And a month later....

June 1, 2009

Yesterday we visited the Issyk Ata resort about an hour away from here. It was an awesome day. Hopefully I will get a few pictures up to explain why.

Since I came back to my training house, I have been constantly amazing my family. They were astounded by the several full sentences that I threw at them when I came home and talked about my site visit. I have also been taking charge and doing things for myself because the family has been out and about more and I have had the opportunity. My apa and host sister were very impressed with the fire I built to heat up my laundry water, mostly because they thought it only took me a few minutes and I didn't tell them I had started twenty minutes and ten matches ago. What was funny was that they were equally as impressed when I figured out how to heat up a kettle full of water on the electric stove to wash my hair with. My poor host sisters. I get showered with “Azamat!” (Well done!) all day for the most mundane household duties and simple sentences with infantile grammar, and they cook and clean and work in the fields all day and get nothing.

I have been getting a lot of mileage around here out of one of my stories from Osh. It is really not that great of a story, but I kind of unknowingly incorporated a (probably poor) imitation of the Southern Kyrgyz dialect into it. One of the southern-isms that I picked up for the short time I was down there was the fact that southerners (at least the ones I encountered) don't really give directions. They just point and say “Ohniaka” (there) if it is close, “ooohniaka” if it is kind of far, and “oooooooooooooooohniaka” if it is really far. My story went something like this (in Kyrgyz, of course): “I asked my new apa, 'where do you go to get water' and she said, 'ooooooooooooohniaka' and I said, 'oh, no!.'”

My family cracked up, and I was able to imitate a few more words that I heard a lot while down there, which completely killed them. Since then, whenever anyone comes to our house, they ask me, “Ajo, what do they say in Osh?” in the same tone of voice you might ask a two-year-old “what does a cow say?” I do my one trick and am rewarded with candy. Now I have to figure out what northern-isms the southerners will think is funny and ride on that for popularity for the next two years. Wait, what am I talking about? I already have more popularity than I know what to do with.

Right now, I am also looking for an awesome English word to teach to my 7-year-old host nephew to replace his current favorite: “lazy.” I don't think that I am responsible for teaching him this word, but I suppose I could be. As far as I know, all the other English he knows is the numbers one through five, (although he usually skips two, three, and four) and “okay,” which I am sure he picked up from me, because I say it all the time, but where did he get “lazy” from? He is endlessly entertained by screaming “AJO LAZY!” with a really dramatic inflection in his voice, and repeating it with every other name in the family. I thought it was funny at first, but not anymore. What a brat. I would hate him so much if he wasn't so stinking cute.

June 5, 2009

Not much more to report now. It has been kind of a weird week, and I am looking forward to being done with training and getting to permanent site. First of all, I have been just a little bit sick, and though my Apa means well, she doesn't understand that drinking large quantities of tea is not necessarily the best remedy for every ailment. On top of that, one of my fellow trainees left us, making the group headed to Osh a little smaller and making me a little bit sad. Also this week, one trainee's teenage host sister got bride kidnapped. Without going into this too much, I will just say that I am becoming increasingly distressed by the treatment of the whole bride-kidnapping topic by the locals, and even more so by everything that I read about the topic before coming here. The general consensus that I have gathered was that the tradition is not widely practiced and not to be taken seriously. I have only been here for two months, but already I can see that this is a practice that I will not be able to take lightly. I love Kyrgyz people and respect and admire their culture very much, but I think we must agree to disagree on this topic.

June 14, 2009

This morning I was locked in my room for several hours.

The lock is kind of tricky anyway, and I had had some trouble unlocking it from inside before, but I figured that there was a trick to it that I would get eventually. I didn't.

It was like in a movie, when someone is trying to open a door and the handle breaks off. I was struggling with the lock when I heard something fall on the other side of the door, and the handle on my side was loose in my hand. Remember, I live in a separate house, so no one in the main house would be able to hear me if I yelled from my room. The neighbors could hear me, but I had no idea how I could get the message across to them. I don't even know them. I thought, “no problem, I'll just call my host sister and tell her 'eshik ishbait'(the door doesn't work) and she can come rescue me.”

The problem is that the number she gave me 'ishbait.' So, I spent the next hour calling the English speakers I know in the village (other volunteers and the English teachers at my school) to try to track down a number for my Apa or sister. Nothing ever came of it. Finally, I gave in and asked another volunteer, who lives a half hour away, to come rescue me. So at 10:30 I got out. (I had been trying since 8:30). Thank God I didn't have to pee really bad like I usually do in the morning. Small miracles.

