A New Hope!

Yesterday I went out with my PC program manager to potential sites in my rayon. The next group of volunteers arrives in late March, and will be settling in at their sites in June. It was one of my more productive and insightful days here, I must say. It was interesting going to potential homes and schools, asking questions, giving a bit of an interview, and just overall seeing how things start out with site selections. I hope to go back again and see these said sites -- especially since you can't really get an effective assessment from one prerendered visit. But if I can do what I can to help set up a comfortable environment for a newcoming volunteer, then I think I'll have done something worthwhile.
In Kyrgyzstan people still celebrate the "Defenders of the Homeland" holiday which started up in 1918 (I believe) with the Soviets. Today it's more of a boy's/man's holiday, but it's still interesting that it continues to be celebrated. It's on the 23rd of February (ugh... classroom habit makes me unable to write February 23rd). Honestly I consider every day, except the 8th of March, to be boy/man holiday here what with how the women are constantly doing a good deal of the work. Anyway, I got to participate in a little show put on by the 11th grade girls -- played a game with another agai (male teacher) where I say an English word, he has to repeat, he says a Russian word, I have to repeat. Was fun! I got a picture frame out of it too.
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Random thought for the day: my toothpaste tastes better than the food here. Good incentive for brushing, not so much so for eating.
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After talking with my father and getting a letter from my brother, I never realized that my blog was so... read, or anticipated. I always think I just ramble on and spend a lot of time blowing wind, which is one reason why I'm trying to condense my more recent updates. Part of that, I suppose, is because I don't get a whole lot of feedback. Surprised and shocked, that was my reaction. I thought people were busy with their own affairs. Sometimes it's nice being proven wrong.
The 23rd has come and gone, the holiday "celebrated," I suppose. My friend Dan came back from his trip to southern KY and needed a place to crash, so he spent the night this past Sunday. We got to celebrate man day together! Well, what there was of it, that is. Turns out it's really just guys sitting around getting gifts from girls. My family gave both Dan and I gifts -- it's actually pretty funny. They got us both towels, and they didn't look at them (entirely) before they bought them. Initially my fam thought it was just palm trees and maybe a beach. But, lo and behold, once unfolded and the entire picture is unveiled, there's a rather sensuous depiction (albeit all in shadow) of a man and a women, both well endowed, in a rather provocative embrace. It's nothing outright naughty, but it's definately something they wouldn't have bought if they had realized what was on the towel. Nevertheless, we had a right good ten minute laughfest over the gift -- I particularly enjoy my quip of "For what purpose?" (in Kyrgyz) when my friend said he'd take the towel with him to the banya.
Yesterday I went to a fellow volunteer's camp, the volunteer who lives closest to me. She's holding this camp to educate locals (in this case, all local girls) about health -- particularly HIV/AIDs, STDs, all that kind of stuff. It was interesting going, if for nothing else than a change of pace. It was also good being able to see a volunteer from Naryn who I don't really get to see all that often. It was just fun being able to work with other volunteers, knowing that ideas would be understood, being able to joke around, and laugh at something other than my own stupidity. Also it seems like an effective seminar -- I'm not really all that up-to-date with health knowledge and all that, but the issues covered are becoming increasingly troublesome in Central Asia.
Right now I should be at my morning classes, but I didn't go today. In fact, I won't be going to those classes any more. I'm going to stop working with my one counterpart, save myself from some early grey hairs and eye rings, and stop trying to push mountains. It's a liberating feeling; I just hope this doesn't affect me too negatively if at all in other regards, particularly with work. That, and my problem of not being able to get out of bed in the morning will be solved -- all my classes with my other counterpart are in the afternoon.
This weekend I'm planning on doing a few things. First I'm heading into the city to help my friend Michael move into an apartment he managed to find. In a way I'm a bit jealous... living with a family is ok, but I dunno, the American in me, particularly after living by myself for the greater part of 2007 and 2008, just wants to be independent and self-reliant. Anyway, I'm also trying to meet up with a student from my village and find her a nice volunteer tutor -- she made it to the national olympiad competition for English (she speaks very well, and has a good knowledge of English) and wants all the help she can get... she studies in the city, though, so I can only help her on weekends. After that, I'm trying to see if I can go to Taraz. Taraz is (from what I've heard) a nice city, comparable to Bishkek, very clean, has stores, businesses, people -- basically a lot going for it. It's in Kazakhstan though, so I have to see if I'm elligible to go. Right now my program manager should be (fingers crossed) finding out if I'm within range to go on weekend travel -- all Talas volunteers within a certain distance from the Kazakh border can take 1 or 2 weekend travel days a month and visit Taraz. The closest volunteer to me can, so I'm hoping I can as well. It's sticky, though -- I'm the farthest away from the border before you get to the city volunteers. We all have visas, it's just a matter of how PC policy works in this regard. If worst comes to worst, I'll have to take an annual leave day to visit, while my friends five minutes away can simply take a weekend day.
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So the worst case scenario with Taraz travel happened (worst of the two options, that is) -- my manager said I live 60 kilometers (take that, British kilometre!) away from the border and that's not going to cut it for the 35 km restriction. It's aggrivating, especially seeing the health volunteer program manager willing to go to bat and say the volunteer next door can go, give or take a couple km's. I feel let down... I'm the only volunteer west of Talas city that can't go to Taraz without taking a vacation day. It's also indicative of how my PM doesn't try to help out unless we rake some muck, and unfortunately I'm the volunteer least likely to kick and scream.
On another note, I finally dropped the ball and am no longer working mornings with counterpart B. Instead I'll be sticking with my afternoon classes, teaching in tandum with the good counterpart. It's a relief. I feel bad for the kids who have to put up with B's constant yelling and condescending remarks, but having got nixed in favor of a very flawed, printed-in-Moscow British English book, it's a decision I can live with. What I can take from this: be there for the next group of volunteers, willing to work out problematic work situations, give advice, and make sure that they're working only with one person, the official counterpart, at reasonable hours and decent working situations. I could go on about how I wished someone came out to help me in such a manner, like seemingly all the volunteers (save a few misfits like myself and Michael) in the oblast received, but it's just air at this point. Lessons learned, experience gained, time to move on.
So it's settled with the classroom. I'm getting a real fix-me-upper -- essentially just an empty room. It has some crummy desks and chairs, and other falling apart things, but not much in the way of anything truly usable. It's a good thing the PC KY Project Design and Management Workshop (PDM) is being held during the second week of March -- my counterpart and I can learn how to write grants to obtain necessary materials, like said desks, a good blackboard, etc. I'm actually looking forward to it. I'm sure it won't be easy, but if I can get it to be a good classroom (probably the best in school, if all works out) then I'll have something tangible to look at as an accomplishment.
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I've been feeling down the past day and a half, and it's all because of the Taraz situation. I shouldn't really let it get to me, but I have. To me it feels like another link in a chain of things gone wrong or neglected by the 'erudites' of my wonderful employer. It's set my mood to tempermatic, enough so that I've foregone the trip idea and will simply spend a weekend doing other things. Hopefully one of those will be rest, my mind feels about ready to explode.
However, all is not for naught. Today I was showing my host brother pictures from a fortutiously sent 'simple suppers' cookbook and seem to have a green light for making beef stew. That got me into an hour long talk or so in which I fondly recalled my favorites from the States, particularly lasagna (brother asked me if it can be made with ketchup -- blasphemy!!) and seafood - lobster (all-time favorite), chowdah, scallops, shrimp, haddock, sushi... I hate the buggers when they're in water, but when on a plate it's daaaaamdooo (tasty -- Kyrgyz, but less aaa and ooo). If I can find a place to buy milk I think I'll be in business. Also I need to work on a ricotta cheese replacement... I think my 'Eating Well in Kyrgyzstan' cookbook has a recipe.
After this week it's ever-so-apparant that I'm in need of a vacation of some sort. I can feel it in my eyes. My friend Michael has been talking about a trip to Turkey (Istanbul) in June, and some other volunteers are talking about different things as well (such as a bus trip to Moscow). I really want to start looking into something because the headaches just seem to compound and I just need something nice. Istanbul would be interesting I think, especially for the (minor) history buff in me. I need to get an account of costs, times, feasibilities, options, and all that. We shall see...

