January 25, 2010
I will take the sunshine and warm weather as sign that my streak of bad luck is finally over! I'm still taking it easy, trying to get rid of this cold that seems to be draining all of my energy, so I hope the weather keeps up tomorrow so I can go for a nice long walk and get some exercise and fresh air.
I still can't believe that the electricity was out for my whole neighborhood for a full five days. I sometimes think that nobody really cares about these things all that much—or that they just don't want to be the person responsible for getting something done about it.
I have an analogy: there were a few times during my first few months with my host family when I would spot a mouse inside the house or out in the summer kitchen and point it out to whoever was there at the time. They would always be like, “What? I didn't see a mouse,” even though I thought they probably did. After a while, I realized that they would all look away and pretend not to see it, because if no one knows its there, no one has to do anything about it. If no one make a fuss about the electricity, no one has to do anything about it.
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Sometimes I wonder if Kyrgyz people get any kind of thrill out of slasher movies with the way they are always slaughtering sheep and horses. There just seems to be so much blood and severed heads and such, and even though I try to avoid all of the slaughtering and butchering (mostly, to be quite honest, because I am lazy) I still find myself having to move a dripping sheep's head from one side of the kitchen floor to the other because it is underfoot, or going to get a bucket for water only to find that it is full of steaming fresh blood (I try to tell myself that they have blood-specific buckets separate from water buckets and milk buckets, but its a hard lie to sell).
Last night, after dark, I went in search of water to distill because I was out. The water buckets in the house were empty, so I went out to the summer kitchen where there is sometimes a big barrel of water. I couldn't remember where the light switch was in the kitchen, so I was feeling around on the walls. In the dark, I noticed that a low table had been put in the middle of the floor and there were some large piles of something silhouetted on it. I figured it would be some big chunks of meat (they don't heat the summer kitchen in the winter, so they use it like a fridge). I found the light and switched it on. I found myself being stared down by a glassy eye rolled slightly backwards in the disembodied head of a beautiful brown horse. It shot a frozen frantic look right at me backwards over it's ears. It was strange how much more unsettling this horse head was from a sheep head. The eye seemed to have so much life behind it, and so much intelligence, it seemed irreverent for it to be sitting there, uncovered and alone in the dark, grimy kitchen. I stepped around the head and got my water and left, and congratulated myself for not jumping when I saw it. Six or seven months ago I certainly would have.
February 8, 2010
The horse head has finally been removed from the summer kitchen after staring at me through the window for a full two weeks.
Its snowing again—seems like just as soon as the snow melts we get another covering. I won't complain because its so pretty. I just hope we don't get so much that the power lines get knocked out again.
Well, there's not much else to report. I thought I had something else to say, but I guess not.
February 15, 2010
Brrr. We're all waiting for this cold snap to end. Apparently it usually starts getting warmer down here in February, but we've been having temperatures and snowstorms closer to February weather in Iowa. Thankfully we don't have to worry about the windy blizzards like back home or the avalanches I've heard about in the villages a few more kilometers up the mountains. And to be quite honest I actually prefer the below freezing temperatures to the melting snow and slush. Yuck.
Right now the main paved road that I walk down to get to school looks like an impossibly straight frozen river. Kids zoom past me by alternately running and sliding down a trampled smooth strip of packed snow in the middle of the road. Resembling skateboarders, the kids actually have been getting to school earlier than usual. After school they race home again to get their sleds. Besides being a fun toy for kids, the small sleds with runners are very useful for hauling heavy water cans to the canal or spigot. With the surface of the roads made even for once by the packed snow, the heavy cans can be pulled almost effortlessly.
Kids without sleds make do with what they have. As I was walking home one afternoon I witnessed a small boy squatting on a square of aluminum roofing and propelling himself forward on the frozen road with two short sticks. He was making surprisingly good time, but looked so silly, like a cross between cross-country skiing and row boating.
February 18, 2010
Valentine's Day was almost a week ago, but love is still in the air at my school. According to my counterpart, most people around here had never heard of Valentine's Day before two or three years ago, which is hard to believe, looking at the enthusiasm with which my students embraced it. Last week a huge red box sat in the school lobby, steadily filling up with valentines. In our English lessons we assigned all our classes to make valentines in English, and we had the highest number of completed homework assignments of the year. I was amazed. I was also surprised at how bold so many of the kids were in writing to a classmate of the opposite sex and writing “I love you” and such.
