A wee bit ambiguous

We had an interesting experience last week. The University of Artificial Intelligence invited us to attend an international conference that is intended to unite students and universities from all around the world in hopes to learn from each other and to set an example for the students. The Dean of the religious and philosophical faculty wanted me to be there. I met her awhile ago when I was a guest speaker for Victor's class. Her English is not so great but I had the impression that she wanted me to speak at this event. I didn't think to much about it and figured it would be an interesting experience so we told her we would go. The problem however is that I did not know what she was expecting from me. I wrote an article for the University earlier so I figured she wanted me to present that but over the phone she told me she adjusted the article a bit to make it fit better with the book it was published with. So the night before I started preparing a speech that somewhat followed what I wrote about. I would have started preparing earlier but we were not sure if we would be able to go until just before we left for Kiev. I was only able to make a rough outline of that speech and of my article before I was overcome with tiredness and figured I would go with what I got.



When we arrived at the University the next morning I was a bit shocked by the magnitude of the event. We were assigned a few students to translate for us and I was even asked to be briefly interviewed by the local TV station. Later I was told I was on TV but we didn't get to see it. The main conference room was quite big. It held a few hundred people and I wasn't sure if I was speaking then or afterwards. From what I understood there was two parts of the conference. One when everyone was gathered together and then another afterwards where more specific groups had their own sessions. It did end up being that way. The main conference had four main speakers presenting different topics, usually based on research they had done. And then our smaller conference was mostly students presenting their term papers. At this point I wished I would have forced myself to stay up and work on my presentation better because I know that I am not good at just 'winging it.' However, I don't think it went as bad as it could have. I gave a little information about myself and talked briefly about the article I wrote.



For the rest of the week Laurie and I showed her parents the city and had them tag along in all our routine activities with shopping and teaching. Today they left for Poland and will be gone for ten days and then they will be returning back here for another few days. It has been really nice to have them around and be able to share our lives with them. Laurie and her mom also spent a lot of time working in our little garden and we are getting excited about our crop. The apricots are starting to grow and we now have five potato plants, lots of carrots, onions and peas coming and so far just one lone bean plant. Our garden project for this week is to move our tomato plants from the house to the garden. We have 32 tomato plants so if anyone needs tomatoes in a couple of months ... come and get them.