Getting into the swing of things..

I have now been at site for over a month and I wish that I could say everything is going perfectly. Unfortunately, perfect is not a word often used in these parts. In fact, I just looked in my Kyrgyz dictionary and they don't even have a word for "perfect". This is not the first time my dictionary has let me down.. I find myself constantly baffled by this language's limited vocabulary. A small example.. "Jakshuh" is the word for good. It is also used for nice, well, fun, pretty, wonderful, amazing, excellent, well-behaved, good-natured, kind, enjoyable, perfect (probably), and many other concepts along these lines. Another example.. The word "koi", depending on how it is used, means sheep, to put, to stop, to punch, please, absolutely, and, when said twice in a row, takes the soothing meaning of "there, there".

The basic simplicity of Kyrgyz is both a blessing and a curse. It's pretty easy to learn, but on many occasions I find myself reaching for a word when it turns out there just isn't one, or there's a much more basic word that should be used in it's place. Being a native English speaker I don't often think about the fact that English has the largest vocabulary in the world. But switching to a language which could, quite possibly, have one of the smallest vocabularies in the world, I am faced with this fact almost everyday. I am used to being able to express myself accurately and eloquently, so Kyrgyz (especially my broken Kyrgyz) can be frustrating at times.

Other things that are frustrating:

- School. For a number of reasons..
1) The textbooks. First of all, there aren't enough of them. In many of my classes there is only one, which the teacher uses to teach out of while the students listen in confusion and boredom. Secondly, the books are far too advanced. They contain texts about different English speaking countries, but the level of English at this school is far from appropriate for students to be reading texts, let alone texts as advanced as these. For example, yesterday we read about The United Kingdom and Great Britain. The new vocabulary for the day was parliamentary, House of Commons, majority, elect, government, power, and monarchy. These kids can barely introduce themselves but they're expected to comprehend monarchies and parliamentary elections. If it was up to me, we wouldn't use the textbooks at all, but the director requires that we teach out of them. My counterpart and I came to an agreement, however. We teach 9 classes together, each of which meets twice a week for 40 minutes. Once a week she will lead the class, teaching ineffectively from the books. Once a week I will lead the class, using my own lesson plans. This means that 40 minutes a week the students will struggle to understand a very pointless, advanced text, and 40 minutes a week they will learn the basics, like the verb "to be", possessive pronouns, and present tense. Learning English will be a very slow process..
2) Cheating. My counterpart and I have given two tests since I started working here and both of them were major cheating fests. I have probably mentioned before that this is a community culture, which means that people share everything and take care of each other. Apparently this transfers into the classroom as well. Judging by the blatancy of the cheating, and the lack of reaction when I talked to my counterpart about it, cheating is just an accepted part of the school system here. No one really cares, or makes much of an attempt to stop it. On top of this, teachers here are hesitant to give bad grades because it makes them look bad if their students don't do well. It's actually assumed by many that if a teacher fails a student, she/he is expecting the parents to offer a bribe for a better grade.
3) The differing concepts of professionalism and keeping to a schedule. Classes often start late, and many times are just canceled altogether without previous notice. My counterpart often leaves the classroom for long periods of time with no explanation. Students come late, or not at all. In every class that we have at least 10 students will be absent on any given day. The classroom door, which I close at the beginning of every class, will be opened multiple times throughout the lesson as various people stick their heads in for the hell of it. During training a volunteer who has been here for a while warned that if a door is closed in Kyrgyzstan, people just have to open it. I thought this was an exaggeration, but apparently it isn't.
4) Motivation. I can really only think of a handful of students who show an interest in learning English. The rest of them don't really seem to care. I did start English Club last week, however, and I enjoyed that much more than class because it tends to be only the most motivated students that come. There are exceptions, of course.. Some kids just come because their friends are there, but overall I think the club will be more productive than class.

- Some of my host family's habits: There is a baby in our family and apparently milk just isn't enough for it anymore. Nearly every meal we have together I get to watch my host mom feed the baby her chewed up food. This is done in two different ways; Sometimes she spits her chewed food into a spoon and then spoons it into the baby's mouth. Other times she just skips the spoon and, much like a mother bird, spits her food into the baby's mouth.. yummy. Then there are the outhouse issues. We don't have lights in our yard where the outhouse is and at night it gets pitch black. For me, this isn't an issue because I have a flashlight. I can always make it to the outhouse. The other people in my house don't seem to bother trying, however, which means that if they have to go to the bathroom when it's dark they just pick a spot in the yard and do their business there. This means that atleast once a week I wake up to find myself avoiding a big, juicy pile of human feces. A few days ago I woke up to find one pile, and two puddles (the locals are not immune to diarrhea, in fact, it is an expected part of life here).