The other day in my 10th grade lesson, a boy slipped me a small piece of folded pink paper when my counterpart left the room for a minute. It had “to my Valentine” written in impossibly tiny letters on the front. Inside was a twenty line poem in Kyrgyz. I thanked him, but had no idea what the poem said without looking at it closely. My counterpart came in and I stood up to show it to her, but the boy was shaking his head desperately behind her back, so I kept it to myself. I've been trying to decipher it, but Kyrgyz cursive still just looks like a bunch of “m”s and “n”s to me. As far as I can tell the first lines are something along the lines of “you are the light from the sun” and “I have fallen in love with you,” etc., etc. I showed it to the girls in my advanced club, without saying who it was from (he didn't sign it) but we didn't get much further with the translation. I don't really know what this kid was going for with this.
In a completely unrelated topic, I'm still waiting for the new, indoor bio-toilets to be finished at my school. They were supposed to be done by September 1st. The school's outhouses are worse than ever now as the shit-cicles have grown so that they come out of the hole, and kids have taken to not even trying to hit the hole. I can't tell if things will be better or worse once everything starts to thaw. At least the smell isn't so bad when everything is frozen. However, I am conscious of the fact that I don't smell so great myself. I haven't been in the city for two weeks, and it has been way too cold to take a bucket bath. My host mom and sister either haven't made a trip to the public banya or they haven't offered to take me with, and I am not brave enough to venture to it myself. I'm very much looking forward to a shower tomorrow!
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Ugh.
I hate to be Debbie Downer again, but I need to give some excuse for not posting in a few weeks.
Sunday night we had a huge snowstorm. Knee-high snow. A lot of power lines went down, and as of when I left on Friday afternoon, the electricity still hadn't come back on in my end of the village. I was sick with a nasty cough that was not improved by the cold dry air in the house and the dust from the fire that was constantly going. My cell, computer, and ipod were all dead by Tuesday afternoon. The school schedule changed so that classes were shortened to 30 minutes and we got out at noon (I guess because they couldn't cook in the kitchen) but I had to get ready in the dark every morning that I went to school.
On top of all this, my counterpart teacher quit to take a better job at a bank, completely abandoning the teaching career that she has attended Peace Corps conferences to improve, and leaving me high and dry for the moment.
Well, 2010 can only get better, I guess.
Sunday night we had a huge snowstorm. Knee-high snow. A lot of power lines went down, and as of when I left on Friday afternoon, the electricity still hadn't come back on in my end of the village. I was sick with a nasty cough that was not improved by the cold dry air in the house and the dust from the fire that was constantly going. My cell, computer, and ipod were all dead by Tuesday afternoon. The school schedule changed so that classes were shortened to 30 minutes and we got out at noon (I guess because they couldn't cook in the kitchen) but I had to get ready in the dark every morning that I went to school.
On top of all this, my counterpart teacher quit to take a better job at a bank, completely abandoning the teaching career that she has attended Peace Corps conferences to improve, and leaving me high and dry for the moment.
Well, 2010 can only get better, I guess.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Intestines, ugly sweaters, and explosives
December 22, 2009
I'm having a terrible day and need to vent. First of all, dinner last night was a plate of plain boiled intestines. Thats it. Just intestines boiled in a pot. This is the first time that I have downright refused to eat something without even tasting it.
Second of all, I have a terrible cold with all the symptoms. This morning I woke everyone in my host family up before dawn with my terrible cough. Luckily, I didn't have class today until late in the morning, so I was able to drink a lot of hot water with jam and get my cough to calm down a bit.
As I got about halfway to school it started to half rain half snow, and of course I hadn't brought my umbrella. I got to school just in time for the weekly teacher meeting that I always attend but never understand, and everyone was asking me where my counterpart was. After the meeting, my counterpart still hadn't shown up, but it was a test day, so I figured that rather than waste time looking for her, I should just get the test started. I walked in the 8th grade classroom, and before I even got past the door a boy told me that all the girls had gone to a meeting, for the whole hour, so we can't have the test. I went to the vice principle to confirm the story, which she did, and also said that she had been trying to call my counterpart, but with no success. Her phone was off. I asked her what I should do, and she just kind of shrugged and said that maybe the girls would be back in time to take the test. I went back to the eighth grade boys and played hangman with them for a while, until it seemed obvious that the girls weren't coming back. To make it worse, my cough came back and I didn't have any cough drops left in my pocket. In the end, I just left. It says in my contract that if my counterpart doesn't teach, I don't teach, and vice versa, so I was in the right, I guess. I still felt bad about it. It was only two classes. I guess thats not that bad.
December 24, 2009
The “where the hell am I” moments that I used to have with such frequency have slowed up a bit, and sometimes I don't have them until someone points out to me how strange something is. Last weekend another volunteer and I were heading out from her apartment to go to a second-hand store in the bazaar to shop for ugly sweaters for our volunteer Christmas party. We had to make a stealthy escape from the building because the pimp who runs the brothel downstairs had been bugging us all weekend to go to his wedding that day, and the train of wedding-bound cars were right outside the door, making it all the easier for someone to kidnap us and drag us there—something that happens to us a lot (I've been to about five weddings of strangers so far, and was dragged to three of them without any advance warning). Luckily neither he nor anyone else we knew happened to be outside at the moment, so we made it through safely.
