technorati tags: central asia  volunteering

technorati tags: central asia  volunteering

A Pumpkin Like Any Other

Well, the gauntlet of the American Holiday season has officially kicked off, starting with Halloween. The students are off from classes for 11 days, for fall break, so I decided to throw a Halloween party to break up the monotony a little bit, and because the time is quickly coming when I will be winging my way back home. Just last week my advanced students completed their first round of the competitive FLEX exams (the US State Department program that provides study abroad scholarships for Central Asian students) Five of mine passed to the second round, which I was proud of, as last year only two of my 10th graders made it in. To celebrate, I organized a Halloween party at my resource center, and invited Russ, my fellow PCV who lives in the village over from me, to bring his students into town to celebrate with us. Three of Russ’s kids also made it past the second round, which for a village school is a huge accomplishment. As luck would have it, a few days ago I was cleaning out my resource center in preparation for leaving, and I stumbled upon a huge box of unopened Halloween decorations and party favors that had been sent by a previous volunteer and never used. I went a little crazy and hung up plastic skeletons, and ghost streamers EVERYWHERE, bought a crap load of candy at the market, and baked cookies like there was no tomorrow. One of my 8th graders, who is also my neighbor, I made a journey to the Bazaar to hunt for pumpkins for 25 kids, which was an adventure in itself.

In America, pumpkins are basically used for decorative purposes. We stack them on porches or stuff them in cornucopias, and hollow them out for Jack o’ Lanterns, but other than showing the holiday spirit, they really have no other utilitarian purpose. Here however, they are one of the main staples of the Turkmen diet. The main type of pumpkin that can be found most everywhere are long oblong pumpkin-squashes, which are shaped more like thin eggplants, or those blow up toys you can punch and they pop back up again (don’t ask…) and are, I might add, ridiculously scrumptious. Sometimes they are so sweet, a plain steamed pumpkin might taste like someone has slow cooked it in brown sugar for a day. De-lish. Mainly, the pumpkins are steamed, or fried with onions and stuffed into baked somsas or steamed dumplings (which is by far my favorite Turkmen dish I have eaten here). For the last few Autumns I have waited in anticipation for when the pumpkins finally come into season, because I know that it means we get to eat Kady Manty (pumpkin dumplings) for a few months before winter sets in, and we are back to onion and goat meat. As crazy as it sounds, it’s one of the reasons that fall is my favorite season here. This particular Bazaar trip though, I wasn’t in search of a nice tasty orange squash for Manty: I was hunting for little deformed orange balls that would most closely resemble an American Jack o Lantern. After combing the bazaar, my student I managed to find a few sellers who had an assortment of deformed pumpkins that would suffice. After insisting several times that I only wanted the “’kichi-jek togoluk kadys’ (little round pumpkins), I got a good selection to choose from. We went from stall to stall and picked through truck beds full of hundreds of green and orange pumpkins to find the roundest, orangest ones they had, which seemed to amuse all of the sellers-as nobody picks pumpkins here by look-only by how thick the meat it, or how big the pumpkin is, and for sure nobody wants the scrawny under-grown ones. I ran into a woman I knew who explained to one little old lady seller that I was a foreign teacher and we often did strange things like this. That explanation seemed to appease her for the time being, and she forked over her round pumpkins. In a little under an hour, we managed to fill an entire car full of pumpkins, and a taxi driver hauled me, my student, and our pumpkins to my office in his old Russian Lada, where 20 some odd teenagers touting knives and wooden spoons were waiting to unload our bounty outside my office. We caused quite a stir, as nobody could quite figure why the hell we were hauling in scrawny little deformed pumpkins by the cartful into the Education Building on a Sunday afternoon, when everyone was supposed to be hanging out at home washing their laundry.

The party lasted a few hours, and was one of the best times I have had with my kids in a while. As my service is sweeping to a close in less than two weeks, I have been looking back on the last two years and trying to summarize up my service, over which I feel somewhat conflicted. Every volunteer has different accomplishments and experiences throughout their service, although the basic idea of Peace Corps is to do grass roots development projects executed in a sustainable manner. In Turkmenistan, one of our main goals has been to try and work with teachers and execute methodology training. This is meant to be a sustainable method for continuing to improve teaching quality and education effectiveness on a wide level to the population. However, what most volunteers have discovered is that the organization of the school system and the strict regulation of access to resources makes these changes a constant uphill battle, which is enough to make even the most diligent volunteer want to pull their hair out. Personally, though I have tried to do a far amount of methodology training, overall I don’t really see any change in the teachers or our classrooms since I have come to the school. So in this sense, I guess I have failed. But the work that I have instead found to be the most rewarding is working outside of school with my club kids. Though it may not be work on the level that we were trained towards, it is what has kept me going for the last two years, and I hope the impact that I have made on these 30 some kids will be sustainable, if on a different level. As hubris as it may sound, I hope that the memories that they have accumulated and the experiences they have had with me will somehow impact how they change as adults, and in turn impact the lives of the people around them as they grow older. I never really saw myself being a mother-hen type to a pack of rowdy teenagers, but I will honestly say as the day approaches when I am going to have to say goodbye to them all for good, I get more and more emotional about it. I have seen so many of them grow and change over the last two years, and it just hit me today, as I lined all them up together outside my office to take a group picture, that THIS, not the governments’ promise of sweeping global change, or the promise of adventure, or some propaganda pamphlet, was why I gave up two years of my life to fly halfway around the world. So, you ask, was it worth it?

In all honesty, Hell yes.

Pictures of some of my kids at the center, some co-workers and I in our resource center, and my counterpart with her new grandaughter at the pishme toy (baby shower).

And, That’s Curtains Kids!!

Sept and Oct, 2010

Well, I have been completely horrendous over the last four months about updating this blog. Partly, it had to do with the fact that most of the internet places in T-stan have now censored many information sharing websites and to add to that, both my computer charger and my backup computer charger decided to fry out on me, and so I have been virtually computer-less for the last few months. Instead I have been fervently using the internet connection on my little Turkmen cell phone, though I am unable to download or upload anything (like a blog...ha) Luckily, a departing comrade who happened to have the same computer as me loaned me her charger on the promise that I pass it on to another volunteer within the month, so I am taking advantage of this small window and using it as much as I can before the times up. So I will recap, in brief, the last few months of my life here in ‘the distant sands’:

The Summer

The summer, as summers generally seem to do, flew by way to quickly. There were both ups and downs, some great times, and some moments that I literally wanted to throw in the towel and call it quits on the whole game and pack my bags for home. Some of my triumphs were seeing some of my students pass their entrance exams to study at foreign universities in Byelorussia, and Kazakhstan. Also it was amazing to see the progress that some of my intermediate students have made since last summer. Some of them have gone from barely speaking a word to chattering like little English-speaking monkeys!! I had some heartbreaking moments as well, like when one of my prize pupils who was selected for a study abroad program was told she couldn’t go on the day she was supposed to leave, because she was 5 months too young. She was 1 out of only 7 students chosen from the entire country of T-stan, and then on the morning her flight was leaving to Washington DC, she was told to pack up and go back home. It was upsetting to see her dreams (try 10 years of studying English for the opportunity to go to abroad) dashed just because of a stupid clerical error. Also in June, one of my closest friends I have made here, who was a fellow English teacher, was killed in a car accident along with her little sister on their way home from her sisters college graduation. Many of my close students were pupils of her, and it was heartbreaking to have to give them the news, as many had known her since they were little, and then go with my co-workers to visit her family, as it expected in Turkmen tradition to do on the 7th day, the 10th day, and the 40th day after a persons death. It was yet another reminder of how fragile life is, and how important it is to make the most out of the time we have. Because even though Jahan was only 27, she was well known throughout the entire community young and old, and it was amazing to see how many peoples lives she had affected in her short time as a teacher, and how much respect she had gained from so many of the teachers and students. She was one of the most active teachers in Tejen, and it is hard to imagine going back to school without her being there. It’s weird sometimes just how much empty space a single person can leave behind them. You don’t even realize it until after they are gone.

Keeping busy, however, is always a good salve for the soul, so for the remainder of the summer, I hunkered down into my summer clubs, rotating about 5 different groups throughout the week, and opening up some new classes. I opened up a Spanish Club, which I had been wanting to do for a while now, and I enjoyed teaching it almost more than my English Clubs! I hadn’t realized just how rusty my Spanish chops had gotten, so it was nice to begin practicing again, and crack open my grammar book to refresh myself. I opened up an elementary English Club, and had my hands full teaching a bunch of rowdy 5th graders (though half of the time was spent keeping my Turkmen kids, Russian and Uzbek kids from killing each other (I had almost forgotten about all the racial issues that exist here outside the little Turkmen bubble that I live in). So most of June, July and August I was pretty much AWAL from the PCV community, avoiding most of the volunteer social gatherings in the regions and in the capital in lui of trying to get some work done before my vacation, and also because I wasn’t in the greatest place emotionally. Nobody ever wants to be the Eore of the group.

Also, recently in the last few months, I welcomed a new volunteer to Tejen. Her name is Karla, and she is an older woman from Oregon, who is assigned to the Tejen Hospital to work as a Health Volunteer. She is extremely energetic and exited about her new home, and I was amazed to find out that we had more in common than we realized. It turns out that she used to live in Whitefish, and summer in Glacier Park!! She was part of the Glacier Mountaineering Society, and even knows some of the same people as I do!! Once again, it’s funny to realize that sometimes the world isn’t as big as you think it is. So as she began to settle into her work schedule and figure her way around Tejen, my sitemate Russ and I, along with another volunteer friend of ours, decided to use the last of our vacation days to take a trip to Cambodia towards the end of summer, so mid August I once again bid my students and my host family adieu, packed my trusty backpack, and along with Russ and Collin, hightailed it for the airport. The boys and I spent about 2 1/2 weeks gallivanting around Cambodia, checking out temples, eating our weight in Seafood BBQ and Cambodian beer, meeting new and interesting people, and haggling in the markets, spending all our well-saved travel money (I put pictures up on my facebook page for anyone who’s curious). After we had run out of both money and clean clothes, the three of us dragged ourselves back to Ashgabat just in time to hop on another plane to go to our last conference as volunteers: our Close of Service Conference!!

The Beginning of the End: Conference

Most of the volunteers, myself included, were marking the weeks-months even- to this particular conference, as it is the last milestone that we have in our service. Officially, it marked the completion of our service as volunteers, and from that point on, we were to begin our transition away from our host communities back into the “real world”. It was surreal sitting around the table with all these people, who 2 years ago were nothing more than 43 strangers to me, and realizing how much I am going to miss all of them, and miss being a part of the little community that we have all created over the last couple of years. Two of our fellow volunteers recently got engaged, so we had a celebratory engagement party-Volunteer style-with a duel vodka-pong tournament and an appropriately themed ‘future’ costume party, to end our service with a bang. It was both a really good time, and a little sad, because it was weird to think that it was the last time I will probably see a lot of them (and/or nurse hangovers with them) ever again. Although who knows, life is funny sometimes, you never know what the future holds. We received our exit dates, and I was placed in the third group, slotted to leave my work site the second week of November.

To wrap up the conference, we had a Cultural Olympiad, which basically consisted of the five regions competing in relay events that focused on the “important skills” we have learned during our service, such as “Turkmen Cola Chugging” ,“Toilet Squatting” ,“Chiggit (sunflower seed) Speed Eating”, “Manat Currency Conversions”, and “Turkmen Party Toasts”. I was appointed the currency conversion competitor for my region (Which was a stupid mistake on their part-they were doomed as soon as they gave me the pen. In high school, I was the girl who COPIED off the delinquents in my math classes. Needless to say, we did NOT win that event). All in all, it was good end to a mind blowing two years, and it was the last little push needed as we began the sprint to the end, and now can start thinking about life beyond the next school semester/harvest season. Though the thought of having to pay for car insurance, rent, utilities, a phone plan, and health coverage without a job is already enough to give me night sweats. In some ways, being a poor government volunteer is great, as we don’t have to think about any of that nonsense that exists out there in the ‘real world’. So, as the last few months funnel down to the end, I will begin the dreaded gauntlet of bag-packing-goodbye-party-hand-shaking craziness.

The Final Semester; Work and Farewells

Our Last semester is now coming to a close. At the end of October, work for most of us ends, as a 11 day Fall holiday/ Independence day break from school begins and immediately following it, many of us will begin migrating to the capital to finish the last of our paperwork, evaluations, and meetings which allow us to tie our two years of service into a nice little bow. For most of us, it is the lull when we can begin ‘cutting the apron’ strings from our students, and begin to transition our coworkers into continuing our work without us. I’m already dreading the day I have to say goodbye to my kids, as I have become really attached to a lot of them, and I can already tell I will be an emotional spaz when the time comes to bid them the final farewell. After 2 years of working with them everyday, helping them with their problems, and encouraging them through their failures and triumphs, a lot of them feel a little like my like my own kids (though as I am only 11 years older than most of them, logistically this is definitely NOT the case).

Also, throughout October, for us T-17 volunteers it was a bit of a roller coaster. Every 12 months, pcvs must re-apply to the T-stan government for work visas, and this year we lost our Peace Corps securities director, so consequently the process didn’t go as smoothly as anticipated as the staff was so overworked. We were given temporary extensions at the last minute, and were told we might be immediately evacuated if the paperwork wasn’t approved because they were submitted too late, and it was only this week, three weeks after our previous visas expired, that we were granted permanent visas until December. Which doesn’t seem like a big deal, except in this post-Soviet system where documentation and protocol is followed before anything else, and any little slip up will land you a one-way ticket to who knows where. But in the end no harm was caused, except for a few more gray hairs on the staff’s part, a lot of document shuffling and taxi rides, and lots of phone calls to appease frantic migration officers and disgruntled school directors. Sometimes it’s hard to concentrate on lesson plans when you’re not sure if you will deported within the next few days. In the end we get to stay a total of…. wait for it….four more weeks! All that stress for a few more weeks. Sheesh.

Besides all that nonsense, these last few weeks, I have begun preparing a lot of my students for (my last!! Ahh!!) Olympiad and the FLEX test, which I should hopefully be here for before I leave Tejen. If some of my girls pass the FLEX exam, they might be in America in the same hemisphere as me next year! THAT would be a trip. They have been working their tails off, and so I’m crossing my fingers that, for at least a few of them, their hard work will be rewarded with this amazing experience. Besides that, I am preparing two final seminars to train the new Volunteers that arrived in October. We got a fresh new group in at the beginning of the month, although a lot of us were holding our breaths after the disaster of Oct 2009 (where the new volunteers got stopped at the airport, and nobody made it over) But they made it in, our program wasn’t shut down (which would have been the case had they not come) and they are now in the whirlwind of PST training in Ashgabat, learning the language and receiving technical training for the next 2 years. It’s weird to think that was me 2 years ago. Crazy how time flies... So in November I and a fellow pcv will be presenting on “Teacher Training Seminars” and “Teaching Advanced Students”, which should hopefully be interesting and helpful to them as they begin their own services (well, at least I think so…says the inner nerd in me…).

So all that remains will be a few last work parties (including a big Halloween bash for my kids!) and packing my room. It’s amazing how much stuff I have accumulated in 2 years. I am crossing my fingers in hopes that I finish everything in time, and that all my crap is going to fit back into my bloody suitcase. It is, how you say, curtains baby. It’s been a crazy two years. Until soon, as now it’s America or Bust! Peace.

Here are some snapshots from over the summer. The first two are from our Fourth of July celebration at the American Embassy in the capital (the theme was national parks. p.s Glacier was NOT represented!) Then another picture of a Turkmen wedding I went to with a friend, then a picture from laundry day at our house that I thought was cute, and also a picture of me and the boys from our Cambodia trip.

Ignorance is Bliss

June 5th

A common topic of conversation between volunteers is the good and bad sides about being able to understand the local language. As 2 years closes in on us, most of us have gotten to the point where we are generally comfortable with speaking our new tongue. We can chat on the bus, barter at the market, and argue with the neighbor women about the best treatment for a cold. Although our grammar may be far from perfect, and mix-ups are still a pretty normal occurrence (I ironically continue to mispronounce the verb ‘to get married’ with ‘to die,’ per one example), and for most of us the linguistic hurdles are far fewer than they were a year ago. However, it has been brought up in conversations between us that there are also downfalls of understanding most of what’s happening around us, and as one of my fellow volunteers recently put it “sometimes it’s just honestly better for your sanity to be blissfully ignorant of what’s going on.” This usually pertains to moments when the conversation concerns the wedding plans of a various relative for about the BAJILLIONTH time and you feel like your head is about to explode, or when your host aunt is complaining YET AGAIN about the effect the wind is having on her arthritis and blood pressure, and you really just wish she would shut up already. Moments like these often bring back the teary-eyed days of nostalgia when, as new volunteers arriving to a party, we would sit and be blissfully ignorant for the next few hours, tuning out to our rice palov and only taking our cue to leave when we would notice the shift towards the door, and thus guestimat that the gathering was wrapping up.

I was thinking about these moments the other day while babysitting my host siblings. They quickly tired of the television and playing with an assortment of cups that I had laid out for them, and so decided to fall back on their old favorite pastime: using my body as their personal jungle gym while I tried to read a book/ write a letter. Most of the time I generally tune out their constant babbling unless it pertains to either immediate danger or tears, or if of their toes accidentally ends up lodged in my ears while they climb over me. But during this particular instance, as my host 5 yr old host brother practiced somersaulting across my knees and my host sister demonstrated her capability of wrapping an entire braid of hair around my ears, it was a little harder to tune them out. Their kindergarten chatter gradually turned to what they would do if their mother didn’t come home that evening, and somehow my sweet little siblings came to the morbid conclusion that they were going to go Donor Party on me, and feed on my carcass to survive.

“I suppose we could eat pretty much everything except her bones”. Malik concluded, poking at my arm. My host sister agreed, then added, pulling on my braid,

“I guess, but what will we do with her hair?”

“We could sell it at the Bazaar! I bet we’d make a lot of money!”

“Yeah, or we could give it to grandma. She’s always saying she wants more hair anyway. And it would be really fashionable” Malik concurred, and added.

“Ok. But, I don’t want to eat her skin. What will we do with that?” My little host sister thought about that for a minute.

“Mom always peels the potatoes before she cooks them, so we’d probably have to peel her too.”

“Really?!? Oh man, that’s a lot of work!” As I lay there on the couch beneath a mound of squirming children, the Salman Rushdie book in my hands temporarily forgotten, I begin to wonder where this conversation might be leading. But just then, my host brother found a particular flexible position by doing an upside-down backward bend over my tops of my knees, and my host sister screeched at him,

“Holy cow Malik, you look JUST like a monkey!!!”

"No, I don’t! Don’t lie!”

“Yes you do! Do you want a banana, Monkey? Here monkey boy, take the ban-naaaa-naaaa!” This was followed by one of those high pitched screeches you generally hear from spoiled kids while being dragged from the toy aisle at Wal-Mart, and thus the next fifteen minutes consisted of them arguing over his resemblance to Curious George, and insulting and taunting each other with various animal names and offers of fruit. The conversation concerning cannibalism was thus abandoned, leaving me perplexed and thinking, “Man those were the good old days when I couldn’t understand anything.” Which leads to me conclude, it’s not called ignorant bliss for nothing.

An Update of Summer

June 15th

With just a few weeks in, I’m already having a more interesting summer than I have had the last few months of school-where I was basically on autopilot-zombie-mode until the last bell rang. After our All-volunteer conference in the capital, which was a well-needed break for everyone and a good chance to catch up with people that I haven’t seen in months, I went back to my work site to gear up for some extra curricular craziness. As my assigned school is a bit of a slacker, and I really didn’t feel like pulling teeth to organize another camp, I agreed to help the Russian school with a health camp.

