TAIT - Thank allah it's thursday!

Thursday is the last day of our workweek. Typically, Friday and Saturday are off in Afghanistan, but for the course, we have class every day but Friday. So everyone was feeling pretty excited about a day off. Our interpreter, Dr. Jawad, seemed especially tired on Thursday. The guy is typically so chipper that you definitely notice when he’s running low on fuel.

The students spend a lot of time complaining about the pace of the course—they sidetracked Mary for 20 minutes once and I almost came in (from the partitioned off side of the room where we have a couple computers, printer, and eat our lunch) to get “Coach Clark” on them. But they subsided just as I started to get up to go in. “Don’t make me come in there!” The syllabus for the course calls for us to cover 27 chapters in 24 days! I don’t see how educated people who speak English as their first language could handle that, let alone these students who may or may not know English very well.

All the students are graduates of the faculty of economics, but I wonder if they have had a “real” class like this before. If the professors are at all like their uninspired leader (the sitting chancellor), I assume not. We’ve been collecting homework and giving short quizzes each morning to keep people a bit honest. Our first exam was scheduled for Monday (covering chapters 1 to 4), but suddenly we find out that there is some kind of religious holiday the date of which is only announced a few days beforehand and, of course, it’s on Monday. I just received a warden message from the embassy, actually, that this is the 10th of Maharam holiday, also known as “Ashura”, the major holy day of mourning for Muslim Shi’ites and commemorates the deaths of the Prophet’s grandson and his family/followers at Karbala in present-day Iraq. I’m supposed to stay inside.

We’re wondering how hard it will be to get the test translated and also to get the answers we receive in return translated! Our poor Dr. Jawad may be pushed to the breaking point, I’m afraid! He is also working at a clinic in the evening…