My last week here in Uzbekistan has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. I have been doing a workshop on overcoming test anxiety for the US Embassy’s American Center in Tashkent. The students have been fun to work with and it is much less stressful to work through the Embassy rather than an Uzbek university. Also, we held it in the American Councils on International Education office in central Tashkent which allowed me to make some new connections there.

Last weekend, I got the chance to travel to Samarkand, one of the beautiful silk road cities in Uzbekistan. A friend of mine was getting married and invited me to her wedding. I’ve received many invites to Uzbek wedding over the years, but for one reason or another, I have never attended before now. However, Malika is a good friend and I was excited that her wedding was taking place while I was in Uzbekistan.

For those who don’t know, Uzbek weddings are a THING. They are huge and extravagant and all about show. This wedding had over 350 guests. I will say more about the wedding and include lots of photos further down in this post.

It was the worst of times…

But before I get to that, I need to share some unfortunate news I received shortly after I arrived in Samarkand. I am renting and Airbnb in Tashkent and the property manager called my friend to tell him that a fire had broken out in the apartment. She didn’t have any more details at that point, only that the firefighters were there and she was heading over to find out the situation.

I did my best to use my mindfulness skills to focus on enjoying dinner with friends in Samarkand I hadn’t seen since my last visit, and not let myself worry too much about a situation that was completely beyond my control. About halfway through dinner I received this video she took of the apartment immediately after the firefighters let her into the apartment.

Thank God I was not at home at the time. Since I was away for the weekend I also had my passport with me, some clothes, my good jewelry, all my money, my iPad, and a special Uzbek dress I had made from vintage silk that was gifted to me by my friend’s mother. My laptop however was in the apartment on the kitchen counter very near to where the fire occurred. Sadly, it sustained extensive water damage and is likely destroyed. I hope that when I get back to the States I will be able to retrieve the data off the hard drive. Thankfully I had already entered all my dissertation data and backed it up to the cloud so I did not lose any of my dissertation related work.

Many of my clothes, shoes, and my luggage sustained smoke or water damage. I spent days washing and rewashing all my clothes. The owner of the apartment has been great and immediately moved me to another apartment she has that wasn’t rented out right now. She also had my luggage professionally cleaned. She couldn’t find anyone that was willing to try to clean my shoes so i will bag them up and bring them home with me in the hopes I can find a place that knows how to clean them. Now that I’m over the initial stress of the situation, I’m grateful that things weren’t worse. I’m fine, my data is fine, and most of my clothes are actually okay.

So let’s get back to a happier subject, the Uzbek wedding…

My friend’s wedding was quite the extravaganza. It was loud, it was golden, it was so very Uzbek. I loved it. There were women dressed as angels welcoming you into the venue along with a string quartet. They were flowers everywhere you looked and the table setting did not disappoint. Malika looked gorgeous. They had a somsa making station and the waiters hovered over us ready to refill our vodka glasses the moment we set them down. It was a fun evening seeing Malika and her family and making myself look like a fool trying to learn how to dance to Uzbek music. I had a great time.

As I am writing this last post, sitting in my apartment, luggage packed and waiting by the door, I am filled with gratitude for all the people who have made this a success despite all the challenges. Thank you.

I love you all.

Our last week of the treatment phase of the project was the week of May 15th. Things went more smoothly this week. The teachers all showed up for their classes (yay!) but student attendance was low. It feels like everyone is just ready for the end of the school year. Students have 2 more weeks before they have to take their end of year exams but it feels like the students and teachers alike are done. We pushed through and tried to include some fun activities for this last week. We read Fox in Sox aloud in the reading classes so the students could practice pronunciation. In the Listening and Speaking classes we played Pictionary which the students really seemed to enjoy.

The 5th and final week was post treatment data collection. We repeated all the same measurements that we did the week prior to starting the 4 weeks of mindfulness training. One of the problems that I was thinking about this week was attrition. Attendance among the students in these final weeks was low, as I noted in the previous paragraph. This was an issue for the post data collection so I contacted the Dean’s assistant and asked her if she could “encourage” the students to attend their classes this week. This turned out to be a good strategy as most of the students were in class at least one of the three days of the week so we were able to get their post-test data collected. As soon as we had the data, my research assistant and i sat down and immediately starting entering everything into an Excel spreadsheet, which automatically backs up to the cloud when I save it. This turned out to be a fortuitous choice, as you will realize after reading my next blog post.

