Merry Christmas and Happy NEw Year!
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2004
1
15
27
Trip End
Dec 28, 2006
Ashgabat,
Turkmenistan
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
I am currently enjoying my time in Ashgabat, relaxing and bored out of my mind to be honest. I am still trying to understand that it is the Christmas season, even though it is days past Christmas. I don't know where the time has gone, and I am starting to feel guilty that I am not miserably homesick! Sounds odd, but I am so far from any reality that I didn't even know it was Christmas, let alone winter or not normal to be in Turkmenistan. Not to say it doesn't feel like anything. Really, they do celebrate this season with the rest of the world. Since it is a Muslim area, there is obviously no signs of Christmas. But they are anxiously awaiting the New Year.
Everything here is "decorated" aka a couple of gaudy sparkly things hanging on a few trees, but they try. My host family has blown up 5 balloons and hung them in our home. They too have the tree tradition and instead of going to the mountains and cutting down a tree, we gathered some random fir branches and tied them to a pole and put some blinking, music making lights on it! It is cute, my brother and sister put a few stuffed animals around it and you have the Christmas. It is far from making huge floats and numerous presents, but it is their own. For those South Park Fans out there
this place really reminds me of the 1999 Christmas special where Mr. Hanky goes around
smashing Christmas trees over different peoples head saying" Merry F-in Christmas!" I just think about the part where he would go up to a Muslim and say, hey there Mr. Muslim...it is funny if you know what I am talking about. I wanted to do it all week....
I personally am not looking forward to the holiday. To begin with, this season means that all children have fireworks. Most think that is cool, but as a PCV that means you are dodging them on your way to school. I prefer rocks to be honest. It is funny, you would think after numerous pops, you would get used to it, but it still brings me close to peeing my pants in fear. I know there are no guns, and I know I am safe, but I still think someone just shot at me!
Along with fireworks, the New Year brings a season of guesting. One of the best things
about the Turkmen culture is how welcoming they are and how excited they are to invite guests to their house. It is a great honor to be able to serve many guests and show them a good time. That means they will always offer you the best food in their house, the most vodka, the best chocolate and even sometimes offer to sew you new clothes. They will literally give you the shirt off their back, even if they don't have another one in the closet. But, the problem is that when I go guesting, they ask the usual questions: are you married? Why not? I can't believe that you aren't married, did you know if
you were Turkmen you would never find a love? How will you ever find love? Then I slowly convince them it is ok, and they move to: what state? why can't you speak Turkmen yet? Really you have been here for 4 months! tell me about PC. Then after describing my whole family, names, jobs, what they look like, apologize for not having pictures, they slowly lose interest in the American and start to talk amongst themselves. So I am sitting there, being told to eat and drink the whole time and that is the end of it. Then on to the next house. This usually lasts about 2 hrs per house and I am guessing that on New Years I will be at about 5-8 houses! FUN! I would rather sit on my chair in my room. But whatever, it will be a cultural experience. My favorite part about being the guest is going into everyone's homes. Really, I live in an amazingly clean and beautiful house. I don't know how my family has money, but somewhere they are well off. But going into new homes, you see the diverse people and there are some amazing ways of living life. So many times a day I feel like I could win a National Geographic Photography contest, but I am too shy to ask to take their picture. They would never act natural, and would have to change their clothes for one of the few pictures that will ever be taken of them.
Christmas here was very nice. All of the Lebap volunteers met up at my site mate's home and cooked some good Mexican food. It is amazing how all of the packages combined can make a really good meal! We had enchiladas, tacos, salad, apple pie, pumpkin pie and some other fixings. Then we watched some movies on my computer. It was a success. I really am starting to realize that this is one of the most supportive groups that I have ever been involved in. Every volunteer is weird and most I would not be friends with, but we are all in this together and we manage to have a really good time despite our
Obvious differences. It is fun to get to know someone, I guess it is like that question, if you had to be stuck in an elevator with anyone who would it be, we are just stuck in Tstan!
I apologize for the amount of time since I have updated this site. It is becoming more and more difficult to describe all the daily events because it is becoming my home. I am working lots, and enjoying all of it. I am teaching two forms, the 7th and 9th grade form. They are good classes, and seem to be actually learning things. I have learned how rewarding the teaching profession can be. I never really realized how much I love seeing someone learn something new, I guess I am just changing from swimming lessons to English. I am also running numerous clubs at my school, which is my main purpose for being there. I have a drama club, 2 beginning English, 1 intermediate, and an advanced
conversation. I also have 4 basketball teams going...it keeps me busy, really busy. I usually go to school at about 9:00 and talk with my teachers about the previous days lessons and offer a new activity that could work with that lesson. It is good to review the lessons with them and then they implement that into the day's lesson. Then I have clubs from 10-12. After that my two crazy counterparts drag me out of the classroom to go eat at one of the most comical cafes I have ever seen. I sent a picture home of it, but it usually offers one thing that I won't eat. So I bring my own eggs and they will cook those up on some noodles! From there, school starts at 1, I usually have 2 classes a day and observe 2 or 3. Then I go home about 4:30 and do my daily chores. It is a really good schedule; the only complaint is that all happens on Saturdays too!
