Talas Life...

Well I am definitely settled in to my permanent site! My new host family is just as great as I remember, and these first few days of school have been amazing! The ride up here was interesting though. We left the Issyk-Kul Hotel in Bishkek at 9:00am in a rented marshutka. I was with four other Talas volunteers and our respective counterparts (the ‘counterpart’ is the teacher that we will be working with or the next two years) riding through the Ala-Too mountain pass with all of our luggage, when our driver hit a turn a bit too fast and blew out a tire going about 30km/h. Granted, it’s not that fast but in the Marshutka that blown-tire felt like a bomb going off! He made us all pile outside while he worked on fixing it but we were all wearing shorts and t-shirts because Bishkek was about 80 degrees, but on the mountain pass the temperature was hovering somewhere between ‘damn-cold’ and ‘fucking freezing’ with a 40mph wind to cap it all off! He finally got us going again in about an hour which was good because I was starting to wonder if the feeling in my hands and feet would ever return. Luckily the feeling did return in time for my warm welcome at my new permanent site!

My new host-family is great. My new host-Apa is an excellent cook, which is a much welcome change from my PST host-Apa who…well, I’m sure you’ve read the other postings on that subject:) I am still friends with Kolya, the gigantic beast of a dog who according to my host-Ata is ‘an excellent dog-fighting champion’…I really don’t even know how he qualifies though because not only does he look more like a bear wearing a dog costume than an actual ‘dog’ but he’s extremely docile and well behaved…when he’s not stealing my left-overs:) We’ve all had some lively dinner-time conversations and my Kyrgyz is improving incrementally by the day; baby steps for sure, but it worked for What About Bob? so I’m sure I’ll get there eventually!

School is awesome! I finally feel like I’m actually doing what I set out here to do. The monotony of PST is finally over and I’m really teaching! Yes, that’s right, I’m really teaching. I was supposed to watch my counterpart teach for the first two weeks before coming up with lesson plans together, but yesterday (24-09-08) she said in her very broken English “James, I am tired. I have to plan our party tomorrow so can you teach this last class?” Me: “Ooookkaaayyy…sure. What should I teach them?” Narjan (my counterpart): “English.” Me: “Right. Okay. English…” Sure enough I went into the 8th grade class and began with introductions, then worked my way from there for the next 45 minutes just by judging what they already knew (not much at all) and what was in the room that I could translate/explain to them. It actually went quite well, and I’ve already got a good grasp on keeping them in order. Once they all figured out that Narjan would not be in there some boys in the back started goofing off so I made them come up and write a sentence on the board. Luckily for me Kyrgyz culture is not as egocentric as American culture so being put in the spotlight is the ultimate humiliation. They were quiet for the rest of my “class.” :)

Now back to the party. As I write this (25-09-08) I’m at home (we actually have electricity past 9am!) waiting to go back to school at 2:00pm for the party. My first class today was scheduled for 10:30 so I arrived at 10:15 to find teachers running all over the place and not a kid in sight. I tracked down Narjan who in very flustered English explained: “No, we no teach today. Today is our party.” Me: “Okay, that’s cool…ummm…when’s the party” Narjan: “Azr”. Now o’ loyal readers is a great lesson in Kyrgyz culture. What Narjan said in response to my query was “azr” which literally translates to “now” and/or “soon”. It’s used interchangeably between the two English definitions and really does mean now and/or soon. By the way, it’s the only word the Kyrgyz even have for “now”. So I of course offered to help prepare for “our party”, but Narjan said that she wanted me to wait in our English classroom because the party would begin “azr”. So I waited. Then I waited some more. Then I took out my deck of cards and had four rousing games of Solitaire, all of which I lost to the dealer. Soon enough (about 4 hours later) Narjan comes back in and says: “Okay, now I leave, but our party will begin azr, you can wait or go home and come back at 4 when our party begins.” “Oh.” I say “the party begins at 4?” Narjan: “Yes, of course, that is what we’ve been planning for weeks!” (I just got here three days ago, remember.) Me: “Oh, yeah, I must have forgotten that tiny all important piece of information from a couple of weeks ago when I wasn’t here…I guess I’ll go home and come back at 4.” The part of my last quote prior to the ellipsis was of course a very funny internal monologue that I repeated for the duration of my walk home.

So there you have it. Kyrgyz culture summed up with one word. The strangest part to me though was the fact that although all of the teachers were running around trying to prepare for the party all of the kids were sitting dutifully in their classrooms waiting for their teacher to appear! When I asked Narjan why the kids were even in school if no teachers were teaching she said: “the children must be in school.” Then I asked why they even bothered going class to class if there were no teachers around? Narjan’s response: “maybe some teachers want to teach.” I guess that tells it all right there. ‘Now’ can also mean ‘soon,’ and when there’s a party going on teaching is purely optional!

I love it here. This style of living fits my personality quite well. I honestly didn’t mind the fact that my entire day was wasted because, honestly, what did I have to do anyway!? I’m really just along for the ride. Lately I seem to have had a crash-course in Kyrgyz professionalism (a bit of an oxymoron, but entertaining nonetheless) and every singly meal I’ve had with my new host family thus far has more than made up for the gastric pain I endured throughout my three months of PST:)

NEW CONTACT INFO.!!!