I honestly didn't think that there was anything strange or even interesting about this at the moment, and wouldn't have even thought to mention it here at all if my friend, once we reached a safe distance from the wedding goers, hadn't mentioned how funny it was that we had just sneaked out the door and run out of sight to avoid going to a pimp's wedding, which we might have agreed to go to (he has actually been a really good neighbor and friend to us volunteers) if we hadn't already made very important plans to go ugly-sweater shopping, which will take all afternoon anyway because we are going to a store that is in the middle of one of the largest bazaars in Central Asia. She's right. Its completely ridiculous.
I had another moment today that I arrived at while I was watching fifth graders wearing kalpaks, tiaras, and tinsel garland ballroom dancing to “My Heart Will Go On” during the New Year's concert. The music was a little bit too quiet because someone was playing the music from their phone plugged into a little portable speaker as the electricity was out, so an 11th grader who was playing Santa helped out by stamping out the beat with his walking stick.
January 2, 2010
Happy New Year!
I'm in Osh now, but I spent New Year's Eve with my family in the village. I'm glad I did, it was a good time. First, the director and vice-directors of my school came over in the morning to bring me a cake and a bottle of champagne and wish me a happy new year. I guess it is a tradition. Apa left for a bit, but made sure that I was prepared to greet my guests with a table full of salads, cookies, and candy and a tea pot all set up to serve them when they came. In the end they only stayed ten minutes, only long enough to kill a small bottle of wine, before they left to go to the next house.
At night, my family celebrated with a kind of progressive dinner, starting at grandma's house for one course, then on to some aunts and uncles' house, before ending up at our house for (ta da!) turkey and some small and tasty quail-like bird, the name of which I have forgotten, but my host dad said it comes from the mountains and costs 150 som at the bazaar. We also had a very small and expensive pineapple that I did the honors of cutting up because no one there had ever cut up a whole pineapple before. At every house we also had a large slice of cake, so by midnight my head and teeth hurt from the sugar and all the kids were bouncing off the walls. At midnight we toasted with my champagne, most of which exploded from the bottle (not a big loss, because it was pretty terrible) and then moved outside to shoot off some fireworks. Kyrgyz fireworks seem to have very loose safety standards, so paired with the five male relatives all in their teens and early twenties, I tried to steer clear. It was still a lot of fun.
I'm having a terrible day and need to vent. First of all, dinner last night was a plate of plain boiled intestines. Thats it. Just intestines boiled in a pot. This is the first time that I have downright refused to eat something without even tasting it.
Second of all, I have a terrible cold with all the symptoms. This morning I woke everyone in my host family up before dawn with my terrible cough. Luckily, I didn't have class today until late in the morning, so I was able to drink a lot of hot water with jam and get my cough to calm down a bit.
As I got about halfway to school it started to half rain half snow, and of course I hadn't brought my umbrella. I got to school just in time for the weekly teacher meeting that I always attend but never understand, and everyone was asking me where my counterpart was. After the meeting, my counterpart still hadn't shown up, but it was a test day, so I figured that rather than waste time looking for her, I should just get the test started. I walked in the 8th grade classroom, and before I even got past the door a boy told me that all the girls had gone to a meeting, for the whole hour, so we can't have the test. I went to the vice principle to confirm the story, which she did, and also said that she had been trying to call my counterpart, but with no success. Her phone was off. I asked her what I should do, and she just kind of shrugged and said that maybe the girls would be back in time to take the test. I went back to the eighth grade boys and played hangman with them for a while, until it seemed obvious that the girls weren't coming back. To make it worse, my cough came back and I didn't have any cough drops left in my pocket. In the end, I just left. It says in my contract that if my counterpart doesn't teach, I don't teach, and vice versa, so I was in the right, I guess. I still felt bad about it. It was only two classes. I guess thats not that bad.
December 24, 2009
The “where the hell am I” moments that I used to have with such frequency have slowed up a bit, and sometimes I don't have them until someone points out to me how strange something is. Last weekend another volunteer and I were heading out from her apartment to go to a second-hand store in the bazaar to shop for ugly sweaters for our volunteer Christmas party. We had to make a stealthy escape from the building because the pimp who runs the brothel downstairs had been bugging us all weekend to go to his wedding that day, and the train of wedding-bound cars were right outside the door, making it all the easier for someone to kidnap us and drag us there—something that happens to us a lot (I've been to about five weddings of strangers so far, and was dragged to three of them without any advance warning). Luckily neither he nor anyone else we knew happened to be outside at the moment, so we made it through safely.
