July 6, 2009
Yesterday I tried to make a blog post in real time (that is, write it up on the spot instead of copy paste like I usually do) but of course, the connection bombed out on me before the thing was posted and it didn't save. Waste of time. So I will just write down my thought here and post it later:
I mostly wanted to comment on how nice it is when people are nice to you. This weekend I spent some time at a new internet cafe in Osh City. It is a really nice place with cushy office chairs and new computers, and they keep plastic over the keyboards when no one is using the computer. It's not that expensive, either. It is run by these really nice Uzbek guys who speak slowly and clearly and really do seem to appreciate my attempts at speaking, which mostly consists of me speaking Kyrgyz and slightly altering the pronunciation of some words. While I was on the internet, the guys brought out a watermelon, carved it up, and gave everyone in the place a slice on a clear glass plate. It was such a pleasant surprise. Or maybe they are just really smart businessmen, and they know that they have us hooked now and we will be there often.
This weekend, some volunteers got together for a nice little 4th of July celebration. It was a little unorthodox, but we are in Kyrgyzstan, so what can you do? Still, there was cherry pie and deviled eggs, so that made it American enough for us.
Today, I made pizza with my host sister. It was fun, but after we were all done, she told me that she doesn't like cheese. Oooops. The sauce was awesome, despite the crappy Kyrgyz tomato paste that I used, so she just picked off the cheese, which wasn't that hard to do since we didn't have a grater and had to cut the cheese in chunks. We made two pizzas and I almost finished one by myself. My host brother and cousin, who were the only ones home tonight, ate quite a bit, but I don't know if they liked it or not. I think they all might have been waiting for me to go to bed so they could eat some real food. I don't care. I often politely eat their food and then run back to my room and eat peanut butter bread and apricots. Have I mentioned my obsession with apricots? Why didn't I ever eat them in the states? Are they expensive there? Where do they grow them? Maybe I just like them so much because they were the key to once again achieving slightly more regular bowel movements after the fruit and vegetable-less diet in training. Too much information? Too bad.
I must relay a cute story from a few days ago. A frisbee came in a package from home, and when I showed it to my sister and threw it, she got a really funny look on her face and told me in half English that they have a frisbee that my ata had brought from America, but they didn't know what it was at the time. Later, my sister dragged me to the refrigerator, giggling like crazy. Inside, Apa had put a pile of meat on it like a plate. It was hilarious. Of course, later they realized that they had seen people playing frisbee in movies (they recalled a movie they once saw where a dog caught the frisbee in his mouth) but didn't realize it at the time. The frisbee is a hit, and for now I am enjoying feeling like I am more coordinated than everyone else, only because my frisbee throwing skills are the best.. They will probably all catch up to me in a matter of days.
(Update from July 18: My frisbee is gone! It was sitting on a bench inside our compound yesterday, and today I can't find it. My family's frisbee also disappeared. I blame the little boy across the street. He always wears these John Lennon sunglasses, which for some reason makes me think he is a likely suspect.)
July 9, 2009
I don't know why I insist on eating things that make me gag. There is a reason we have a gag reflex, right? This morning my apa gave me a tray of food because she is leaving for the day and locking up the main house. She gave me a big mug full of ayran—a yogurt-y drink that you put sugar in. The last time I had ayran was a few months ago in training, and it made me feel pretty queasy. This batch of ayran seems pretty good, but I can't say that I really like it. Still, I keep eating it. Why? (Note: every time I get served ayran, I start singing in my head “and ayraaaan, ayran so far awaaaay” and it gets stuck for several hours. How annoying.) Last night, the cvet was out (sorry, cvet is electricity. I just think it is a better word, and it is shorter, so I tend to use it all the time now) and we ate dinner in the dark. It was a jumble of boiled potatoes, cabbage, and meat. Usually I am pretty selective about the pieces of meat that I eat, but we were eating by candlelight, so I just grabbed a chunk. I regretted it as soon as I put it in my mouth, because it was obviously a piece of tongue. I know that people eat tongue, but it caught me off guard because it felt exactly like you would expect a sheep tongue to feel. It was a big chunk, so I couldn't exactly spit it out. It took all my strength and effort to swallow the rough-edged chewy chunk. Bleh.
I don't know if I have mentioned it before, but there is one more food here that makes me gag. They are called kooroot and they look like little ping-pong ball sized balls of chalk. Really, they are dried balls of salty yogurt. Sounds tasty, no? People carry them around in their pockets all the time, and are always offering them to me.
On another note, I wanted to talk about language stuff a little bit. I always think it is funny to translate things that people say to me word for word. The question “are you married” for example, is one of my favorite phrases in Kyrgyz. It literally translates to something along the lines of “have you climbed to your life/destiny/fate?” The connotation of the life/destiny/fate part depending, I suppose, on your opinion of marriage. The “climbed” verb is a funny word that relates to going either up or down a mountain (I forget which), either boarding or getting off a marshrutka (again, I forget), or taking a shower.
Peace Corps wanted me to introduce myself to the village government as part of the community entry assignments that they've been giving us to fill up our summer. Luckily for me, the head of the local government and the main secretary came to my school today because my school is a voting site for the upcoming presidential elections. I tried to speak almost entirely in Kyrgyz, and was really disappointed when my counterpart, instead of just helping by translating the few English words that I stuck in there that I didn't know, repeated everything that I just said in more grammatically correct English. I felt pretty stupid.
July 14, 2009
Argh! Not being able to communicate is so frustrating! I am currently waiting for my counterpart to call me so I can go to Uzgen with her and help her with an application online. The problem is, I don't think that she is qualified for the thing she is applying for, not to mention that she definitely won't make the deadline, but I can't seem to get the message across to her. Her English is good, but she is not confident in it, and she is definitely not fluent (a requirement). Most of our conversations are bi-lingual, which often causes problems considering that I have only been speaking Kyrgyz for a few months. We will see how it goes.
Another frustration is that, at long last, I have stomach issues. I seem to be fine now, but it makes me nervous to go to Uzgen where the public toilets are, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook for Central Asia, the worst in the country. I haven't used them yet, but I have also heard testimony from other volunteers, so I'd like to put it off.
The sad thing is is that I think I may have brought the stomach issues on myself by pigging out on American food, of all things, this past weekend when I visited Jalalabad city. How's that for irony? Not much to report about J-bad. It is the third largest city in the country, but it seems considerably smaller than Osh. There are some very nice areas, I saw a nice park, and we ate some excellent pizza by the side of a nice looking public pool. Although, you know you are in a strange place when you have to ask the waitress to hold the dill and pickles on your pizza.
One of the big pluses to J-bad seems to be a cafe that serves fried laghman. It is like really good greasy, salty, takeout Chinese noodles. Yum.
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