So this school teaching thing is finally starting to come together. I actually taught health twice this week again. It was great. I did my love lesson, and I did my dental lesson. The kids seemed to dig it, there was just one slight problem: the keek.
I was teaching a class of first graders about love. We were in the middle of talking about who we loved and each of the kids was telling me one thing or person that they loved while I handed out paper for them to make valentines with. Here’s how it went: (except in Turkmen, not English)
Me: (while holding a big stack of drawing paper) Oh, that’s great, you love your cow, and how about you? Who do you love? Your car? That’s nice, I love my car too, are you going to make a valentine for it?
Them: I love flowers, I love my mom, I love Britney Spears, I love bananas, I lo… KEEK!
Me: Keek?! What’s a keek?
Them: (pointing frantically behind me, in an upward direction) KEEK, KEEK! That’s a KEEEEEEK!
Me: (looking behind me and seeing a little brown bird that was flying around the classroom trying to get out) Oh, you mean a bird. That’s not scary. Stop yelling.
Them: That is NOT a bird, it’s a keek!
Me: (looking closer and realizing it’s a BAT, not a bird) (in English now) Oh my god oh my god oh my god, IT’S A BAT!!! AAAAaaaaahhhh!
I spent the next ten minutes hiding under my pile of papers, crouched in a corner screaming while another teacher tried to chase the vampire, er, I mean bat, out of the classroom with a broom. I’d never seen a bat before in real life, and I was convinced I was going to get rabies just by being in the same room as him. Every time he tried to escape the broom and dove closer to me, I let out an especially high pitched wail. I was terrified. An excellent role model…
The bat was finally.. um, dealt with… (you don’t want details, trust me) and I tried to continue our lesson, but it wasn’t going to happen. Every few minutes, one of the kids would point behind me and scream KEEK!! really loud, and I would look appropriately petrified as they all dissolved into giggles at my cowardice. Shut up, it wasn’t funny… I really was in fear for my life!
Our family finally got the cell phone on Tuesday. That was a happy happy day. You can all call me on it now (if you feel like trying to call Turkmenistan). I would love to hear from you! I will give the number for it to my (American) parents, so if you want to try getting ahold of me via phone, feel free to hit them up for my contact information.
The rest of the week was fairly uneventful. Bagila got a cell phone too, so we can call each other now (yay!) and Bagila wants me to make some posters for our clinic’s hallway about anemia. I’m just excited to be doing stuff. I also met with the other health volunteers again, and the four of us are going to do a health day camp in Gahmya’s village later this month.
There was a big bayram this week (do you remember what bayram means?). It was called Ayal Bayram. Ayal is the word for woman, so it was kind of like a day to celebrate femininity. It was similar to our Mother’s Day, but instead of just celebrating mothers, we celebrated EVERY woman in Turkmenistan. Quite the event. It’s customary to buy little gifts and give them to the important women in your life, a way to let them know you think they’re special. I bought all of the nurses at my clinic, as well as Bagila flowers, and I bought fabric for new dresses for Rayhan and Shukerjan. They all liked their gifts, and I was just stoked for a chance to shop in the bazaar. I love the bazaar… all the cool stuff, all the haggling, all the people, all the colors… ahhhh. Anyways, I’m digressing.
