11 Hours Ahead, and Still Behind

July 30, 2006

Before I start this post/journal entry, I have a quick note to all the wonderful people who have been emailing me. Actually, I more so have a favor to ask; would it be possible for you all to start attaching (in a MS Word attachment) news articles, headlines, pictures, and stories (pretty much anything that could help me stay up on news and life back in the states) to your emails. I have found my jumpdrive to be an incredibly useful tool to transfer emails back and forth from the internet café to my laptop. Mr. Brauhn, you would be very impressed with the speed and efficiency I have displayed during my last two internet stops. In a half hours’ time I can send 7-8 emails off, post to the blog, and copy my emails/news headlines to Word and save them to the jumpdrive. I love the pictures that have been attached to emails so far (thank you Vicki!), they are a wonderful accent to words and provide some late night smiles while reading all the emails I’ve gotten. I do not want to make you think you need to attach something to every email you send; I am just asking that if you have the time, could you please help me stay connected to your lives and everything happening back home, thank you!

Ok, as you can see, I still cannot get to the point, it took me 223 words to ask a simple favor! Sorry, you would expect that by learning a new language (especially a agglomerative language—basically, nouns, verbs, and adjectives are combined with different endings to signify pluralizing, negation, past indefinite, etc.) I would start to weed out my usage of fillers and rambling. Sorry, no luck there, I think I’ve just gotten a bit weirder with my English word choice. Hopefully learning another language will slowly change this as time moves along.

While I’m on the topic, I may as start talking about my progress with Kyrgyz. I have to admit, the lessons have been very tough and very intensive; but amongst all the struggles, Kyrgyz has been a very rewarding language to learn (as I can guess learning any language would be while living in the country where it is spoken). Everyone learning Kyrgyz, both in my group and throughout all of K-14, has different learning styles, and we are all moving at different paces. But in general, we all seem to be grasping the language fairly well. Personally, I am loving every minute (even the painful studying needed with an agglomerative language) of learning Kyrgyz. My vocab is growing daily and more and more I am picking up on the language from native speakers. For the past four weeks (4 Weeks!!!!) I have been both impressed and disappointed with my progress, so I cannot complain, I just need to study more. Sometimes, though, playing soccer with the neighborhood boys (there are some really good players out here) and cops and robbers with my host sister need to take priority.

Yeah, the little sister, she is so cool. Actually, both of my host sisters are awesome. Maakoo is eight and Aika is fourteen (she turns 15 on August 20) and I also have a twenty-one year-old host brother named Bakit. My host brother is cool, he is very open and loves to joke around; but my host sisters are the stars of the family. Maakoo is the about as tall as my waist and is the cutest eight year-old in the world (this is open for objection, obviously I am slightly bias). She loves to play any game that involves make believe fighting/tickle attacks and won’t let a day pass without a “surprise attack.” She has been very pivotal, among a few other things, in helping me adjust to life in Kyrgyzstan. My other host sister, Aika, was born to be a teacher. She spends most dinners, along with my host mother, teaching me new words and correcting my pronunciation. She comes off as a very quiet girl, but countless times I have been in my room and heard her singing and dancing around the house to whatever is on the radio. I do hope that she, as well as her parents, recognizes the talents she possesses and they all act on them accordingly. I will do my best to help bring out her talents as much as I can, especially since I just found out that she will be in my English Club group.

Peace Corps requires TEFL trainees to organize an English Club at their local schools for all grade levels. Peace Corps and our LCF did most of the work in organizing the students and talking to the local school, and now that they are organized, it is our job to run the club. We meet two days a week for a half hour each day and basically just organize educational games to play. I elected to take a group by myself (I learn best by walking in the dark), and all of the other volunteers are paired up with different grade levels. I will be doing the same amount of work as the other volunteers (every individual volunteer is required to run a half hour session), it is my students who lucked out and only have to be at the club for a half hour, rather than an hour. We were all given the option of which grade level we would like, and I jumped at the chance to take the 9th and 10th graders when they were offered up. I was hoping they would have a fairly good foundation in English, and for the past two sessions, I have been pleasantly surprised. My group is 95% girls, and most of them know more English than I know Kyrgyz. I have already explained to them that they will be my teachers, and I will be theirs. I believe that this club could be very helpful with teaching experience, so I am welcome this new challenge.

Another challenge that was talked up a lot before I came to Kyrgyzstan was the weather. Before I left I heard over and over again how cold Kyrgyzstan can get; no one talked about how hot it can also get! We have repeatedly reached 38° C (roughly 100° F) in the North. There is little to no humidity here, which is nice, but it feels good to know that right now the US and the Kyrgyz Republic are battling the same heat! The heat grows on you though, I barely notice it now (with the exception of my ever-present back-pack sweat stain); whenever it gets really hot, I have learned to find solace in ice cream and cold Fanta.



August 4, 2006

I have officially completed one of the requirements to becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer: the 24-36 hour sickness! I am pretty much recovered by now, but wow, did I have one hell of wild ride from Tuesday night into Thursday morning. Tuesday night started with a mad onslaught of chills and nausea. By the time I had woke up Wednesday morning, I was dripping sweat and freezing at the same time with a body temperature of 38° C (a temp. to which my host family and I now joke was equal to the outside temp.). I stayed in bed for most of the morning, getting up once to go to the bathroom, which is when I almost passed. That seemed like a good moment to start the oral hydration packets (packets of powder added to water meant to help you retain fluid and keep you hydrated—they taste horrible. When noon rolled around, I had soaked through one t-shirt, my bed was a puddle, and my temp. had jumped to 39°. Before I go any further, though, let me explain one thing first. If you think Kyrgyz people are kind and giving on a normal day, try getting ill around them. My host mother and my LCF treated me like a king. About every half hour (that I was awake; I was asleep for half the day) throughout the day, my Apa (Kyrgyz for mother) would come in to make sure I was ok. She would check to see if my water bottle was full, bring in a new towel soaked in cold water and clean off my forehead, and she was on the phone all day talking to all the neighborhood Apas’ for help. My Kyrgyz Apa would have made my American Apa proud; I was well taken care of.

So the day went on and eventually Peace Corps was able to get some hard-core medicine my way (courtesy of the hardest working LCF in Kyrgyzstan, Ratbu and my dedicated Apa) that quickly started to lower my fever and quell some of my crazy nausea. By the end of Wednesday my temperature had completed its decent and my head finally reattached itself. I went to bed feeling like I had gained some equilibrium back and by morning I would be pretty much back to normal; silly me. I woke up Thursday morning without the fever, without the nausea, but I had a new guest: loose bowels! Bowel movements tend to be a large part of conversation between PSTs’, so excuse me if I come off blunt. For most of Thursday, my intestines were reenacting World War II and my stomach was the battle field. I will save the details, but let me tell you one thing, my thighs were sore from all of the outhouse squatting! I will leave mental pictures up to you all.



Ah, man, I miss you all. I wish I could give you all a quick 30 minute reality show twice a week, just to give you all a glimpse of what life is like here. I love what I am doing right now and I would love to be able to share more with you all.

Peace and One Love,

Inshallah, I shall see you all soon, in Central Asia.