Turnaround

Salutations,

I'm feeling quite a bit better this week, especially after the horrendous happenings of last. Yesterday I talked with my school's director and I came away with promise: she'll put a notice up that I'm looking for a Kyrgyz tutor, took note that I'm interested in having a youth club, said that the school should have a copy of Manas and if it doesn't she has one that she'll lend me, and she said that we have free classrooms and will look into getting me one. A big plus! Everything is very early at this point, but just the prospect of something going well is such a turnaround from my past few months here. 

My host family and one friend of the oldest boy are interested in taking English lessons at home. I'm all for it. There's one trip, though. My host eje was giving me a 5 minute speal yesterday about the friend and how much money the course should be. She lectured me (ha! of all things) about how I can't take money because I'm a volunteer, and amid a torrent of words I'm either not accustomed to or are of a different dialect, I believe she said she would be taking money for said lessons. I was a bit caught up in the flurry of this facade, and couldn't properly reply until realization dawned upon me what the purpose of this talk was about -- a few minutes after the conversation had ended and we both went our ways for the day. Needless to say, her taking money on this account is not correct for several reasons. The only real argument in favor of taking money is that the classes are being held in the house, and that's flimsy. It's not just that I'm a volunteer and this whole scheme defeats the purpose of volunteer work, but I'm doing work so that someone else can get paid not having done or the capabilities of doing said work? How... irritating. The bottom line of money, while true to the real world, is very aggrivating. Once again, the very idea of volunteering has flown over heads and goes unappreciated.

