The other day I had emerged from Tashrabat, the fancy Western-style shopping center on Gorkova where the "fast" internet cafe is located, and had just begun my trek back to The London School when an SUV with tinted windows pulled alongside of me and began honking. Now, in general, when a strange SUV with tinted windows pulls alongside of you and starts honking, the best thing to do is to ignore it, which is what I did. Then its window rolled down, and one of my students (er, former student; he's studying with Katy this month) appeared, leaning over, shouting, "Jane! Jane! Hello!" At which point he rear-ended the Mercedes in front of him. Yes ladies and gentlemen, I caused a guy to wreck his car. Luckily it wasn't serious, and he seemed more amused by it than anything else. He also told me that any time I needed a ride to give him a call. Because after seeing him wreck his car, getting into said car is exactly what I want to do.
Later that day, I went to my class at the embassy. Sort of. See, of the last four scheduled lessons at the embassy, one fell on Presidents' Day (woohoo for American holidays at the American Embassy!) and my one student was sick on the other three. And instead of phoning The London School to say that there would be no lesson, I discovered this each time after arriving at the embassy and going through the whole security rigmarole. Sigh. However, as this means less work for me, I'm not really complaining. Thursday was beutiful, so I decided to walk most of the way back to the school instead of calling a taxi; I think the school's staff thought I was insane for doing so!
I'll leave you with a small article on whether or not Kyrgyzstan should switch from Cyrillic to the Roman alphabet, and an article on a song contest against the US base at Manas Airport. Enjoy!
3 comments:
Oh how bizarre! I left 2 1/2 years ago and I can't picture where Gorkovo is! Tashrabat is new, yeah? Weird. I knew every street town.
Ah well. I'll enjoy reading your blog, for sure!
Poka!
I was walking with a friend in Korea back in 2002 when something similar happened to us.
A guy driving a fish tank truck plowed into the driver in front of him because he was gawking and screaming "Hello!" out of his window at us. The tank sloshed in the accident, and the poor little fishies were all flopping around in the road.
She and I ran away as quickly as possible.
Mamashift - Tashrabat seems pretty new. I don't know if the (also new) Vefa Center was here when you were, but it's on the corner of Sovietskaya and Gorkova, and Tashrabat is located on G. a couple blocks to the east.
W. Shedd - I met Elena the other day - just by chance. She came for her level placement interview on a day when I'd switched with a coworker. I hadn't been scheduled to itnerview her, but then I did... Sadly, she won't be in any of my classes as I teach the lower levels.
Gwen - Oh my god! I would totally have run away too. Poor fishies.
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