Now the begging begins! Just kidding…here’s the address to my permanent site for those of you that are interested in sending me any packages or letters. Because my site is a Rayon Center (Rayon is like a “county” in America, so Kyzyl-Adyr is like what Seattle is in King County) you can send everything directly to the post office which cuts down on the amount of hands that might get to it. Liz, the K-15 that’s also at my site said that she’s become friends with the lady that works at the post-office and the lady just calls Liz directly whenever she gets anything. Hopefully I can use my wit and charm to win her over and receive the same privilege…for the time being, please just assume that I can:) With that said, because I still can’t figure out the formatting on this blog site although I’ve put the two addresses (Latin and Cyrillic) one-below-the-other, please put the Cyrillic address one to two inches to the right of the Latin-letter address.

722700
Talas Oblast
Karabura Region
Kyzyl-Adyr Village
ATTN: JAMES SWIFT
Kyrgyzstan

722700
Талас областы
Карабуура району
Кызыл-Адыр айылы
Джеймс Свифт
Кыргызстан

That’s all for now, I just wanted to get this out there! On Thursday I have my ‘swearing-in’ ceremony and Friday I take a taxi to my permanent site to begin work in Manas Secondary School on Monday!! I’ll post an updated blog with how all of that goes in the next week or so.

Thank you so much to everyone who has sent me packages/letters!!! You have no idea how much I appreciate receiving things from home, it’s an incredible feeling to actually get a package, or open a letter sent by my close friends—holding it is like actually being back there. Yeah, I know I’m being a bit cheesy but I really mean it. Thank you thank you thank you!!!

I typed this out about a week ago, and have just been able to use the internet. A little outdated, but just ignore the incorrect use of future tense.

I’m sitting in my (soon-to-be) permanent host-family’s gorgeous living room typing this out on a brand new Pentium IV computer next to a really nice TV that’s actually hooked up to cable. Yeah…it’s going to be pretty sweet once I finally move in here for good! Kizul-Adyr is also incredible! Everything I said about it before turned out to be absolutely true, and then some! The town is huge by Kyrgyz standards. It’s got numerous cafés (with working beer taps—I forgot how good those really are!), a ton of really big super-market-type (again, by Kyrgyz standards here folks) shops that carry anything I might need and my future school is amazing! More on that later though…Kizul-Adyr also hosts a huge park right in the center off from a giant bazaar selling tons of fresh fruit, vegetables, marked-up personal products, and beans…lots of beans. Talas is known as the “bean-capital” of Kyrgyzstan, and Kizul-Adyr doesn’t do much to diminish that reputation at all. I have honestly never seen so many of the little tasty buggars! As I mentioned at the start of this paragraph, my host family’s house is absolutely beautiful! Do I need to mention that we’re dealing with Kyrgyz standards again? I hope not…but with that said, it really is a very nice house that I’m going to be living in for the next two years. Aside from the aforementioned niceties they also have a great fridge with freezer, nice kitchen and a huge yard! My mom would love it because this yard has cows, two sheep, and 12 chickens…she’s got a bit of a chicken fetish—don’t ask. At any rate, it is a very nice place. They have a sun-shower like my current temporary host-family but they also have a working banya! I think I might have mentioned this ingenious device in a previous posting, but for a quick refresher the banya is basically like a low-grade sauna that you wash your self in as well as ‘cleanse’…like a sauna. All of my friends that have tried one rave about it, so I really can’t wait to get in there! Plus, in the winter if you don’t have one you really don’t have any opportunity to wash yourself at all—I’m going to be getting plenty use out of it this winter for sure!

Now on to my school. The opening day ceremony was yesterday (September 2), and I’ve really never seen anything quite like it! All of the kids came dressed in little French-maid dresses for the girls and the guys in their finest two-sizes-too-big suits. As soon as I’m able to post pictures you’ll be amazed! The younger classes all brought flowers for their teachers and all of the teachers were treated to a feast of sandwiches and vodka by the parents of the newest class (equivalent of kindergarten). Following this party we had a teachers meeting at which my counter-part held her own despite the morning (yes, vodka at roughly 10am) activity…honestly I think that vodka should be a requirement for any meeting—it just makes things so much more entertaining! Following this we went to my counter-part’s house (my counter-part is the Kyrgyz English teacher that I’m paired up with to ‘team teach’) with my director (principal) and three other teachers. There we had another feast and quite a bit more vodka (it’s about noon at this time, so the guilt is less than before, but by now I’m a little drunk…) following this we went to the ‘main party’ at a local café. This party was hosted by the parents of the newest class again, but in style. They had a DJ, a huge feast (honestly I couldn’t even see the table under all of the food, vodka and champagne) and we danced, ate and drank until about 9pm. I finally got home around 9:30 and promptly passed out. That is not before Colya (my host-family’s dog-fighting champion that weighs about 150lbs.) accosted me outside the front gate and ate all of the food I brought home for my family from the feast. He’s really a very sweet dog, but doesn’t have much humor when it comes to food—then again, what dog does? Yes, he’s a ‘dog-fighting’ champion according to my host-father and has raked in about $1000 this year alone for my host family. Could that be the reason they’re so wealthy? Eh, I don’t trouble myself with the details, and as long as I’m on Colya’s good side I think I’ll be okay.

Today Im heading to Talas City today to meet up with all of the current volunteers and my fellow Talas K-16’s to go on the huge water slide, hang out in the park and party before heading back to Bishkek tomorrow. Once I get to Bishkek I’m heading straight to Beta Café which has the best cheeseburger and French fry combo in town. It’s not much, but we are dealing with Kyrgyz standards, remember? Then it’s back to Station Ivanovka where I shall remain before I’m sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer at the end of the month. If the next two years of my service are anything like the last two days in Kizul-Adyr have been I think I’m in for one hell of a time!