I honestly didn't think that there was anything strange or even interesting about this at the moment, and wouldn't have even thought to mention it here at all if my friend, once we reached a safe distance from the wedding goers, hadn't mentioned how funny it was that we had just sneaked out the door and run out of sight to avoid going to a pimp's wedding, which we might have agreed to go to (he has actually been a really good neighbor and friend to us volunteers) if we hadn't already made very important plans to go ugly-sweater shopping, which will take all afternoon anyway because we are going to a store that is in the middle of one of the largest bazaars in Central Asia. She's right. Its completely ridiculous.
I had another moment today that I arrived at while I was watching fifth graders wearing kalpaks, tiaras, and tinsel garland ballroom dancing to “My Heart Will Go On” during the New Year's concert. The music was a little bit too quiet because someone was playing the music from their phone plugged into a little portable speaker as the electricity was out, so an 11th grader who was playing Santa helped out by stamping out the beat with his walking stick.
January 2, 2010
Happy New Year!
I'm in Osh now, but I spent New Year's Eve with my family in the village. I'm glad I did, it was a good time. First, the director and vice-directors of my school came over in the morning to bring me a cake and a bottle of champagne and wish me a happy new year. I guess it is a tradition. Apa left for a bit, but made sure that I was prepared to greet my guests with a table full of salads, cookies, and candy and a tea pot all set up to serve them when they came. In the end they only stayed ten minutes, only long enough to kill a small bottle of wine, before they left to go to the next house.
At night, my family celebrated with a kind of progressive dinner, starting at grandma's house for one course, then on to some aunts and uncles' house, before ending up at our house for (ta da!) turkey and some small and tasty quail-like bird, the name of which I have forgotten, but my host dad said it comes from the mountains and costs 150 som at the bazaar. We also had a very small and expensive pineapple that I did the honors of cutting up because no one there had ever cut up a whole pineapple before. At every house we also had a large slice of cake, so by midnight my head and teeth hurt from the sugar and all the kids were bouncing off the walls. At midnight we toasted with my champagne, most of which exploded from the bottle (not a big loss, because it was pretty terrible) and then moved outside to shoot off some fireworks. Kyrgyz fireworks seem to have very loose safety standards, so paired with the five male relatives all in their teens and early twenties, I tried to steer clear. It was still a lot of fun.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Borsok
Ok, to clear up some confusion regarding the title of the last blog. It was not the date, and it was not a mistake. It only said "Kyrgyz kyz" -- Kyrgyz girl. Nothing too exciting. I just like the way it sounds, and it seemed appropriate, but I forgot to explain it.
I have a new nickname - "Borsok." Borsok is a Kyrgyz donut. I earned this name last night during a dinner with one volunteer's host family in which several bottles of vodka were polished off. I had just come in from the village a little later than usual because I had to help my Apa with a borsok emergency. She had to make a bunch of it for Ata's birthday party the next day, but she threw out her back, so she was having difficulty. So, I rolled out the dough, built the fire, and fried up the borsok. Of course, I brought a huge bag of it to Osh, which I bragged to the family about making myself. Therefore, I was dubbed "Borsok" by the father and I think it will stick forever.
Its almost Christmas! Crazy! Time is going by so fast!
I have a new nickname - "Borsok." Borsok is a Kyrgyz donut. I earned this name last night during a dinner with one volunteer's host family in which several bottles of vodka were polished off. I had just come in from the village a little later than usual because I had to help my Apa with a borsok emergency. She had to make a bunch of it for Ata's birthday party the next day, but she threw out her back, so she was having difficulty. So, I rolled out the dough, built the fire, and fried up the borsok. Of course, I brought a huge bag of it to Osh, which I bragged to the family about making myself. Therefore, I was dubbed "Borsok" by the father and I think it will stick forever.
Its almost Christmas! Crazy! Time is going by so fast!
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Кыргыз кыз
December 3, 2005
Ask and ye shall receive. My school's one and only electric heater has been installed in Informatsia/English room, also now known as Miss Audra's Kabinet. Yay! It still isn't warm enough to take off your hat and coat, but at least my hands won't freeze when I'm writing on the board. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I remembered to turn off the heater when I left the room this afternoon. Ooops. I'd better make sure I get there first tomorrow to check or they might take it away from me.
Today nobody showed up at my club because there was a concert at my school that all my students went to. I actually knew about the concert because they made an announcement during one of my classes yesterday, but so many kids asked me if I was going to have club that I assumed they would come. They didn't. So, there was nothing left but to check out the concert. It was terrible.
