To Minsk (Минск) and Beyond!

My First Classes at BSU and other Weekly Happenings!

Thursday was my first official day of teaching at BSU.  When I first arrived at 1 pm (later in the day since I was teaching a 6-9 pm evening class), I had a meeting with Sonya (an English teaching Fulbright student we met in D.C. last July) about a couple of workshops we will do together in the next few weeks, as well as about Jacque and my involvement with the BSU language institute over the next couple months.   

The BSU MBA Office

My test area.

Out front of the building where I will be teaching my MBA class.

The courtyard outside the BSU MBA building.

After the meeting with Sonya, I focused my time on some research in progress (mixed with some class prep) the rest of the afternoon.  I then got a quick dinner at the BSU student cafeteria around 5 pm (I had Belarusian mashed potatoes!), which was described to me as quick and dirt cheap.  It lived up to those expectations (dinner was about $1.25), but I actually found the food to be just fine (I don’t have a very sophisticated palate!)…   

In line with the BSU lunch lady...!

At 6 pm was my first MBA HRM class.  I really didn’t know what to expect in terms of student language ability and class interaction/student involvement, but the class did not disappoint.  Generally speaking, the language ability of the students was very good, and they were definitely very involved with the class activities and discussions.  I think the class went really well and hopefully the students felt the same way.  I arrived home a little before 10 pm that night and was up with Jacque for a little bit as we were winding down and getting ready for bed.  It was a long but good day!

My MBA students during a class activity.

I was up early with the kids Friday morning and worked on more research and a little class preparation.  Around 10:30 Jacque left to take Sara to see an English-speaking doctor to look at her balding spot and sore on the side of her head.  It turns out that it is not what we were thinking, so the doctor took Jacque and Sara over to a specialist to get some tests done and some medicine (she will probably go in for some additional blood tests in the next few days, just to make sure everything is OK).  They got back about 1:30, just in time for me to take off for my lecture at 2 pm.   

BSU set up a special short-term elective course for me to teach undergrad students and unfortunately the turnout was really low for this first session (hopefully there will be a better turnout next week).  It was a fun class though and after that I met with Katrina (BSU director of the Communications department) about Jacque and I getting involved with the language institute.

I then met with Alexander to do more paperwork stuff.  We had to take all of our various documents to Belarus Foreign Ministry to get translated into Russian before the immigration office would accept the documents and grant us temporary residency and a multi-entry visas, so we got that going.  But they told us they wouldn’t accept our marriage license and birth certificates at all until we got an official apostille (international certification) through the various secretaries of state where the official documents were issued.  So we also stopped by the post office to mail those documents back to the U.S., with the appropriate forms so they can get the apostilles and then sent back to us.  It is quite the complicated process and will end up taking a lot of time and costing us a pretty penny (and the way it is looking, my trip to Croatia will almost definitely not happen, as I need a multi-entry visa first... and the Poland trip is in question too... hopefully we can get all of this taken care of quickly so we can at least salvage the trip to Warsaw).   

We finished with that fun stuff in time for me to get home for a yummy dinner Jacque prepared, ice-cream for dessert, and then a slightly late bedtime for the kids.  Jacque and I then spent some time browsing the newly-set-up international satellite channels (part of our monthly rent, but not working until Friday).  There are literally over a thousand channels.  We will likely stick pretty much to CNN and a few channels that have English-speaker cartoons/shows for the kids.  But it will be nice to have some channels to watch from time to time (no Hulu or Netflix here).  Friday was another good day. 

This morning I headed off first thing for my next MBA class (9:00-12:00).  Class went really well this morning and we had some great class discussions.  A lot of the ideas we discussed seemed a bit foreign to the students (employee engagement, employee empowerment, theory Y leadership, leveraging an organization’s human capital capacity, creating a culture of innovation, etc.) so we spent a lot of time on those ideas.  When class was over, I came back home and we have all been enjoying a quiet Saturday afternoon since.   

And here is a cute picture of David, just for fun!