Our funding however, fell through at the last minute, so we decided to do just a regular English camp-this year with a Space theme. We planned a five-day camp, and it worked out pretty nicely, with about 25 students, and 2 assistant students. Lots of arts and crafts like paper machete, pop up cards, and solar system mobiles. I had a good time, got to stretch my creative muscles cutting about a billion pieces of construction paper for the kids, managed to get coated in paper machete, and had fun dumping a bunch of squirmy kids in water-all in all good times. Then the following week turned more serious- a five day long teacher conference; organized, written and presented by yours truly. Although I have already presented at numerous seminars over the last year or so, a five day long program was pretty daunting, and left me frantically pouring over all my teacher training materials into the wee hours of the morning to scrape up enough material to teach them that wouldn’t bore them to death. Luckily a few teachers helped out giving short presentations so I was able to write a pretty decent lesson plan of themes we could cover over the course of the week. All in all, it was pretty successful, and I enjoyed working with all the teachers-and I even learned some new techniques and ideas myself from some of the other women! So with that finished, and the center and my time freer, I’ve added some new summer classes to my schedule (including a TEOFL prep class and a Spanish class! Whoop!) and I am ready to cruise until July-when our Fourth of July party (as well as the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps) will be held at the embassy. And everyone knows what that means: Imported wine and an open bar. Let the summer

madness begin!

Documenting the Slow and Eventual Death of my Beloved Mother Tongue

April 15th, 2010

It’s inevitable, when you live abroad long enough, that the way you speak tends to change. In addition to getting accustomed to speaking like a five-year old in your new language, you must also- as an Language teacher- learn how to speak your own language using grammar and vocabulary at levels that your co-workers and students will understand. And as most students have the grammatical understanding equivalent of 7 year olds-this results in that between the two languages you end up having the linguistic flexibility of a oversized toddler, complete with bad pronunciation (just think of David Sedaris “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, SO true Sally). And as all the textbooks here use British grammar, and people don’t understand a lot of American idioms or vocabulary, I often find myself saying things like “Yes, Aman is a clever pupil, he should go in for football.” or “Why, what lovely trousers you have today Begench!”, without a single trace of irony.

The only real chance for us to speak English with other native speakers occurs when volunteers get together on weekends in the cities, or during conferences in the capital. However, this can be anywhere from once a week, to once a month, or even longer for the more hermitic amongst our ranks. When the latter occurs, and a lot of time has passed without seeing another English Speaking person, what usually results is what one fellow volunteer here diplomatically titled (pardon the vulgarity) “explosive verbal diarrhea”. Even the most private of volunteers might find themselves rattling on and on about the most mundane or personal things, which can range from expressing our deepest darkest fears about the future to a person we haven’t seen in 6 months and who just happens to be sitting in front of us, to launching into a detailed hour-long monologue of the latest gross thing our Turkmen host brother did with a cow head (oblivious to whether or not the story is actually even remotely interesting to anybody besides ourselves). And because of our superior understanding of English, we find ourselves talking at breakneck speeds with the patience of drunken sailors so that a simple sentence might go something like this, and be completed in about 2.5 seconds flat:

“Imean,comeonit’slike,didshereallyexpectmetoeatthatIjustsawherpourlike,ahalfabottleofoilinthere,seriously!TherewasnowayinHellIwasgoingtoswallowthat.”

Previously, there had been a running competition amongst pcv’s to see which volunteer would crack most under the pressure and say the most outrageous things, which would be published in the volunteer newsletter. After some pretty hilarious results though, this competition gradually petered out, perhaps because it has been realized that each and every one of us have reached our moments of verbal desperation at some point or another during the last year and a half (mine was last summer when after nearly 2 months of not seeing another volunteer, I managed a nearly 30 minute monologue about my deeply violent feelings towards “The Mosquito”. Let it be known that EVERYBODY has his or her breaking point).

Added to the hilarity of us speaking like Ritilin-deprived drunken Sailors, over the last year and a half, most volunteers have all acquired certain vocabulary words from the Turkmen language that have become ingrained into our way of life, and thus do not need any translating in casual conversations amongst each other, but which would baffle anyone who didn’t have at least a general grasp of both languages (much like Spanglish, as it were). A typical conversation between two volunteers might consist of something like this:

“Hey Dave, gowumi?”

“Yeah, you?”

“Ehh, boljak. Yesterday my eje decided she wanted to go to our gonshy’s toyy, but my gelneje didn’t want to go because

everybody says he’s like a Narcoman, but we went anyway, and then I got sick cause the chorba had some serious yag in it. But I’m ok now. What’s new with you?”

“Not too much, we’re doing some remont at our school, so my bashlyk wants to close some classes for a month. So my kids don’t have anywhere to meet for clubs.”

“Bummer, can you meet somewhere else?”

“Ehh, bolonok. They only have permission for the school, because there was some problem with the Hakimlik before.”

“Bah!? That’s just samsak.”

“I know man, seriously. Give me a break already!”

It wasn’t until I went to Nepal, where English speakers are a dime a dozen in the cities, due to the proximity to India, and also as a result of the tourism trade, that I realized how pathetic my control of the mother tongue’ has gotten. This occurred when someone asked me what my native language was WHILE I was speaking English to them, thinking that I was a Eastern European on vacation and English was my second language (Kia dear, you will understand that one). And imagine his surprise when I told him I was an ENGLISH teacher. Hah. THAT was a fun conversation.

So, as the months pass here, I continue to fear the slow and eventual death of my Beloved Mother Tongue, and I can only hope that in the time that remains here, it will not completely disintegrate into useless babble. And if that is the case- to be as dramatic as I possibly can- then perhaps I may consider a life in silent religious contemplation, or a career as a professional mime. We’ll see how it goes.

In the Land of the Buddha,

One perk of joining the Peace Corps is not only to be able to work overseas, but also the possibility of border hopping in lands unknown during the time abroad. As most of the countries where volunteers serve border numerous other countries, it is fairly easy to obtain a visa, cross the border, and do a bit of cheap sightseeing during breaks from school, or when work is slow. For every month of service overseas, we accrue two vacation days to do with as we want, and most of us here hoard our days and lump them into two or three short vacations throughout the two years of service. Even though living overseas might seem like adventure enough, the truth is that after a few months, the daily grind here becomes just as tedious as anywhere else in the world, and it’s not long before most of us are staring dreamily at our maps on the walls in the anticipation of a little excitement. So this March, faced with an entire week of no classes due to spring break, I decided to plan my escape. The destination of choice? Nepal.

Let me say this: I was not meant to be a flatlander. I was raised romping around in hills and am not happy on a flat plane- a year and a half in this deserty place has confirmed this fact. So, fueled by Mountain Wonderlust and stories of friends and family who had visited Nepal before, a few weeks ago I dusted off my backpack and set off towards the airport. As luck would have it, there were some family friends of my uncles who were from the capital and were kind enough to put me up for a few days and get me pointed in the right direction.

I arrived in Kathmandu, tired after a night spent on an airplane, but pumped to start exploring. After filling me with some delicious Nepalese food, my Nepalese friends oriented me a bit around the capital and then set me in the right direction to do some exploring of my own. I visited some of the oldest Buddhist temples in the country, worked my way through the cultural maze that is Dubar Square, and climbed to the tops of the Stuppas to take in the views of the city. It just so happened that the day that I arrived the elderly Prime Minister passed away, and within a day, the entire city turned into a giant procession, with literally thousands of people lining the streets to watch as his family took his body to the river for the burial rites. We watched as they drove past the apartment, then later on TV that night, watched as his family and the elders preformed the lat rites and set his body on fire on the banks of the river. Even though I studied Buddhism a bit at UM, and am generally familiar with Buddhist and Hindu burial practices, I have to admit that for me it felt a bit morbid to see them set fire to him, and watch as he burned to a crisp surrounded by thousands of people. In comparison, western burials are so sterile; besides the viewing, you generally never see the body-it’s comfortably encased by several thousand dollars of wood, metal, and silk for most, if not all, of the ceremony. And even if families choose to cremate their loved ones, it is done in the privacy of a funeral home or crematory, and presented later to the loved ones. So it was quite an experience to watch a dead body burn on live television.

After a few days in the capital, the noise and dirt did me in, and I said goodbye to my Nepalese hosts and took off for what I had really come to see: Some Mountains. Because of my limited time, I decided to forego the Himalayas and instead went west, towards The Annapurna Mountain range, a less famous, but equally as stunning range that runs throughout Nepal. I took an 8 hour bus trip from Kathmandu to the city of Pokhara, stopping off halfway though the valley to take a newly built cable car to a popular temple built on a the top of a mountain, where Hindu families go to sacrifice goats for yearly pilgrimages. At first I was confused at the number of goats people were bringing up with them, and the mysterious lack of goats returning back down the mountain. It wasn’t until I saw everyone hauling large bloody sacks onto the cable cars with us as we went back down that I realized where the goats had gone!

I arrived in Pokhara (a complete haven for hippie trekkers) towards the evening, found a hostel, and began getting things in order for a short trek. I rented the basic equipment, bought a trekking permit, and arranged for a guide. The next day at dawn my guide (a young woman who works for an all female trekking company, for rural gender development) and I set off, and we begin making our way up in the foothills of the Annapurnas on the ABC trek (Annapurna Base Camp). For the next four days we wound our way though small villages, tea house settlements and lush terraced hills, over rivers, up ridges, and down through deep valleys. Nepal was one of my first times I have ever traveled solo, and it was an amazing experience. The trekking routes are like entire communities in themselves-all the guides and porters know each other, as well as the locals who run the teahouses, and within a day or so you begin to see familiar faces and meet up with other trekkers. At the end of every day, everyone gathers around the teahouses, eats piles of rice and Dal Bhat and swaps stories until the lights switch off and the hillside towns go dark. Although even up the hills, technology is never far away. At one point on our decent back to the valley, we were walking past a small group of hill women on the trail, all in traditional garb, barefoot, and hauling overloaded straw baskets attached with straps across their foreheads. Just when I was thinking how neat it was to be in such a simplistic and rustic place, miles away from any cars, trains, planes or technology, I heard a strange beeping noise, and one of the old ladies pulled a cell phone from a fold in her tunic and started chatting away on the trail!

We finished the trek, and I went back to Pokhara with some new friends to get a hot shower and stretch out my sore feet before leaving for the capital. The next day I caught a small plane back to the Kathmandu to start the journey back to Ashgabat. I made it to the airport in time, but due to bad weather our flight was canceled from Delhi. To make a long story short, I couldn’t get a connecting flight, and so after a day and a half at the airport offices, I had to transfer airports, apply for an emergency travel visa through India, and sweet talk my way onto a plane back to Ashgabat without a ticket. It took about 4 days, but I finally made it, a few days later than expected and with my nerves a little worse for wear. And despite the complications of the last few days, this trip only reinforced that I want to return to Nepal for a longer time to do it justice. But for now, the memory of cool mountain nights should be able to sustain me through most of the hot Turkmen summer, and in the meantime, it’s back to the grind once again. So, until the next adventure.

Peace

A Trip Northland

January 25th

So, on an up-note we just finished winter semester. I had planned to travel out of country, but at the last minute it fell through, so instead I stayed home for the break. I relaxed, read some books, had a few lazy mornings, and celebrated New Years and X-mas with my host family. The next day I went to the capital to meet up with a few other PCV friends who decided not to travel out of country, and then we traveled north to stay at another volunteers place. It was good to get out of our towns, as we were all going a bit stir crazy, and so the break was well needed. The other volunteers’ family was interesting, the host father is a Wildlife Biologist-a pretty rare profession in this country, and actually used to work for the WWF. After exploring the town and meeting some of our friends’ Turkmen buddies, her host father took us up into the hills to where he and his brother keep their horses. He is a real animal lover, and though his income is small and work is scarce, he still puts aside money to keep his horses-even buying feed for them (which in the winter costs $2 a day-extremely expensive for Turkmen standards) just because he loves them. Attitudes towards animals here are so different from western ideas, and it has been a while since I have seen anyone showing genuine affection towards an animal. To put it in perspective, it’s kind of like finding a dolphin in the middle of a corn field in Iowa. I can’t count the number of dead cats and dogs I have crossed on the way to work here in the past year, and so to meet someone who actually likes animals was kind of like a breath of fresh air. He let us ride the horses for a bit, and we watched him and his son feed and brush them. It reminded me of being a kid again, messing around with my dad and ‘lil brother’ Lindsey with our own horses out behind our house. As the sun set behind the mountains, the horses began to settle in for the night, putting their backs up against the night winter wind, and so the six of us all piled in the old jeep to drive back towards town. And as we drove past the old Soviet army tanks and training barracks silhouetted against the mountains that cross over to Iran, I couldn’t help thinking that it’s funny how the most random moments here remind me of home, and how they can somehow manage to put things on an even tilt again, and make it worth it.

The Seasons of Work and Home

January 20th, 2010

So it has been a while since wrote one of these, but life has continued to march on, and it seemed like every time I sat down to write, I could come up with nothing interesting to say. We have slipped full on into winter, and thanks to a generous leaving volunteer who gifted me her winter coat, I have been surviving this school semester in our unheated classrooms in relative comfort and warmth. The last two months has been a whirlwind of checking off dates in preparation for test exams for my advanced students. Last month several of my students wrote their first two rounds of FLEX exams, which is a program that chooses 60 kids from T-Stan to send to an American High School for a year. Last year I had two students go, and this year I am crossing my fingers that I will have at least three of my girls pass it. We prepped dialogues and TEOFL material for weeks, and almost all of my students made it to the second round. So now they will wait until next month, when they will hear the results for the third round and travel to the capital for interviews. I am crossing my fingers like it’s no ones business.

Besides the Flex exam, this month has been the Scholastic Olympiad, where kids from all schools compete in subjects like Russian, English, Math, and Chemistry. It was tough, because I was prepping half a dozen kids, all knowing they would be competing against each other. Added to this, I was on the English Judging committee, and had to determine all their placements for the final round. Teachers are super-competitive here, and many of them try to cheat on the final results so that their students get the best placements. Many are my co-workers, as well as my friends, and so it was difficult to try to be as fair as I could and at the same time watch that none of them tried to change or alter the results. If their students didn’t get the marks or places that they thought they deserved, they would start fighting and yelling at each other, or try to trick me into changing them. Some of it made me very angry, and needless to say I was more than happy when it was over, and relieved that I would not be around for next years Olympiad.

Well, in terms of home life, for the last year I have wrestled with the idea of trying to get my own apartment, even though getting all the government permissions seemed daunting, if not almost impossible. Like most Americans, I have over time settled into my independent routine of doing what I wanted when I wanted, and suddenly having to live in a family setting was frustrating. As my host siblings are young, and my host mother often works, many times I found myself having to cook for the family and watch the kids. My host parents family got it in their heads that I was going to be an English tutor for the whole family (a common problem for TEFL volunteers here), but after working a 9-6 everyday at school, I wasn’t to keen on coming home and teaching more lessons. The idea of being a substitute housewife and live in free-tutor didn’t really settle that well, and it led to quite a few scenes of frustration on both sides. With living with a family, I must say that it has further cemented my belief that I am not ready for the whole family scene-I am still way too attached to my carefree lifestyle (sorry mom, you’re gonna have to wait a few more years on that one…) But over the last year I have become gradually closer with both my host parents and my little ‘siblings’, we have made our compromises, and so I made the decision to stay with them until my contract is finished next year. Although it’s not always smooth sailing, we have all become really close, and I have no doubt that I will keep in contact with them for as many years as I am able after I leave here. And for now I will just dream of the day when I will have a place all my own….with running water and a washing machine J

A Bittersweet November

November 26th, 2009

Literally, before my eyes, November has come and gone. And what a month it has been, Jeeze. My site mate deserted me, I aged YET another year (I am now 21, if anybody was wondering), and winter had come roaring in with a vengeance. It has been a bittersweet month, both some really good times, and some sad ones. Due to unforeseen circumstances, no new volunteers have come to join our ranks here in this sandy patch of the world, and with the previous Volunteers contracts being up, well it’s like they say in show business: curtains baby. This month begins their departures, and by the end of December, they will all be gone on to continue their lives elsewhere. It’s also a running joke here that Peace Corps Turkmenistan is a lot like being in Harry Potter Movie, as we are all divided into the five regions (Ahal, Mary, Dashoguz, Lebop, and Balkan) and have thus been given nicknames (my region is the Slitherin house, for any of you Harry Potter peops out there...still don’t know why) We see the volunteers in our respective regions most often, as we spend holiday and birthday events with one another, share work duties such as workshops and camps, and tend to travel in packs sharing taxi rides, planes or trains. So over time our ‘region buddies’ have started to become like family. And as December closes in, it has started to hit us that our family is going to get a lot smaller very soon.

Recently, all the Ahal Volunteers gathered in the capital to commemorate their last days among our ranks, and because it was the last time most of us would see each other, we decided to throw together a early thanksgiving day feast. As we went round the table giving thanks before eating our piles of delicious grub, it was resoundingly apparent from everybody how much of an impact that we have had on each other in just this short amount of time. A year ago, when we were sitting in our training rooms in Philadelphia, filling out the last of our paperwork before we boarded the plane, one of our trainers said to us. “Look around you guys. All these people are strangers now, but in ten years they will be the people coming to your weddings, and holding your babies, or sitting around the table with your families.” A lot of us laughed and were like “Ok, dude, cut down on the cheese factor a little, why don’t ya…” But to a certain degree, he was right. We have all come from vastly different walks of life as far as Americans go, but looking at my comrades around the table on our last day of celebration before they left and listening to everybody’s heartfelt speeches, I couldn’t help thinking, ‘It’s good to be around family’. I can only imagine what another year will bring. And ignoring the dangerously high rating on the cheese-o-meter, on my part, I’m thankful for family, whatever form or shape that it comes in. So, with that said, I wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving. And to Dan’s mom, remind him to write me. He will be missed. 

Go to Hell!

October 29th, 2009

Fellow PCV: “So, are we still going to Hell this weekend?”

ME: “I don’t know, it might be really cold”

PCV: “Dude, even if we froze, I would still go.”

ME: “Alright, Hell it is then. But pack extra socks.”

Yeah, this snippet of conversation might seem a bit odd. Actually, what we were talking about was the Crater of Darveza, known locally as the Pit of Hell. To backtrack, a while ago some fellow volunteers has told us about a place they had heard of that was this huge burning pit literally in the middle of the desert. To reach it, you had to go north into the center of Gara Gun desert, drive off the main road a while through the sand dunes with a 4 x 4, and then camp out at the site overnight. There was no cell phone coverage, no town within a several hundred-kilometer radius, and no marked road to show where you needed to go. For a normal person this might sound like more trouble than it’s worth. For a bunch of entertainment and adventure-starved volunteers, it sounded like GOLD. And rumor had it there was a group of Russians who rented out SUV’s and for a dime or two, would take curious travelers out there to check it out. So it was then that on fall break a group of fellow volunteers and I, faced with a week of free classes, escaped our work sites, piled into SUV’s, and headed into the desert. As I hadn’t left site for nearly two months, I was more than ecstatic to be out and about. (I suffer from a bad case of zip code claustrophobia-too long in one place and I start to go a bit bonkers. Ecstatic might have been an understatement.) Although I have lived here for over a year now, working a six-day week and travel policies really limit how much of the country I have seen, and as my work site is a fair stretch from most of the other volunteers, my social calendar is pretty much slim to none. Thus far my experiences have been mostly around my region, and so little excursions do a lot to make life here a little bit more exciting.

Added that this week was the celebration of Turkmenistan’s independence, a few of us decided the best way to ring in another year of Independence would be to camp out under the stars next to a burning pit of gas. As 4 of our assembled group live in the south and the other 4 live in the north, we had to coordinate meeting up before hand. Being as there is no cell phone service or road marks, this process was a bit tricky. But we did know that the stop was exactly halfway between the capital city and the Northern city of Dashoguz (about half of a 6 hour trek in), so what we came up with was to leave at the same time, and the group with the SUV’s would pull over on the side of the road where the halfway point was and wait till the other half of the group arrived, roughly within the same hour. When the second group spotted our vehicles, they would stop, switch to the SUV’s, and we would all head into the dunes together. As retarded as this sounds, believe it or not it actually worked, and in the middle of nowhere almost without a hitch we managed to locate the correct lone vehicles on the side of the road, exchange rides, and head inward in search of the pit as the evening closed in on us.