I also presented at a conference hosted by the university during this last week. The conference was on innovations in Foreign Language teaching and included two local faculty members, one woman from India who presented via Zoom, one English Language Fellow, and myself. One common theme here at conferences is that presenters generally disregard any time guidelines and end up running way over time. I was presenting last and was pleasantly surprised when we only ended up 30 minutes over the scheduled time when it came my turn to present.

Finally, I was happy to be able to meet our FLEX exchange student from last year here in Tashkent to celebrate his birthday with him. I have not seen him in about a year, since he left Minnesota to return to Uzbekistan in June 2022. We enjoyed a lovely dinner at one of my favorite places here in Tashkent (Cafe Kafe, which I recently learned has been renamed Kafe Loft).

I’m taking a little side trip now to introduce you to one of Uzbek custom that I find endearing. Hospitality is an important value within Uzbek culture. They are so welcoming to guests, too much so, at times. I have received more invitations to dinners and even weddings for people I barely even know. But still, it definintely makes you feel special and important. One way this hospitality manifests is in the giving of gifts. Every time I’ve been in Uzbekistan for some type of project, I’ve received some lovely gifts.

One of my favorite gifts is a beautiful platter I received from a school principal in Bukhara after conducting a training there in 2019, which is now hanging on my living room wall. Every time I conduct a training or present at a conference, I receive some type of gift, most often it is some type of traditional Uzbek item such as fabric, silk scarves, jewelry or ceramics.

I treasure these items because each one reminds me of a person I’ve met or event that I’ve attended.

So far on this trip I have received two scarves, two different traditional fabrics, a green and gold chapan (the “bathrobe” like item in my previous blog post), and shorter red and white chapan, a shoulder bag made of traditional fabric, a tote bag, a ceramic plate, a necklace made by my friend’s daughter-in-law, a silver and turquoise necklace and earring set.

This week started off with Tullo and I entering all the pretreatment data into an excel spreadsheet so that I will have less work to do at the end of my data collection phase. We also prepped some activities to use in the classes this week. For the Reading courses we found a Mad Lib based on the Gettysburg Address which we thought would be a fun activities for the students. We printed out copies of the actual Gettysburg Address to use in class along with the Mad Lib. Mad Libs are a fun way to practice grammar and vocabulary with students and I have to admit that doing them brings me back to my childhood. In elementary school I had a long bus ride home after school and somedays a few friends and I would be lucky to have a book of Mad Libs to entertain ourselves. I still love doing them.

We also prepared a lyrics sheet for the song Love Yourself by Justin Bieber to use with the students in the Speaking & Listening classes on Friday.Last week one of the teachers in one of the speaking classes had the students sing along with a song from the moive Titanic, which many of the students knew. After that activity we told all the classes that we would prepare a song-related activity for them. Tullo found the lyrics online and them systematically removed key words or phrases and replaced them with blanks for the students to fill in as they listened.

Thursday morning we were all set to go to class. Before I could send my customary text to the Dean’s assistant asking for the room assignments for the day, she messaged me to say that there would be no classes today. I didn’t fully understand what happened, but she said they had to close campus and cancel classes because they had to “disinfect” the building. I’m hoping that was a translation issue and not that they really had some kind of issue. In any case, I missed an entire day of my treatment phase because of this.

By Friday they were back to business as usual and we were able to do the Reading activity along with the planned midnfulness or study skills treatments in the classes. We saved the song for Saturday, which was good because niether of the Speaking teachers showed up for their classes again, just like last week. We ended up teaching about 45 minutes of each 80 minute session and then just allowed the students to work on other things for the remainder of the period.

This is my 4th project here in Uzbekistan in as many years and I have to say that this has been by far the most challenging. The research itself is A LOT that I am managing between all the data collection and the interventions I am exhausted by the end of each day, as is my research assistant. Having to figure out every day which classroom to go to and then also having unpredictable teachers, it has been a lot to manage, almost too much. Honestly, if I did not have such a reliable and knowledgeable research assistant helping me manage everything, there is really no way I could get this all accomplished. I’m so grateful to him and also the other friends that I have here who are all pitching in to help me be successful. From helping me get copies made at the last minute because schedules changed, to taking me to the bazaar to buy strawberries just to perk up my mood, or inviting me over for dinner so I can have a delicious home cooked meal. I’m grateful for it all.

