of the topics. At the end Umed said he had a little surprise and boy did he ever. He had brought a big snake in his backpack. he had caught it in his village and brought it to the A.C. i guess because he said I wanted him to but I don't remember telling him to bring a snake. I was as shocked as the kids. He said it was a poisoness snake but I'm not totally sure it was. He told about how he likes to eat snakes etc. it was pretty amazing for all of us.
Then Vivian came to the A.C. and talked to the jam packed room of kids. There are so many people in the A.C. that it begins to smell like humans the humans. Vivian and her husband showed pictures and talked to kids. They are Buddhists so that was interesting for kids to learn about. But i couldn't stay around for the end of their talk because I had bottles to recycle. this was our maiden trip to recycle bottles.
We were supposed to have a woman walk to the A.C. from the market were she works 10 minutes away and pick up the bottles. But of course this was too much trouble so with two young men we put the big bottle box in the back of a taxi and went to her. We gave her all the bottles plastic, glass etc. She told us how much each bottle was worth and what she wanted and we wrote it all down. in the end we had 4 somoni for our work. We hope to improve on this total every week. Our goal is 50 somoni. We will use the money to buy things for orphans. So then we went back to the A.C. to report to others about our findings and give Madina the $.
Then I had TOEFL class we did the listening section of the test. i had about 6-7 students at the A.C. for this class. Then we went to eat ice-cream it was 5 pm at this point. 6 of us went to an outdoor cafe for soft ice-cream.
Then as I was walking with students to get pizza from the grocery store we ran into Kim from habitat for humanity. I told her about our bottle recycling and she said she had some big gallon water bottles for us. We took four big bottles from her I think we can get a half of a somoni for each bottle which is a lot here. then we took her to the best internet cafe in town. I ate my pizza while walking around on the street. Then it was home to talk on the phone, lesson plan, correct homwork, rest and to bed.
This was a pretty crazy day for me but the next day was just as nuts but i don't have time to detail all the actvities I've been engaged in. Like Friday we went to an orphange and we went to another one today Saturday etc. etc. etc. One day's memories get erased by the next day's.