The history of the pit is a bit sketchy, and there are a few different versions to how it came about, but most of the stories circle around the Russians drilling expeditions. One story goes that in the 50’s or so the Russians were drilling for natural gas like they did over most of the country, and they hit a small pocket, but concluded it wasn’t large enough to draw from. So they decided to burn it out it so that the stagnant gas wouldn’t be left exposed. Apparently there was more gas there than they bargained on, and 50 years later the pit is still burning. Another story goes that while they were drilling, one of the workers accidentally dropped his cigarette into the pit and it lit the gas on fire. There was no putting it out, and so they had no choice but to leave the deserted pit burning. Probably was kind of hard for him to find another job after that. Yet another story says that while the workers were drilling they hit an unexpected air pocket that collapsed underneath them and took the drill head with it. When the drill hit the bottom of the cave, it hit rock and sparked, and the sparks hit the gas, and ta-da, the oversized Bunsen burner was born. Whatever the real story is, it resulted in a large fiery pit about the circumference of a small football field and the depth of a three story building, that has been nicknamed by the locals the Gate of Hell, or The Pit of Hell, and is pretty damn cool when the sun goes down amid miles of stretching sand and dunes.

So we arrived around sunset, cooked some BBQ with our fearless Russian leaders Sasha and Vladimeer (our drivers, who proved true any stereotype you’ve ever read about burly Russian men), met some fellow travelers from Austria who had also managed to hear about this odd place and found their way out into the sand, and settled in to watch the sun go down and the flames burn bright with some old fashioned Russian vodka to keep us warm. It was a pretty neat evening all around, and a nice change from watching my family’s Russian Soap Operas, which make up our normal evening entertainment. And let me just say, who needs fireworks on Independence Day when you have an endless supply of blazing flames coming straight from mother earth? All in all, going to Hell was a good time. Even if it was bloody cold out there and I am still recovering feeling in my toes  In the future, I will definitely tell anyone to go to Hell. It really is quite a nice place.

Uses and Abuses

Oct 5th, 2009

So, a while ago I wrote that I was going to start keeping a running tally of all the funny stuff that my students came up with. And though the last few months have been pretty devoid of interesting topics, the other day I stumbled upon an activity that yielded GOLD. Looking for something to teach modal verbs (can, could, must, should), I found a game in an old lesson-planning book, and after making a few alterations on the rules and explanations, I decided to try it out on my intermediate club to see what they could handle. Basically, the students had to come up with two separate lists; one of items, and one of people. After we had a manageable list, they had to mix and match the two lists and make up questions and answers using the phrases “What can a so-and-so do with a so-and-so?” or “Why does a so-and-so need a so-and-so?” Once they got the hang of it, my kids went wild. With the help of my dictionary, they slapped together some phrases that literally made me want to pee my koynek. Here’s a ‘lil sample of what a few of them came up with:

Q: “Why does a crocodile need a safety pin?”

A: “To catch fish with when he has no teeth.”

Q: “ What can a baby do with a beer?”

A: “ He can take a bath with it.”

Q: “What can Harry Potter do in a Chamber?”

A: “He can find Valdemort.”

Q: “What can a writer do with a chick?”

A: “He can write a book about the history of chickens.”

Q: “Why does a teacher need a cactus?”

A: “To punish bad students.”

And my very favorite, thought up by some of my rock stars…

Q: “What can an old woman do with a walking stick?”

A: “She can dismantle small children with it.”

After some thought, I have decided to call this game ‘Uses and Abuses’ and I think I am going to try it out it on some of my beginner classes to see what they can come up with. Anything to make my life a little more interesting…

The Dirty Thief

Oct 1, 2009

I have never thought of myself as a horribly dishonest person, and as an everyday rule I try to stay on the moral straight away. And, despite a few bumps along the way, I think I have done a generally good job. I know the basics: never do unto others what you would not want done unto yourself. Honesty is the best policy. Don’t ever covet anything of your neighbors: wife, husband, favorite gardening tools, or whatever. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and thus also results in a lot of doctor’s bills. Never kill anything with a social security number or passport. You know, all the general things we learn growing up. And although my family is not a particularly religious bunch, my parents did their best to instill upon us children the basic rights from wrongs, the moral guide-posts with which to live our lives by, so to speak. But this week, I failed that upbringing, and broke one of those cardinal rules: I stole.

To preface my actions, let me first just say that I was basically raised in a big Terrarium. My back yard growing up was- literally-a forest, and I am used to having such things like trees and grass and flowers and crawly bugs around me all the time. And although I have served my time in the Concrete Jungle and enjoyed it just fine, I still prefer to have natury-like things nearby. Which is why I have found one of the hardest things about this country is the lack of growing things. (* See my blog about the near tree-hugging incident) My host family here is not a particularly green thumbed bunch-they know HOW to garden, as pretty much everyone is this country does, and we have our small plot in the back yard where every once in a while we extract tomatoes, radishes, dill, grapes, sometimes figs, or other such small items. But mostly, we get our veggies at the store, and mostly our garden is a lot of weeds. During the school year I found I had no extra time to help with our garden what with all the classes I took on, and so my contribution to the effort was basically nil. And most host father was only interested when the power was out or there was nothing of interest on the TV. Some families here get really into their gardens, and added to this they grow these crazy Rose gardens and have latticed grape vines coming out of their ears-we’re talking garden of Eden style. Not so at my house. Our back yard is basically dirty sand. So in order to make myself feel a little more at home, over the last few months I have gotten lots of plant cuttings and invested, borrowed, or scrounged a variety of small pots and have installed them in my room. Among my collection I have a few vines, a spider plant, and a couple little Aloe Vera plants. These little patches of green do a lot to brighten my day sometimes, as small as they are. But flourish in the sand-mud they do not, and every week I wonder how much longer my struggling little plants will hold out.

So the other day, as I was returning from my weekly expedition to the post office to mail out a few letters, I noticed a large pile of dirt next to the road the telegraph office. But it didn’t look like normal Turkmen dirt, which is basically compacted mud. No, this dirt looked decidedly different. I opted to take a closer look, and upon inspection I made an amazing discovery. Now if you’ve ever taken a biology class, you know that what makes soil so healthy is decomposing plant life: i.e. dead trees, undergrowth, ect. And among other things, dead plants produce this great thing called Nitrogen that-wonder beyond wonders-makes stuff GROW. Well, here in the desert there is no decomposing plant life. It’s basically grainy sand, with just enough nutrients in it to support scrub grass and weedy-type plants. Thus people here just stick a tree in the sand, and hope it grows. And miracle beyond miracles, sometimes it does. But this dirt, believe it or not SMELLED like real dirt, felt like real dirt, and even had real plant parts in it! Jackpot! And it was just SITTING there, glorious and untouched. So you’re probably thinking big deal, pile of dirt, whoopee. Just grab a bucket, right? Well, let me footnote this discovery by saying that in this country every little thing here is highly coveted. Saving a dollar goes along way here, especially when you can buy a kilo of apples for 20 cents. There’s not a lot of wealth to be found, and so people guard even the smallest little scrap piles with their lives. An old metal door and some broken wood piled in the backyard? That’s a frame for the future hen house. A bunch of dusty old jars? They will cover the tomato plants when the frost comes in. That old proverb one mans junk is another mans treasure doesn’t really apply here. There is no junk. People use EVERYTHING. This also applies to grade A dirt. And this grade A dirt was sitting suspiciously near a large dug up flower-bed. So, wary of unseen eyes on me, I continued past the pile non-chalauntly, inwardly scheming of ways to get my hands on some.

As fate would have it, several days later I arrived at school to find my classes with my morning counterpart canceled, the class locked and empty (not a huge surprise) and thus two hours to kill before my next class. So, I did what any normal person would do during a long lunch hour: I decided to go steal some dirt. I arrived at the scene with two large plastic bags in my purse. After carefully checking the premises, I waited until the sidewalk was mostly empty of passerbys, then worked my way around to the backside of the dirt pile. A minute or so after I had sneakily begun to fill my little bags with the precious soil, people began to filter out of the café next door. Panicked, I began to imagine what I would have to tell my director when he asked why he had to bail his American teacher out of prison. “Well, sir. She was apprehended stealing some dirt.” The police clerk would have to say. (Don’t laugh-people are arrested here for stupider things. Just a few months ago my host father was detained for an entire day while he was jogging-all because they said he was running ‘suspiciously’) So, I grabbed what booty I could and dashed down the sidewalk as well as I was able to in my Koynek, visions of sirens ringing in my ears, my heart pounding in my ears. Lucky for me, nobody gave chase, whether for lack of interest, or for the fact they were just to perplexed by the sight of a grown woman sprinting down the street with a giant bag of dirt to do anything. So this evening, as my host siblings and I filled my new and improved flowerpots and displayed them on the windowsills, I had to ask myself, was I wrong to steal the dirt? Yes, probably. Stealing is generally not the best thing, especially when you are clinging to your citizenship by the flimsy edge of a temporary visa. But, do I regret stealing the dirt? No, not really. After all, it IS only dirt.

Until next time

The Thief

Well, I've gotten some complaints that I don't put up enough photos on here. So here's a little grab bag of some random ones I've snapped recently.

Host sisters B-day Party at our house

Pictures from work. My office, and me and counterpart.

Some pictures I snapped around my house than I house I thought were nice.

My site mate and I Russ,

and Dinner. Yum.

Anniversary Nostalgia and Eyeballs

Sept 20, 2009

Well, put a candle in it, because in less than 2 weeks it will mark exactly 1 year (Oct. 1st) since I’ve touched down into this crazy, interesting, and at times challenging, country. Although it didn’t seem like it at first, two years really is a pretty chunk of time to sign away to uncle Sam and go run around somewhere to play in the dirt and spread my knowledge of English verb conjugations. I’m amazed, yet again, at how strangely time passes in another country, especially when you are trying to set up a life for yourself all the while knowing it isn’t permanent. At this point it is looking like I’ll have spent the majority of my twenties overseas, and there are still times where I ask myself, is it worth it? Trying to keep ties with friends and family is hard enough when people start to go their own ways, and move on with new jobs or relationships-but add a few thousand miles and a constantly changing zip code to the mix, and it makes it ever trickier. Talking with other volunteers, it’s weird to think we’ve already put in a year here, because there are still days when we still feel like we have the cultural aptitude of toddlers, but yet there isn’t a volunteer here who hasn’t missed important events of close friends and loved ones back home-weddings, new babies, and even funerals. It’s amazing how many things can happen in such a short amount of time, and although in the grand scope of things two years is a drop in the bucket, when you start adding all those things up, you realize how precious that time really is and wonder if it’s worth it. So, to all my family and friends back home or elsewhere, I send you a grand hug, and hope everyone is well and happy!

On a lighter note: I have been through some serious gastric Olympics in the last year with the ever-surprising Turkmen cuisine, but this week I trumped my record and ate the most adventuresome thing to date. The other day my host father brought home a goat head and legs from his Mothers house, and by the giddy look on his face, I knew that could only mean one thing: Kellebashlyk. Kellebashlyk, (or Death in a Bowl, as I like to refer to it), is when they take the head and hooves of a cow, goat, or camel, and boil them till the meat comes off the bones. They hollow out the neck or crack open the top of the skull, and scoop out the brain mush and eyes, and eat them with the bone mallow broth, which is basically the leftover water from the boiled head. Sound delicious? Well, it also happens to be my host father’s favorite meal (a DELICACY, to quote him). And after months of avoiding this particular dish, this week I finally manned up and tried it. For one, I am not fasting for Ramadan and therefore had no more legitimate excuses, and two, there was nothing left to eat in the house except old tomato sauce and shredded beets. So I figured hey, what the hell, what the worse that can happen? Just yet another notch on my culinary bedpost. I’ve done weirder things, right? So I bellied up to the bar, grabbed a spoon, and dug in. The highlight of the meal? My host father, so psyched that I finally agreed to try it, dug out an especially goopy eyeball, popped out the hard center, and crammed it in my mouth. My overall feeling on the matter? Although goat eyeball isn’t really that vile, I don’t see Apple Bee’s putting it on their Super Starters Menu any time soon.

Well, that’s about it for now. Getting ready for a nice two day weekend, as there is no school this Monday due to the end of Ramadan (party!!! Because now people can EAT again), and then I’m back to the grind. My grant project is getting close to being finished, and classes are going pretty good. So bring it on year two! I’m ready for you (and if I’m not, there’s always counseling and therapy later on in life). Peace and Rainbow Skittles ya’ll.

A Cultural Pondering of Marriage.

September 7, 2009

Well, before I left on my magical journey back to the homeland that words cannot even describe, I was twiddling away the last days of summer away by making my students do random and abstact assignments, if only to relieve my boredom from the tedious grammar train that we seemed trapped in. In some aspect, I hope it was equally interesting to them, and in any case, from several of the assignments I got some pretty funny, and enlightening results. One of my assignments, the idea taken from a fellow volunteer, and fueled by the fact that I would be soon attending a wedding myself, consisted of having the students translate the short story version of The Princess and The Pea. Once we had a translation that I thought was reasonably accurate, I had them re-write the story, using new characters and inventing different endings. I gave them three days to do the assignment, and when I got the papers back, the results were pretty hilarious. One of my girls changed the story so that the princess, once she was discovered to be a true blue-blood, didn’t want to marry the presented prince, and told her future mother in law that she was in love with a servant and that she should ‘bug off’. Then she ran off. During class, I practically peed my pants laughing while my kids read their new and improved versions of the fairytale. I will present one version here, unchanged, to give an idea of what some of my kids came up with.

The Princess and the Prince

By Bahar

Once upon a time there was two princes. Once prince was from London, his name is Alfredo. The second prince is from Mexico, his name is Carlos. The two princes lived in a very big castle with very many people. They loved one princess, who is named Jennifer. But their mother did not like the princess, and she said to them “You do not marry her!” They fight very hard for many days. But the Prince Alfredo said “No!” and talked with the princess Jennifer. So Alfredo and Jennifer deserted and they now live in another country.

The End

Now for some fun some cultural introspect: what I found interesting about most of the stories, at least the stories written by my girls, was how all the little cultural differences worked their way into the stories. Most of the stories included some version of a bride-price, which is a standard practice here. (When a couple gets married, the grooms family pays the brides family an agreed upon price for the girl). I also noticed in many of them was how important the mother-in-law was in the plot. It seemed that the relationship between the bride and her new mother in law was almost more important than the relationship between the newly married couple. Which, in this area of the world, where genders are often kept separated, is probably a pretty true idea. Normally, once a couple gets married, the bride moves into her new in-laws house, and becomes the Gelin (new daughter-in-law). Once there, if it’s a traditional family, she spends most of the time with her mother in law and sisters in law, cooking, cleaning, and helping with the chores. Pretty much, her new mother-in-law becomes her new ‘best friend’-she spends most of her time with her. So if they don’t see eye to eye? Well, it would make for some pretty uncomfortable days. The new gelin is supposed to show respect to her new in-laws by always covering her mouth with her yalik, or head scarf, in their presence. Over time, once the mother and law and her become cool, she can let down her guard, and doesn’t have to cover her face. But this rule doesn’t apply for the father-in-law. To show respect, she must ALWAYS cover her face. Sometimes, a more liberal man will ask his daughter in law to un-cover in mouth, but most of the time that little cloth guard stays up for as long as they know each other, or are in the same room together. Mostly these practices are just an accepted custom, and are not questioned more than Americans question who should change the oil in the car, or help with the dishes. (Although, yes, we sometimes debate about that).

So this assignment was yet another fun insight into the little, and big, differences between Muslim and Western practices, both for my students, and for me. (And yet another reason why I am still not dating a Turkmen dude, if anybody was wondering.) At the moment I am considering showing Mrs. Doubtfire in my next movie club. Might be fun to see how that gender bender goes over :) Until next time.

August 20, 2009

The Arrival Day

Well the day has arrived. After watching my collegues and fellow volunteers go and return from vacations, flaunting contraband goodies from the outside world such as gum and Whiskey, and telling stories of a rollicking good time, now my ticket has arrived. This week is my last week before my first official vacation-the first one in 10 months, believe it or not. Sitting at home croqueting cell phone cases during winter break does NOT count, thank you very much. This 2 vacation day-a-month policy kills me, seriously. So, starting this Wednesday, I am officially on ‘leave’. Monday, I am giving my student their last tests of the summer, locking up my office, putting up a ‘the doctor is out’ sign, and putting on pants for three whole weeks. Oh the glory. I will be boarding a plane (well, 4 actually) to return briefly to the motherland to attend a family gathering, visit friends, and stock up on good razor blades, some decent food, and hopefully * cough* cough * a LOT of good alcohol. The day I have plotted for about 5 months has arrived, and I am phyched. So if anybody is in the Glacier area August 20 until Sept 4th, hell stop by, say hey, and check out my bad tan lines and insect bites. They’re impressive. Until SOON,

Megan

August 10, 2009

Money Buys Happiness.

Whoever said that money can’t buy happiness was obviously a trust fund baby. Or a moron. Perhaps even both. Money can, in fact, buy you a number of things, believe it or not. Among these: food, housing, education, transportation, and decent medical care. For most normal human beings, (this doesn’t apply if you are Danish or Finish, as they are issued a government-supplied velvet carriage upon arrival from the womb, per standard socialism), basic necessities cost something. Show me a normal average person who has adequate housing, a full stomach, and basic medical care, and put him next to a hungry person who sleeps in a cardboard box and who happens to have a bad case of goiters, and ask them who’s happier. Honestly. None of that poor little rich girl crap. To put it straightly, in many places of the world your quality of life depends strongly upon the social, and/or financial system, that you are born into. The luck of the draw, so to speak. Just pray you get a flush. A farmers kid? Well, in most places, you’ll probably be picking potatoes until you’re fifty, unless by some chance American Idol is scouring the potato fields that week and they find your voice particularity charming and decide to ship you to Atlanta for tryouts. But a doctors kid? Well, most chances you won’t have to help your family with the sheep, and pop can probably afford to pay for those extra tutoring lessons and extra books to help you out with your studies after school. Public schools really aren’t that great anyway. And, with that little extra boost, most likely you’ll do better on your exams. Not to mention you can pay to sit for an exam, come entrance time. Every exam costs something, you know. And if you didn’t do so hot, even with all that extra help? Well, a little well greased palm here and there can help with that. All universities little a little extra contribution here and there. Everybody knows that, heck that’s how your dad got into school. And then, after graduation, if jobs are a little hard to find? Well, make some calls to dad’s buddies, return some back pats, grease a few more palms, and there you go, that chemical company that wasn’t hiring suddenly came up short one man-would you be available to start next Monday?

No, of course not, money can’t buy happiness. I mean, just ask the guy with the Mercedes Benz. He’ll tell you. So will my students who can’t pay for university.

Sincerely,

Sceptical

Freebird,

June 16th,

Well I haven’t written anything here in a while, but lately there hasn’t been much to report. My camps went very smoothly, the camp at the Russian School I really enjoyed and learned a lot. I was worried because with planning a camp I was pretty hard up for ideas, as I never really did the whole camp thing when I was a kid. I did a Girl Scout camp like once, and I wasn’t very good camp material, I was in trouble with the counselors pretty much the whole time there for never listening, so that was that- no more camp for this girl. Anyway, the teachers wanted to teach how to write newspaper articles and advertisements, so the theme of the camp became ‘News Channel’. We had the campers split into 3 teams; team Newsroom, team Cameramen, and team Reporters. The kids all had funny nicknames (like Audio, Print, and Microphone) that we had to call them all week, and we recruited some older students to help us lead songs, go through the morning drills, and organize the teams. I made a giant black Samsung TV out of a cardboard box and at the beginning and end of camp everyday the counselors stood inside of it and we did our daily announcements like we were giving the news report (yeah, I realize, the geek level was pretty high here). Besides doing the arts and projects, we played lots of games from bowling to bingo, organized an English scavenger hunt, and I set up a huge sports obstacle course that included an egg and spoon race, ball and cup tosses, and a Frisbee relay race. We watched Planet Earth in Russian, and on the last day had a poster competition and an ice cream party. For my second camp, only a handful of kids showed up for, so I modified it and instead of playing lots of sports games and activities, we focused more on grammar games and arts and crafts. I took some pictures from my first camp, so I’ll try and post a few of them. All in all it was a lot of fun, and one of the teachers and I decided that next summer we are going to write a grant for a region wide camp, and try and involve students and teachers from around the region. It should be a riot.