In other news, I am settling in well at my permanent site. I really like this area a lot. Yesterday the new village volunteers in the oblast got a tour of Osh City, given by a new volunteers' host sister. I might be speaking too soon, but I think that Osh earn a place on my favorite-cities-in-the-world list. Or maybe my expectations were low because I was picturing something like Bishkek (no offense to all the people in Kyrgyzstan who think that Bishkek is the center of the universe, but I really don't like it very much) but it is much nicer looking than Bishkek, has cooler cafes and way more character.

Osh is home to such interesting things as a crazy mountain smack dab in the center of the city, a huge swimming pool, and the biggest statue of Lenin in Central Asia (or so I hear. It is really huge). It also has several universities (one has an American Center with all kinds of books in English, hoorah!).

Other than that little trip, I have just been settling in at home. Right now the only people around are my Apa and sister, which is nice because I am not as overwhelmed. I am definitely liking my Apa a lot more now. She was a lot to handle at first, but even though she hasn't quite figured out that she needs to speak slowly to me and not just repeat herself louder and louder, I think she will be easy to live with. Also, I feel like I am more a part of the family already. I helped make “ash” (southern plov made with Uzgen rice, which is what the region is famous for, and rightly so) the other night, even though my Apa found my carrot-cutting skills laughable. (By the way, they also have the weirdest carrots down here that I have ever seen. They are yellow and more potato-shaped, and not very carrot-y tasting.) Apparently, my family also has a rice field somewhere (ooooohniaka, of course) and now that I am hearing more about rice farming, I am regretting agreeing to help. Ooops.

June 19, 2009

In my last house, the only water source was a spigot in the yard that only worked most of the time. I never thought that I would take something like that for granted. Turns out my new apa wasn't kidding when she said that water was “oooooooohniaka.” It is a 15 minute walk to the nearest well! My sister has to drag a tank on wheels down the road a few times a week to get all the water we need for drinking, cooking, and washing, and sometimes they get a neighbor to drive down in his car to fill up the tank. Thank God there is an irrigation canal just across the street where we can get water for watering plants and whatever else. Once again, I will have to reassess how much water I actually need as opposed to how much I was used to using in the states.

On the work side, communication is tricky at my school. I set up my first English club for Monday (or at least I think. The arrangement was made in Kyrgyz, so I could have said, “On Monday, I will go to China and buy a yak”). We'll see if anyone shows up. Just as difficult as the language stuff is figuring out the Kyrgyz sense of time. I came to school for a meeting with the school director at 9, and ended up sitting around and occasionally chasing him around when he walked by. The meeting finally happened at 12:30, but at least it happened.

Speaking of meetings, I forgot to tell about when I met the biggest celebrity in the country! His name is Omar and he is a huge pop star. In Kyrgyzstan. He was at the party the American ambassador threw for us at her house after swearing-in, along with a selection of other young Kyrgyzstanis who are way cooler and more successful than any of us. And there were also hamburgers and doritos.

So once again, I found myself in a situation that I never in my wildest dreams would have thought I would find myself in: gorging myself on Cool-Ranch Doritos (a food that I don't even like in the states, but which in Kyrgyzstan is like manna from heaven) and discussing kymyz (a drink made of horse milk that was fermented in a animal skin that still looks like an animal) with the biggest pop star in an entire nation while standing in the beautiful garden of the American ambassador to Kyrgyzstan.

I view it as a career-advancing meeting, because once my new American teacher coolness wears off, I can whip out my picture with Omar to remind my students that I am still awesome.

Someone please tell me where the hell am I and what am I doing here? And why didn't I get Omar's phone number when I had the chance?

June 23, 2009

I am officially the biggest loser of an American. My poor village that they must put up with me. I got stuck in my bedroom AGAIN. This time it was for several hours, because no one was home. My family cracked up the last time it happened, but this time they were pretty exasperated. Seriously. How stupid do you have to be to get yourself stuck in a room twice?

My apa had told me that she would get a new doorknob put in a long time ago, but, in true Kyrgyz fashion, it never happened. Today, I was like, “look. I really, really need a doorknob on my door. I will buy it if you help me and get someone to install it.” She said that no, no, she would pay, and she would go into Uzgen today to get it. I asked if I could go with because I needed to get some things too, and bazaar shopping is always easier with a local. My sister came along and we made it a girl date, complete with lunch at a cafe in the village.

