Everyone Likes a Nice View

School began on Thursday. For those of us who aren't living in Azerbaijan, let me tell you what that means. It means that I arrived at 8:45am for an assembly I was told would begin at 9pm. As the crowd got larger and larger, I slowly moved closer and closer to the side of the building to stay in the ever-reducing shade. At 10:30 the assembly celebrating 'Knowledge Day' began and ended with two first graders ringing bells to open the school.

After the new school year was inaugurated the adorable first graders were ushered through the doors, followed by a mass of people clogging those doors preventing anyone else from entering. 30 minutes later I successfully found myself inside, only to think: 'I have absolutely no clue why I'm here, or what I'm doing'. Aimlessly I walked the halls; no one was in class, no one was in the teacher's room. And no one seemed to have any clue of the schedule.

In fact the schedule made its first appearence the next day. A massive, graphite-smudged, hand-written anachronism; its existence embodying the very argument for Excel. I jockeyed between burley Xanims to copy down my two counterparts schedules, in hopes of figuring out some compromise that would allow me to work with both of them. At this point Tamilla entered and encouraged me not to worry too much because the whole thing would change in a few days. We probably wouldn't see a stable schedule for at least a few weeks.

Thanks Tamilla, what a relief.

But this is the way of things in this country, and this is the way of one's service in this country. Beginnings are slow, changes (to your plan) frequent, and progress gradual. We are warned not to become discouraged and continue on this gradual slope of presumed improvement. Honestly, its not a bad perspective to bring back to the United States. And as frustrating as this incremental progress is, there are certain moments when you are able to step back and see progress being made, a little overlook on your mountain path to show how far you've come. These moments get me a little more excited than an American should get.

I just had one of these moments yesterday with our region's English Methodist, who is responsible for English Education in Xachmaz. We've been meeting throughout the summer discussing an idea for monthly trainings for English teachers on interactive methods. But at the end of this meeting I could see it happening. We had our first one scheduled-October 1st, we had the plan for the second one as well. We even had found another teacher who wanted to help with these, allowing me to broach the idea to him that this could continue after I had left Azerbaijan.

I left this meeting nearly giddy with excitement. 'It's actually happening,' I thought, 'teacher training and training the trainers is actually going to occur in my service'. This summer I'd often stop and wonder if I was bluffing myself, if I was telling myself I was focusing on teacher training simply because I was lazy and disinterested in classroom teaching. Then a meeting like this happens, a brief little plateau in my gradual climb that allows me to look back and see that I actually am headed in the right direction and have come quite a ways.