Lets see, what else. Well, now that the camps are behind me, I am finding that the only way to exist in this country is in the mannar of extremes. During the school year teachers are worked to the point of exhaustion/mental breakdown, and when the summer rolls around I find I now have the mental activity of a goldfish. Besides keeping a few of my classes at the resource center going, and showing up to the school to shoot the breeze with my teachers every once in a while, life as I know it has pretty much stopped. I wake up in the morning and the day stretches out before me in a large wastland of nothingness, and I find myself thinking, ok, so how many months until school starts again? There is literally NADA to do here in terms of entertainment, unless you call washing clothes for three hours entertainment. In the last two weeks, I have read more books and watched more dvds than in the last 6 months combined. But my host family has pretty much the same deal. My host mom and I eat b-fast, go to work for a few hours, come home before noon, and then everybody in the house passes out until like 5 pm, or watches TV, or twidles their thumbs, or decides to come annoy me with questions under the guise of making me practice Turkmen. I am thinking it might be a looooong summer at this point. So if anybody wants to write me an email or letter in the next three months, lets just say any news would be VERY appreciated. Right now I am counting down the days until July 4th-when the Embassy is having their Independence Day party in Ashgabat. They invited all of the volunteers in the country to come, as well as oodles of diplomats and political big wig types. Should be a riot-although I am mostly excited because I have heard a rumor that there is going to be actual honest-to-goodness WINE available. Dear sweet Jesus, let that be true.

-Me

To the T-18 Newbies:

June 20h

Well, just about this time last year I was checking my mailbox for my placement sheet and chewing my fingernails to find out where the Peace Corps plane would be taking me. I was one of the last ones in our group to find out my country assignment-about three or four weeks before I left, so I’m sure a good lot of you incoming volunteers have already called in your acceptances (after looking to make sure Turkmenistan is even on the map). And as it is really friggin’ hard to find out anything relevant on the net about this blessed country (other than it’s a desert and really, really HOT) I’m sure many of ya’ll have zoned in on the blogs of current volunteers, like a lot of my group did, so maybe a few of you have found mine. I think I read about 15 packing lists before I left. The typical questions: What do I bring? What gifts should I bring? How much money should I take? Do I bring money at all? Or even clothes for that matter? Am I going to DIE? You know, general stuff.

As I am sure there are10 other volunteers who have already written packing lists for all of ya’ll, I’m not going to do that. One, every site is different, so everybody needs something different. And two, I don’t have that kind of attention span to write an entire detailed list. But I am going to impart a bit of knowledge to those who are trying to decide what to cram into those lovely rolling suitcases.

1. LESS IS MORE. This should be your packing manta. For one, host nationals are always shocked at how much crap volunteers haul with them, being as life here is really minimalistic. Some volunteers in my group literally took the bag limit and then some-even the staff was taken aback at how much crap they packed. Their host families didn’t know how to deal with it. You will find you can survive just fine on a big suitcase and carry on. Second, it’s kind of unnecessary to bring two years worth of razor blades and 34 pairs of underwear. For example, it has been 10 months and I am still using the shampoo I bought before I left. And they have the same brand in the Bazaar 10 minutes from my house. Although, I’m not gonna lie, I brought a lot of bottles of my favorite concealer, and I’m glad I did, cause they don’t have it here- but normal stuff, like toothbrushes, face wash, shampoo, and all that jazz-they got it. If you are placed in a village, you can go to your etrap center every few weeks or so and restock. But you’d be surprised what you can find in the villages. I randomly found feta cheese and olive oil one week at the store near my house. We ate Greek salad for like two weeks. Whoduthunkit?

2. CLOTHES: the clothes packing thing is tricky. OK, so that whole “bring lots of loose flowing skirts and loose fitting tops” thing? Don’t. The whole little house on the prairie look here doesn’t fly. Neither does North Face Sporty Spice for that matter, especially for girls. I wore my ski coat to school once this winter and you would have thought I was wearing a skinned elephant. I swear that show “What Not to Wear” would probably do really well in this country. Talk about the friggin’ fashion police. But the business casual thing does go. Fitted skirts and blazers are a lot better bet than peasant skirts for work, if you really don’t want to wear the national dress. For winter, a really good peacoat. And if you’re like me and get placed in the conservative southern region, and can’t wear anything but the Koynek anyway, don’t sweat it. Turkmen women give material and dresses out like snickers on Halloween. It costs about 6 bucks to have the material made into dresses, so hella cheap. Myself, I have received about 10 Koyneks since I’ve been here, all free. I went out and picked out some fabric that I liked for work., and my host sister and a neighbor sewed them up for me for free. The clothes I brought with me are gathering dust in my closet. The stuff I do wear that I brought from home are mostly jeans and shirts for when I go to the capital and can stop pretending I’m a Turkmen gelneje for a day. And remember you get vacation days while you’re here, when you get to LEAVE the country and dress normal again, so bring something for that. But again, don’t overdo it in the wardrobe department-think about the clothes you want to bring and cut it down by a third, if not a half. Also, don’t bother with 12 pairs of shoes. Your shoes will get trashed here, so better to bring two or three pairs you absolutely need (I swear by my Chacos), then buy cheap shoes in the bazaar, wear them until they break down, and then buy some new ones with your living allowance. I bought a nice pair of dress shoes, and within four months I had to throw them away. It just makes life that much easier in the long run. Also, people won’t judge you for wearing the same dress 5 days in a row-as long as your belly button’s not showing or you don’t look you just stepped off a Flower Power tour bus. Some of my teachers here I’ve only ever seen wear the same three Koyneks. No biggie.

3. GIFTS: Remember: training host family, and then permanent family. Candy is good-but not snickers-they have that here. Useful things are good: Sturdy bags, t-shirts, stuff that says America on it maybe. Trinkets from your state. A little photo album for them of picture from America, friends, family. They friggin’ love photos here. My personal favorite: Tupperware. They might think its odd at first, but it’s good for both you and them in the long run. You will eat leftovers a lot-and keeping things sanitary and sealed goes a long way in keeping yourself healthy here. If anything, you can fill them with fun little stuff so it’s not just a plastic box, and then you can show them how to use it. And once you learn Turkmen (haha!) you can explain why it’s good to seal and refrigerate food. It’s a gift and mini health lesson all rolled into one. My host mom loves hers, and now brings her lunch with her when she goes to work or has to travel to see family, and occasionally even puts leftovers in it!

4. CRAFT SUPPLIES. Guess what, if you’re an English teacher, you’ll have to do an ECA or a camp at some point! And a craft workshop is really fun for everyone. A lot of these kids don’t even know how to use scissors, so it’s this whole learning process for them. The teachers I work with asked me for things like water balloons, pipe cleaners, wiggly eyes, acrylic paint, foam paper-stuff like that, that they had used with a previous volunteer. We made crafts like photo frames, ladybugs, and masks out of paper plates and cups that I found in the capital. The kids loved them all, and it gave them something to take home to their families. And if you do an ECA a couple of times, have family members in the states mail you a ‘craft box’ to re-supply. Look up easy craft ideas on the web before you leave, or get a book with easy-to-do projects.

5. A GOOD PURSE/BAG. It’s part of the dress code here, for lassies. And all the purses sold hereabouts are shitty $3 China warehouse deals either encrusted with plastic diamonds or have metallic ruffles all over them, so bring one you like. If you have a bigger one to put school books in, even better. For dudes, a black satchel type thingie would come in handy-kind of like a briefcase, but not. Its weird to think that you might not have running water or a working toilet and you sleep on the floor, but people expect you to be well accessorized and have shiny shoes all the time. Go figure.

6. ENTERTAINMENT: Don’t bother with books, as sad as that sounds. The office library here has 10 million of them-and they are heavy to haul over with you. But a computer, not gonna lie-bring it. I use mine a ton for work, and for pre-typing emails to people so when I get online to send them it takes like 10 minutes and I’m free to do other stuff. Plus it’s good for movies and music on those slow days. The volunteers here have built up an impressive collection of*cough cough* p@#$ed movies, and when people get together, everybody pulls out their portable hard drives and trades new stuff. Also a mp3 player- music will save your soul. Yes, welcome to the new age: this is not the Peace Corps of our fathers. Volunteers are technologically savvy now. Plus, as there is not much here in terms of recreation, options are pretty limited. No hiking to distant waterfalls or exploring the rolling foothills or exotic campouts in the desert on your days off in this land. That’s for Thailand Volunteers. Here, we generally get together, cook, watch movies, and avoid the sun. Get togethers have to be planned sometimes months in advance. So, if you have a hobby, bring that. I am learning how to play the guitar and croquet, and people are constantly sending me yarn in care packages. It’s good for passing the hours. My tally thus far? Six scarves, three hats, two cell phone cases, a yoga bag, and a quilt-in-process. Just wait until I start croqueting tea cozies for people. I’ll be well occupied until I my service is up. Yes, I am aware that my life is riveting

7. MONEY: $500 bucks should cover it. If you run out, you can always withdraw more when you leave the country for your first vacation. I brought $400 with me for gifts and emergencies, and I only spent $100 of it thus far, for a plane ticket, so it was more than enough. But I’m a hoarder-I never even spend my living allowance; I just keep it in wads under my bed. So some people might have need for a larger amount. Also, apparently there is an ATM somewhere in the capital that works, if you get seriously hard up. But all the money you bring has to be PRISTINE-no rips, dirt, or pen marks. If its’ not up to par, nobody will exchange it, and there you have it, a useless $20 bill. Might as well use it for toilet paper. Heaven knows you might have need for that.

Well, there’s probably more, but I’m done with the whole typing thing for now. Hope this helps some of you. If anybody has more questions or concerns about their upcoming service, feel free to drop me a note.

Peace

June 12th

English is Stupid

I found this poem digging through a bunch of old stuff in my office, and it pretty encompasses how I feel about life right now. Hope somebody else can appreciate it as much as I did.

English Is a Stupid Language

Anonymous

There is no egg in eggplant,

No ham in the hamburger,

And neither pine, nor apple,

In our dear pineapple

English Muffins were not invented in England,

And French Fries do not hail from France.

And while quicksand takes you down slowly,

Why do boxers, in boxing rings, dance?

If writers write, how come fingers don’t fing?

If the plural of tooth is teeth,

Why aren’t phone booths called phone beeth?

If a teacher taught, why didn’t the preacher praught?

If a Vegetarian eats vegetables,

What does a humanitarian eat?

And why do we recite at a play,

When a play has a recital?

And why do we park on our driveways,

and drive on our Parkways?

And, in being of the human race,

we find that it isn’t even a race at all.

You have to marvel, that a house burns up,

while it actually burns down.

And when the stars are out they are visible

While when the lights are out they are invisible,

Yes, English is a stupid language,

Which makes not much sense at all,

And that is why, when I wind up my watch, it starts.

But when I wind up this poem, it ends.

The End

May 25

The End …and another Beginning.

Well, school has officially ended for the year. I have managed to make it to the finish, yes a little worse for wear mentally, but ready to sink my teeth into something different for this summer. A change of pace is always good. I have a nice week of break while the kids all do their tests, and then come June, I am going to swing into doing my camps. Two straight weeks of hectic game-playing-puzzle-solving-and-English-leaning camp-chaos for 40 some over-suggared kids. Oh joy. I have a feeling I am either going to love it, or I am going to altogether loathe it and it’s going to stress me out to the point of insomnia and I will decide never to bear children. It’s kind of 50/50 at this point. But I hope at least, that I will be prepared and organized enough to avoid complete and total disaster. For someone who never had the slightest desire to work in the public school system, I am finding that I seem to continually put myself into these situations. Hmmm…I guess that old saying about how you can never avoid the fate of genetics might really be true. If a kid’s father is a plumber, and his grandfather is a plumber, then the likelihood of that kid being a plumber is pretty well set, no matter how much he denies it. With all the twists and turns he may take to avoid it, at some point, that kid is going to be fixing leaky pipes in some form or another. Thanks mom and grandma for being teachers. I’ve successfully been cuckolded.

Anyway, this week, classes have pretty much ground to a halt and lessons are pretty much non existent, cause the kids have turned in all the books and teachers are preoccupied with writing up all the records for the year by hand, so I have vacated the classroom and turned my focus to finishing my grant. If all goes as planned, this summer I will successfully get our English Teachers Cabinet up and running. My counterpart and I are planning on setting up a small room in our school for both teachers and students to study and prepare for lessons, and a place to keep all the new teaching materials. Hopefully we’ll get the funds needed to get some good books in place that can help the teachers supplement their lesson plans-as the government provided books (in my opinion) are good enough only for fire kindling and/or toilet paper. So this week I will cross my T’s, dot my I’s and send this sucker off to the capital for revision. And Allah willing here, we’ll get some green to get the ball rolling  Yay, progress. Wish me luck! And ting in summer!!

ALSO, in other news… I want to send a hearty congrats to my lil’ bro Lindsey and his soon-to-be-wife Jamie who are tying the knot next week!!! I wish so much that I could be there with you guys and all the Holbrook gang on the special day to wish you guys the best of luck and to welcome Jamie into our crazy Holbrook/Haggar family-that brings the body count to 9! I’m so happy to have another Lass in the gang, as we officially outnumber the men now . I’ll be homeward bound at the end of summer, so freeze me a piece of cake, have a good Honeymoon, and I’ll see you guys in August!!!

Peace and Doves,

Meg

April 12, 2009

Stage Fright

You know that scene in movies, where the girl stumbles on to the stage by accident, or tumbles through a curtain and the whole audience is sitting there, all looking at her, and she squeaks “Ohmigod!” then runs backstage and throws up? (Well, either that or she miraculously overcomes her stage fright and goes on to perform a stunning rendition of a Whitney Huston song that brings everyone to their feet while the credits roll...) So about a week earlier my English Methodologist, who is a Belarusian woman who speaks about three words of English and Turkmen equal to my own, had mentioned she wanted me to attend both a open lesson and an ‘English party’ later that month. Like a lot of the open lessons, I figured it might be interesting, but driving all the way across town to watch a 45 minute class that wasn’t even at my school didn’t really appeal to me, as I had my own lessons to teach and I had just started tutoring a new student at home. So I put them in the back of my mind, and honestly forgot about them. Then, come the morning of the supposed teacher party, I was working with my student and the phone rings. Long story short, I was across town 10 minutes later, running through the school still putting on my coat. Suspecting the party would be a classroom, I poked my head through the door that the secretary directed me to, and lo and behold there was a full auditorium of teachers and students, which upon my arrival, all directed their attention to me. My director waved me over while everybody watched, and there on the stage was a group of waiting students, a panel of assorted teachers, several directors…. and an empty chair. Mine, apparently. The supposed teacher party was actually a Ruhknama competition. The Ruhknama is this sort of cultural guidebook that the previous Turkmen President wrote. All the kids have to take Ruhknama classes in school, and once a year they have a Ruhknama day to celebrate it. Apparently, I was one of the 5 judges for the competition, as it was preformed both in English and in Russian, so I and another teacher were the English judges. Kids from 15 schools and come, and were performing, and there I was…a no show. ‘Teachers party’, my ass. So I scurried up on staged while everyone waited, inwardly cursing my inept grasp of the Russian language for the confusion, and the show went on. After sitting through 3 hours of plays, songs, and readings and quotes from the Ruhknama translated into a bunch of random Central Asian languages, the judges had to confer, pick winners, and then give a speech to the crowd. After we had our selection, I stood up for my turn, having no idea what the Russian judges had just said, mumbled through some Turkmen, then copped out and just summed it all up in English, clapping dramatically at the end to congratulate everyone. I felt like a monkey.

In summary, I should also probably be better about studying my Russian grammar and the next time someone invites me to a party, I will ask for details. I must also kiss my stage fright goodbye if I am ever going to survive in this country.

April 24,2009

Toyy Season

In the last 6 months I have been to my fair share of weddings. Turkmen people, being the community-oriented folks they are, tend to invite everybody and their cousin, not to mention their cousin’s cousin’s cousin. Most weddings tend to host between about 250-500 people, on average. Because of this, most of them are Café weddings, held in a big Restaurants specially built for the events, because they can pile everybody in pretty easily, and they have crews of teenage boys trained to a science running around the room and feeding every body. In our town there are two restaurants that host weddings. So every time somebody invites me, if it’s a café wedding, I know pretty much what to expect, where to go, and what I’ll be eating, as it’s mostly the same event, just with a slight change of characters and a few menu alterations. My first few weddings were pretty intimidating, as inevitably the dinner part is over and the dancing commences. It usually takes about 20 minutes for most everybody to realize there is a non-Turkmen in the room, because 1) I’m over 20 and don’t wear a headscarf (I’ve decided to put my foot down on that one, it’s just not happening) and 2) I have no clue how to dance to Turkmen music. I have tried in vain, but I have absolutely no rhythm for the music here. Women dancing consists of walking in a circle elaborately swirling your arms, while side stepping and hopping to the right. I feel like a chicken trying to learn sign language- to put it lightly. So soon enough it comes to attention that there is an awkward Foreigner dancing among them, and in about 5 minutes all three-camera crews (hired especially for the event) have swarmed around whichever dancing circle I happen to be a part of, to commence filming ‘the dancing American’. I realize it’s a way of making me feel welcome, but jeeze. My first few Toyys I was pretty mortified, I dreaded thinking about how many people were going to be watching me on their home video tapes a month later, saying ‘yes, there’s that American who came to our wedding. Look at her dance, isn’t if funny?!” In fact, my fear of the camera crews and the observing crowd was so bad that I hid behind my six-year-old host sister for the better part of two hours at my first few Toyys, but inevitably, I was discovered soon enough. You would have thought after three years of being a tour guide and have Japanese tourists record me for three hours on a tour I would have gotten over it, but here it is a whole new ball game. The lights and microphones bring it up to a whole different level. Added to this hilarity, it turns out the assistant director at my school also happens to be a wedding MC, so literally every Toy I attend, he is there booming away on the microphone, telling everybody to have a good time and giving a running commentary of the event like he was broadcasting a wrestling match. “Look, so-and-so’s aunt is dancing now, isn’t she great! Come on everybody, eat that food, it’s Murat’s cow, fine meat, don’t you think!” Note to self: never get openly drunk at a Toy and call in sick to work the next day. Won’t work.

This past weekend though, I went to my first outside Toy, or Street Toy, as they are called. It was kind of unavoidable as our neighbors were hosting the event for their middle son, and the entire neighborhood, along with helping prepare the wedding, were expected to be in attendance. My host mother baked 30 kilos of chicken legs in about three hours in our kitchen, and shred about 5 kilos of carrots for salad-enough for about 300 people. The morning of the wedding, the traveling Toy stages showed up. Toy stages are large un-foldable trailers that are dead ringers to carnival trailers. They resemble the game booths of a traveling circus with a thousand flashing lights, cheesy lit up pictures, and circus music. Once they unfold, and all the lights are hung up, you can literally hear the music from about a mile away- the only thing missing is the creepy clown. I think this is why all the neighbors are invited, because if everybody is at the Toy, no one can complain about the noise. After the Trailers are set up in the middle of whichever street the wedding house is on, the preparing of the food commences. Or in this case, the killing of the food. I was sitting in my room grading some papers, when I heard the rather frantic moo of a cow. It persisted for a while, and lifting my curtain I noticed a rather sad-looking cow latched to the telephone pole in our front yard. In about ten minutes, I watched while poor Bessie was dispatched to the hereafter by my neighbor men and quickly quarted, diced and boiled for the stew, head and all. Well, at least I know now what I’m having for dinner tonight, thought I. Bessie. I enclose a photo of my unfortunate dinner as exhibit A. All in all it was a jolly Toy, besides getting my high heels embedded in the mud, stalked by several drunk random neighbor dudes who thought throwing pebbles at my shoes to get my attention was a ingenious way of courtship, and having somebody nearly throw up on my host brother. And although I will probably never get down dancing like a Turkmen girl, I can say at least that the Hollywood camera show is starting to phase me less. But in answer to some previous queries, no, I will most definitely not be having a Turkmen wedding.