Health-wise, things are going ok. My ear is doing better, especially after using a trick with vegetable oil. Still not 100%, but it's better. What's concerning me now is my weight, diet, and exercise routine. My weight has gone from loss to gain from my initial upon arrival to country. This is in part due to the standard diet here of grease, fat, and tons of carbs, packages with their tastes from heaven, and my non-existant exercise schedule. I meant to pick up a stretching dvd while in Bishkek, as PC provided a free cd from the 90s with Cindy Crawford conducting the lessons, but I was beat to that punch. The other day I was helping my host brother clean out a room of 6 month old apples, and saw that we have a barbell and bench, in addition to a pole for pullups and tree stumps for dips. It's not ideal now, particularly since today it's snowing out and this stuff is mostly all outside (save the bench), but come Spring when the weather clears up a bit I'd like to get back into the exercise scene. It's been a while, having not worked out since high school, but I remember most everything and can even help my host brother etc. because he was lifting improperly and in an unhealthy way. 

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This has been a crazy week. Yesterday I went in to teach classes (my counterpart left me to go to it on my own for a good 20 minutes for each class, naturally) but the schedule was all mixed up. When I went in for my final class, I walked into my 11th G class to find the same dunderheads from my 11th B class sitting among the G's; as I brace myself to teach what would invariably be one of my worst sessions, the zavuch (vice-princ) comes in and informs me that he's conducting a Russian dictation test to the joint class -- my bacon is saved. As I walk out, my counterpart ambles on down from halway across the hall and asks me "Whats up?" Ha, you should have known. 

Yesterday I also got notice of three (!) packages arriving in town. Since the place is a bit far, and my host eje knows the taxi drivers, I asked her to call one so I could get them yesterday. With a typical "Sure, sure" that never got done, so I put on my 'if you want something done right you have to do it yourself' face today. After my morning clubs, I walked to the store (about 30-40 minutes) that's now handling my packages. When I get there, I'm first told my packages are in the rayon center (not my village), then that they're in the store but I can't take them because the proper person isn't there to take my signature. I got pretty heated at that, especially since the last time I took the packages and came back the next day to give my signature. But I got bolboited and so left empty-handed for the moment, and was told that said person would come at 5 pm. I go on to teach my afternoon clubs, having skipped lunch to (try to) get my packages, and afterwards I go back to the store. I arrive at 5, and talked a bit with some ladies from a different era who were remeniscing about how things were good and products were cheap back in Soviet times. They also were admonishing toward the woman who needed to come in order for me to get my packages ("In my day, if I needed to be somewhere at 5, I'd be there at 3!!") because she didn't show up until just under an hour after 5. When she did show up, it was with a rather large entourage. In one of the more perplexing situations I've been involved in, about 30-40 people packed into this shop thats about half the size of a small gas station store, and watch as they, who had been there a whole of 5 seconds, cut in front of me, who had been waiting for almost an hour. Kyrgyzstan has no sense of line or priority (in that sense) -- a store owner will halt his dealings with someone buying in bulk for quite a bit of money to get the person gawking at eggs to buy one for 7 som. Anyway, I was just dumbfounded by this scenario, and watched in awe as people kept pouring in. This was apparently pay day or something of the sort -- some people were giving this lady money, some people were taking it. I simply swam my way through the crowd to get to my packages -- this was going on in a back room, and I'm a bit irate that they decided to hold my packages in the same room with so many people, it would be so easy to steal one. I sat guarding them and watching the procession. After about half an hour, the crowd had diminished to about 10 or 15 people, and the eje finally called my name. I gave her my ID, signed a few slips of paper, and walked back home. What should have taken all of 2 minutes took almost two hours, not counting the time it took for me to travel. 

The packages, though, are worth it. Getting a package is so wonderful, I can't truly encapsulate what it means in mere words. In this batch, I got lots of food and candy -- much appreciated, especially since dinner (and I mean American dinner, not British dinner) tonight was a bowl of plain boiled elbow macaroni. As soon as I saw the bag with Hershey's Kisses in it, I thought I'd share them with my family. First I'd try one myself though; if I give my family 50 pieces of candy, and I only eat 1, they'll eat 49, so I literally have to divide how much I want and how much I want to give. I saw one with a strange wrapper and a green piece of paper sticking out of it. I thought it odd, I don't remember such Kisses. I put it in my mouth, and oh sweet lord! I never knew Kisses were made so good. Cordial Cherry Hershey Kisses -- it was so good, I immediately rescinded my offer of sharing most of the candy with my host family. Instead, I spent a couple minutes sorting through the almond and cherry variants, and opted to give them some of the former. Oi vey, my mind was blown with this particular deliciousness. 

