Bright and early I rose and headed off to my English class. It was odd to be teaching in the middle of Central Asia, but has long been an aim for this trip. It had been a while since I last taught a group and I found myself even with a few nerves as I walked down Sovietskaya street to the school. Having no idea of what level my students would be at also made it a little daunting for the preparation. Still I reckoned that if I did my usual "let's make English fun" tactic with tons of fun games and activities then it would be a welcome change from their usual grammar-intensive stuff.

At 9 O'clocl my new students filed in and seemed pleasantly surprised that Olga, their usual teacher, had been transformed into a beard-wielding Englishman armed only with a piece of chalk and a blackboard without their dull-looking grammar book. In true TEFL style off I went with my lesson and basically made a fool of myself as I tried to act out the grammar point in story style - but it worked and made for an amusing way to learn the past perfect continuous, whatever that actually is! 2 hours later I'd finished and was finally let go by the inquisitive students on the promise that when I was next in Bishkek I would drop by again. I came out of the class on a real high and strolled back to the centre smiling. Nothing was going to annoy me today, surely. Well only the idiotic man at the post office who didn't know how much it would cost to send a post card and seemed totally unwilling to help me find out.

It had been an astronomically hot morning reaching over 35 degrees by 11am and naturally this turned quickly into a loud and heavy thunderstorm. The temperature dropped quickly and I soon found myself inadequately dressed, so I headed for the nearest cafe to sit and wait while the storm passed. It didn't and I got soaked making my way back to Sabyrbeck's guesthouse for supper.