April 27, 2009

Cloud Nine

Call me a mother hen, but this week I’m so proud I could burst. As of this week, two of my advanced students from the Russian School have passed the Flex exam, which gives them a full ride ticket to the USA to study at an American High School for one year come next Fall. Being as only about 60 kids out of the entire country get picked-I feel like a mother sending her kids off to Harvard. I also feel extremely lucky because while a lot of volunteers will be teaching “Murat is playing football” for the next two years here, I have a work site where I have students able to do advanced grammar and practice with, and I can actually see significant headway being made with them. In terms of a Peace Corps volunteer, I’m pretty lucky. Every once and a while, when I mention to another volunteer a comment one of my students made, they say in disbelief, “your kids know how to say THAT???” This is mostly because most volunteers have to start from square one- with counterparts that don’t speak a lick of English, with a school curriculum that is almost beyond unsalvageable, or with slim to none resources. Not I said the fly. Yes, let the jealousy flow. For example, a few weeks ago, I was giving my kids scenarios like, ‘if you found out you had 6 months to live, what would you do?’ And one of my girls, who is one of the most reserved, shy, well behaved, quiet Muslim girls you will ever find, said that she would spend her time speed-dating, at the rate of one boy every two weeks. I almost fell off my chair. One-because I don’t know where she learned the term speed date, and two, because I’m pretty sure she has never even kissed a boy before. It’s amazing how language can open some doors.

Though as much as I’m excited for my girls to depart to my Homeland, I am also extremely nervous for them. Young girls are so protected here in terms of the gender differences I am terrified to think of the shock they will have when they hit America. So this week I have been examining some of the differences between the Turkmen way of thinking and the American way of thinking in hopes of preparing them for the culture shock they are sure to have. A lot comes down to the American mindset of Independence. As a culture of rags to riches, most Americans are pretty keen on the idea of relying on ourselves, and view dependence on others as a weakness. This may be why we have such a competitive and go-getter’ type culture. We are also very straightforward. If we are asked if we want something to eat, we say no, sit down, and that’s pretty much it, case closed. Here though, you are asked if you are hungry about six times, you say no out of politeness, and then regardless, somebody puts a plate of food in front of you, so you eat out of respect-whether you were planning on it or not. So I had to tell my girls: “Ok, if somebody asks you if you are hungry, and you are, for petes’ sake, just say YES. Otherwise, they’ll believe you when you say no, and you’ll starve to death. And if you want more, ask for more. Because when you stop eating, people will assume you are full. If you are tired-tell somebody. If you are cold, tell somebody. Just say it”. Simple right? Yeah, not as easy as it sounds. People here are masters of skirting around the issues without actually getting to the real point (this I say in my annoying American mindset). In any case, I hope to get them mentally prepared by August, so they will be prepared for a year in my Motherland. I’m hoping they put them in Florida, just for the sake that they don’t freeze to death in the winter. So watch out America, Turkmenistan is coming your way. And it’s ready to speed date.

Peace,

Me

April 29, 2009

Superstitions

I am going to be known as the volunteer that brought the rain. Apparently we are having an unusually wet spring here in Tejen, and I happened to jokingly mention to my students a while ago that it tends to rain every time I do my laundry. Well, it seems quite a few of them remembered this little factoid, and Meteorological oddities aside, I think many of them have taken this quite seriously and come to the conclusion that the rain is my fault. This Monday, it happened to be raining AGAIN, and I was wringing out my skirt over the trashcan before class while my waterlogged kids dashed through the door. One of my better students sat down irately, her braids plastered to the side of her face, water dripping down her nose, and asked me accusingly “Megan, you wash dress today?” And as luck would have it, I had actually washed some clothes the day before.

“Well, nooo…” I said. It wasn’t really a lie.

“When you wash?” She said, crossing her arms.

“Umm...” I tried to avoid the question by scribbling something on the chalkboard.

“When!” She is a little bulldog when she wants to be, and wasn’t buying that for a second.

“Umm, yesterday.” I mumbled, and quickly commenced scratching out a complicated grammatical graph on the board in the hope of diverting their attention. This brought a resounding groan from my kids, though I am pretty sure it had nothing to do with the future indefinite tense. Imagine, if you will, the blame of a dozen small shivering children boring their way into the back of your skull. One of them mumbled something in Turkmen that I’m pretty sure had to do with confiscating my laundry soap.

So, as my mother would famously say: What did we learn from this? Well, it appears that I may have to be a bit more careful when it comes to mentioning things that might be taken as superstition in these parts, as the Turkmen hereabouts still strongly follow and abide by a plethora of superstitions and well cemented beliefs. I knew before coming here that I would have to deal with a lot of them. In fact, I would have been a little bit disappointed if there weren’t any, because it’s part of the fun of living, or even just traveling, in different countries. Each country and people has their own little oddities that make them unique, and I’ve found you can tell a lot about a countries people by the superstitions they have. Here, for instance, a lot of superstitions have to do with the preservation of money-pretty important for a culture that doesn’t have too much of it. Whistling inside the house, for instance, will cause the residents to lose money, or become poor. I did it once, and my host family shut me up faster than you can swallow sand on a windy day in the Sahara. You would have thought I had just stolen right out of their pocket. Needless to say, I haven’t done it since. This particular superstition though can be found in other cultures, not just Turkmen culture. In Russian Culture for instance, it has pretty much the same meaning; whistling inside=no money. In the Chinese culture, I’m pretty sure that indoor whistling invites angry spirits into your house. I also remember hearing that whistling at night also invites death in to your home, (although I can’t remember which culture that is, as I read something about ‘whistling the devil in’ a while ago and I forgot where I read it-could be Native American, could be South American…not sure). Bottom line: no whistling.

There’s another Turkmen tradition that says when you pour tea, if there’s any bubbles on the surface, you must quickly ‘snuff’ them out before they touch the rim of the cup, and then touch your ‘snuffing’ finger to your forehead. This is supposed to bring money into the house. I haven’t discerned exactly where the hell this one came from, or what basis it has, being as it’s one of the most completely random traditions I have ever heard of. But I’m not gonna’ lie, I actually do this one a lot, because by wishing them good fortune, it’s like you’re theoretically offering them five bucks. Tickles the hell of the women when I go guesting. There is another one that forbids throwing anything outdoors at night, like left over crumbs or tea. Which means every night after dinner we fold up all the crumbs from dinner, save the leftover tea water, and then toss them in the garden the next morning when it’s light out. There’s yet another belief that says that people should always bathe in the evening-never in the morning-and don’t EVER go outside with wet/damp hair. Something about protecting the oils in the hair. I made this mistake once, and walking down the street you would have thought my wet hair consisted of Medusa’s snakes.

However, after a while, some of these cultural oddities cease to be unique and interesting, and are just downright annoying. Lets take, for example, the superstition that Turkmen have when it comes to avoiding anything cold. I’m not sure if its because the country of Turkmenistan is located about three feet under the glowing ball of death in the sky they call the sun, and so thus the people here just prefer unbearable heat, but in any account, cold things are not that kosher hereabouts. Leaning against a cold wall? Well, this will cause you to instantly take a chill and become ill. You sit on the part of the floor that doesn’t have a carpet, and the wood or cement is cool? Well, if you’re a woman, this will cause you to become infertile. Naturally. This aversion to cold also stems to food items and liquids. I recently got reprimanded by a neighbor for drinking some water which I had put in the refrigerator to chill. Her and my host mother explained to me that cold things-in this case ice water-are harmful for the body, and disrupt the natural flow of your blood and the healthy function of your organs. New one to me. Added to this, at the moment of reprimand I had also been sitting against the wall, off the carpet, and I had neglected to put on socks that morning, as it was a balmy 65 degrees out. By all counts, the next day I should have been deathly ill, gone into cardiac arrest, and/or simultaneously become infertile. I explained to them that in my homeland we live in the cold about 8 months out of the year, so cold doesn’t phase my ‘organism’ and that if it does make women infertile, well then I was long past the point of no return. Although to give me host mom credit, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t give much sway to the cold liquids bit, because they’re constantly putting soda in the freezer to chill, and their addiction to Turkmen ice cream is a little scary. But I had to concede a bit and now always sit on the carpet.

So these are just a few samples of some Turkmen beliefs, quirks, and customs that I find myself adhering to in this fair land. So, added to being blamed for metaphysical anomalies such as excessive rain because of my laundry habits, my next order of business is convincing my students that talking in class will result in premature baldness and/or earthquakes…

Until next time,

The-girl-who-brought-the-rain

Also: side note…3 weeks of school and counting until summer!!!! I don’t know who is more excited about the break, the teachers or the students…. I’m thinking it might be the teachers at this point.

I DID IT PEOPLE!!!! I HAVE SUCCEEDED!!!!!! Here to for, I present unto you: pictures. Just a few, but a little visual to go along with my long winded posts none the less.

Megan

Spring has Spruuuunnnngggg!!!!

March 25, 2009

I want to sing it from the rooftops, I am so happy to see green! Five months in a brown wasteland is enough to make any nature lover go a bit bonkers, and coming home a week or so ago, I saw a tree near my house in full bloom, flowers and all, and I almost up and hugged it right there in broad daylight. Thankfully, I stopped myself, being as the last thing I need is another bit of gossip circulating about ‘the American’ (Murat said that Jeren and Shemshat saw her hugging a TREE yesterday! Do you think, maybe she really IS crazy???) No thanks. It doesn’t matter that there is still no grass here to speak of, but just the reassurance that something grows in this land outside the well-manicured lawns of the Capital is enough for me. I was beginning to despair that my surroundings would be an earth colored monotone for the next two years of my life-but no, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it is colorful.

Added to this epiphany, I have been complaining to my host mom about the lack of nature, and announced a week or so ago that I was going to start a garden in the wasteland that is our backyard, and then this week my host father turned off the TV, arose off his caboose, popped outside, and dug out a well organized garden plot, and planted some cucumbers in about an hour! Needless to say, I was pretty impressed, not to mention a wee bit embarrassed. In preparation of this grand garden idea, I had gone so far as to check out some appropriate reading material from the Peace Corps Library, researched what kind of seeds I should get, and made plans for where I should map out the compost pile to better fertilize the soil. Although I have a bit of experience with gardening, I have never embarked upon a solo veggie garden, so I have been gearing up for it. But in a little less time than it takes me to get ready in the morning, my host father had the entire plot dug up, trenches set it, seeds mixed in, and had begun to water it. Moral of the story: in learning to do something, just ask a local-it’s a lot faster than trying to learn from a damn book. But I did my part and went and bought some tomato plants and carrot seeds, as well as some flower seeds to start a flower plot in our front yard, which somewhat resembles a crater on the moon. So this Wednesday I am going to finish the job and set in some tomatoes and some petunias, and get our little garden a’ growin! Now to see if it will actually survive the scorching hot sun of this summer-that is the true test. But I am going to save some reserves to put in flowerpots and put them in my room for a bit of color. Now I just have to remember to water the damn things….

My first Field Trip,

March 23, 2009

Over this spring break, I held a few clubs and gave a seminar, and as everyone else was vacationing, I felt that I was due for a little trip. I agreed to help my host mother, who is also an English teacher, chaperone a picnic trip with her students to Kaka, a town about an hour away from us. She had planned a lunch at the foot of the Kopetdog Mountains, which makes up the Northern border of Iran. Kaka was actually the site of some volunteer training mates of mine, who went back to America a few weeks ago, but before they left they had visited the valley and said it was gorgeous, so I was pretty excited to see it.

Monday morning, at about 5:30am we were all up and about as a bus honked outside our door. Imagine 15 16-year-olds motivated enough to get up on their own at 4:30 in the morning to pick up their teacher just for a picnic! I don’t think that would ever happen in the States! We all piled in the bus and drove about 45 minutes to a large mosque which is in this empty field miles from anything, where we all got out and walked to a huge tomb. It is a special place for my host mother, as her son is named after the Turkmen buried there, because as a new wife she had gone there every week to pray for a son, as well as for my host fathers’ safe return from Turkey, where he was working. As both things came true, she has a strong attachment to the site, and it is very holy for her. The tomb itself is impressive-a black marble structure about 20 feet wide by about 50 feet long. One by one all the students gave thanks to Malik, and we walked in a line three times around the tomb in silence, dragging our hands over the marble all the way around. After the third go around, we sat in a circle, and one of the mail students ‘read’, or prayed, for all of us. I am not a particularly religious person, but I do respect how the power of ritual can unite people, and listing to the Arabic words repeated as the sun peaked over the horizon was a pretty neat experience.

After the stop at the mosque, we continued on past Kaka, and began our accent into the Valley. It was like we had entered another world- there were rolling grass hills in every direction, and everywhere we turned there were waundering herds of goats and sheep, all kept guard by a man or woman propped atop a shaggy donkey. My little host siblings were cranky from being woken up so early, so the students cheered them up by yelling “ Huny Malik Aylar, Eshek!” (Look, Malik and Aylar, there’s a donkey!) every time we passed a heard. Our bus driver, who I nicknamed the Surgeoun, and his assistant, keep constant guard over our ancient bus the whole way up, and every time we passed a stream would stop and refill the radiator and coaxs the engine a few more miles. We finally made to this little town at the gateway of the valley, and passing through that, made towards the river. After about 15 minutes, we pulled up alongside the river and unloaded, yelling hello’s to all the other picnicers who were out. My host mother cooked a huge vat of stew with water pulled straight from the stream, and my host father and his nephew tended the fire dutifully to serve the bundle of hungry teenagers. Afterwords, we took turns exploring, and I hiked with my host sisters to the top of the bluff, where we could look out over the valley. I pointed out the mountains to one of my host sisters. “Enegul can you see what’s over there?” I asked her, referring to the snow. “Yeah,’ she said “That’s Iran.” “Oh yeah, well, that too….” says I sheepishly. All in all, it was probably my favorite day I’ve had thus far in this country, just for the mere fact that we were froliking in nature. Thus far all my trips here in T-stan have been either chore-filled or involved the capital in some way or another. On our way back the bus broke down a few times, and while the Surgeoun tore out the engine, cut some pipes and started putting it all back together on the side of the road, some of took advantage of this, and we explored the ruins of an ancient city nearby, complete with castle wall and hundreds of house foundations. Also there was this thing, which is called the Uly Tamdyr (big tamdyr) by locals, that was the bread oven which supplied bread to the entire city of a few thousand people. It literally was about the size of a tw-story house, and the brick side had a doorway width the size of three grown men. It put the little Tamdyr in our backyard to shame, to say the least. It was like a bread oven on steroids, and hundreds of years old. Definitely a pretty neat place, and totally worth getting up at 5 am for…. So after the nice holiday, it’s now it’s back to the daily grind. 8 weeks and counting until summer!!

Peace

Megan

Freedom has arrived

March 15, 2009

Third semester is officially over (well, in five days). And about damn time I say. This last week was pretty wacky, because the Ministery came to check out the English Department, so all the teachers had to give presentations, and get evaluated. Pretty stressful for a lot of them all around, so I think everybody is glad for the break. I don’t feel like I have very productive this semester with teaching, so I have made my version of a new years resolution decided to be a more organized teacher this next semester. This includes cutting down my schedule so that I am not running from classroom to classroom unprepared, spending more time with teachers that I think will benefit from co-teaching, rather than trying to work with all of them, because some of them who just use the time to take a nap in the back, and also cracking down on my students in general so that lessons become more effective. I am finding discipline and classroom management here is the hardest thing, because besides the fact that my grasp of the Turkmen language is rudimentary at best, kids here aren’t raised to respond to normal punishment. Corpral punishment was just recently banned here (that’s not to say it doesn’t still happen a lot) but kids are used to it, so merely just speaking firmly to them doesn’t do a damn thing. Teachers scream and use any sort of verbal abuse to control their lessons. Anything less and the older children aren’t phased or don’t take notice. Threatening bloody murder to a group of 14 year olds was never something I saw myself doing, but in this land it seems the only way to get through to some of these kids. A lot of them here actually remind me of a lot of the punks in my class back in high school, when a lot of them considered it their personal duty to see how far they could push the teacher off before pissing her off. Now being on the other end of that stick I have a lot more respect for those teachers, although I didn’t think much of it at the time. But this doesn’t mean I don’t want to pummel the little jerks any less. Maybe from now on I’ll request just working with the 1st graders, at least I can hold them in a headlock when they get unruly... In any case I have 4 glorious days of freedom coming up, and I plan on using that to escape my work site and travel to the capital, get some chores and stuff done, and start prepping for my next teacher seminar. Summer is fast approaching!!

March 4, 2009

The Name Game

The first test of a teacher: remembering their student’s names. I must say this is one of the trickiest parts about working in a foreign country, because the names are all wacky and thus harder to remember. No Katies or Dannys among these kiddies. Last year I worked with a total of about 300 kids, and by the end of my contract, I knew about maybe 75 of their names, which I thought was fairly decent. Granted the names were pretty easy, in every class I had give or take a few Marias, or Jose Andres, or Jorges. We have enough Spanish names in America to remember these pretty easy. But for the life of me, I cannot seem to remember Turkmen names here. I have had my club kids for nearly two months now, and I still only know about a handful of their names. I resort to tricky ways to remember them, like making them call on each other, having them write their names on the board, or making them do roll call, but alas, I still cannot remember all of them. I will list briefly several girl names from some of my classes, to give an idea of the problem that I’m having.

1. Olgulnabat

2. Oguljeren

3. Ogulshat

4. Ogulgerek

5. Ogulsheren

6. Bagtlygul

7. Gulbahar

8. Gulnabat

9. Guljahar

10. Gurbangul

Need I say more? My newest hobby on my trek to and from school everyday is trying to translate all these names in my head, because most of the names are combinations of Turkmen words that have to do either with nature or astronomy. For example, pretty much any girl name that has ‘gul’ somewhere in it means flower-something-or-other. For example, I have several Bagtlyguls’ in my classes, which in Turkmen translates as bagtly=happy, gul=flower. So, you can imagine me saying seriously “Tell me Happyflower, what is the present continuous form of ‘to clean’?” I resist the urge of giggling a lot when I do roll call. It’s also happened on a few occasions where I have stumbled upon a sudden translation in the middle of my daily trek, and stopped in the middle of the street yelling either “Ah ha!” or just guffawing out loud, which usually draws a few curious stares from the street sweepers or the unlucky random persons within earshot. My favorite name thus far that I’ve translated is Ogulgerek, which is the name of one of the teachers that I tutor. In Turkmen, ogul=boy, gerek=want. Literally: I want a boy. I might add that she’s a woman. I wonder what it’s like going through your entire life with that kind of a name? Why not just name her Letstryagain? Or Secondtimesacharm? Outwardly, she doesn’t seem to display any sort of complex or insecurity from this, so I take it this must be a culture thing, and it doesn’t have the same significance that I ascribe to it. But in any case, I do like the idea that each name symbolizes something, even if I can’t tell them all apart. I mean, in America if somebody were to ask me what George means I’d be like, dude, heck if I know… So, I decided to see what my name would be, if I were Turkmen. In Latin Megan is Margarita, which I’m pretty sure means Daisy. So, being as there is not a Turkmen word for that particular flower, if I were Turkmen, I’d probably be Akichigul- small white flower. This to me though sounds a little bit like someone sneezing. If someone yelled after me “Hey, Akichigul!” I’d probably just reply, “Dude, bless you!’. Think I’ll stick with my given name.

Until next time,

Akichigul

March 2, 2009

Rematch with the Enemy: Rain

True to form, I washed my clothes yesterday, hung them out to dry, and the clouds gloriously appeared, the heavens opened up, and commenced dumping rain. I am beginning to believe this is a theme that will follow me until the day I die no matter where I end up. In the last year or so pre-T-Stan I have gotten pretty use to hand washing and line drying most of my clothes, because drying machines are kind of a unnecessary item in Spain as things dry lickity split and water is spendy. However, it was a running joke with my roommates last year that you never needed to watch the weather channel if you lived with Megan, just wait until she does her laundry and hangs it outside, and it will most likely rain that day, or the following afternoon. I can probably count on my hands the number of time that my drying clothes were not drenched in rain. It was pretty normal for our apartment to have every available perch covered in my clothing the day after I did my laundry, due to a downpour outside. My roommate Fernando had actually lived in our apartment for four years and had never needed a drying rack, but after a month of living with me, he went out and bought one due to my uncanny timing with storms.

