Monday: Crisis averted…

English Week 2007
From 26 March to 30 March, we are celebrating English Week at Katie’s school. Now don’t worry. You didn’t get your dates mixed up. This is NOT an internationally recognized week of English. It’s just a week where activities in English are planned for the English students. The project was started by Katie and her counterpart, with some limited brainstorming contributions from yours truly. However, when Katie had to leave suddenly, we agreed that I would take over for Katie and help organize and participate in a different activity every day.
From LtoR: Ray, Juliet, Katie's counterpart, guest from Mjaft, guest from Prefektur (former teacher)

Monday (go figure) was the kick-off of our English week. The focus was Life Skills. The plan was to have a panel of guest speakers talk about a variety of topics in English. The original plan was to have two guests from Mjaft, an Albanian youth activist group, Benedikt, a German who manages two local banks, David and his family, and one volunteers from the Peace Corps working in the Berat area. The goal was to expose the students to a wide variety of community members who use English daily. We also wanted to briefly introduce the students to the ideas of activism and debate, personal finance and money management, and volunteering and civil society. So that was the plan.

Glitch One: Wednesday David informs me that he is unable to attend due to an unexpected but important meeting with new regional director of his organization. This wasn’t a problem. We had too many speakers. One less just gave more time to the others.
Glitch Two: I didn’t want to be on the panel. Remember, I’m shy. Plus I had to take pictures, the specific request of Katie. I warned Juliet that she might be called upon to talk for about 5-10 minutes on the topic of volunteering.
Glitch Three: Sunday was Daylight Savings Time for us. Guess where this is going. I remembered to change my phone and everything went fine on Sunday. However, I failed to change my alarm clock. When I got up at 7:30 AM to be ready for the presentations at 10:00 AM, I actually got up at 8:30AM. Man I despise Daylight Savings. Ok, no worries. I was able ready in that amount of time.
Glitch Four: Just as I am about to start shaving (gotta look so fresh and so clean, clean), Benedikt calls at 9:00. He is unable to attend due to an unannounced inspection/audit at his bank. Plus he was unable to borrow a projector (which I wanted to use for Tuesday). I call David to double check his availability. No luck. I call Juliet and tell her that I do need her to present. I tried to call Katie’s counterpart but she was teaching and didn’t answer her phone.
Glitch Five: I arrive at the Cultural Center at 9:40. No one is there. It’s twenty minutes before show time and I am locked out of the room, standing alone, and short a main speaker. Mentally I wish that something major comes up and we have to scrap the whole thing.
Glitch Six: Katie’s counterpart arrives and informs me that one of the speakers from Mjaft isn’t able to come. I tell her that Benedikt cancelled too. A horrible sinking feeling starts to set in.
With about five minutes to the scheduled start time, I see Juliet get off the bus and jogging over to the Cultural Center. Now at least if the presentations are a bust, I have Juliet to share it with. As I am talking to Juliet, I see Ray walking from a café. I ask him if he would also be on the panel to discuss volunteering. At 10:15 everyone is in the meeting room ready to begin. The panel is comprised of Katie’s counterpart, one woman from Mjaft, one woman from regional government office who was a former English teacher at the school (she was added to the panel fifteen minutes before it started), Juliet (added to the panel forty-five minutes before) and Ray (added ten minutes before the start time).
The impromptu panel proved to be a huge success. The students were attentive and engaged. Several asked questions and reflected on the topics presented. The students were very intrigued by some of Juliet’s previous work and volunteering experience, especially working with convicted criminals.

Afterward, Ray, Juliet, and I went to lunch. Ray and I discussed Tuesday’s Technology Day, crafting a plan to teach basic computer instruction to the senior English students. Juliet then accompanied me to Monday’s usual Vocab session at the school. The students didn’t have their handouts so we worked on whatever came to my head. We also talked about the topics presented in the Life Skills discussion. Again, the students were responsive and receptive. We even talked about some activities for Earth Day.

At the end of the day Monday, I was exhausted. Despite our best efforts, many things went wrong. However, through the efforts and willingness of others, the day was saved.

English Week: Monday = Success!!!