They had hung up a big poster above the stage in the little auditorium featuring over-sized glamor shots of the star, a handsome Kyrgyz jigit and “super star” (the poster's words, not mine). He probably sings at weddings on the weekends. When I came in, a young man was singing a popular Kyrgyz pop song, but he was most definitely not the guy from the poster: he happened to be a four foot tall dwarf. He started doing some crazy comic dances and it became apparent that he wasn't singing at all, but lip syncing. To his credit, he did sing a little later (karaoke style, of course, like the rest of the concert). Besides the guy from the poster and the dwarf, there were also two not-so-good-looking guys with mediocre karaoke skills. In between musical numbers there were some comedy routines, almost entirely centered around the dwarf's height. I can't imagine that I would have found the jokes nearly as funny as everyone else even if I did understand them in their entirety.
There was one good part of the concert that was nearly ruined by the shitty sound system that was being used (I don't think it could have made anyone sound good): a song that the poster guy and the dwarf guy did together. It was in Kyrgzy, but it had some Middle Eastern or maybe Uzbek flair to it. If I drowned out the static and feedback I really liked it a lot. During the whole song they did all their movements in unison, including this crazy little dance that I was a little bit obsessed with. I can't explain it, but I have never seen anything quite like it.
Anyway, it was exactly like I should have expected an after-school matinée concert. in the auditorium of a freezing cold Soviet-built school featuring a C-list pop star in a developing country to be like, so I don't know why I'm complaining. They even let me in for free (tickets for the students cost 20 com. Thats about 85 cents and the cost of four ice cream cones for these kids).
December 6, 2009
I'm taking a break from reading a book that I started this morning and haven't been able to put down since. I've never been so sucked into a non-fiction book before. Its called Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, and it is excellent. I've got a full free day ahead of me with nothing to do, so I'll probably just plow through and finish it.
I stayed in the village this weekend at the repeated insistence of my host family. They hosted a guesting last night and really wanted to show me off to their friends. Also, I am sure they were happy to have an extra pair of hands to help out. My host mom asked me to make few pizzas for the guests, and although the sauce was amazing (if I do say so myself), the dough was pretty bad (I'm blaming the yeast) and the cheese that Apa picked out at the bazaar was not the best for pizza, although I'm not sure if there is a good pizza cheese to be found at all in Uzgen.
To prepare for the meal, Apa started baking bread on Friday morning. After I came home from work some neighbor ladies came over to help fry borsok (Kyrgyz donuts), which they always make in ridiculously huge quantities for any occasion and is at least a three-woman job. They showed me how to make and roll out the dough and fry it, insisting that I need to learn these skills just in case I marry a Kyrgyz boy and have to cook for my in-laws. Fresh, hot borsok is the absolute best Kyrgyz tradition, hands down. It also clears up the mystery of why I'm not losing any weight with as little food as I eat. Whenever there's fresh borsok around I gorge myself on it, eating probably the equivalent of six American-sized donuts in one sitting. Its a really bad habit. It was a really good time until they force-fed me bozo (a pinkish-colored milk drink that tastes like sour cream mixed with club soda) insisting that if I drink more of it I will start to like it, and even if I don't, it is good for my health and I should drink it to keep my blood warm during the winter. Bleh.
Everyone went to bed early that night and by the time I got up at 8 in the morning, Apa had already put out two huge piles of ingredients for me to peel and cut up for two different salads. I was also given my usual assignment to peel onions and potatoes. Even though I basically spent five hours cutting vegetables, the whole family was sitting and working and talking together, and there was a nice warm fire going in the stove, so I'll admit that I had a surprisingly pleasant time. I spent the afternoon making pizza by myself and helping set up the table and such. The guests finally came at 6, and my host dad effectively kept me hidden from sight until everyone was there and I could make my dramatic appearance to a chorus of “oooh, beautiful girl!” like he had just unveiled a new work of art. So awkward. Anyway, after the guests were all served I went and hid in my room “babysitting” my little host niece because I knew that my host dad had wanted me to give a toast and sing a song, and I hoped that if he went through enough vodka toasts and I was out of sight he might forget. He didn't, but I told him I would only sing if he sang first, which got a good laugh and let me off the hook.
December 8, 2009
I just want to continue my thoughts on that book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. In a nutshell, it talks about how geography and the layout of the continents, as opposed to physiological differences between the people themselves, led to the differences in when people in different parts of the world had advancements in the areas of food production, tool making, etc. which led to developing the diseases, weapons, etc. that allowed them to conquer other groups in other areas of the world.