My ata came home from America this weekend when I was in Osh, and he has been gone again to I don't know where, but he left behind all kinds of little treasures to be handed out to friends and neighbors, all packed into Wal-Mart bags. I never thought I'd say it, but I miss Wal-Mart! Especially after a day at the bazaar, which absolutely exhausts me. And this is a pretty small bazaar too.

Although, I have to say that Wal-Mart has nothing on the wide variety of things that you can get in a small amount of space at the bazaar. Between the three of us, we came back with cucumbers, tomatoes, tea, a chunk of meat, paper, blackboard chalk, laundry soap, chicken feed, a pair of shoes for my sister, and a shoe box full of live baby chickens. And yes, the shoe box was the same one that the new shoes came in.

Why we needed more chickens at the house, I have no idea. We seem to have a lot already, but whatever. I will never complain about a constant supply of eggs. It was really good to follow my apa around the bazaar today to hear what a typical bazaar transaction sounds like when people don't keep trying to talk to you in Russian. I realized how much of the language I am actually able to understand when I listened in on the chick buying transaction, which I thought was really funny. It went something like this:

Apa: Why are these chick so expensive? They don't look healthy.
Bazaar Lady: (kicking the box of chicks so they run around and make a bunch of noise) It's hot. They are tired!
(They bargain for a while and then the lady starts scooping up chicks three at a time and throwing them in the box)
Apa: Take that brown one out! It's ugly.
Bazaar Lady: It will be good looking when it is big.
Apa: Give it to me for half-price.
Bazaar Lady: I'll throw in another brown one for free.

Other weird things Apa did included sneaking an extra cucumber into her pocket when the lady was getting her change, licking her finger, sticking it in a bag of ground corn chicken feed, tasting it, and saying it was no good, and then, upon finding a bag that was suitable, sneaking a handful of feed into the shoe box of chicks when the lady had her back turned to weigh her order.

Anyway, after all that, we forgot to get a doorknob. Not that we didn't spend a lot of time looking for one. I don't know what Apa was looking for, exactly. Maybe she just wanted to make sure she went to every single seller of door knobs so she could be sure she got the best price. Actually, I have a suspicion that she regretted saying she would pay for it and took advantage of my being distracted with a delicious ice cream cone (have I mentioned that Uzgen has the best soft-serve ice cream EVER?) to usher me onto a marshrutka and then, once we left the bus stop, she smacked her forehead and admitted that she had forgot the doorknob. Whatever. Who needs a door knob? Actually it is really not that big of a deal if I close my door or not, since I am the only one who sleeps here and the outside door gets locked at night. But still...

July 26, 2009

Yesterday I went to a wedding with my family. I was really excited about it, but as it turned out, it kind of sucked. The best part was probably going to the beauty shop with my Apa and another female relative. I had actually gone to another beauty shop with my sister the day before, and I really enjoyed both experiences. It makes me want to go get my hair cut often (I chickened out both times because I was afraid of ending up with the crazy asymmetrical Russian haircuts that were all over the walls). First of all, it is interesting to note that both these hair-dressers were also wedding/formal dress shops, and that seems to be the trend in most places. It's a pretty good idea if you think about it. Anyway, the reason I enjoyed this was because there was so much chatting going on, and I could just sit in the corner and take it in. It was also interesting to note the differences in language between the two shops, because one was run by Kyrgyz women and the other by Uzbeks. I was fascinated when a gorgeous young Uzbek woman, who had just had her hair dyed shiny black and put into elaborate tiny curls, which were then pinned up with a really cool clip thing, promptly covered up the whole do with one scarf, and then another scarf over that pinned at her throat.

Anyway, the wedding was slightly torturous because I got separated from most of my family (I sat with my host parents' oldest daughter and her husband, who both very nice but not very talkative) so I was mostly surrounded by a bunch of strangers who kept forgetting that I don't speak Russian. Before the wedding party came in, I actually had a nice conversation with some of the serving girls who treated me like a celebrity at first, but were so excited to find out that last summer I had the same job they do.

The rest of the evening consisted of begs from the old men at my table for me to make toasts. I think that toasts may be one of the most dreaded parts of my service in this country. Right now, I have two. The literal translations are as follows: “Health!” (Yes that's it, but I've heard local people say it, so there) and “Kyrgyzstan! America! Together work!”