Of course my family back home has also been amazingly supportive, both by talking with me when I’m struggling and also understanding when I’m so exhuasted that I can’t even manage a video call some days.

Only one more week of the treatment phase and then I will do my post-treatment data collection. I’m so much looking forward to wrapping this up and just being able to analyze my data and see what it shows.

We returned to regular classes on Wednesday, April 26th but the 2nd year students have practicum on Wednesdays and no classes so our first day of week was Thursday. We had a few students who were missing the pretest data because they were absent the previous week so before starting the intervention phase of the study, we collected any missing data that we could.

That took about 30 minutes of class time and then I moved into the treatment phase for each class. In one class I spent 15 minutes introducing mindfulness. In a second class we covered an introduction to study skills. The third class is a control control group so I spent the same amount of time just speaking in English with them about the topic for the day, which was health and fitness.

Friday of this week was a very busy day for me. At 10am in the morning, before going to the univeristy for my research, I went to a private school that a friend of my now teaches at to conduct a fculty training in socio-emotional learning with the teachers. This was actually the highlight of the day for me. The teachers were so engaged and interactive. We had a great discussion about stress and relaxation and how to handle various emotional difficulties in the classroom. It was a wonderful group and reminded me of why I love teaching so much. While I truly do enjoy working directly with students, over the years I’ve realized that I find working with faculty is even more rewarding for me.

Immediately after this workshop I headed over to Westminster University to present a survey that I conducted here last year as part of a project for one of my graduate courses. I collaborated on it with a local English professor from Djizak Pedagogical Institute, Azizbek, my dissertation advisor, Ximena, and my friend and research assistant here in Tahskent, Tullo. Azizbek submitted a proposal to present our research at the 4th International Conference on Education and Linguistics (ICEL) which was accepted. Our presentaiton time was Noon-1pm. I was happy to be in Tashkent and able to present for this conference with him but it did make for a hectic day.

While I was presenting, Tullo was talking with the teachers of the Speaking & Listening classes that we were working with that afternoon. Apparently one of the teacher’s mother was ill and in the hospital so she couldn’t come teach her classes today and the other teacher was busy planning her son’s wedding and wasn’t sure she could cover both of the classes. The teachers asked if I could teach the three 80-minute speaking courses by myself that afternoon. Oh, and they also said that the first class was starting today at 12:50 instead of 2:20 as is the regular schedule for Fridays.

Now, I may be an experienced faculty member, but I do NOT teach English. Just before I had to go into my presentation, Tullo called to tell me what was going on and ask how I wanted to handle it. If we couldn’t teach the full classes, the only other option was to cancel classes and I would lose a day of data collection. Lucky for me, Tullo is an experienced English teacher, so he came up with a plan while I went ahead with my presentaion. Immediately after I finished presenting, he picked me up in a taxi and we headed to the university. It turns out that they were not starting early so we actually arrived about an hour early instead of 15 minutes late so that helped take some of the pressure off. We got through the day but we were both understandably exhausted by the time we fininshed. Still, I was able to meet with all three of my groups and didn’t have to miss a day of the intervention so it was worth it.

Saturday was basically the same as neither teacher was able to be there to teach. This time Tullo and I had more time to prepare for it so we had a lesson planned. Attendance was lower than normal but those who were there for class seemed more engaged. We did decide to end each class early. We only kept them for about 60 of the scheduled 80 minute block but we made sure to cover the same content in each class (with the exception of my research portion that is different for each group) and end after the same amount of time. We also made the decision to let the teachers know that we would not be able to cover classes for them again. Hopefully this won’t happen any more.

Last weekend was Eid and the univeristy was closed for 4 days so that students could travel home to celebrate with their families. I decided to take advantage of the break and take an impromtu trip to Baku, Azerbajian with my friend. It was an easy 3 hour direct flight from Tashkent to Baku and I was able to get an evisa online in just a few hours.