Anyway, like I said, I breezed through it, even though it was a pretty big book. It was one of those books where you are reading it and think, “ok, thats great, but what about....?” and then your question is answered in the next paragraph. However, now after I have finished the book, I thought of something that he neglected to touch on. I was walking home from work when I saw a familiar sight, even for three in the afternoon: a man passed out in the mud on the side of the road. I got to thinking, what role did Russia's vodka play in expanding its empire back in the day? I can only assume that its pretty easy to get people to do what you want after a few vodka toasts, especially if you are a big Russian man who has been drinking vodka all his life and you are up some Central Asians who are half your size. Had Kyrgyzstan been swallowed up by China instead, would we still see this problem here? I don't know. Maybe I'm putting the blame on Russia unfairly. Maybe the toasting culture goes back further than that. Maybe if they had some wine and beer that wasn't absolute shit they would drink that instead of nasty cheap vodka. My host dad and I have been engaged in an endless argument over which is better: expensive American beer or cheap Uzgen beer. He'll bring home a half empty bottle once in a while for us to share (most of the beer here comes in plastic bottles—what does that tell you about the quality?), insisting that it is a good bottle this time (the fact that the taste changes noticeably from bottle to bottle should also indicate the quality of beer we're talking about. It ranges from watery, stale-tasting beer to watery, stale-tasting piss). His argument is that Uzgen beer is better because it is so much cheaper: 20 som, compared to the $4 he paid in the states—100 som.
Really, me and my host dad only have had about four conversations since I have been here, and they just keep continuing. The others revolve around pigs, swine flu, and why Christians should take it as a hint to follow the example of Muslims and stop keeping pigs and eating pork; the fact that everything is made in China; and some mystery monument he saw when he visited what he keeps calling “Square Times” in New York (he keeps thinking that if he talks about it enough I'll figure out what he is talking about).
Ask and ye shall receive. My school's one and only electric heater has been installed in Informatsia/English room, also now known as Miss Audra's Kabinet. Yay! It still isn't warm enough to take off your hat and coat, but at least my hands won't freeze when I'm writing on the board. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I remembered to turn off the heater when I left the room this afternoon. Ooops. I'd better make sure I get there first tomorrow to check or they might take it away from me.
Today nobody showed up at my club because there was a concert at my school that all my students went to. I actually knew about the concert because they made an announcement during one of my classes yesterday, but so many kids asked me if I was going to have club that I assumed they would come. They didn't. So, there was nothing left but to check out the concert. It was terrible.
They had hung up a big poster above the stage in the little auditorium featuring over-sized glamor shots of the star, a handsome Kyrgyz jigit and “super star” (the poster's words, not mine). He probably sings at weddings on the weekends. When I came in, a young man was singing a popular Kyrgyz pop song, but he was most definitely not the guy from the poster: he happened to be a four foot tall dwarf. He started doing some crazy comic dances and it became apparent that he wasn't singing at all, but lip syncing. To his credit, he did sing a little later (karaoke style, of course, like the rest of the concert). Besides the guy from the poster and the dwarf, there were also two not-so-good-looking guys with mediocre karaoke skills. In between musical numbers there were some comedy routines, almost entirely centered around the dwarf's height. I can't imagine that I would have found the jokes nearly as funny as everyone else even if I did understand them in their entirety.
There was one good part of the concert that was nearly ruined by the shitty sound system that was being used (I don't think it could have made anyone sound good): a song that the poster guy and the dwarf guy did together. It was in Kyrgzy, but it had some Middle Eastern or maybe Uzbek flair to it. If I drowned out the static and feedback I really liked it a lot. During the whole song they did all their movements in unison, including this crazy little dance that I was a little bit obsessed with. I can't explain it, but I have never seen anything quite like it.
Anyway, it was exactly like I should have expected an after-school matinée concert. in the auditorium of a freezing cold Soviet-built school featuring a C-list pop star in a developing country to be like, so I don't know why I'm complaining. They even let me in for free (tickets for the students cost 20 com. Thats about 85 cents and the cost of four ice cream cones for these kids).
December 6, 2009
I'm taking a break from reading a book that I started this morning and haven't been able to put down since. I've never been so sucked into a non-fiction book before. Its called Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, and it is excellent. I've got a full free day ahead of me with nothing to do, so I'll probably just plow through and finish it.
I stayed in the village this weekend at the repeated insistence of my host family. They hosted a guesting last night and really wanted to show me off to their friends. Also, I am sure they were happy to have an extra pair of hands to help out. My host mom asked me to make few pizzas for the guests, and although the sauce was amazing (if I do say so myself), the dough was pretty bad (I'm blaming the yeast) and the cheese that Apa picked out at the bazaar was not the best for pizza, although I'm not sure if there is a good pizza cheese to be found at all in Uzgen.
To prepare for the meal, Apa started baking bread on Friday morning. After I came home from work some neighbor ladies came over to help fry borsok (Kyrgyz donuts), which they always make in ridiculously huge quantities for any occasion and is at least a three-woman job. They showed me how to make and roll out the dough and fry it, insisting that I need to learn these skills just in case I marry a Kyrgyz boy and have to cook for my in-laws. Fresh, hot borsok is the absolute best Kyrgyz tradition, hands down. It also clears up the mystery of why I'm not losing any weight with as little food as I eat. Whenever there's fresh borsok around I gorge myself on it, eating probably the equivalent of six American-sized donuts in one sitting. Its a really bad habit. It was a really good time until they force-fed me bozo (a pinkish-colored milk drink that tastes like sour cream mixed with club soda) insisting that if I drink more of it I will start to like it, and even if I don't, it is good for my health and I should drink it to keep my blood warm during the winter. Bleh.