As I mentioned, I have chores at my house. Living on a farm has a lot of work! I don't do all that much, but I do get to sweep the entire property everyday with this "broom" It really is just a bunch of twigs about knees length that I push all the dirt to the irrigation ditch. It only takes me about 25 minutes a day, but by the end my back kills me! I am looking for shoulder length twigs! Then I usually help my mom cook some of the dinner. I feel for her often. She works all day cooking and then comes home and never stops moving. Literally, she is always cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, baking bread, something. It is amazing. Plus, simple tasks here take much longer. She is not
Exactly just whipping something up for dinner, between loads of laundry! It is full on
manual labor. I give as much as I can, plus not like I have much else to do!
My brother had his 14th birthday last Thursday and I had to be the Turkmen girl. It was
actually a funny story! The night before, my host mom invited Ian over for the party at 6:00, and I was at school and my counterpart said, I will see you at 10:00. I came home and was like dude, my Turkmen sucks, and asked what time the party was. Well this started a huge fight in my family, because he was not supposed to invite people over during the day because the mom has to work and it is too much work. I calmed her down and said I can help, we will wake up early, cook the soup and have a little party. don't worry, Katy is here. Well, the next day I woke up at like 5 am and started cooking soup, chopping salads, setting the mat etc for 8-10 people. The mom goes to work, I think it will go well. But, 22 kids show up!!!! We don't have enough soup, bread, salad, fruit. So I run down to the cafe, buy more soup, get bread and try to play it off. I fully understood the stress of having guests that day and it was pretty embarrassing because most of them were my students....oh well. The best part was when the goat came into our farmyard and I had to try and chase it out. Fun that all my students got to laugh at that one! I was the talk of the town for yet another reason.
School is out now for 2 weeks. I am going to hold a teachers seminar because all the
teachers have to go to school. We are going to talk about different learning styles, I am pretty excited. I got to do a lot of research while I was in Ashgabat. Also, all of the volunteers have planned a one day rotating day camp. So I will get to see all of the schools in the Velayat with TEFL teachers and compare. I am convinced I may have the
lowest English speaking teachers, but the most willing to learn and fun! So it should be a good couple weeks...I am excited.
What is funny, while writing all these great things and how happy I am, I can't figure out why. I actually had a very difficult week this week. Between all my weight problems, the stress of having to go to Ashgabat for these tests, I also had my first petty theft. I was on my way to the airport and 700000 manat was stolen from my purse. Granted it is only about 27 dollars, it is all I had and that is a huge amount for me!
It really sucks to be so upset at the people, I just hate the stealing. So I had to change my first dollars this week and try to live sparingly...I just hope that person needed the money more than I did. My host mom is now apologizing for how bad her people are and insists that I will never go to the bazaar again! I am like...don't worry and yes, I am going to go to the bazaar! She is cute. So I had to talk to the police and try to explain it all. Not too successful, but I did it. Everything is ok, at least they didn't get my passport or plane ticket. That would have pissed me off.
Ok, the last major thing and then I will shut up! I cut off all my hair!!! It is about my chin level and has more layers than sense. It was quite a random activity. I was done with my blood test today and saw a salon and was like I am going to cut my hair today.(The real reason was I hadn't showered in 4 days and needed someone to wash my hair....but apparently they don't wash your hair here, you just dunk your head in the bucket!) SO I go into the "salon" and there are only Russian speakers (most traditional Turkmen women will not cut their hair). So I go in and ask in my best Russian, (almost none) how much for a hair cut. It was more like my fingers going through my hair in a cutting action asking skolka? So this guy comes up and says, 50000. I look at him, and see that he has a glass eye, or a not working eye, then preceded to look around the room and no one else can cut it and I say ok! I motioned that I wanted it short and he just started cutting. The best part about it is that I had this done 6 hours ago, and I have only seen it once. People ask me if I like it, and I say I don't know I haven't seen it dry. But it works! Quite a change for the usual storming around after a haircut that I pull. Once again...I am very far from reality. Don't laugh too hard when you see the fat girl with a lop sided hair cut in the next batch of pictures. Just remember he only had one eye!!!!
Keep laughing!
I love you all and miss you
Happy Holidays....keep writing!
Katy
An update since this has happened....I had the best shower of my life today. It is amazing how good a shower feels after 2 months of buckets! I stayed in for almost 40 minutes, I am officially clean. Too bad my clothes aren't...