To celebrate the bayram (since it was totally a day off from work), I was sitting at home reading a book, when Akmet (host dad) came in and told me there was someone at the door for me. I was a little confused at the expression on his face, because normally he would tell me exactly who was at the door, and to be honest, I couldn’t really think of a time anyone had come to the door specifically for me. I jumped up to solve the mystery of the door and to my surprise got to it only to not recognize the man standing there at all. He was an older man, maybe in his late fifties, and he was holding a bouquet of roses (real ones!) for me. After a rapid exchange in Turkmen between him and my host family members, he wished me a happy woman holiday, handed me the flowers, and left. I absolutely confused. Flowers are expensive in Turkmenistan and I had no idea why this absolute stranger would have stopped by to give them to me specifically. After talking to my host family, they told me he had driven a taxi for me once, thought I was really friendly, and had remembered where I live, so he brought me holiday flowers. Hmm. I think I was flattered… I think. Meanwhile my family told me to be less chatty in taxis in the future. Oops.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
The Week of Arts and Crafts
Monday dawned with a fair amount of promise, I finally got a second chance to prove myself as a health teacher in the school. I had thought that after my less than stellar performance with the teeth lesson, they would never let me come back, but there I was standing in front of a group of third graders. I decided that in light of the recent Valentines holiday, I would teach them a lesson about love. It went really well, we talked about how love was just as important as all of the other basic needs (food, water, etc.), then we talked about who we loved and who loved us. After that we made (slightly tardy) valentines for those we loved and I taught them the Barney song (I love you, you love me, blah blah blah). It was a good day in the classroom. I repeated the lesson on Tuesday (two teachings in one week, crazy, huh?) and it met with equal levels of success. A few of the kids (and by a few, I mean more than half), made their valentines for ME. I was quite touched, and put all of their pretty pictures up on my office door at the clinic. It added some needed color to the hallway, and I get warm fuzzies every time I look at it. Awww…
I spent another day this week redoing all of the filing labels in Shukerjan and Bagila’s office. They have this set of shelves with a little cubby for each year that their patients were born in. They stick all of their patients’ records in the little cubbies, and that’s the extent of their filing system. The year labels on the cubbies were horribly faded, and getting more difficult to read by the day, so I decided to rectify the situation. It took forever, but when I was done, it looked great. There’s something deeply satisfying about rows and rows of matching year labels, all in the same handwriting and color. The fact that I considered that a “fun” work project doesn’t make me anal retentive, does it?
Besides the door decorating, and shelf relabeling, I managed to find even more arts and crafts projects to participate in this week. There’s an old examination table in my office that is covered in this gnarly-looking faux leather (do they call that pleather, or is that just the stuff stripper outfits are made out of…?) that had been ripped up and taped back down in several spots. I decided to make it into a coffee table since I do a lot more tea drinking in my office than examining, and that was simply no way for a coffee table to look. I bought a few yards of vinyl from the bazaar and spent Friday ripping my exam table apart, and reupholstering it with the vinyl. Not to toot my own horn, but I must say that it looked rather exquisite when I was finished with it. I immediately celebrated my success with tea and cookies (on my new table!). Way to go me.
On the home front, the fun was non-stop this week. It was Rayhan’s (my gelineje) 24th birthday and we had a big birthday party at our house for her with 50 of our closest friends and family. It started at 4:30 with tea, cookies, apples, and chorek (bread). It officially ended at 12:30 (am!) when all of us took one last celebratory vodka shot and said goodnight. In the between time, we went through dozens of bottles of vodka, cognac, and wine, multiple roosters, about 20 pounds of palaw (fried rice), and more pots of tea than I was capable of counting. I could barely find my way to my bedroom (which was only two doors down the hall from the festivities) due to the way the room insisted on spinning, but I had a really good time. These people really know how to celebrate a birthday party.
Bagila came back from her tuberculosis training on Saturday, I was so happy to see her. She told me that we’re really going to start working on projects now that she’s done with all of her comings and goings. I’m looking forward to it.
I went to the city on the 29th (by the way, happy leap year guys!) to get my salary for March. After the snowstorming of last week, I was looking to my trip with a great deal of apprehension, but it turns out it was for naught. The weather was a-ma-zing! I don’t know how it happened, but in the course of one week Turkmenistan went from winter to spring. There was bright warm sunshine, all of the snow had melted, and I was walking around without a jacket or sweater on. Trust me, this is a significant development. Yay for spring! Now the bummer is that I hear this weather is only supposed to get significantly warmer for the next six months. Boo. If I think the weather is perfect right now, I can imagine I may be slightly less enthusiastic about it by June. Maybe I shouldn’t have complained about the cold so much, at least I know how to deal with that…
The other big drama around here is in the form of cell phone service. Our village’s district just got cell phone service last week, its like a fever has swept the village ever since. EVERYONE has been buying a cell phone! The phones here aren’t cheap, the least expensive phone is $60, but they get up to $300. For people who are making somewhere around $100 in an entire month (frequently less), that is crazy expensive. These people can barely afford to eat like they should for the month and somehow they have managed to scrounge funds together to buy a cell phone with a camera and mp3 player. Its very confusing to me.