My luck, it seems, has followed me here, for today I woke up to the gentle pitter-patter of rain drops on the tin roof, and the first thing that crossed my mind was, “well crap, there goes my dry underwear’. I thought that being in a desert, where it only rains a few times a year, my chances would be dramatically improved, but no. In fact, I think my presence here may have actually increased the average percentage of rainfall in the country. At this rate, if I wash my clothes regularly at least once a week for the next two years, Turkmenistan may go from being an arid desert climate to that of a subtropical dry climate. The other problem (besides my lack of dry underwear) was the muddy havoc that the roads were once again reduced to. This morning I stepped gingerly out the front door, reminding myself that my last encounter with treacherous Turkmen mud landed me in the hospital, and began my perilous journey to school. I arrived to work looking a wee bit like a war refugee, but nevertheless intact. I stepped into my office and took off my heels, which had a generous 2-inch layer of mud caking every available surface, and placed them next to the rows of my student’s pristine black shoes. So my question today is: how the hell do their shoes stay so pretty and shiny while mine look like I have just waded through the Caspian sea? I’m pretty sure most of us take the same general route to school. It is yet another mystery about this country that I have yet to figure out. But on the bright side of things, I made it the entire day without catapulting myself into the mud or losing a shoe in a suck hole, although there were a few close calls. So now: Turkmenistan: 1, Lowly Volunteer: 1. Thus far it is a duel match.

The Scale of Life

February 28, 2009

I am going to steal this theme from one of my fellow volunteers. This weekend the two volunteers in my region and I decided to meet up, cook some American food for his host family and spend a day not thinking about work. We crafted some makeshift pizza for everyone-which was met with a lukewarm “it’s ‘aight….” from the Turkmen crowd. Why is it that when you are bumming around the kitchen at home in your pjs and no one is in sight, you can whip up a meal worthy of making Rachel Ray bow down with tears in the corners of her eyes and say “Wo-wee, this is scrumptious!!” , but when you have to cook for an audience the mere act of boiling water suddenly becomes a process as complicated as intermolecular physics? Pretty much every one of my attempts to cook American food for Turkmen people in this country has been met with rousing suspicion and looks of “what the hell is that?” The days I have cooked with other volunteers usually results in a three-ring circus with family members coming in and out of the kitchen to see what the hell we were making. Being polite, we would share what was cooking with them, though they usually decided pretty quickly that Americans don’t know how to cook well and abandoned our creation after about three bites. However, this time our Turkmen receivers, although I’m sure will never cook Pizza for themselves, gave it a pretty decent attempt, and ate most of what we put in front of them.

The rest of the visit we hung out at home and read two-month old Atlantic and Time magazines that had come in a package, watched a news program IN ENGLISH, explored the local library, went on an evening stroll with the family through town, drank about 6 pots of green tea, and generally just spent a day in American laziness gossiping (though I’m sure the boys would object to this last one). Upon our departure, my mate said to us “Guys, I think this is one of the best days I’ve had in the last 5 months.” To which we asked, “Well on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate it?” My mate thought about this one for a moment then said “well, on the Turkmenistan scale, I’d give it like an 8. But I guess on like, a general Life scale, it’d probably be like a 5.” This managed to hit us in the funny bone, and after laughing for about 10 minutes straight; we tried to figure out why this was so true. We concluded that when you live in a country where any random person on the street will walk up to you and say first “Hi”, second “Are you from America?”, third “How much is your salary?” and fourth “will you take me to America?”, or that while walking to work you see groups of children playing with either goat bones or the carcass of a dog, your perspectives tend to alter a wee bit. What would seem like a normal, standard afternoon in the general status of things is distorted here a tad. Call us addicted to our culture, or slaves of our generation, but be it crappy pizza or old magazines, it’s the little things that make life a little smoother.

Young at Heart

February 23, 2009

It is official. I have the maturity level of a three year old. Just when I think I’m a mature, grown adult capable of carrying myself in the world, I slip up and boom-the image is shattered. But I dare anyone to try and keep a straight face while a class of second graders dutifully recite over and over harmoniously “I have one ass” (translation: donkey) or “He has one cock” (translation: rooster) in class. Even though I am perfectly aware that it’s British English and has nothing to do with anything, and there is a friggin’ picture of a donkey and a rooster right in front of me, I can’t help that my first instinct in to fall over howling in laughter. Today one of my fourth graders who was working on I have/she has statements, wrote on the chalkboard “ I have two apricots in my pants. What do you have?” and I almost choked on my tea. Since when did I acquire the mind of a twelve-year old boy? I don’t recall being this immature since I was well, immature. I blame it on being surrounded by children 24 hours a day. I calculated I only have about 6 hours each day where I am not constantly bombarded by children-and that is when I am sleeping. In any case, I believe that it’s starting to have an effect. Either that, or I just never matured. I’m really hoping it’s the first one.

I now have a lot more reverence for my Spanish teachers in college for being able to keep their cool while we fumbled around with grammar, trying to figure out what the hell we wanted to say in the correct order. I’m sure we came up with some doozies of our own. But just for posterities sake, I am going to start keeping a running tally of the funny phrases and student works that come my way. I’m rooting for my club kids-they can get pretty imaginative when it comes to slapping together a sentence. We shall see how it progresses from here. In the mean time, I’m going to work on being more mature.

February 20th 2009

The Wheel is a Turnin’

Picture a Hamster running very fast on a wheel. Now stretch this overused metaphor and replace the word Hamster with the word “Volunteer”. Not that you need a lot of imagination, but can you kind of see where I’m going with this one? I won’t say I’ve been counting or anything, but exactly one month from today (i.e. 29 days and 15 hours) is the start of spring break, and after that, 12 weeks of fourth semester, and after that, SUMMER. I can hardly believe that February is over with. It literally- and I’m going to use another tired metaphor here- flew by. I was writing the date on the blackboard today and I looked at my calendar and was like “Whoa, seriously?! Are you kidding me?!?” My students didn’t know what to make of this and so just did what they usually do when I do something weird in class, which is look at each other with confused expressions and shrug. In about a week and a half, I will have been at permanent site for three months. And quite honestly I don’t feel like I’ve done a friggin’ thing here thus far. With the first month being the end of the semester/holiday/and everything being in general chaos, and added to that my week and a half of being on house arrest (due to what I now refer to as ‘the mud incident’), I feel like I have only accomplished about a month of good solid work here. Time is a tickin’ as they say, and the inner workaholic in me is doing the finger shaking thing and saying ‘what have you got to show for it’? I keep telling myself, it’s ok, all volunteers feel like they’re not doing anything at some point, but then I ask myself, how can you been teaching 42 hours a week and still not be accomplishing a damn thing??

Usually the problem with volunteering in general tends to be that when a volunteer shows up the community doesn’t really know what to do with them, or they are just too disorganized and busy to figure out where to utilize them. In some cases they just expect the volunteer to fork over a couple of thousand bucks and have all their problems solved. Or maybe there just aren’t the resources at hand for the volunteer to be able to make an effective impact. I could probably make this list of problems about 4 pages long, but right now none of those reasons can be blamed for the predicament in which I now find myself. In the Peace Corps wheel of life, it seems to me I remember hearing that the ‘brick wall’ phase of service tended to come along a bit farther along than a few months into it But here I am: month 5-or 3 if you count my actual time in the community- and I’m just about three steps away from pulling all my hair out. I have all the general ingredients for a successful work site: an involved and experienced counterpart who is willing to let me drag her out of class at the drop of the hat to ask stupid questions, plus my very own work space with the ability to pick and choose the students that I want to teach there. I even have oodles of resources that have been left for me by previous volunteers at my site and a staff full of teachers and students dying to work with me for whatever I want to do at the moment. After school some days I literally have a trail of students follow me home asking me when I’m coming to teach their classes. Generally, the teachers seem to think I am doing a decent job, so why is it at the end of every week I feel as if I have done a whole bucket-full of nothing?

In order to better contemplate this problem I have decided to reclaim my Saturdays. I don’t know how people in Muslim countries can function with a six-day workweek. When I was in Spain, I was amazed at the Moroccan students because while we chilling back on Saturday afternoon, they would still be going at it full boar. I don’t know if I could have survived 4 years of that. One day is not just enough to recollect the sanity needed to persevere through the following week, especially since this day consists mostly of doing the chores you don’t have time to do all week-i.e. Cleaning, washing, organizing and-if you’re a teacher- writing lesson plans. It all seems like a perfect setup for the inevitable crash and burn. Although I haven’t reached this point yet, I don’t feel like continuing until I do so, seeing as how I don’t think it would be very pretty. So, as of this week I have cleared my Saturday schedule except for a few ‘chai sagatlar’- (tea time) which is basically just conversation practice with advanced students that doesn’t take much effort other than refining my gossiping skills and thinking of synonyms for all the thousands of phrasal idioms that we use every day in the English Language. Hopefully this extra day will help me step back, refocus, and kick my ass out of this rut I seemed to have found myself in. We shall see. Stay tuned…

Also, Footnote:

Thanks to all the lovely people who have shipped me AMAZING packages these last few months, I am golden in the coffee and tea department. I am like the Y2k of coffee beans right now. I am now drinking, like, three cups of really strong coffee a day in the hopes that I finish my stash before the end of my service  Although I must say-I literally don’t think I could survive an entire day of work now without a bloodstream full of caffeine, so every last bag of that beautiful java goodness will go to good use. But for now, I see no immediate need for more to be hauled across the ocean. Thanks again everyone! Keep me posted on how live is over yonder via snail mail

Until Next Time,

Moi

Pros and Cons

February 14, 2009

This last week, after my visit to the hospital post-mud incident, for which I was ordered to a week of being chained to my bed, I have had a lot of time to contemplate both my ceiling, the position of the curtains, and the particular route of the ants around the perimeter of the room. The 7 days of what I like to consider now as ‘jail time’ brought out my inner neurotic OCD tendencies, and I somehow became that weird person who re-organizes the books on the bookshelf first by size, then by theme, then by the quality of the book jacket summary, then by the particular style of narration (i.e. first person, third person omniscient, ect.), then by year of copy write. I blame in on a mix of pain meds and extreme boredom. Lets just hope I never do hard time anywhere, because Lord knows what would result from that. I would probably start rearranging the bricks based upon density content.

Anyway, besides my re-organizing skills, I also managed to write copious lists of random things, which for any of you who know me, is what I tend to do when I have nothing better to occupy my time. Some of my lists consisted of pros and cons of random things, such as coffee vs. tea, summer vs. winter, American Football vs. Canadian Hockey, and volunteering vs. working-a-real-job-and-making-actual-money, just to name a few. One of my lists were my views concerning the Turkmen Koynek (Dress), which some of you might have noticed by now is an ever-present theme in my day-to-day life here in T-Stan. So, I thought I might share it, being as I have nothing more of interest to talk about at the moment. I came up with is this lengthy- but I think rather accurate- list that describes my mindset on this garment. I present it as follows:

The pros of wearing a Turkmen Koynek:

1. It saves time.

Instead of spending valuable time trying to co-ordinate outfits, such as a blue skirt with a white shirt, or brown top with brown skirt, ect, you can just toss on a Koynek. Perfect for the fashionably lazy, such as myself. For Koynek matching here, pretty much anything goes. You can have a dress of brown African Safari print material with a bright neon pink and blue Yaka embroidered on it, and people will still say, “Hey, nice Koynek, you look great today!” This occurs even if you look like the sewing machine threw up all over you. You really can’t go wrong here.

2. Layering.

For winter at least, when it’s really cold, and heating at work is pretty much non-existent, I can put on like, 3 pairs of long johns and 5 pairs of socks and nobody is the wiser. Plus, it's kind of like wearing pajamas to work.

3. Cheaper taxi fares.

Nobody tries to take advantage of you or charge you that extra 5,000 manat (about 30 cents) more when you look like a homeless bag lady, especially a local.

4. When walking down the street, it makes for less harassment and screams of “AMERICA!! HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! HELLO!”

On days when I want to completely go unnoticed, I put on the most Turkmen Koynek I can possibly find, wrap a scarf around my head, and make a run for it. I like to think of it as my Clark Kent outfit. When he had his glasses and suit, Clark managed to blend into the mob and go quietly about his day-to-day activities without a problem, but as soon as he put that red and blue spandex on, everybody went all “HEY!! LOOK GUYS, IT’S SUPERMAN!!!” And then he had to go catch a building or stop a nuclear bomb or something. And who in their right mind wants that all the time? Dressing like a local helps with this problem.

5. No wedgies.

I know this might not be socially appropriate, but it is very true when you are wearing a potato sack. It is a very loose flowing garment.

…And the cons of wearing a Turkmen Koynek:

1. Danger of tripping is increased exponentially by the amount of walking that is done.

The design of the Koynek has what those in the fashion biz call a ‘pencil’ skirt- meaning the dress is a straight cut from the hips to the ankles. Which for Americans who are accustomed to taking larger strides in pants, makes the mere act of walking a bit tricky (picture, if you will, a mermaid trying to complete an obstacle course). Recently, I tried to demonstrate this fact to my dressmaker by miming a person taking very large, manly, Sasquatch-like steps and spreading my arms really wide while saying “Ulllly kan!” (THIIIIS BIG!) repeatedly in Turkmen. It didn’t translate well. I still have my ‘Pencil Koynek’, in which I’ve tripped three times this week, and now my dressmaker thinks I’m crazy, and that I walk like Sasquatch.

2. Static Cling.

Although the sack-like design of the Koynek (which provides the extra space to wear those 32 pairs of long johns) is a plus, all those layers together can often turn into a wrinkly nightmare that will cling to anything that moves. On a super clingy day for example, picture walking down the street looking like you just rolled out of bed. But not just any bed, mind you. Nooooo, siree. Rather, picture a bed that has been kidnapped by a gang of pirates, used as a sail through a hurricane, then repossessed by the Australian government after a failed ransom attempt and used in a lab to test the effects of electric currents induced by shocking. Afterwards, when the economy took a turn for the worse and the lab was closed down, this bed was stashed in a warehouse, forgotten, but then later rediscovered and given to a retiring Employee as part of his Pension packet, who decided to roll it in a vat of honey in order to attract Kangaroos during hunting season. That people, is static cling.

3. Constant fear of tucking the back of my skirt into my underwear.

Ok, also not socially appropriate, but it is a legitimate fear that I have every time I visit the pit toilet. You know that scene where the girl comes out of the bathroom with toilet paper stuck on her shoe and everybody laughs at her? Well, being as no toilets here have toilet paper, let alone a seat, or a door, or sometimes a roof or walls, this is never a very large concern of mine. But I am however, genuinely afraid of exposing my bum to all the world while obliviously walking down the street post pit-toilet one day with an edge tucked into my bloomers.

4. Slower reaction times.

When avoiding Turkmen dogs, wearing a Koynek gives the dog a slightly bigger advantage. I’d like to see one of them try to chase me while wearing one of these suckers. I’d say that would even the playing field a little bit (ok, I still have a little residual anger with Turkmen dogs, I am aware of this). Also, I might have caught that bus last week and not been late to school had I been able to run. How Turkmen girls run (and in 4-inch heels, on gravel roads) is still a mystery to me. I’m thinking it takes years of training at this point.

5. It’s a Koynek. Enough said with this last one.

…..The End

To wear or not to wear, that is the question. In short, this is just one example of what a single week of house arrest will amount too. Although don’t get me wrong, there are there some perfectly dandy Koyneks out there- they are just worn by those with more fashion or grace than this particular volunteer has the capacity for. Also, given more time and boredom (perhaps this summer), I may also tackle the merits of the Turkmen Telpek, which closely resemble that of the Davy Crocket hat, except that instead of a Raccoon pelt, the Turkmen hat contains the hide of an entire sheep that somehow props atop a man’s head. It is quite brilliant, really. Kind of like balancing a lap dog on your forehead.

Also, in answer to the queries- yes, I have kind of given up on the whole picture-uploading thing. How other volunteers here have managed to do it is a mystery to me. I’m basically technologically retarded, and added to that I am living in a technologically challenged country, so that’s two strikes against me right there. If anything, I can try to mail pictures to ‘The America’ and have a family member who is more techno savvy, or who has a better Internet service than I, to attempt to post them or scan them, or however it is done these days. Or they can just pass them around or make copies. By 2010, maybe? (I’m kind of serious when I say that…)

Also, mostly because he told me not to do this (hehe...) Hi Dan’s mom! Your baby is doing just swimmingly here in this little village. I make sure I bug him at least twice weekly for sanity’s sake. Mine, mostly. I don’t know if I do anything to help his.

Love to all ya’lls in The America and otherwise.

Paz.

Hey, if anybody is sending my letters/packages, make sure you omit School #7 from the address-because people have just been delivering mail to my schhol and it dissapears.... So if you want me to get it, just take out that part! Loves to you all. Oh and if you haven't figured it out, when I post these blogs, the oldest is at the top, and it goes down so that the most recent is at the bottem of the post.

January 15, 2009

The Complexities of the English Language

Happy New Year Ya’ll. Although I do realize it ‘twill possibly be awhile before I make the journey into the Metropolis of Ashgabat and enter this little ditty on the invention they call the world wide web, I thought I’d write for posterities sake. Think of it as a time capsule. So, now that we are in the grand year of 2009, what is my New Years resolution, you ask? My desires are simple:

1). Firstly, I am a realist, so I don’t plan on spreading the joy of linguistic knowledge to all reaches of this country, but I would like-by the end of my 2 years here-for ONE of my students (at the moment I have somewhere around 2000) to know enough grammar to be able to tell me a decent original joke in English. That would be thoroughly gratifying- Lord knows a little humor can go along way around here. On my end, I will reciprocate with a good Turkmen joke. Thus far in my quest, I have learned the phrase “you are killing me!” in Turkmen, which I find quite helpful around here when my kids are being unruly little demons (to put it gently).

2). My secondary resolution is to master walking in a long dress without completely making a fool of myself, or causing injuries to myself or to those around me. I am being utterly serious when I say this. This week alone I have tripped thirteen times, caught myself on a row of heaters (which almost resulted in death by fire) and used the last of my orange thread to mend the tears in my fashionable pumpkin-colored-maternity-style Koynek, most of which were resulted from various klutzy activities. I have never really considered myself an extremely graceful and overly coordinated person, but I have never experienced this grandiose level of personal mayhem in my life until I arrived to this country and dawned this charming national garment. At the moment, my life is a cross between a Mr. Bean and I Love Lucy episode- going about my personal business while simultaneously constantly avoiding and/or causing near disaster. To put it mildly, I miss pants.

Well, in other news, life in general has been very busy here. I am working a BIT more than I would like right now, but right now my personal goal is to power through this semester, so that I can crash from complete exhaustion when spring break rolls around. Personally, I think this is a good, well thought-out plan (ha). On the upside, I am becoming a pro at lesson planning, and can now whip out five different lesson plans in about an hour. The degree of diversity in English levels around here constantly stuns me. I go from teaching I am good for an hour, to working on phrasal idioms, to talking about the difference of countable and uncountable nouns, to teaching cat and dog, all in the course of a day. I am discovering things about the English language that I never thought possible. Take today, for example. Because the pronouns she and he don’t exist in Turkmen, I spent 15 minutes explaining to a student that it is possible to assign three separate pronouns to a cat. Most people generally just call a cat “it”. But some people, especially strange Americans, are very close to their cats, so it is also possible to say “she” or “he” if they to prefer to personify their cats. So somebody can say, “where is the cat?” And any normal person would reply, “It is sleeping.” BUT, take somebody who really loves their cat, and they know that their particular cat is a girl, and suddenly it is also possible to reply, “she is sleeping.” WHOA. A whole different pronoun, because now…wait for it… the sex of the cat had been positively identified!!! Whoodathunkit!! So, if anyone was curious, this is how I spend my days. If anyone so desires, now for only 3 payments of$19.99 plus tax and shipping, you can have all the episodes of “Megan’s Life in Turkmenistan” on DVD, with all politically incorrect footage unedited! (And believe you me, there’s a lot of that going on) Checks made payable to the address listed on this web page. Included is a bonus feature of dancing at Turkmen weddings that is particularly entertaining.

On a more somber note, I was tutoring a student the other day on the complexities of countable and non-countable nouns (which for any of you grammar stumped folks out there means when you can use the determiners much, or a lot of). We were discussing and arguing phrases when you use certain determiners based on the degree of ‘countability’. For instance, we say “I didn’t have much luck at the casino yesterday”, because you can measure the amount of luck that you experienced from the money you won or lost. But other things don’t have a measurable quality, and so we say “a lot of”. In this particular instance we were talking about grief, with the sentence “she has experienced a lot of grief in her life.” When I asked my student why she thought we used this determiner, she said,

“Well, I think the uncountable determiner is correct.”

“And why is that?” I asked.

“ Because you can’t measure grief,” she said. So, take that one home with you Jack Handy. That is one seriously deep thought.

