Days 456 Turkmenistan

On Tuesday we finally arrived in Turkmenistan after quite a bit of flying. We arrived at midnight and awoke early on Wednesday to begin our program. On Wednesday we had the opportunity to teach the TAG (Tech Age Girls) Advanced Powerpoint and Photoshop. The girls worked really hard and loved the lessons. I will post our pictures with them on this blog. They were the best students I have ever hadand they produced great results. Wednesday was fun with a lot of driving around. We found out that seatbelts are not quite as popular in Turkmenistan as they are in the United States. Actually it seems to offend some cab drivers if you put it on. Gas is apparantly very cheap here so taxi is the cheapest way to get around. It is also interesting that every car is a taxi. We played some Turkmenistan basketball last night and it was a lot of fun. We had the traditional watermelon at halftime. It is very hot with no humidity here. Mehri said that it was about 135 degrees the other day. We find that hard to believe but I'm sure she is correct.

Today (Thursday) we woke up and had a nice breakfast at the hotel. Then we went to meet our on-line forum participants from this school year. We were very excited to meet them and show them our documentary, "The Road to Turkmenistan". They really enjoyed the fim and can't wait until next week when we work with them and show them how to use iMovie and Garageband. Life in Turkmenistan is very interesting. The people are very nice and the buildings are very beautiful and unlike anything we have ever seen. Kenny and Anna are both doing such a wonderful job teaching and they are like quasi-celebreties here. The Turkmen kids adore them and it is very neat to see. Well, we are off to lunch with some Turkmenistan teachers and then later on today we will be teaching effective lesson planning and the integration of technology into lessons to a group of teachers from Turkmenistan. I hope to get internet access again soon. It is tricky here.