Day 26 Monday

England has informed me that there is a meeting of all the branch managers this morning, and a few other key individuals of The Bank, and he thinks it would be good for me to attend this meeting. So, I walk down to the bank at about 9:00 and prepare for this meeting--I find out that I am on the agenda. England has asked me to prepare some ideas for advertising the bank, especially to market the launch of our newest branch in Zakatala in April.

The meeting is about many things concerning the operation of the bank, but it is helpful to learn more about the details of the workings of the bank. My portion goes well, although England showed my graphics before I could set them up, so there was some awkward explanation of what we were looking at since it was revealed before I could tell them what they would be seeing, most glaringly, all the text was in English and I made up the names of the clients and their business names. All-in-all not too bad, there was some good discussion about visual concepts and elements of the logo of the bank, which I am encouraging them to review and refresh. 

I apologize about the redaction of certain elements--primarily the name of the firm. I am not sure if this is even necessary, and I’m sure that anyone really trying hard could figure out who I am and the company I will be working for, but for now, I am going to try very hard to keep it more secure. There are a lot of strange things that go on over here that are not very savory to speak about, so I will try to keep things as secure as possible until such time that I am confident I can reveal more. Thanks for understanding...


The meeting is done at 1:00 and I go home for lunch. Beloved and I are back on the sidewalk at 2:00, we have been asked to do some volunteer “listening” at the Training House, listening and evaluating the language skills of some students there--Azerbaijanis that are learning english.


At 2:30 the students start coming in. We have been instructed to explain the directions, then listen to the students interact with each other, two students at a time. “One of you think of an animal. The other student will ask descriptive questions to try to determine what animal the first student is thinking of.” It was exhausting. The students didn’t seem to understand the questions, then didn’t seem to know enough language to accomplish the directions. Oh well, everyone has a bad day from time to time. I’m sure our language skills have a long way to go as well.


It’s funny, when you are surrounded by a language you don’t understand, you can get to the point where it is hard to think or communicate in English! Today was that day! We go to bed early, tired-out in our brains.