With only 6 weeks left before we leave, things are starting to feel real. I’ve been busy with wrapping up my regular fall semester classes. We have one more week and then final exams. I’ve been focused on catching up on grading and preparing my final exams. I’m looking forward to the semester being over so that I can focus exclusively on preparing to leave for Uzbekistan.
The time I have spent preparing, has been mainly on wrapping my head around the details of my project. The woman that I’m working with at the Uzbek Ministry of Education asked me to put together some details on the curriculum. At first I thought she wanted to actual lesson plans and materials so I started to put that together. I sent her an 8 page document with just the first part of the curriculum. It turns out, that wasn’t at all what she needed. She wanted a PowerPoint presentation with an overview of the project. This confused me at first and I had to ask my husband, who works in the corporate world, what exactly a presentation of this nature should include. After a bit of consultation and a weekend of solid work, I had a nice overview of the project. Going through this was a great exercise for me because I had to really think through the timeline and the scope of the project. It was a good exercise for me to go through and one that I likely would have done when I originally applied, if I had applied to do this project. Given my unique situation of applying for one one country but being offered a different one, I had never formally written up this project.
With that presentation sent over the the Ministry and my visa application in process, I decided to take the leap and purchase our plane tickets. For some reason I can’t get the routes I want using a website like Travelocity or Expedia but I can get them directly through the respective airlines. I opted to purchase the flight to Tashkent from London on Uzbek Airlines first. It took me several tries to get to the checkout screen with my tickets because of various errors messages on the page. I finally got there and entered my credit card information only to have the transaction declined. What??? A moment later a got a text message with a fraud alert. Duh! Of course a charge online in Uzbekistan would trigger a fraud alter. Why didn’t I think to call first and let them know about the purchase? One quick phone call and that will be solved but I’m taking the weekend off to relax. I’ll get this all sorted out on Monday.
Experience Fulbright 