General update
I need to update more often, I think.
The end of a very long summer vacation is coming to an end and i'm headed back to Kabul shortly. I was teaching in the Masters of Eduction program for the last year and I loved it. The students were from teacher colleges from all over the country and I enjoyed teaching the more typical/average students. Normal AUAF students tend to be the elite in one fashion or another because of the high level English requirements and the expensive tuition (although we do give as many scholarships as we can.)
Despite the fact that it was funded for 3 years by the World Bank, the funding (or something) seems to have disappeared (or something) and so the MA program is on hiatus until maybe January. If this makes no sense to you, that's not unreasonable. However, it's Afghanistan, and things make more sense in that context. So for next semester, I'll presumably be teaching in the English undergrad department.
The fun things of the summer have been gaming lots (NWRE, NCRE, and National), in addition to Seattle, Olympia, Tri-Cities, & Portland/Vancouver games. I'm quite enjoying all my characters.
NCRE & National were one week apart, so I spent the in-between week visiting Brittan (housemate my first year in Afghanistan) & Kim (college roommate) in Washington DC. It was great to catch up with them. The other highlight of the trip was touring the east wing of the white house because Brittan's husband works for the national security council and this is able to give private tours of the west wing (after proper security clearances and several weeks advance notification.)
I've also been doing krav maga very dutifully and having lots of fun with that--aside from the 6 weeks off when I broke my toe at the very beginning of the summer. (THAT was frustrating!!!) I went back after 6 weeks and was just super careful about doing anything.
Over the last school year (and a bit longer), I've taken to rewatching Star Trek. I decided to do so because I have only seen TOS & TNG all the way through. I started watching all the others, but never finished because I went off to college or overseas. So I figured I should fix that. Plus I was curious how the shows have held up after ~25 yrs. I've rewatched all of Enterprise, Deep Space 9, and Voyager. I liked them more than I expected to. Watching DS9 from Afghanistan gives you a whole new appreciation for the politics. I think I just might consider DS9 my favorite. Enterprise was fine. Voyager, well, definitely the weakest, but I enjoyed it fine.
The end of a very long summer vacation is coming to an end and i'm headed back to Kabul shortly. I was teaching in the Masters of Eduction program for the last year and I loved it. The students were from teacher colleges from all over the country and I enjoyed teaching the more typical/average students. Normal AUAF students tend to be the elite in one fashion or another because of the high level English requirements and the expensive tuition (although we do give as many scholarships as we can.)
Despite the fact that it was funded for 3 years by the World Bank, the funding (or something) seems to have disappeared (or something) and so the MA program is on hiatus until maybe January. If this makes no sense to you, that's not unreasonable. However, it's Afghanistan, and things make more sense in that context. So for next semester, I'll presumably be teaching in the English undergrad department.
The fun things of the summer have been gaming lots (NWRE, NCRE, and National), in addition to Seattle, Olympia, Tri-Cities, & Portland/Vancouver games. I'm quite enjoying all my characters.
NCRE & National were one week apart, so I spent the in-between week visiting Brittan (housemate my first year in Afghanistan) & Kim (college roommate) in Washington DC. It was great to catch up with them. The other highlight of the trip was touring the east wing of the white house because Brittan's husband works for the national security council and this is able to give private tours of the west wing (after proper security clearances and several weeks advance notification.)
I've also been doing krav maga very dutifully and having lots of fun with that--aside from the 6 weeks off when I broke my toe at the very beginning of the summer. (THAT was frustrating!!!) I went back after 6 weeks and was just super careful about doing anything.
Over the last school year (and a bit longer), I've taken to rewatching Star Trek. I decided to do so because I have only seen TOS & TNG all the way through. I started watching all the others, but never finished because I went off to college or overseas. So I figured I should fix that. Plus I was curious how the shows have held up after ~25 yrs. I've rewatched all of Enterprise, Deep Space 9, and Voyager. I liked them more than I expected to. Watching DS9 from Afghanistan gives you a whole new appreciation for the politics. I think I just might consider DS9 my favorite. Enterprise was fine. Voyager, well, definitely the weakest, but I enjoyed it fine.