Volunteering at American Corner

The American Corner Dushanbe is a house sponsored by the U.S. embassy full of all things related to the U.S.

AC front desk

It's staffed by a local director and lots of local volunteers--with some American volunteers too. They have a room devoted to study in the U.S.:

a library:

a lounge where people play chess, strum a guitar, or sit and chat; and a big upstairs classroom:

Omeed, a student from Boston College here on a study abroad semester to learn Persian, volunteers to teach TOEFL prep

Every afternoon between 1 and 5 they try to schedule different classes, from Current Events to Grammar to Karaoke to HTML.

This month we decided to give a series of talks on American Family Life.

Today was our opening talk: Dating and Marriage in the U.S. - our personal story plus some statistics and comments about whether we're typical or not.

Next week: how to stay happily married for 34 years.

I must say--working on the talk together provided some anecdotes for managing conflict  :-)
K: "They won't understand if you say it that way."
L: "I prefer using my normal authentic words"

K: "But..."