Exam 3 and more commute video

We have our third exam tomorrow, and we’ve tried to make it shorter. At the end of the last exam, I had to physically take exam papers from some students because the time was up—and we’d even given extra time. So, hopefully they’re prepared to be done when they need to be done this time around. We’ve been blazing through information lately, though, and while Mary and I think the exam is pretty easy, we kind of thought that about the last exam as well. I was about at the end of my rope this morning—we decided to give an open book quiz on the bond math I’d presented Wednesday, broken down into very digestible steps. Well, during the quiz there was quite a bit of chatting—they love to share information. And some students who were stumped just refused to open their books to find the information. “Open your book and look for the answer!” I implored as they just sat there with a blank space on their quiz. “Why won’t you just open your book and look for the answer—the book explains it!” It was just confounding. I collected the quiz and redistributed it for grading…but there were some shenanigans whereby people were swapping papers and allowing the owner to change answers or just putting answers in for people—so though they were doing an awful job of answering my questions orally, the scores were very high. So we just didn’t record them. At the end of the day, we did a review for the exam and that’s when it sunk in just how much information we’d covered. Since their last exam (last Saturday), we’ve covered chapters 11 and 14-18. That’s pretty quick, even if these were all native English speakers. After class, N and K were milling around outside. K said, “Tonight we study, but you only rest—because tomorrow, we will be cheat, and you will be patrolling us.” We’re becoming regulars at the bakery a few blocks away near the Iranian restaurant. They make these mini pies I’m quite fond of in apricot, cherry, and apple. I’ve not tried the apple, but the cherry is excellent. I bought four this afternoon, but ended up giving them all away to W, W, R, and D. But I had one left over in the fridge from the day before. We also bought candy bars for the students—an established a tradition for test days. I tried to take some “interview” footage of some of the students today. Most kind of gave some pat “thank you USA for your help.” I’m unsure of the extent to which they really feel this sentiment—I mean, I know they’re appreciative of the accounting course and all, but in a larger sense… It is very common here, considered polite, perhaps, to tell people what you think they want to hear. That’s one issue westerners will run into when trying to work with the locals. You come to an agreement about when something will be done, then it doesn’t get done and the person says, “Oh, yes we’re working on that and it will get done soon.” So then you press for a time that it will be done by—and they will tell you “tomorrow” or whatever they think you want to hear. Regarding IT infrastructure here, there ain’t much. Cell phones are everywhere, that's one thing they do have going. I don’t have the impression that the students are super familiar with using a computer though—of course there are a few who are. But, in a group of 30 university graduates I think there are probably 5 to 10 who own a computer. We’re in the ritzy part of town and D (often referred to as “Engineer D”) has a buddy at the power company, so that ensures us pretty regularly functioning electricity. I think most people get 2-3 hours of electricity from the grid, so many use diesel generators, which contributes to the awful air quality! I don’t think there is a city sewage system—a nice place will have its own septic tank, otherwise hopefully it rains soon to wash out those deep gutters at the side of the road...but to where? The Kabul River, I suspect. Check out some additional footage of our commute—this time heading home from the university: