June 28, 2010
I made it back home to Iowa, whew.
As for what my plan is now: no idea.
The posts below were written over the last few weeks. Check the dates before you read the entries, everything is kind of in a jumbled-up order.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Waiting
June 13, 2010
Things are not looking good for southern Kyrgyzstan right now. At the moment, my site mate and I are sitting at her house, each on our own computers because we've run out of games to play with each other and stuff to talk about and we are way to antsy to watch more TV.
I won't go into details here, but yesterday was a very tense day for us. We were very, very worried about the safety of our fellow volunteers in Osh Oblast, as well as our local friends in various areas. Our village is very safe, but the same cannot be said many places in the surrounding region. We spent many hours yesterday waiting for word about when we would be evacuated and for news about how the other volunteers were faring, but could finally relax a bit after 9 p.m. when we heard news that all but one volunteer had been safely eveacuated, and that one had been moved to a safer location. Now there's just three of us waiting to get out of the south, and while we are all safe we are more or less trapped. On top of all this we are hearing terrible news of the violence in the city, and while it is comforting to know that all volunteers are safe, there are still many local friends still in Osh, and we are so scared for them. Its not fair that I should be so certain of my rescue, based only on the place of my birth.
In any case, I am not at all optomistic about coming back home to Osh once I leave. I hate to admit it, and the feelings of guilt are choking me, but I'm ready to leave the country once I am evacuated from the South. Maybe I'll change my mind later, but right now I'm just done. I love this country, and I feel like leaving willingly is a serious betrayal, but I can't shake the feeling that I just have to get out alltogether.
Things are not looking good for southern Kyrgyzstan right now. At the moment, my site mate and I are sitting at her house, each on our own computers because we've run out of games to play with each other and stuff to talk about and we are way to antsy to watch more TV.
I won't go into details here, but yesterday was a very tense day for us. We were very, very worried about the safety of our fellow volunteers in Osh Oblast, as well as our local friends in various areas. Our village is very safe, but the same cannot be said many places in the surrounding region. We spent many hours yesterday waiting for word about when we would be evacuated and for news about how the other volunteers were faring, but could finally relax a bit after 9 p.m. when we heard news that all but one volunteer had been safely eveacuated, and that one had been moved to a safer location. Now there's just three of us waiting to get out of the south, and while we are all safe we are more or less trapped. On top of all this we are hearing terrible news of the violence in the city, and while it is comforting to know that all volunteers are safe, there are still many local friends still in Osh, and we are so scared for them. Its not fair that I should be so certain of my rescue, based only on the place of my birth.
In any case, I am not at all optomistic about coming back home to Osh once I leave. I hate to admit it, and the feelings of guilt are choking me, but I'm ready to leave the country once I am evacuated from the South. Maybe I'll change my mind later, but right now I'm just done. I love this country, and I feel like leaving willingly is a serious betrayal, but I can't shake the feeling that I just have to get out alltogether.
Runaways and Runway Models
May 25, 2010
Today I had a revelation: being a grown-up is hard. I hope I can start to get the hang of it by the time I''m 80.
When you're a kid, you have this idea that all your problems can be easily solved by some person you perceive to be a "grown-up." Its great to be on the kid side, but I've only recently started to experience things from the grown-up side, and that's not so great.
Around two weeks ago I heard that one volunteer's 16-year-old host brother ran away from home. The volunteer was away for a training, so couldn't really do much about this. When the volunteer told me this over the phone, I said something along the lines of "hmmm, that's too bad,' and when he asked me for advice, I assured him that he shouldn't worry about it because it isn't his problem.
My apathy bit me in the butt when the runaway turned up at my front door Sunday night.
The self-proclaimed "fugitive" (he had to spend some time flipping through his Kyrgyz-English dictionary before arriving at this word) had been floating around southern Kyrgyzstan for the past two weeks, staying with friends and acquaintances and avoiding family before arriving in my village at the house of his friend. He then asked around until he found me, knowing that I was friends with the volunteer that lives in his house and hoping that I could help him.
So, the kid said he had a place to stay, food to eat, and a change of clothes, but nothing else. He said he'd grabbed 100 som (about $2) before he left home two weeks ago, but now he was broke. He was trying to play it cool, telling me he was looking for work, but I could tell he was getting desparate. He asked if he could come and help me teach at school the next day, and I told him that would be fine, but when he continued to stand around expectantly I didn't know what to tell him. He wanted me to promise not to call his American brother, but I wouldn't promise, even though I had the urge to be the cool grown-up as opposed to the responsible teacher type.
In my childhood, I read enough books about runaways to recognize this story. At this point in the plot the runaway is getting scared and feeling alone. The happy feeling that came with freedom has worn off and realityy has set in. He's broke and out of options. Everything is looking bleak; but wait! Enter a new character: the wise spiritual guide who will offer sage advice and point the young protagonist in the right direction, resolving the story and teaching the runaway and the youthfull reader a valuable life lesson or two.
Only the author of this novel did a shitty job because the runaway got me instead.
Anyway, after following me around for two days, we finally sat down and had a good talk about his options. It was hard for me to look at this kid who is directly asking me for help and telling him that I can't even offer a possible solution for him that is anything other than going back home, which I knew he didn't want to do.
At long last, I offered to go with him back to his village and stand by him while he apologizes to his parents. I expected him to turn this offer down flat, but his face kind of lit up and he promised to think about it tonight.
I guess it wasn't that grown-ups always knew the solution, but they knew a solution. Wisdom comes with age, yes, but even more so it comes with the opportunity to experience responsibility over the life of another human being. And the difference between a child and an adult is sometimes not a difference in years, but the difference between trusting and being trusted.
And that is my sage advice for the resolution of this novel.
May 31, 2010
Paris runway models in robot-like leggings looking like characters the sci-fi film.
Quiz: The above phrase is
a) the name of a champion racehorse
b) the title of a punk-rock song from the late 90's
c) the text printed on the back of a shirt worn by a middle-aged woman in front of me in line at the bank
The correct answer, of course, is "c"
Today I was walking through my village when I was met with the usual chorus of cheerful and overly enthusiastic "hello"s from the little boys playing in the street. As I walked away, they begain to shout at me, "I am a sexy guy! I am a sexy guy!" I was confused for a minute until I realized that they were reciting the lyrics of a popular dance song.
I would like to place all the blame on things like t-shirts and pop songs for confusing the hell out of my students, but I think I am often to blame. Once, a pair of sweek eighth-grade girls asked for my help in understanding the lyrics of an Enlish pop song. They had already done an excellent job of translating, but were stuck on the phrase "make love." Not knowing an eighth-grade appropriate Kyrgyz equivalent, I told them in Kyrgyz, "for example, kisses, and ..." and then acted out obnoxious, noisy kissing. The girls had a giggle fit and ran away, so I couldn't check their understanding. I forgot about the whole thing until the last day of school when one of these girls wrote me a note that said, "Dear Miss Audra. Thank you we learn English. Summer good. Make love!" I guess they didn't get it. Oh well.
Update on the runaway: after tagging along after me for a few more days, he finally went home to his parents. Hooray!
Today I had a revelation: being a grown-up is hard. I hope I can start to get the hang of it by the time I''m 80.
When you're a kid, you have this idea that all your problems can be easily solved by some person you perceive to be a "grown-up." Its great to be on the kid side, but I've only recently started to experience things from the grown-up side, and that's not so great.
Around two weeks ago I heard that one volunteer's 16-year-old host brother ran away from home. The volunteer was away for a training, so couldn't really do much about this. When the volunteer told me this over the phone, I said something along the lines of "hmmm, that's too bad,' and when he asked me for advice, I assured him that he shouldn't worry about it because it isn't his problem.
My apathy bit me in the butt when the runaway turned up at my front door Sunday night.
The self-proclaimed "fugitive" (he had to spend some time flipping through his Kyrgyz-English dictionary before arriving at this word) had been floating around southern Kyrgyzstan for the past two weeks, staying with friends and acquaintances and avoiding family before arriving in my village at the house of his friend. He then asked around until he found me, knowing that I was friends with the volunteer that lives in his house and hoping that I could help him.
So, the kid said he had a place to stay, food to eat, and a change of clothes, but nothing else. He said he'd grabbed 100 som (about $2) before he left home two weeks ago, but now he was broke. He was trying to play it cool, telling me he was looking for work, but I could tell he was getting desparate. He asked if he could come and help me teach at school the next day, and I told him that would be fine, but when he continued to stand around expectantly I didn't know what to tell him. He wanted me to promise not to call his American brother, but I wouldn't promise, even though I had the urge to be the cool grown-up as opposed to the responsible teacher type.
In my childhood, I read enough books about runaways to recognize this story. At this point in the plot the runaway is getting scared and feeling alone. The happy feeling that came with freedom has worn off and realityy has set in. He's broke and out of options. Everything is looking bleak; but wait! Enter a new character: the wise spiritual guide who will offer sage advice and point the young protagonist in the right direction, resolving the story and teaching the runaway and the youthfull reader a valuable life lesson or two.
Only the author of this novel did a shitty job because the runaway got me instead.
Anyway, after following me around for two days, we finally sat down and had a good talk about his options. It was hard for me to look at this kid who is directly asking me for help and telling him that I can't even offer a possible solution for him that is anything other than going back home, which I knew he didn't want to do.
At long last, I offered to go with him back to his village and stand by him while he apologizes to his parents. I expected him to turn this offer down flat, but his face kind of lit up and he promised to think about it tonight.
I guess it wasn't that grown-ups always knew the solution, but they knew a solution. Wisdom comes with age, yes, but even more so it comes with the opportunity to experience responsibility over the life of another human being. And the difference between a child and an adult is sometimes not a difference in years, but the difference between trusting and being trusted.
And that is my sage advice for the resolution of this novel.
May 31, 2010
Paris runway models in robot-like leggings looking like characters the sci-fi film.
Quiz: The above phrase is
a) the name of a champion racehorse
b) the title of a punk-rock song from the late 90's
c) the text printed on the back of a shirt worn by a middle-aged woman in front of me in line at the bank
The correct answer, of course, is "c"
Today I was walking through my village when I was met with the usual chorus of cheerful and overly enthusiastic "hello"s from the little boys playing in the street. As I walked away, they begain to shout at me, "I am a sexy guy! I am a sexy guy!" I was confused for a minute until I realized that they were reciting the lyrics of a popular dance song.
I would like to place all the blame on things like t-shirts and pop songs for confusing the hell out of my students, but I think I am often to blame. Once, a pair of sweek eighth-grade girls asked for my help in understanding the lyrics of an Enlish pop song. They had already done an excellent job of translating, but were stuck on the phrase "make love." Not knowing an eighth-grade appropriate Kyrgyz equivalent, I told them in Kyrgyz, "for example, kisses, and ..." and then acted out obnoxious, noisy kissing. The girls had a giggle fit and ran away, so I couldn't check their understanding. I forgot about the whole thing until the last day of school when one of these girls wrote me a note that said, "Dear Miss Audra. Thank you we learn English. Summer good. Make love!" I guess they didn't get it. Oh well.
Update on the runaway: after tagging along after me for a few more days, he finally went home to his parents. Hooray!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Peace Corps policy prevents me from voicing opinions on this blog, and I will find it hard to relate the events of the past week without doing so. I will say that I have just been moved from the South and am very safe. I don't know what will happen next.
However:
Please, please, read the news about the current situation in Kyrgyzstan. Please stay informed. Tell your friends, family, co-workers. Don't allow this story to be ignored by the rest of the world. And please keep my friends and neighbors in Southern Kyrgyzstan in your thoughts and prayers.
I have more blog entries saved on my computer, but I will post them later at a more appropriate time.
However:
Please, please, read the news about the current situation in Kyrgyzstan. Please stay informed. Tell your friends, family, co-workers. Don't allow this story to be ignored by the rest of the world. And please keep my friends and neighbors in Southern Kyrgyzstan in your thoughts and prayers.
I have more blog entries saved on my computer, but I will post them later at a more appropriate time.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
The Mixed Herd Strategy
May 20, 2010
The political situation in southern K-stan has been giving me emotional whiplash (it's dangerous!—it's safe!--there's fighting!--no, just kidding!--so-and-so took control of the government!--nope, now it's so-and-so!--don't leave your house!--everything's fine!).
Although there has never been a moment when I have felt that my personal safety was at risk, all of this is still taking a toll on me. As I seem to always be reiterating in this journal, I NEVER HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON. The biggest problem is that all these happenings are very seriously slowing down the progress of this camp that I am planning. Thankfully, my wonderful site mate and I have been able to spend several pleasant days hiding out in our village together, whereas if I had been alone I might have torn all my hair out in frustration.
Anyway, all seems well now (although things have seemed well and then gotten iffy a few times in the last few weeks, so who knows) so I'm happy.
In the meantime, the school year has been winding down. Today was the last day of tests for my English classes, and I feel bad that I didn't even show up because I was waiting for a call from Peace Corps to tell me that things were all clear after the last “situation.” But not too bad, considering my day yesterday:
Since its spring, as I was walking down the road I ran into a lot of livestock traffic being herded along the main road up into the mountains. Now, seeing lots of large animals being driven towards me at a slow jog pace still makes me nervous, but I've gotten used to it and developed a strategy of moving through the herd in a way that I would imagine that it would make sense to a scary cow with big horns to NOT run over me. Utilizing this strategy every morning for the last few weeks has decreased my nervousness considerably, as well as my tendency to shield myself with as many third graders as I can hold onto. Which is one of the many reasons that would contribute to my being promptly fired if I were a teacher in the States.
Anyway, I realized yesterday morning that my strategy has a weakness: mixed herds. It works great with cows and okay with sheep (I'm not quite as scared of them, just mostly concerned about getting brushed up against. Their wool is really gross.), but when it's a mixed herd of cows AND sheep; or, (God forbid) cows, sheep, goats, and horses, as was the case this morning, I get thrown off. The trick to the strategy is predicting where the animal will go. Cows move with a certain predictability, and so do sheep, but it's a different kind of movement for both. When you throw four species together in one big group, you have to predict four kinds of movement. And that's hard.
I'll bet you all thought I was going somewhere with that, but I wasn't. I'll save it in my analogy/metaphor arsenal. That seems to be another strange side effect of teaching, along with learning how to draw really good stick figures. Coming up with ridiculous analogies that draw blank looks from students.
Anyway, I started off my morning by wading through a very large mixed herd. Shortly thereafter, a car that had just made its way slowly through the same herd abruptly sped up and rudely drove though a puddle, spraying me with water and the wet remains of the traffic that had just passed.
So, I was 10 minutes late to give my 10th graders their test since I had to spend some time at the canal washing the spray of manure off the lower half of my left pant leg (it's a good thing I wore the green-ish colored khakis). Of course, the kids complained about the loss of time to no end. I tried to convince them that the test was super-easy, and that we had gone over all the correct answers in the last lesson, but they were still whiny. Unwilling to give up my status as the “nice” teacher (I may put children between myself and scary animals, but I don't smack kids with rulers like the other teachers), I agreed to cut down the number of sentences they had to write for number 8 from six to three. One boy thanked me by writing no sentences at all, but graciously handing in a drawing of a penis. Ah, the joys of teaching teenagers.
Oh, and some kymys got spilled on my feet in a taxi. That's that fermented mare's milk drink. Not pleasant.
The political situation in southern K-stan has been giving me emotional whiplash (it's dangerous!—it's safe!--there's fighting!--no, just kidding!--so-and-so took control of the government!--nope, now it's so-and-so!--don't leave your house!--everything's fine!).
Although there has never been a moment when I have felt that my personal safety was at risk, all of this is still taking a toll on me. As I seem to always be reiterating in this journal, I NEVER HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON. The biggest problem is that all these happenings are very seriously slowing down the progress of this camp that I am planning. Thankfully, my wonderful site mate and I have been able to spend several pleasant days hiding out in our village together, whereas if I had been alone I might have torn all my hair out in frustration.
Anyway, all seems well now (although things have seemed well and then gotten iffy a few times in the last few weeks, so who knows) so I'm happy.
In the meantime, the school year has been winding down. Today was the last day of tests for my English classes, and I feel bad that I didn't even show up because I was waiting for a call from Peace Corps to tell me that things were all clear after the last “situation.” But not too bad, considering my day yesterday:
Since its spring, as I was walking down the road I ran into a lot of livestock traffic being herded along the main road up into the mountains. Now, seeing lots of large animals being driven towards me at a slow jog pace still makes me nervous, but I've gotten used to it and developed a strategy of moving through the herd in a way that I would imagine that it would make sense to a scary cow with big horns to NOT run over me. Utilizing this strategy every morning for the last few weeks has decreased my nervousness considerably, as well as my tendency to shield myself with as many third graders as I can hold onto. Which is one of the many reasons that would contribute to my being promptly fired if I were a teacher in the States.
Anyway, I realized yesterday morning that my strategy has a weakness: mixed herds. It works great with cows and okay with sheep (I'm not quite as scared of them, just mostly concerned about getting brushed up against. Their wool is really gross.), but when it's a mixed herd of cows AND sheep; or, (God forbid) cows, sheep, goats, and horses, as was the case this morning, I get thrown off. The trick to the strategy is predicting where the animal will go. Cows move with a certain predictability, and so do sheep, but it's a different kind of movement for both. When you throw four species together in one big group, you have to predict four kinds of movement. And that's hard.
I'll bet you all thought I was going somewhere with that, but I wasn't. I'll save it in my analogy/metaphor arsenal. That seems to be another strange side effect of teaching, along with learning how to draw really good stick figures. Coming up with ridiculous analogies that draw blank looks from students.
Anyway, I started off my morning by wading through a very large mixed herd. Shortly thereafter, a car that had just made its way slowly through the same herd abruptly sped up and rudely drove though a puddle, spraying me with water and the wet remains of the traffic that had just passed.
So, I was 10 minutes late to give my 10th graders their test since I had to spend some time at the canal washing the spray of manure off the lower half of my left pant leg (it's a good thing I wore the green-ish colored khakis). Of course, the kids complained about the loss of time to no end. I tried to convince them that the test was super-easy, and that we had gone over all the correct answers in the last lesson, but they were still whiny. Unwilling to give up my status as the “nice” teacher (I may put children between myself and scary animals, but I don't smack kids with rulers like the other teachers), I agreed to cut down the number of sentences they had to write for number 8 from six to three. One boy thanked me by writing no sentences at all, but graciously handing in a drawing of a penis. Ah, the joys of teaching teenagers.
Oh, and some kymys got spilled on my feet in a taxi. That's that fermented mare's milk drink. Not pleasant.
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