We arrived in the morning and decided to start with breakfast at a little cafe in the old city called Çay Bağı 145 (Tea Garden) which has a great view of the city from their rooftop terrace. Unfortunately the terrace was full when we arrived and without a reservation we could only get a table on the outdoor patio, which was still lovely. The food was a set breakfast and was far too much for us but we ate so much that we didn’t need any lunch.

After lunch we took a walk along the boardwalk with the Caspian Sea. Even though it was a hot day, the water was still far too cold to swim, not to mention the fact that the water was nasty looking and had a smelly geen slime on the top of it along the shore line.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the old city and seeing the sites. It was so much different than I expected. The old city has a beautiful old workd Eurpoean charm with classic brick buildings with wrought iron balconies and window boxes. We wandered aournd the old city taking photos of streets, balconies, and interesting doors. We found our way to the wall of the old city and wound our way up to visit the UNESCO world heritage site of Shirvanshah’s Palace.

On our second day we rode the funicular up to the Flame towers and explored a nearby park with a scenic view of the city. The park had a very post-Soviet feel to it that I haven’t noticed much in Tashkent.

Finally, since we had an afternoon flight back to Tahskent, we spent the morning of our third day exploring a local bazaar. We even treated ourselves to some saffron to bring home. We bought 5 grams in this cute tin for about $15.

Our final stop was the iconic Heydar Aliyev Center designed by Zaha Hadid, which is in the background of the cover photo for this post.

I wanted to give you all a quick update on the situation with the older male Reading and Writing teacher who insisted that I attend his 3rd year course on Friday. Each morning I contact the Dean’s assistant to ask for the classroom assignments for the courses I will be visiting that day. The classrooms are not fixed and seem to each each day. So on Friday morning I sent my message asking which classroom I needed to go to for the 2nd year Speaking and Listening class that afternoon. She responded that Mr. so-and-so would meet me on the 9th floor. I recognized this as the male teachers from the previous day and reiterated to the assistant that I was NOT going to this man’s 3rd year course but needed to be with the 2nd year Speaking class as we had scheduled. I asked again which room that class would be in. She responded with room 905.

When I arrived at the university, I found that the elevator was out of service. Two female students had gotten stuck in the elevator between floors and workers were called to get them out. Thankfully that didn’t happen with me in it as I would have struggled to stay calm in such as situation. Oh, and did I mention it was about 87*F this day and the univeristy is NOT air conditioned?

So I climbed up the 9 flights of stairs, in high heals no less, only to find that in room 905 was none other than… that’s right, the 3rd year Reading class. I was livid. The teacher saw us (me and my RA, Tullo) peek in the room and immediately came out to great us. As he came toward me, his arm outstretched to place around me back and lead me into the room, I took a giant step back, to make space between us and just said, “No.” I immediately turned on my heels and walked away from him, leaving poor Tullo sending there to explain to the teacher what had just happened. Meanwhile, I call the Dean’s assistant again asking her for the correct room for the 2nd year speaking class. She must have heard the irritation in my voice because not 2 minutes later the Speaking teacher came up the stairs to get me and bring me down to the 2nd floor to join her class.

The rest of the day went smoothly but it will be interesting on Thursday when I go back into that guy’s 2nd year Reading class. I know that this was a strong response, but I felt it was essential to set a clear boundary right now in the beginning that my schedule cannot be changed like this without my consent. My project requires a precise schedule which was established between myself, the Dean, and the participating teachers, prior to starting the research. It is not flexible. I have been clear with everyone on this but also have offered to attend other classes or conduct workshops at times that do not conflict with the three research groups.

Table setting at Loza Art cafe in Tashkent.

Connecting…

My first week back in Tashkent has been a whirlwind. I’ve been able to spend time reconnecting with friends and also setting the groundwork for my data collection. My first full day here I went to the univeristy and met with the Dean of the Foreign Languages department. He welcomed me warmly and offered any support that I needed to conduct my research project. His assistant also introduced me to each of the 2nd year English teachers who had previously been identified as having their classes participate in the project. We had only one misstep, which occured when the assistant brought us to the wrong room for the first class and we were halfway through explaining the project before she realized this was the wrong class. I politely apologized for the mistake and when some of the students expressed their dissappointment about not participating I offered to come back to just visit their class when my schedule allowed.