What all of this boils down to is that I'm working on my "brush off" skills. The only way to survive in this atmosphere is to be able to casually brush things off and not worry about them. I thought I was pretty good at this, but my recent stress levels would suggest otherwise. I'm learning to accept the previously unacceptable, and trying to just go with it. The more I adopt this attitude, the better I feel. This doesn't mean I plan on leaving my own piles of waste in various spots in the yard, or that I will completely turn my back to the rampant cheating problems, but I'm finding it's important here to choose my battles.

On a different note, I found out last week that my school will be closed from January 1st-February 28th. Two whole months, because winters here are ridiculously cold, and my school doesn't have a sufficient heating system. I am going to try to plan a trip somewhere, or I may fall victim to toxic boredom.

That's all for now, folks!

I haven't forgotten about this thing

It’s been a busy week! Two holidays! Wednesday was Orozo Ait, which is the end of Ramadan. Everyone stops fasting (though if I’m honest, I didn’t actually meet anyone who practiced the fast) and goes guesting. It’s tradition to visit at least 7 houses for Orozo Ait, I went to 9. It was fun, though I ended the day incredibly tired and extremely full. Thursday wasn’t a holiday but it was special for me because my training family came to visit me in my new village! Seeing them again reminded me just how much I miss them, especially my sister. I didn’t realize we had gotten so close until I stopped seeing her, but I guess living with someone for two and a half months will do that. I'm glad we don't live far from each other.

That brings us to Friday, which was another holiday; Teacher’s Day! Why don’t we have this in the states? Classes ended early and the 11th grade students (oldest in the school) put on performances for all the teachers. They also gave out flowers and then there was a mini-dance party. After the at-school festivities all us teachers took taxis to a cafe in the neighboring town and had a party of our own. LOTS of vodka, LOTS of food, LOTS of singing, and then, when the electricity finally started working so we could play music, LOTS of dancing. It was a good time. I made a short toast in Kyrgyz and was pressured into singing twice, one Kyrgyz song and one English. This is not the first time this has happened and I always seem to blank when it comes to picking an English song to sing.. Which means that I inevitably end up singing Backstreet Boys (not my proudest moments). So I’ve decided I’m going to go through my iTunes and pick out some good songs so I’ll have them ready the next time this happens. Better to be prepared.

And now I will bombard you all with photos because I’m using the computers at the Peace Corps office and that means FREE INTERNET!

First of all, here is my room.. well, one side of it anyway. You can see my bed, the chair where I keep my computer, and on the ground on the left is my water distiller. Cheers to staying giardia free!

And here’s the other half of my room. Table is messy, I know.. But give me a break, it’s the only surface area I have! Hanging over the windows on my door you will see two joluks (headscarves, very popular here). I recieved them as gifts, the left one from a family friend and the right one from my language teacher at the end of training.

Here is the front of the house. Behind the sheet metal is the door. The two adorable girls are my little host sisters, but we’ll get to them later

This is the side of the house, lined with grape vines

Here’s the backyard type area. The little shed looking thing is the outhouse. On the right where all the tires are is where the kids usually play. It’s also where I like to sit outside and read on sunny days

Close-up on the play/reading area. You can’t see it but the trees have little rope swings on them. What you can see, in the bottom left hand corner, are drying patties of cow shit. This is very common here. My family will later burn these to heat the banya (shower room) and also to heat up the kazan (big cooking pot, stone oven type thing... I posted a picture in one of my first few posts.. we made french fries in a kazan)

Here’s the backside of the house. The middle window is my room! The little cement shack on the left is the banya. And on the bottom, more dung patties drying in the sun

This is the stable area, where the cows live

Baby cow!

Now for some pictures of the fam. Like I said earlier, these are my host sisters. The baby is Akulai and the one who can actually hold herself up is Anjan

Here’s one with my host brothers. Holding Akulai is Milan, and in the back is Maxat.

Anjan and Maxat having fun with my flashlight accessories after a blackout

A good one of me with the kids

And one with my host mom, though I feel weird calling her that because she’s so young. Also living in the house are her husband, my host dad, though he's rarely here, and his mom, my host grandma. Eight people including me.

Last but not least, a picture of the view from behind my village. We had some rain recently, which means snow in the highlands, so the mountains are looking particularly beautiful lately