Everyone went to bed early that night and by the time I got up at 8 in the morning, Apa had already put out two huge piles of ingredients for me to peel and cut up for two different salads. I was also given my usual assignment to peel onions and potatoes. Even though I basically spent five hours cutting vegetables, the whole family was sitting and working and talking together, and there was a nice warm fire going in the stove, so I'll admit that I had a surprisingly pleasant time. I spent the afternoon making pizza by myself and helping set up the table and such. The guests finally came at 6, and my host dad effectively kept me hidden from sight until everyone was there and I could make my dramatic appearance to a chorus of “oooh, beautiful girl!” like he had just unveiled a new work of art. So awkward. Anyway, after the guests were all served I went and hid in my room “babysitting” my little host niece because I knew that my host dad had wanted me to give a toast and sing a song, and I hoped that if he went through enough vodka toasts and I was out of sight he might forget. He didn't, but I told him I would only sing if he sang first, which got a good laugh and let me off the hook.
December 8, 2009
I just want to continue my thoughts on that book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. In a nutshell, it talks about how geography and the layout of the continents, as opposed to physiological differences between the people themselves, led to the differences in when people in different parts of the world had advancements in the areas of food production, tool making, etc. which led to developing the diseases, weapons, etc. that allowed them to conquer other groups in other areas of the world.
Anyway, like I said, I breezed through it, even though it was a pretty big book. It was one of those books where you are reading it and think, “ok, thats great, but what about....?” and then your question is answered in the next paragraph. However, now after I have finished the book, I thought of something that he neglected to touch on. I was walking home from work when I saw a familiar sight, even for three in the afternoon: a man passed out in the mud on the side of the road. I got to thinking, what role did Russia's vodka play in expanding its empire back in the day? I can only assume that its pretty easy to get people to do what you want after a few vodka toasts, especially if you are a big Russian man who has been drinking vodka all his life and you are up some Central Asians who are half your size. Had Kyrgyzstan been swallowed up by China instead, would we still see this problem here? I don't know. Maybe I'm putting the blame on Russia unfairly. Maybe the toasting culture goes back further than that. Maybe if they had some wine and beer that wasn't absolute shit they would drink that instead of nasty cheap vodka. My host dad and I have been engaged in an endless argument over which is better: expensive American beer or cheap Uzgen beer. He'll bring home a half empty bottle once in a while for us to share (most of the beer here comes in plastic bottles—what does that tell you about the quality?), insisting that it is a good bottle this time (the fact that the taste changes noticeably from bottle to bottle should also indicate the quality of beer we're talking about. It ranges from watery, stale-tasting beer to watery, stale-tasting piss). His argument is that Uzgen beer is better because it is so much cheaper: 20 som, compared to the $4 he paid in the states—100 som.
Really, me and my host dad only have had about four conversations since I have been here, and they just keep continuing. The others revolve around pigs, swine flu, and why Christians should take it as a hint to follow the example of Muslims and stop keeping pigs and eating pork; the fact that everything is made in China; and some mystery monument he saw when he visited what he keeps calling “Square Times” in New York (he keeps thinking that if he talks about it enough I'll figure out what he is talking about).
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Thanksgiving
November 24, 2009
On Tuesdays I don't have class until 11:00, but I usually go in at 8:30 anyway because more often than not there has been a change in the schedule anyway, and if not, I use the time to talk to other teachers, make visual aids, and whatever else. Today, I woke up at my usual time, but when I went to dip my hand into the water can to wash my face, my knuckles hit a half inch of ice floating on top. I decided that was as good an excuse as any to crawl back into my sleeping bag for another few hours, which is where I am now. There's no point in hanging around an unheated school for any longer than is necessary, right?
November 25, 2009
Its snowing again today. The school was colder than ever, and there wasn't any sun to run out and stand in during the breaks. I walked around all day with my new wool coat (thank God I went out and bought one!) buttoned up to my eyes and the hood up. All the teachers laughed at me, asking mockingly, “are you cold, Audra? I thought it was cold in your state.” I think I may have struck some nerves when I told them a little testily that my state gives the schools enough money so that the schools are warm and people can take off their hats and coats inside. I don't want to insult their country, but seriously...
So, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which doesn't make any difference to me, really, except for that I am doing the same Thanksgiving-themed lesson in all the grades today and tomorrow. I think my counterpart and I are regretting this, because even though it was easy to plan one lesson rather than four, it is difficult to do the same thing over and over again (six down today, three tomorrow!). I explained the holiday and our traditions to the kids and then they wrote five things that they are thankful for. I thought they would need some help with this assignment since, chances are, they've never answered this question specifically like American students do every year, but they did a great job of it. I ended up being a little embarrassed by my list, which included wool socks and peanut butter from America and was probably the silliest of all the lists. I was surprised that most of my kids in all the classes included God on their lists, since, in my village at least, religiousness is not terribly visible. Most of the kids also wrote “I am thankful for Miss Audra comes to Kyrgyzstan,” which made me feel good, even though I know they are just a bunch of little suck-ups.
After school the snow was really coming down. I had a little bit of shopping to do, so I figured if I was going to wave down a car anyway, I might as well go all the way to the Uzgen bazaar. Bad idea. I am now wet and miserable. I wondered how the bazaar operates in bad weather, and the answer is exactly like it always does. The difference is that you have to watch out above you from the occasional flood of rain water getting knocked off the tarp awning of a stall and below you for the occasional puddle that is a lot deeper than it looks. In my quest to navigate the driest path between the sections I needed to visit, I came across a part of the bazaar that I had never seen before, and I was surprised at how similar it looked to Best Buy. Sometime when it is dryer I will have to investigate. I can't let today ruin my love of the Uzgen bazaar, which I appreciate so much more after doing some shopping last weekend in the Osh bazaar, which is way too stinking big for me to handle.
November 29, 2009
Yesterday we Oshian volunteers and some friends enjoyed our own little Thanksgiving feast. It was fantastic and included almost all of the essentials, with the exception that the turkey was substituted for three rotisserie chickens. The triumph of the evening, in my opinion, was a fantastic green bean casserole made almost completely from scratch. Amazing. I hope everyone’s American Thanksgiving was wonderful too.
On Tuesdays I don't have class until 11:00, but I usually go in at 8:30 anyway because more often than not there has been a change in the schedule anyway, and if not, I use the time to talk to other teachers, make visual aids, and whatever else. Today, I woke up at my usual time, but when I went to dip my hand into the water can to wash my face, my knuckles hit a half inch of ice floating on top. I decided that was as good an excuse as any to crawl back into my sleeping bag for another few hours, which is where I am now. There's no point in hanging around an unheated school for any longer than is necessary, right?
November 25, 2009
Its snowing again today. The school was colder than ever, and there wasn't any sun to run out and stand in during the breaks. I walked around all day with my new wool coat (thank God I went out and bought one!) buttoned up to my eyes and the hood up. All the teachers laughed at me, asking mockingly, “are you cold, Audra? I thought it was cold in your state.” I think I may have struck some nerves when I told them a little testily that my state gives the schools enough money so that the schools are warm and people can take off their hats and coats inside. I don't want to insult their country, but seriously...
So, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which doesn't make any difference to me, really, except for that I am doing the same Thanksgiving-themed lesson in all the grades today and tomorrow. I think my counterpart and I are regretting this, because even though it was easy to plan one lesson rather than four, it is difficult to do the same thing over and over again (six down today, three tomorrow!). I explained the holiday and our traditions to the kids and then they wrote five things that they are thankful for. I thought they would need some help with this assignment since, chances are, they've never answered this question specifically like American students do every year, but they did a great job of it. I ended up being a little embarrassed by my list, which included wool socks and peanut butter from America and was probably the silliest of all the lists. I was surprised that most of my kids in all the classes included God on their lists, since, in my village at least, religiousness is not terribly visible. Most of the kids also wrote “I am thankful for Miss Audra comes to Kyrgyzstan,” which made me feel good, even though I know they are just a bunch of little suck-ups.
After school the snow was really coming down. I had a little bit of shopping to do, so I figured if I was going to wave down a car anyway, I might as well go all the way to the Uzgen bazaar. Bad idea. I am now wet and miserable. I wondered how the bazaar operates in bad weather, and the answer is exactly like it always does. The difference is that you have to watch out above you from the occasional flood of rain water getting knocked off the tarp awning of a stall and below you for the occasional puddle that is a lot deeper than it looks. In my quest to navigate the driest path between the sections I needed to visit, I came across a part of the bazaar that I had never seen before, and I was surprised at how similar it looked to Best Buy. Sometime when it is dryer I will have to investigate. I can't let today ruin my love of the Uzgen bazaar, which I appreciate so much more after doing some shopping last weekend in the Osh bazaar, which is way too stinking big for me to handle.
November 29, 2009
Yesterday we Oshian volunteers and some friends enjoyed our own little Thanksgiving feast. It was fantastic and included almost all of the essentials, with the exception that the turkey was substituted for three rotisserie chickens. The triumph of the evening, in my opinion, was a fantastic green bean casserole made almost completely from scratch. Amazing. I hope everyone’s American Thanksgiving was wonderful too.
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