Until next time,

Me

Feb 2, 2009

My first student joke

It was only just a few weeks or so ago that I was lamenting the lack of cross-lingual jokes. But hear ye, hear ye…I think I may have just got my first good one. The other day I was doing some scheduling with one of the teachers I am training, and through a bit of miming and pictionary, she drew out for me what she diplomatically titled “Hell’s Calendar”. It appears below:

Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday

work work work work work work work

Ok, so it might not win a slot on who’s line is it anyway, but it sure brightened my day, in the grand spectrum of things. In any case, it was a pretty witty joke coming from a very conservative Muslim woman. Needless to say she got an A for the day.

Also, from the non-related work area of my life, I am just now reading For Who the Bell Tolls, by Hemingway. As someone who holds a bachelors in English literature, I will admit I still have not read a large amount of famous American authors and books (aak, revoke my degree!). I have started and not finished at least 2 dozen classic novels all in the quest to make myself more of a literary elitist/snob. I will also admit I was once a declared hater of good ol’ Ernest (I mean, who’s mother willingly names their child Ernest, anyway?). I think it was due in part to the copious amounts of Hemingway in my High school AP English class curriculum, and also because in various college classes I have had to re-read The Sun Also Rises far too many times for my liking. But now I have turned the leaf, and am thus a fan of ‘The Hemingway’. This particular tale, for those of you who haven’t read it, is about a professor from Missoula, MT who’s hanging out in Spain, fightin’ a war, tryin’ to blow up a bridge, drinking lots of wine, and falling for a chick named Maria. And I asked myself how, out of all the cities in the world, did Hemingway pick Missoula? He can’t be all that bad of a guy, right? (Who knows, maybe I like it just because my last 2 zip codes were Missoula and Spain.) But in any case, I highly suggest to any of those who have not read it, to do so; it’s a pretty swell book. My favorite phrase from the book thus far? “I obscenity in the milk of thy mother.” Take that one to the bank, people. I’m going to use that one some day on an un-liked employer. He’s a jolly good writer, that Hemingway-even if he did steal Gertrude Stein’s thunder.

Well, I hope everybody is swell in the Motherland, or in countries elsewhere. Keep the news a coming and thanks for all the great packages so far from everybody-they make my days brighter! You are all awesome!

Peace.

January 5, 2009

MUD

So, we’ve had our first snow here in the jolly land of Tejen. A whole half-inch that lasted about 5 hours. Winter!! I made my little host siblings come outside and play with me, and showed them how to make a gar adam-snow man. (Although the result was only about 5 inches tall, due the limited supply of snow) But of course with the snow went the power. Pretty much the entire city of about thirty thousand went sans electricity for about a day and a half. My host parents, being the smart cookies they are, took advantage of the cold and hung all of our meat outside. I found our my neighborhood boys have guitars, because without TV they were forced to find different methods of entertainment, and the lack of light goaded them out into the street, thus I heard the same three Enrique Inglesias songs played over and over for about 5 hours straight. Although for a country with such a frequent rate of power outages, people are still remarkably unprepared for it. We have a total of 1 candle in our house, which is ancient and highly unpredictable, and no flashlights. Flashlights? What are those? My small keychain flashlight was the showstopper of the night, and was worth every last cent I paid for it at Sportsmans. For all the future volunteers that come to Turkmenistan and stumble across this little blog-forget hiking boots in your packing list, you won’t need ‘em-use the space and bring a friggin’ flashlight!!

I have also suffered my first mishap in this fair country. Due to the rain and snow, every last inch of dirt here has turned into a giant pile of mud/sludge. While walking to school this last Monday I attempted to avoid a rather persistent beastly dog by vaulting a small hill, and with all the slippery gook in every direction, did a spectacular Charlie Chaplin on my back. Besides being thoroughly covered in mud (my host dad almost peed his pants laughing at me when I came home looking like the abominable mud woman) I also somehow managed to injure myself and am now walking like an old bag lady with a bum hip. So this week I will be making an unexpected visit to the capital to say ‘hey’ to our medic and/or replace my entire spine. How is it that in your home country you can fall 5 thousand times or escape the jaws of death on a weekly basis and nothing ever comes of it, but when you’re in another country and a fly looks at you wrong, you end up with a broken elbow, or whooping cough, or some other equally exotic ailment? I wish somebody would explain that one to me when I’m in another country. As of now, it is Turkmenistan: 1, Lowly Volunteer: 0

December 08, 2008

The Flowers in Tejen

Smell the roses, count your blessings, eat your last meal, and get ready for the real deal, people. As of three days ago, we woke up at 5 o’clock in our nice hotel rooms, and one by one over the coarse of a few hours, the 43 of us squished all of our crap into a caravan of minibuses. And as dawn hit the tip of the city, we sped in all directions over the country of Turkmenistan to our new homes….

So, I have heard so many stories from other volunteers, even from before I came here, who told me that the first day you actually realize you are in the peace corps, and not just on some random weird vacation, is the day when the truck pulls up to the village, drops you at the front door, and peaces out for good. The phrase “that was the day I realized I was a volunteer” is the one sentence I have heard over and over since I started this whole shenanigan over a year ago (along with “holy crap what have I gotten myself into?” “Am I crazy?” and “when is the next bus out of here?”).

So while I watched the taillights disappear into the distance, I joined the hoards of PCV’s before me in taking a deep breath, picking up my suitcase and saying to myself “Ok, so here goes….”. I shut the gate behind me, followed my host father into the house, and began to lug all my crap into my room, which surprisingly had no door. Generally one to roll with the punches, I nodded and said to myself, “well, on the plus side of things, I do have a bed…”. But the worrying was all for naught, because about an hour later the door turned up-apparently my host father had been installing the mandatory “peace corps deadbolt” onto it, and so it was down for repairs. Wanting to be a good volunteer, I started putting some of my things away, organized a bit, and then, because my host mother and the kids were out, decided to take a quick nap to recharge my batteries so I could be properly talkative and social.

Long story short: I woke up five and a half hours later. So much for the first day impression with the host family; I slept through the whole damn thing. Apparently staying up the night before you go to permanent site isn’t the smartest option, especially if you want to be perkier later. I got up that evening, having missed lunch and dinner, stumbled out of my room, and my host mom, who was seriously concerned and confused, started yelling “Megan!! Why you sleep?! What is wrong!?”. So yeah, off to a great start. But a little explaining in broken Turkmen/English and we were cool. I actually came at a pretty good time, because this week is a four day holiday, called “good neighbor day” which every other person repeatedly explained to me, is when you go guesting and eat lots and lots of Dograma (bread soup) and Palov (rice with carrots and onions) and gossip with family and friends. Or in my case, go to a house, avoid eating too much oil, and listen to everyone talk about “the American and her salary” for three hours in front of you. But it was actually lots of fun. The first night, we went to my “host grandma’s” house and ripped about a hundred loaves of bread for the Dograma. (It’s later mixed with a vat of boiled animal fat and onions, and served with some sort of broth stuff. Yum.) I can honestly say I had some nice calluses the next day on my‘ bread tearing thumbs’. Then because it was late, we crashed at grandmas pad (a surprise to me, and I admit the high maintenance American in me desperately wanted my toothbrush and contact solution the whole night). We woke up the next morning for some serious cooking and entertaining. I wore my new koynek, which all the Turkmen ladies glowed over. It’s amazing how much more the people in this country like you if you just put on a sack of a dress with flowers sewn on it (and let me just add to the visual by pointing out that my koynek is also bright orange, and I could probably be six months pregnant in it and nobody would be the wiser). A stunning difference from my old uniform of a skirt and long sleeved shirt. The women wouldn’t really let me cook, so I just sat around looking lazy for a while, until the first guests showed up, then they stuck me in a room with two Dyzas (old ladies) and I let them grill and critique me in Turkmen for a while, until more people showed up and they brought out the beloved Dograma to eat. By two o’clock I was so incoherent and tired I literally fell asleep at the table (by table I mean rug on the floor), until some of the ladies noticed, loudly let my host mom know, then we were hustled into the grandfathers car to drive us home.

The ride home was a story in itself as well. The grandfather is an interesting man; a Journalist, he lived in Cuba for a few years, and in some random Scandinavian country for a while, (although as far as I could tell, he didn’t speak Spanish, English, or Norwegian). But packed into his car on the way back, he filled me in –through translation-on some valuable American history of which I was previously unaware. I will present that conversation here in loose translation, so you can fully enjoy and pass along this knowledge to all of your friends and colleagues.

Grandpa: “Girl, do you know American history?”

Me: “Yes, I think so.”

Grandpa: “Then who is Christopher Columbus?”

Me: “The first European that came to America.”

Grandpa: “Do you Americans say that he discovered America?”

Me “Yup.”

Grandpa “Bah, Stupid! Before Christopher Columbus came to America, the Turkmen people were there.”

Me: “Really, how is that?”

Grandpa: “The Turkmen were in Russia for many years, and long ago a group of Turkmen traveled across Russia and came over the water to Alaska!”

Me: “Really??” (In disbelief)

Grandpa: “Of course, why do you think your Indians in America look like Turkmen people? Because we were in America before Columbus was there. He came many years after we had found it. Our people were the first ones there.”

Me: “Wow. And to think we never knew. I’ll make sure to tell people back home about that.”

So there you have it. Not that our history books aren’t accurate already, but we’re missing the part where a large majority of Americans are genetically derived from the Turkmen people. Take that as you may.

That’s pretty much it for the first few days here in Tejen. Not much else for interesting tidbits of life on this end of the world. Although, I suppose I can pass along the highlight of my day today: this morning I translated for my host dad part of a BMW engine manual from German into English and then with my host mom into Turkmen and Russian. Never mind that I have never studied a single world of German in my entire life, my Turkmen is barely passable, and I don’t speak Russian. I now know how to say automatic brake fluid in 4 languages. Life is funny sometimes. Peace out, ya’ll.

December 24, 2008

They’re all going to laugh at you!

Gün Tertibi. These two words little have been the bane of my existence for the last week and a half. Gün Tertibi is Turkmen for Daily Calendar. After a nice 5 days of complete laziness and avoiding reality and the outside world, I finally ventured to school with my counterpart to see what this volunteer teaching thing was all about. I was told there were 5 English teachers. Not too bad, thought I. But then factor in that there is an afternoon schedule and a morning schedule, and that the English Center has to be open in the morning and in the afternoon as well. Roll that into a second-world school system and what you basically have is -in a nutshell- general chaos. My Department director was gone to the capital for a week, so for the first week I had it pretty easy, just following random teachers around and teaching a lesson here and there and writing down when they wanted me to come and promising that the center would be open soon. I also discovered that there were two more teachers than originally accounted for-making for a total of 7 teachers I will work with. So this Monday we finally had our schedule meeting and she mentioned that I needed to teach not only in the morning and the afternoon, and have the center available in the morning and the afternoon, but I was also asked to teach advance classes at another school as well. So I worked up a schedule complicated enough to confuse pretty much everybody involved (including me) and am crossing my fingers and hoping that it works. So the last day and I half I have spent trying to figure out the graphs and charts feature on my friggin’ computer (apparently I made it through four years of college with out doing graphs and charts-that’s what you get for being a liberal arts major) and a doing bilingual newsletter for the district schools here in Tejen.

It will be interesting to see how successful this newsletter thing is (or if I’ve just wasted a day and a half), because in Turkmen they have two forms of the language-the spoken form and the written form. I only learned the spoken form, because PC said we wouldn’t need to write in Turkmen, we just needed to know how to speak it. So thus I am doing a written newsletter in spoken Turkmen. We’ll see how it goes over… I keep hearing Adam Sandler’s voice in my head over and over again saying “They’re all going to laugh at you! They’re all going to laugh at you!”. I guess I’ll see next week when I open up the center if the message got through.

In the meantime I am wishing everybody over the ocean a Happy Holiday season!!! I keep forgetting its’ Christmas here in a few days-because Christmas spirit isn’t much in this part of the world, and if nobody mentions it, I kind of forget about it. My host mother though, bless her soul, is cooking me a Christmas dinner, and next Saturday we got a travel permission to go to the Capital for a Volunteer Party hosted in the office, so me and one of my other volunteer pals are going to journey in and crash with my old host family for a night. I am a little worried about how excited I am to use the Internet when I get there…

December 25, 2008

Christmas and Margaret Thatcher

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE….AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!! (Plus Kwanza and Hanukkah)

Dear Santa: I want a pony and a princess castle. Or maybe a pair of jeans. Actually, make that a glass of pasteurized milk. With one of my mom’s Brownies with the dried cherry things. Or maybe the most recent issue of the New Yorker or a Newsweek. Wait, you know what? I got it. I would like, for Christmas, one medium sized shower Loufa (that spongy thing you use with soap). That would be the end all.

Actually, to be completely serious, the number one thing on my holiday wish list would be like an inch of snow. This is my third, count it, THIRD Christmas without snow overseas. Although interestingly enough, there is this weird white film on the sand here that kind of resembles frost, and could almost pass for it, but I’m pretty sure it’s dried up salt. I’ve decided I’m just going to pretend it is frost, if only to boost the seasonal spirit of things  So while all of you in the Northland complain about the frost and snow and ice, please think of the less fortunate out there who have only frosty-looking sand and camels wearing cowbells. And maybe, if you feel up to it, make a snow angel for those of us who can’t.

On the upside of life, I’m going to an English Christmas Party today at my school. The kids are singing Jingle Bells, doing a skit of the Cinderella story (which somehow translates here into “The Ash Tree”) and Singing Mariah Carey’s Hero (accompanied by cell phone music). They are also doing an English Trivia Game. One of the advanced students let me preview the Trivia answers, and I totally got schooled. Europeans are always harping on us poor Americans because we don’t know anything about Geography or History. And I’m a prime example of this stereotype. Guess who didn’t know who the third President of the United States was? Or the first woman Prime Minister? (Yes, Thomas Jefferson and Margaret Thatcher for all of you smarty pants out there...) And who knew that the capital of Australia is NOT Sydney. (ok, maybe lots of people….) I just nodded, praised them on how smart they were, shrugged and said I hadn’t studied any of that stuff in 7 years, but I used to know it when I was a student (did I?). So I’m supplying a Christmas tree and a bit of American culture. Should be fun.

Oh I forgot to mention to people earlier, but I now have a new address and wait for it…a phone number!! Although I’m not sure what the country code is to call to Turkmenistan, but I’m sure a little sleuthing on the Internet and it would be easy enough to find out if you so desire to phone me . I think Turkmenistan is a12 hour time difference from standard Mountain Time… Anyhoo, they are as follows:

Address

Megan Haggar, PCV

Mekdep #7, c.p. Ejeby

Ahal Welayatynyñ, Tejen Etraby

Tejen Saher, 745360

Türkmenistan

Phone number:

800135-40724

Well, that’s pretty much it. As always, I would looove your letters and news (i.e. any old magazines and newspapers with news of the outside world, cause all I get is Russian news)! Although, on a last note…if ANYBODY feels like sending a gift- and I will totally reciprocate with Turkmen goodies-and has in their possession the pirated 5th Season thus far of The Office, I will personally mail you an ENTIRE Camel. You would make about 50 volunteers here in this country extremely happy. Merry Christmas to all!!

So,

I have been getting more questions about things like what do Turkmens wear, what do they eat, how do they live, and so on and so forth. Obviously it’s a wee bit difficult to sum up an entire country and its culture in a few paragraphs. But I’ll take a swing at a few topics, just to fill in some of the blanks.

A lot of what I read online before I came I have found to be quite right on the money. Talking to a few of my fellow volunteers here, it seems we all tuned in to the same information before we came: current and past volunteers blogs. The random stuff I remember reading, like for instance, how they play the Star Wars theme song on the radio before every news broadcast, or how every car is actually a functioning taxi, is indeed true. Fact: I now listen to the star wars theme song on a daily basis, and can now humm it by memory. Fact: I can walk out my front door, into the street, stick out my hand, and pretty much the next car that stops, if they’re headed my way, I hop in and for 10,000 manats (about 75 cents) they’ll drop me wherever I need to go, no questions asked. Why is this ok? Everybody’s out to make a bit of extra cash, so what’s the problem with utilizing those empty seats? And due to the Soviet Union being here for so long, everybody’s still got a good taste of not wanting to be in trouble with “the law”. So the bottom line is: no funny business. You get in, you get dropped off, its that simple. Not that crime isn’t unheard of here, but comparatively speaking, Turkmenistan one of the safest countries in the world. Still don’t believe this is a completely tame country? How about that one of the biggest symbols of the country is called the Arch of Nutrality, which is this impressive robot looking statue in the center of the capital city. It looks kind of like a huge rocket ship straddling a few roads, covered in changing colored lights, and topped with a moving golden statue of a past president with a flowing cape It is set so that the statue is always following the rotation of the sun, which you can tell by how the cape is flowing behind him. The golden statues job, you ask? To remain neutral ladies and gentleman. Notice a theme?

Food; always a fun topic of conversation. I had heard the food was not figure friendly here, Oily, heavy, bread by the ton, and no veggies. First impression, ok…a little bit true. Turkmen LOVE their bread. And their cotton seed oil. And Potatoes are just damn cheap, so why not eat them for breakfast? Soup, or Chorba, as it called here, is a big staple of Turkmen diet. I have soup at least once a day, although often it is two times a day. One of their National dishes is something called Dograma, which they eating at parties and weddings, and is a soup with bread broken up in a broth of chicken and onions. Mixed reviews on this one. Another National dish is called Palov –pronounced pall-ow-which literally translated to rice pilaf. It is rice boiled in cottonseed oil with lots of fried carrots and a few pieces of whatever meat is handy tossed in. I like this one, although I try not to think about the three cups of oil that is in it. Another popular national dish is called Unash, which is another soup with beans and homemade boiled noodles mixed in. They serve it with a side of camel yogurt, so you take a spoonful of yogurt, mix it to taste, and voila, creamy noodle soup stuff. This one is allright to, all though I think I like it mostly because it is one of the only meals that has milk in it, hence one of my only sources of calcium now.

I have already noticed in the last two weeks veggies have pretty much disappeared from our food tables. When we arrived there were cucumbers and tomatoes coming out our ears. Now however, the green has mostly disappeared from the table, and I think we’re looking at a long winter of potatoes. Exporting and importing seasonal veggies in this area of the world is too expensive, so when the growing season is over, that’s the show folks-wait until spring comes back. Although in the last week or so I’ve had a good amount-my mom will appreciate this- Kimshee. It’s a Korean dish of pretty much any vegetable soaked in a Vinegar-like mixture and some spice. But even Kimshee is starting to become rare on the table. I have a feeling in a few weeks my veggies are going to consist of canned tomatoes and pickles for the next 5 months. If anyone wants to try and air mail me some cucumbers…lets just say if the box made it, you would be my bestest new friend ever. On the other side, I’m suppose going to have to develop a better relationship with potatoes and utilize those Billie Blanks disks I brought I suppose…

Well, I think that covers a few things. I’m going to try and attach some fotos I took, with a trick one of my techno savy volunteer pals showed me, so hopefully it works. One is a picture of Anew, where I live now, with the long windy dirt road. I walk home on this road every day. Theres also a picture of some of the houses around where I live, which I took from my room. Theres one of some friends and I in front of a BIG mosque-which is where the old president is buried, right outside the capital, and supposedly the largest mosque in Central Asia. Also a foto of my four training site mates and I-these are the folks I spend pretty much all my waking hours with. Good people. And another foto of my family baking bread in the Tamdyr-a holy oven Turkmens soley for their chorek, or bread. Its holy for them so there’s a whole set of rules on how to treat the bread and its oven. Some general bread rules:

1. Never swear or tell lies around the bread. Bad karma and VERY disrespectful. This keeps mealtime conversation very tame.

2. Never step OVER or in front of the bread. Also bad karma.

3. Do not lean, dirty, or break the Tamdyr.

4. Do not put the bread face down. The small designs pressed on the top of the bread must always face Allah, or the sky.

5. When you tear a piece of bread for yourself, you must tear the bread by holding it evenly with both hands so that it doesn’t touch the ground when you eat.

6. Finish the bread piece that you tore for yourself. No crumbs left behind, people. There’s some good history to this one: when times were tough, bread was all people had, so if you do not finish your bread, you are not respecting the hardship that your ancestors went through in times of hunger.