Confusion or not, I was still very excited to find out that my family would be getting a phone. (Yeah, yeah, I’m a hypocrite) Keep in mind that I have been existing for the past two and a half months with no phone at all. The idea that we’ll now have a cell phone in our house is completely mind blowing. We’re supposed to buy it at the beginning of next week, so I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes. Cross your fingers for me!
I spent another day this week redoing all of the filing labels in Shukerjan and Bagila’s office. They have this set of shelves with a little cubby for each year that their patients were born in. They stick all of their patients’ records in the little cubbies, and that’s the extent of their filing system. The year labels on the cubbies were horribly faded, and getting more difficult to read by the day, so I decided to rectify the situation. It took forever, but when I was done, it looked great. There’s something deeply satisfying about rows and rows of matching year labels, all in the same handwriting and color. The fact that I considered that a “fun” work project doesn’t make me anal retentive, does it?
Besides the door decorating, and shelf relabeling, I managed to find even more arts and crafts projects to participate in this week. There’s an old examination table in my office that is covered in this gnarly-looking faux leather (do they call that pleather, or is that just the stuff stripper outfits are made out of…?) that had been ripped up and taped back down in several spots. I decided to make it into a coffee table since I do a lot more tea drinking in my office than examining, and that was simply no way for a coffee table to look. I bought a few yards of vinyl from the bazaar and spent Friday ripping my exam table apart, and reupholstering it with the vinyl. Not to toot my own horn, but I must say that it looked rather exquisite when I was finished with it. I immediately celebrated my success with tea and cookies (on my new table!). Way to go me.
On the home front, the fun was non-stop this week. It was Rayhan’s (my gelineje) 24th birthday and we had a big birthday party at our house for her with 50 of our closest friends and family. It started at 4:30 with tea, cookies, apples, and chorek (bread). It officially ended at 12:30 (am!) when all of us took one last celebratory vodka shot and said goodnight. In the between time, we went through dozens of bottles of vodka, cognac, and wine, multiple roosters, about 20 pounds of palaw (fried rice), and more pots of tea than I was capable of counting. I could barely find my way to my bedroom (which was only two doors down the hall from the festivities) due to the way the room insisted on spinning, but I had a really good time. These people really know how to celebrate a birthday party.
Bagila came back from her tuberculosis training on Saturday, I was so happy to see her. She told me that we’re really going to start working on projects now that she’s done with all of her comings and goings. I’m looking forward to it.
I went to the city on the 29th (by the way, happy leap year guys!) to get my salary for March. After the snowstorming of last week, I was looking to my trip with a great deal of apprehension, but it turns out it was for naught. The weather was a-ma-zing! I don’t know how it happened, but in the course of one week Turkmenistan went from winter to spring. There was bright warm sunshine, all of the snow had melted, and I was walking around without a jacket or sweater on. Trust me, this is a significant development. Yay for spring! Now the bummer is that I hear this weather is only supposed to get significantly warmer for the next six months. Boo. If I think the weather is perfect right now, I can imagine I may be slightly less enthusiastic about it by June. Maybe I shouldn’t have complained about the cold so much, at least I know how to deal with that…
The other big drama around here is in the form of cell phone service. Our village’s district just got cell phone service last week, its like a fever has swept the village ever since. EVERYONE has been buying a cell phone! The phones here aren’t cheap, the least expensive phone is $60, but they get up to $300. For people who are making somewhere around $100 in an entire month (frequently less), that is crazy expensive. These people can barely afford to eat like they should for the month and somehow they have managed to scrounge funds together to buy a cell phone with a camera and mp3 player. Its very confusing to me.
Confusion or not, I was still very excited to find out that my family would be getting a phone. (Yeah, yeah, I’m a hypocrite) Keep in mind that I have been existing for the past two and a half months with no phone at all. The idea that we’ll now have a cell phone in our house is completely mind blowing. We’re supposed to buy it at the beginning of next week, so I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes. Cross your fingers for me!
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