November 26th

It’s officially fall here. The locals are actually referring to it as winter, but by Alaskan standards, its fall. It has been raining constantly, its incredibly cold outside, and all I want to do is curl up in a big blanket on the couch while reading a book. Instead, I have been trudging around the village going between language lessons, the clinic, the dressmaker’s, and the other volunteers’ houses. A lot of people’s phones aren’t working very well because of the rain, and some of the other villages have even been losing power.

We had club again on Saturday, and even though it was raining and gross outside, we still had about forty kids show up to hang out with us. We drew big posters about healthy lifestyles, and the kids got to use markers from “the America”, it was quite the event. The markers were Mr. Sketch markers (the ones that smell really yummy, like different foods), so the kids were in heaven. Turkmen kids really like to draw, and there aren’t markers in Turkmenistan, so anytime they get to make posters with markers, they are happy as clams.

I’m really starting to dig my host family, they take really good care of me. My mom and dad were supposed to call from America on Sunday morning. I had been looking forward to hearing from them for two weeks, and my host family knew it. Sunday morning dawned, and because of the heavy rain, the phone wasn’t working. I was so sad that I wasn’t going to be able to talk to my family, but I was trying not to act disappointed in front of my host family since I knew that it wasn’t their fault that the phone was out of order.

They realized how much it meant to me, and before I knew it, my whole family was sitting in the middle of the living room ripping apart pieces and parts from three different phones. One half hour, a butter knife, a spoon, and a large roll of duct tape later, we had one functional phone, and still fifteen minutes until the appointed call time. Life was good.

This morning was a little stressful. I was supposed to be at the bus stop (a twenty minute walk from my house), ready to visit Dashoguz for a week at nine am. Being myself, and completely incapable of punctuality, I was still working on packing my bag at 8:50. I don’t know what it is, but I can never seem to travel light. I always start packing with the best of intentions, but it seems that by the time my bag is ready to travel, it alwayshas grown to monsterous proportions. (Case in point, my luggage for the plane ride to Turkmenistan was classified as “cargo” because it were so heavy.) My “small travel bag” for my week in Dashoguz was no exception, and by the time I had managed to hoist my 26 kilo (That’s a little under fifty-five pounds for all you non-metric users) bag over my shoulder and toddle out the door, there was no way I was making it to the bus stop by nine. Realistically, there was probably no way I would have made it to the bus stop at all with that bag… My sweet little family came to my rescue again, and my host brother (the one who never talks to me) actually offered to drive my behemoth bag and me to the bus stop. Phew, thank goodness!

I spent the rest of the day catching up with the other volunteers as we spent the day in Ashgabat going through training sessions from Peace Corps. It’s amazing how much I find myself craving that American interaction. It concerns me a little because right now I live in the same village as four other Americans and I still get excited when I get to see more. Hhow am I going to hold up when it’s just me in my village? We are going to spend the next few days in Ashgabat meeting what they call our
Counterparts. These are the Turkmen who will be assigned to us at our workplace when we get to site. We’re supposed to meet them in Ashgabat, then travel with them to our site on the 28th. Cross your fingers for me that everything goes well…