Just one set of table manners to live by. Until next time, ya'll

Lots of Cake

So this last week we did our permanent site visits. Our site announcements happened to be on the same day as the election back in the states, so our director, as soon as he found out who won, came down to the training meeting to pass out the acceptant speech. Everybody was pretty psyched (at least all the democrats of the group). It was kind of weird to be on the other side of the world when such a big thing was happening back in the States. Our director told us it was the biggest turn out at the polls since 1930 something or other-so that was pretty wild. I really would have loved to see even like 5 minutes off CNN to see when it was going down. But what can ya do.. Anyway, after all that, they gave us our placements. Come December I will be living in Tejen City, Ahal for the rest of my time here. They bussed/flew our counterparts up to meet us, and the next day we traveled with them for site visits. Half of our folks had to take a plane and/or train, cause the roads are crappy pretty much everywhere.

Tejen is going to be an interesting town-the population is about 30,000-but its not really a city besides having a big bazaar. There are 10 schools-my school has about 2,000 kids, although only about 6 English teachers. There is no infrastructure or city center, although they do have a post office, and a telegraph office. Most of the roads aren’t paved, so it feels like a big town. In fact when I was walking to work the first morning we had to chill for a little bit cause there was a huge heard of camels hogging the main street, and we had to wait till they went on their way. It was definitely an interesting morning commute, to say the least. The nearest internet place I found out is in the Capital, so I will be looking at a 2 hour taxi ride whenever I have to go in…so needless to say I won’t be checking my email that much after December. Right now I have it pretty posh cause our village is only 20 min. outside the city AND it has an Internet café. So prepare to hear from me a lot less folks  The site visit was interesting, I met my new host family, who seem like cool people-although I really love my host family now-its going to be really hard to leave them. My host mom is an English teacher as well, although she doesn’t really speak English, so that’s where I’m going to come in handy. It was pretty interesting because the same week I came to visit, her husband, who’s been living in Turkey for 2 years working, and who she or her children haven’t seen the whole time, came back the second day I was there. So it was a pretty crazy few days, to say the least- the arrival of the American AND the dad’s homecoming. They’ve got two little kids, a four year old and a six-year old-and he hadn’t seen them since they were toddlers-so the reuniting was pretty wild. Needless to say that for about three days there was a lot of guesting, vodka, and cake going around.

I met the other volunteers who are at my site, and they seem like cool people. There is a married couple that are finishing their service in a few weeks, so they’ll be gone by the time I get back, and another guy who is here for another year. They showed me around and helped me get oriented a little bit-the city/town is pretty big, and since there is no bus service there, I’m going to be walking A LOT. They have an English resource center that a previous volunteer set up, which is like a little haven of materials and a great place for clubs. I already promised a few people from other schools that I would work with them too, doing teacher training and exam tutoring-so instead of working with just my school, it looks like I’m going to be involved in a couple of the other schools as well. We’ll see how busy I’ll get when I start my service.

I have officially sworn off cake forever. So after four days at me new site, three of which my new host mom baked cakes for several different occasions, one being a welcome home party, and other because the in-laws came over, and other just because… I came back to Ashgabat, and it just happened to be my birthday. I had totally spaced it out, then at the office one of my training mates mentioned that his birthday had been the day before, and then somebody was like, “so what’s today?”, “the12th” and I was like, “whoa, I’m officially 25 then!” So when we bussed back to our village after our meeting, a bunch of the other volunteers chipped in and bought ANOTHER cake and we walked to our local café to eat it and get some beer. The electricity in the café was out (electricity is out a lot in this country) so the girl at the café scrounged up some candles and we had a birthday celebration by candlelight, complete with beer and meat Kabobs. (The Turkmen eating at the table next to us were pretty amused by us, as its not often a heard of foreigners show up at a random café carrying a cake and dragging suitcases) Then the next day, my Language trainer and some of my training mates bought a cake during our lunch break for the two of us who had birthdays in my group, and got us some presents! Then, to top it all off, when I tromped home after work, my host father had gone to Ashgabat and bought home ANOTHER cake, to have our own surprise ‘mini’ party that night with my host siblings.

And anyone want to make a guess at what we ate for breakfast the next morning?? Who ever said you can’t have your cake and eat it too has obviously never been to Turkmenistan. Lots and lots of cake in this country form what I can tell. I wonder if that’s why everyone has gold teeth…

All in all this whole last two weeks have been a trip. I discovered I can’t upload pictures very well due to the Internet around here, so unless I can get some printed out somewhere before December, everybody will just have to imagine Turkmenistan in your heads…That’s about it for now. Love everyone bunches!

Oh yeah, and if anyone wants to send care packages…right now I’d dig some good magazines, yarn, cooking spices, and baking powder/soda. And in December I’m getting a French press passed down from another volunteer who’s leaving, so ground coffee and French vanilla coffee mate creamer is always welcome  Peace.

Meg

Charades and Camel Milkshakes

Oct 4th

Salaam men dozum!

Hey to all from the desert. Well I am in one piece in Turkmenistan as of a few days ago. We arrived in the capital of Ashgabat after almost three days of traveling and stumbled off the plane at about 3:00 in the morning, although it didn’t make any difference as none of had slept for two days anyway and our clocks were all screwed up from 3 days of time zone switching. It was kind of a weird arrival. I had heard that Ashgabat at night is an experience-and its true. The government and monumental part of the city looks like it was built about three years ago-everything is clean white marble and gold and one-dimensional. Its due to the fact that there was a huge earthquake about 50 years ago that leveled pretty much the entire city, so there are no buildings older than that time period. It kind of looks like you just stepped into a Sim City game with all the new marble. I half expected little computer generated people to come strolling down the sidewalk and turn the corner. The president keeps in effect a strict 11:00 noise curfew, meaning in the capital of the city after about 10:00 you will see no one-and I mean NO ONE-on the streets. We stopped in the middle of the street in front of the hotel to unload our bags. It was in the middle of the city, but that didn’t matter much because we were literally the ONLY cars out and about. We were able to unload over 80 suitcases without blocking a bit of traffic. I dare anyone to try that in downtown New York on a Friday night, it probably wouldn’t go over so well.

The next three days consisted of whirlwind meetings and culture classes at a conference building, learning about our schedules, job preparation, beginning language courses, and getting some more shots (oh joy...). We took a trip to the Russian Bazaar to pick up some last minute things (although it was mostly so we could try out our new language skillz on the shop vendors). My proud purchase was a power surge protector for my computer for 85,000 manats-which is about 6$. We started at about 8 every morning, and were done by about 6 every night. I wish I could say we passed out every night, but all of our internal clocks were so whacked that nobody was really sleeping very well. On Saturday we had one last minute session with our instructors, signed on names on about the hundredth piece of paperwork, and returned to the hotel to meet our host families!! It was pretty nerve wracking-and we were all freaking out.

I now live in a village about half an hour outside of Ashgabat. I’m thinking I lucked out because my host family is pretty much adorable, and I love their home. We have two houses, a bathhouse, a small garden, a chicken coop, and small lime orchard, and the obligatory squat toilet. They are pretty wealthy for Turkmen standards, and are pretty crafty when it comes to money. The father was an economist, but now works for a Turkish firm in the capital, and the mother is a nurse who works at an epidemic sanitation center in the village (I think that means vaccinations). They have a small shop they run from the front of their house, where they sell odds and ends like vegetables, bread, toiletries, cigarettes and coca cola. Jennet, which means paradise in Turkmen, is 16 and the oldest of the three kids. She is studying to be an English teacher and will start university in Ashgabat next year. Needless to say my Turkmen language skills being what they are right now, she is my new best friend. She is also a seamstress, and I’ve convinced her to make me a yakacoynek (a traditional embroidered dress) for a wedding we have to go to in a week. By’ran is the middle son, and so far loves cheating in all the card games I have taught him and laughing at me whenever I try to pronounce Turkmen words. Mamajan is the youngest of the three, and I call her “men gyz jigim kazyk”- my little Kazak sister. She looks a lot different from her siblings and my host mom says she looks like she’s from Kazakhstan but doesn’t know why, although I personally think she looks kind of Chinese. I tried telling them the joke about the postman baby, but I don’t think they really got it. I’m blaming that on cultural differences and a language barrier, and not the fact that I’m pretty bad at telling jokes.

Our schedule for the next few weeks is pretty intense-tomorrow we go to mosque because it is the Memorial Day for the earthquake that leveled Ashgabat (I talked about that earlier I think.) It’s a pretty big deal, so we’re wrapping ourselves up in scarves and hustling off for a ‘culture lesson’- and then we have to start our 4-hour language classes.

Last note of happiness-a whole week has past and I am still spared from the revered Montezuma’s Revenge. The T-16 volunteers (Peace Corps volunteers that have been here in T-stan about a year now) told us it hits everybody within the 1st 72 hours, and I made it past the window. They were right to, because on the third day a bunch of my fellow T-17’s started dropping like flies. Lets just say there were a few empty seats and lots of sprints for the bathroom our last day of training. So far, so good, although I did have a near brush with disaster when my host mother tried to give me a traditional drink of Chal. Chal, for those of you who aren’t already aware, consists of fresh camel yogurt, water, and salt...stir, shake and pour…MMMM! I had to desperately explain to her I couldn’t drink the tap water because it would possibly KILL me with all its invisible floating parasites (haha). So they tossed out the bad Chal and made me my very own mix with water from my purifier. So yeah, that was fun.

Word to the wise-camel yogurt and salt water does not make the greatest beverage in the world. Stick to your raspberry mocha latte’s people, and tip your barista.

Peace.

BMW’s and Icebergs

Oct 8, 08

So I’m regretting the fact that I suppressed my urge to pack more shoes. They advised us to bring four pairs -of the work, house, and recreational variety-and so I did. I narrowed them down and whittled them out, which was not easy, being as I’m really attached to many and/or all of my shoes. But I said to myself “Self, don’t be an idiot-you’ll be living in the desert. What in the Bajeezus do you need with 13 pairs of shoes in the desert??” So I did it. First it was 11, then 7, then 5….and then the final 4. My beloved Chacos, a pair of running shoes, my house slippers (key in any Muslim country where shoes aren’t allowed in the house and you’re constantly running in and out), and a pair of work shoes.

However I didn’t count on the fact that pretty much all of my walking would be done in my work shoes as we have to dress up for work everyday. And that I would live a half an hour’s walk from the school. Today I think I walked about 8 or 9 miles in them due to the fact that my house is waaay out there, and we did lots of “ errands” in town (i.e. shopping and the post office) as a group to kill time before language classes. By the end of the day my heels had pretty much had it, and were coated in layers of well-earned dust. And I was left wondering how many more months they have left in them before they start disintegrating. It’s not looking good at this point. I wonder what the policy on wearing hiking books to work is here. I’m betting they would look charming with my dress.

Well, I finally succumbed to my first bout of stomach woes. Remembrance day we went to a Mosque outside of the city with our group for some ‘quake history’. I wasn’t feeling so hot when I woke up, but I ate to make my host mom happy because she’s so nice. While we were at the mosque we ate a big spread that people were laying out, stock full of some interesting and dubious food items. And as the entire kitchen staff was watching us, we did the best we could to polish off the massive amounts of food they keep trucking out. After we ate we were informed by our language teachers that no, that was not lunch. Lunch would be in an hour, and we had to eat that too. When I got home that evening my host mother didn’t seem to understand that a stomachache was excusable grounds for not eating, so I obligingly shoveled more food down my throat. Lets just say I’m glad they gave us a medical kit and that our pit toilet is of a sprint-able distance.

I have been keeping a running tally of the strange things I have seen so far. One thing I love about traveling to different countries is the random things that you see or do…it makes getting up every day just that much more fun. For instance just yesterday my fellow Americans and I decided to walk to the bazaar for some ice cream. While we were hanging out, we met this nice chap who worked in the bar next door and with much pantomiming, he invited us back into this back room where I saw the LARGEST billiard table I have ever seen in my life. Now this might not seem that strange, but keep in mind that I am living in a desert-where the nearest harvest-able tree is the next country over. For this reason most everybody traditionally sits, eats, and sleeps on the floor, and generally have only one or two pieces of furniture in their houses. Wood is THAT expensive. So to see a 15-foot long mahogany billiard table in the back of a dive bar in a Turkmen village is literally like seeing a BMW parked on a floating iceberg in the North Pole. Guess you never know what to expect. But I must say I’m enjoying the everyday oddities, like the pair of camels that hang out by the water tower on my walk home from class everyday. I’ve decided to name them Ali and Muhammad. You just don’t see camels like that too often in Montana. Well, hope all is well on the other side of the globe and let me know you all ya’ll are doing!!

Oct 9, 08

Trek to Ashgabat

So week two at our training site is coming to a close. We went to Ashgabat yesterday to get some more shots, medical checkups, and some Internet time. It was kind of a bummer cause we got there late, partly due to me and one of my group mates. They had told us meet at the Bazaar so I made it there, and saw no one except one of my other site mates. We hung out for a while and were pretty confused because no one else was showing up. We were just on the verge of getting a taxi when one of the group leaders turned up, all frantic-like, looking for us. Turns out everybody had been waiting in the Peace Corps van on the OTHER side of the Bazaar and were almost about to ditch us. Don’t know how we missed that memo. So we got to Ashgabat late and it was a little hectic running around the Peace Corps office and getting all our crap done in time. Towards the end some other trainees from other sites showed up and we had a fun whirlwind reunion, catching up with a few people and swapping stories of our sites and host families before we were herded out. I was kind of bummed cause I had saved all my blog entries on a flash drive and the file wouldn’t read on the office computer, so these probably won’t get downloaded for a WHILE. I’m hoping someday soon we can get access to a computer...but I guess this is one way of weaning me off the technical world. I suppose I better just get used to it and start writing some friggen letters to people…

So the Peace Corps office is pretty sweet and they have a killer library of books left by 10 years of volunteers, so my decision to not bring any books totally paid off. I loaded up on a few before we headed out. Although with all the work we’ve been doing I don’t know when I’ll have time to read any of them. It seems like I’m busy every morning from the time I wake up (at like 6) to when my head hits the pillow every night (around 10 or 11). And the down time I do have I like hanging out with my host family, because they help me with my Turkmen and I can play with the kids (plus they won’t think I’m a weirdo who hangs out in her room all the time). Looking at our schedule, it’s looking like its only going to get busier. A lot of trainees did say that training was the hardest part, and if we can get past that, its cake. Although some others said that was the easiest, most fun time of their service. So we’ll see how the crow lands on that one.

Well I have oodles more to talk about, one of them being the school, which we finally got to go to and meet all the English teachers and the kids, but I’m pretty beat. I’ll elaborate about that on a future date. Peace.

Oct 27th, 08

Social Gymnastics

Well, it’s on to week five now. It’s weird to think I’ve already been here a month, although at the same time it feels like I’ve been here for years. It’s the break between the school trimesters, so the kids have a week off school. We had our day camp scheduled for the break, so for two whole days we took over the school and herded children for half a day of “Inglis Klub”. Its basically part of our practicum to get us ready for out permanent site, so we can get an idea of what to expect when we have to set up clubs at our individual sites. Ours went relatively smoothly, the only bump in the road was that one of the girls in my training group announced that she had decided to terminate early and go home. It was a pretty big shock for everyone, as the six of us have all gotten to be pretty close (we see each other pretty much all day, every day) so it shook everybody up a little bit when she left. But she had thought about it a lot, and made the decision that was best for herself. So we trucked on and pulled the planning together, and our club went pretty well (if you define successful as being able to entertain 40 middle schoolers for several hours with the vocabulary spectrum of a confused toddler). Most of the kids were awesome and super enthusiastic, and made it that much easier and fun for us. So now we’re enjoying having a few days off for ourselves the chill out with our host families before the next trimester starts, which is nice because our schedule has been pretty ridged up to this point-10 hour days, 6 days a week. I actually slept in until 9:00 this morning! (A far cry from Spain where it was WEIRD if you woke up before noon on the weekends) To think, this time last year I was probably hanging out at a wine bar in Granada somewhere putting my feet up….

So today was Byramchylk (Turkmen independence day), so I went in to Ashgabat with a friend to watch firecrackers. I’m starting to experiences the first boundaries of a Muslim culture. I’m used to being able to hang out with whomever I want, but here I’m learning I have to be a lot more aware of who that may be. In the states I always had a pretty good group of guys friends as a norm, but here whenever my site mates, most of whom are guys, stop by and want to hang out I have to make clear to everyone where we are going and why, and that we are just BUDDIES. I haven’t had to explain my schedule The first day I walked home alone with one of them, by the next afternoon it had somehow made it through the town grapevine that we were “together” whatever that means by Turkmen standards. And today I went to Ashgabat with another site mate, also a boy, and came back after dark. So, by Turkmen standards, right now I am probably one step above a street walker (a.k.a “loose woman”.) Just wait till I start running. In PANTS. That’s going to blow their minds.  My poor host family. But I say bring it on, gender boundaries. Bring it on. I’m ready for ya.

Hope everyone is doing well and keep those marvelous letters coming! Ashley, we miss you and are thinking about you!

P.S. I will have some pictures up just as soon as I am able

Also, here's the Turkmen-ish version of my address:

Türkmenistan Asgabat, 744000

Merkezi poçta

abonent 258, Krugozor

Parahatçylyk Korpusy, Türkmenistan

Megan Haggar, PCT

TÜRKMENISTAN

So I mentioned to some people during the application process that I realized I was signing on to a Government program when I discovered my training handbook had an entire glossary reserved for program anagrams. Today, at orientation, I found I have entered a new realm of this. We are no longer Peace Core Volunteers: we are now PCV's. Today we got the DOS from our CD (description of service from the country director). We didn't chat about the locals: we discussed the HCN's (host country nationals). We talked about when we could do our SPA's and our VAD's (volunteer assignment description and small project assistance). And apparently, when its time to go home, its not the end: its the COS (close of service). And if we decide to don't want to finish and go home early, we don't quit: we ET (early termination). And as many of us all discussed, besides the toilet and the lack of shower fears, there is the looming terror that we will suffer from MS (medical separation) from our site. Let me just say this would be a difficult program if I was dyslexic.

The people in our group are all pretty interesting. Definitely some interesting ones in the bunch. Today was a series of ice breakers, including Fact Bingo, list making, drawing pictures (most of which turned out to be of outhouses, goats, and riding camels) and Q and A with our desk representative. We all got debit cards with american flags printed on them. Stellar. Well, the schedule for the next week should be a fun one:

Sunday: more staging (i.e. orientation) from 8am until 7pm.

Monday: leave Philly at 7:30, off to JFK, depart for Istanbul

Tueday: arrive in Istanbul, 12 hr layover

Wednesday: arrive in Ashgabat 3:00am...sleep as much as I possibly can.

After that I assume we will be doing another in-country orientation, after which they will kick us all to the curb, where we will all promptly fall of the face of the earth until about mid december while we do our language training and program prep at our first home site.

So far I can say one sentence in Turkmen : men adym megan, men turmenece gowy bilemok.

Me name is megan, I don't speak Turkmen very good.

Well, thats about it for now. Stay tuned, ya'll.

So, it's T minus 2 weeks at this point, and I'm still wildly unprepared for leaving (but ok with that, for some reason). I officially leave MT here Sept 26th for Philidalphia, then from there its off to Istanbul and then Turkmenistan to start the 3 month training process Oct 1. Should be a riot. I'm in the process of packing about a half a years supply of deodorant, shampoo, and other miscelaneous things they told me I'll need to bring, so my bag is starting to resemble a small pharmacy. Hmm. As of now I have my address where I can recieve mail for the next half a year or so, which is:

Turkmenistan

Ashgabat, 744000

Central Post Office

PO Box 258, Krugozor

U.S. PEace Corps Turkmenistan

Megan Haggar, PCT

Apparently, their addresses are written upside down, and you have to write "Par Avion" and "Via Istanbul" on the outside of the envelope to help it get here faster. And apparently alot of things dissapear mysterously in the mail en-route, so "expensive irreplacable objects should not be mailed". So don't mail me any of your grandmothers heirlooms, but PLEASE WRITE ME!!! They tell me the first few months are the hardest, so every little piece of mail counts. Well, off to South Dakota today for a quick family reunion, then back to MT to finish packing, then I'm off. Until then :)