Once we sorted that out and went to the correct room everything went smoothly. I will be working with 3 sections of 2nd year english students. I will be partnering with their teachers for the Reading & Writing class once a week and their Speaking and Listening class twice a week. That’s 3 meetings a week for 80 minutes each time. I was able to give out the consent forms on this first day and discuss a plan for collecting my pretreatment data with the teachers. Every teacher was again enthususiatic about participating in the project. They were more than happy to accommodate my requests to conduct reading and speaking assessments with the students in classes after they return from the Eid holiday.

After spending the first day meeting with the Dean and faculty and introducing myself to the classes I will be working in, my research assistant (more on him in a later post) and I returned the next day to administer the pre-treatment stress and midnfulness questionaire. We went back yesterday to conduct the reading and speaking assessments. It has been an a busy and exhuasting week but at this point I am feeling really good about where we are at with the project.

A few more observations for those of you unfamilar with what it is like to work here in Uzbekistan as a Westerner. First, one of the challenges is getting information about logistics. Each morning I message the Dean’s assistant and ask her which rooms I need to go to for each class, as they are not always the same each day for each class. This was evident when even she took us to the wrong room at first. Also, I’ve asked the teachers to share with me their lesson plan or topic outline for the next few weeks so that I can work with them to plan activities in class. Generally speaking, they don’t have much of a plan. Yesterday, the first class I went into the teachers (they team teach) had no lesson planned. They just assumed that I would take up the entire 80 minute block. Given all the assessments I needed to conduct it ended up working out fine, but I tried to explain again to them that I am there to help them in class but didn’t intend to teach the entire block myself. I’m not an English teacher.

Another challenge comes from working in a strongly patriarchal system. One of the teachers I’m working with is an older, Russian speaking man, who is a senior faculty member. He told me (yes told, not asked) that today I should come to his 3rd year class in the afternoon because those students were excited to work with me and would be more impressive (yes, impressing people is a thing here) to me given their higher level of English. I inquired as to what time this class met and it directly conflicted with the Speaking class I am working with for my research. I told him that was not possible as I needed to be in the 2nd year Speaking class on Fridays at that time. His response was, “No problem, I will speak with the Dean’s assistant and get your schedule changed so you can come to my 3rd year Reading class instead.” I quite sternly told him NO. I have set a specific schedule for my project and it is not possible for me to change this. I then offered to meet with his other students at a different time that did not conflict with one of the classes that I am conducting my research with. He frowned and told me I was “too serious” today. (Where is the eye roll emoji?). On a better note, the two female Reading and Writing teachers for the other sections are a joy to work with and so responsive and helpful.

Reconnecting…

In the time between prepping materials and being at the university, I’ve been able to reconnect with some of my friends here in Tashkent. I had dinner with my amazing friend Shakhina who has been working with the UNDP Women’s Development program and conducting women’s leaderhip courses for young women through the US Embassy here.

I celebrated Iftar at the home of my friend, Zulfiya. She worked for the Ministry of Public Education back in 2019 and was assigned to work with me as the project coordinator on my Fulbright grant. She is now teaching English to primary students at a recently opened Canadian international school. Uzbeks have a tradition of giving gifts to guests and though I’ve known Zulfiya for years now, she presented me with a beautilful green and gold chapan (see the photo below). I’m planning to wear this to a conference I am presenting at next week.

I was also contacted my a psychology faculty member who attended my active learning workshop in 2021. She invited me to present my work on mindfulness and stress at a conference this week. YES, that’s right, this week. I had only a few days to prepare but that is typical here in Uzbekistan. Luckily for me I know this topic well and could pull slides together from other presentations I’ve given in the past. She picked me up at my apartment and took me to have plov (a traditional rice pilaf…see previous blog post from 2019 for more on plov). After lunch I gave a 20 minute presentation to students and faculty in the psychology and education programs and answered questions for about another 10 minutes. They also presented me with a gift (red and white short chapon and traditional Uzbek jewlery) and a certificate.

Now that I’m settled in and feel like I’m off to a good start, I will try to make a few blog entries a week so you can all follow along with my progress. Stay tuned…