American dinner vs British dinner. This is something I've been fighting with ever since I arrived at site. My counterparts both teach (or attempt to, in most cases) British English. This aggrivates me, immensely. It's not that I don't like British English and all, but they absolutely refuse to acknowledge that I don't use British English. I don't have a rest, my weekend isn't a holiday, I'm not going to the pillar box to post a letter, dinner is in the evening and isn't lunch, and for the love of Pete it's not a superior version of English. They constantly bug me for stuff I find somewhat ludicrous -- do you have information/pictures on/of Australia/New Zealand/Great Britain? Never of America, mind you. But oh, I absolutely must have pictures of aforementioned countries -- I'm giving a presentation on this country and you (the American) should have all these things! Oi. Time to implement the 2nd goal of Peace Corps -- teaching the host country about America. I don't consider myself to be super patriotic (or even mildly so) by any means, but my purpose here seems somewhat voided if all they're ever after is Brit English and non-American English speaking countries (of which they focus on 3). And I know next to nothing about Australia and *particularly* New Zealand. But I did recently finish the first season of Flight of the Concords -- love it!

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Wow. Just wow. Things are actually, finally, for the first time in a long long time, starting to look good! I just got through with my first ever actual lesson planning with my good counterpart! Just the act alone has given me spirit I haven't had at site... ever, really. My other counterpart, while seemingly on the same page as always (particularly after a bout on Monday, where she refused my help snappishly and took to the book's guidance instead -- felt like quitting our partnership at that point), has seemingly been less uptight these past few days. My Kyrgyz language classes have started. The director of my school told me there's a classroom waiting for me (that makes me want to dance and frolic and just burst with glee!); the holdup is something I have no clue about, but it's there, I can taste it! Only thing left on my immediate goal list is to land my paws on a copy of Manas, that slippery epic...

With the classroom prospect, I have to start looking into things to equip it with. My first thought is "MAPS!" -- particularly world, US, CT, the UK, maybe Australia, New Zealand... but man oh man how I want maps. And posters! Bright big posters to put up around the classroom: posters for grammar, posters for vocabulary, posters for anything having to do with English! And books! Oh ho now I can finally ask for books and try starting up an English library; books for little kids, books for teenagers, books on grammar, books for fun, books books books! And not the crappy made-in-Russia English books, ohhhhhh no, good, real, correct, actual English books! And a good chalkboard (whiteboard doesn't seem so feasible with a lack of dry-erase markers out here, although it is quite tempting...), new desks, chairs, bookcases.... Ohhhhh I'm so excited for the classroom!! If anyone can help out with equipping it, whether through information or donation, it would be greatly appreciated! I have to look into things a bit more, but woweee!

The other day I decided to bust into my Hickory Farms food item gift box -- I wasn't having a good day. Stunned. Completely stunned. I hadn't realized it until I dug into the food. I had forgotten what flavor tastes like. It's sad, but true. When I tasted the hickory smoked cheddar cheese, I wanted to weep. When I put the cheese on a cracked wheat cracker, my tongue lept out of my mouth in joy. When I put sweet hot mustard on said cracker with cheese, my mind was completely and utterly blown. Amazing, simply amazing. I knew at that moment that I truly had began to conform to blandness. I must savor, cherish, and conserve -- taste is too scarce a bliss here to be wontonly flourished about and devoured. 

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I have here a picture of myself with my recently won PC award. Surprise surprise at what it is, it's the same ol' thing I've been winning since high school. Nevertheless, I've taken the opportunity to take another ridiculous picture of myself-- this time with my favorite homework quote! One of our (volunteer's) favorite exchanges is happenings from the classroom. This one was a hit at the time, and has a special place with me. Enjoy!

Today is Valentine's Day, my most hated holiday of all. I'm taking the opportunity to escape to the city tonight and avoid anything that may happen in the village. I've already got preliminary threats of receiving hearts and cards, and that - the threat of said action - is quite enough. Time to flee this preposterous holiday!

After making pizza again, this time with my host sister, I realize that it's not too difficult. That is, if you have a professional with dough like most female Kyrgyz seem to be. Unfortunately, this time around, despite two pizzas being made, I only got to eat one slice before heading off to my afternoon classes. When I came back all the pizza was gone. That makes me feel not so bad about hording food -- I can't give anything to my fam that will last more than a couple hours at most. Subsequently my counterpart was kind of grilling me why I hadn't made her pizza yet. Aside from the obvious, I had a good fallback with the "it barely makes it out of the kitchen, let alone the house" line which is both true and convenient for this particular circumstance. 

Well, I think that's all for this update. Stay in touch and be safe everyone!

Peace,

Chris