Here's the other frustrating thing about social situations in Kyrgyzstan. I really feel the pressure to uphold the “good girl” image. And it is a lot harder that I anticipated. I know that people are watching me all the time, and I can feel the mood change immediately as soon as I do something I shouldn't. I feel like they are all little devils on my shoulder trying to trick me all the time, though. That is the problem. They are always pressuring me to drink, drink, drink, and topping off my vodka glass, even though it is full, but none of the other women are drinking hardly anything, and every time I bring the glass to my lips, I can feel all eyes on me, waiting to see how much I will drink, and when they see it is still full, everyone nods their approval. Even worse than this is the dilemma I face every day. Wherever I go, I always have everyone's full attention. Even before they know I am American. It is ridiculous. However, this attention also comes from all the most attractive young men. But I can't flirt with any of them without ultimately getting myself into a situation that I don't want to be in. Why??!!! What a cruel trick to play on me.

Anyway, the good news is that I got rescued and was able to go home early at about 11 with my host sister and her little niece. The bad news is that I was packed into a regular-sized car with 10 people, not counting me and the driver. How this was accomplished, I don't know. It got worse when the woman smashed up beside me, who I had only just met, started breast feeding her kid who, in my humble opinion, was a little too old to be breast feeding. It was uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as staying at the party until the end would have been.

In other news, I forgot to tell about my Ata's trip to America! (By the way, I saw a few Vermont t-shirts at the wedding. Very classy.) I was a little disappointed by his list of complaints, but that might just be his personality. In any case, it made for a very entertaining conversation. Here are some things he doesn't like about America:
-The food (“No bread! I pay $15 for a meal and no bread! Why are American's so fat when they don't eat any bread?”)
-Cold drinks (“Ice! Ice! What is this ice? Cold water, cold cola, cold TEA! COLD TEA!!!! Ugh! Ice! I say 'no ice' in English, and still, they bring ice!”)
-No taxis, busses, or marshrutkas outside of the big cities
-Prices (“In Kyrgyzstan, a beer is 30 som, 40 som. In America, beer is $4.” I nod in agreement. “$4! That's 100 som!” Yes, I say, but it's better beer, don't you think? “For 100 som, it should be the best beer!”)
-Visiting the Statue of Liberty in the rain

Things he likes about America:
-Japanese steak houses
-The Empire State Building
-Boston (one of the tribes of Kyrgyzstan is called the Boston tribe, so Kyrgyz people think that the fact that we have a city called Boston is pretty sweet)

He also came home with the idea that he knows more about American history than me. He tried to tell me that there were 11 colonies, and thought he would prove me wrong by counting the stripes on a picture of an American flag. Ooops. He also is convinced that Abraham Lincoln was the second president of the United States.

Anyway, at first, I was a teensy bit hurt by all his lists of complaints, but the more I thought about it, I think it is probably a good thing that he was able to see all of the great things that America has to offer, but also realized that it has it's downsides and is not some magical place that is better than any other place.

I should probably throw in a word about my work (yes, I am working! A bit). I have had a few English clubs already, and they have gone pretty well. The speaking level of the students isn't quite where I thought it would be, but whatever. I have been trying to keep things informal and teach more conversational bits of English. The result is that these kids' English is fast becoming more full of idioms than of grammar or vocab (they have “going crazy” and “drive me crazy” down, thanks to the tangent that today's club took, but the only food word they know is “apple.” We'll have to work on that.) Here's a problem I am having. One of the 11th year boys has an embarrassingly ridiculous crush on me. When I was helping out with tests last week, he had written “you very pretty are” on a slip of paper and slid it over to me. Today, I was collecting back some handouts I had made to save for later, and on his he had drawn a heart and written “we are very a blakbord.” What he meant by that, I have no idea. The biggest problem is that he is something of a white supremacist. Which is funny, because he is, of course, Asian. Anyway, he has told me that he likes George Bush better than Obama because he doesn't like black people. Also, during one of the clubs, we were playing the change chair game, and while everyone was saying things like “who likes volleyball,” he said “who likes white people.” All the other kids looked around kind of awkwardly and pretended not to hear or understand, so maybe this kid is just weird. I hope. Anyway, he goes to university in the fall, so he will be someone else's problem.