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
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
long time, no write
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
Friday, May 22, 2009
FINISHED!!!
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
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
Saturday, May 2, 2009
May Blogs
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
DID IT!!
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
Megan
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