And now to add to the “things I will never hope to understand” / “reasons I’m sure this is all just an extremely elaborate episode of ‘Punkd’ (if Ashton Kutcher were to jump out of the bushes one day, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest)”: Yesterday, I had a few hours between classes, so I went to the closest café to get a pot of tea and read for a while. As I was sitting there, an old woman came in, sat down, and started doing something with her socks. A woman who works at the café went over and was talking to her. They both stood up and walked to a very specific place in the café (which happened to be about two feet away from me). The younger woman squatted down, and the older one muttered something (I’m assuming some sort of prayer), and they both “omeened” their hands (holding them in front of them like a book, then rubbing them over their faces – it’s done at the end of every meal and often during religious ceremonies). The older woman then took her right shoe off and pressed her foot forcefully into the younger woman’s neck. The younger woman grunted. They repeated that again. Then, the older woman put her shoe back on, turned to the younger woman, and wacked her on the back a few times. The younger woman then stood up and went to work in the back. The older woman washed her hands at the sink and left the café.
Another oddity, and one that I understand even less, has to do with my landlady. She’s Russian, and Christian, which is why I’m so surprised by it, because there’s less of an excuse to not understand. The last two times I have gone to her apartment to pay her for the month ($75 for rent and $5 for water, trash, electricity, and gas – hard to beat), there have been men at her door. They ring the bell, and she opens the door, spears a few pieces of food (the first time it was apple, last time it was bread) on a fork, and feeds it to them. She then gives them a few sips of water, and they give her some money. They then turn to leave, and she closes the door and turns to me like nothing happened. Needless to say, I’m very confused, but my Russian is definitely not strong enough to ask (the closest I can think is “what apple water man”. I don’t think I would understand her response even if she did understand me).
My landlady and I do have an interesting relationship, though. Since we really can’t talk to each other, we’ve bonded over the few words of Russian I know and the few of Kyrgyz she knows. Other than that, it’s a lot of pantomiming (this month, she was asking if there was any leaking like there used to be. That meant she said “vada (water)” and pointed to the ceiling, and made rain-like hand motions. I understood, and answered in Russian, she gave me a pat on the back and a cookie. I like the way this is going.
Last week was spring break for me, which was nice. I pretty much just relaxed around here, besides one small trip down to Uzgen, a town about an hour south of me, to see the silk road ruins and the pretty bazaar and have lunch with the only other volunteer in the area on spring break. It was nice to have time to relax here, though. School started again this Wednesday, and we’re now on the “summer schedule”, meaning we start at 7:30. That means that two days a week, I have to get up at 6:00 in order to eat some breakfast and get to school on time. It’s a bit rough, but at least it’s only two days of the week… I agreed, along with Fritz and Martha, to do a club for Ginger’s counterpart who teaches at the Uzbek university’s lyceum (grades 1-11) on Wednesdays. It should be a lot of fun – they picked the best students from 6th-9th grades (with one university student and a few teachers as well), and asked us to talk about American culture. I’m excited, because the kids are super cute, and you’ve probably all noticed that I have a great love of Uzbeks, so the room full of adorable Uzbek children is very exciting for me.
School’s gone well this week too. Just to give you a taste of what we do, here’s yesterday’s 5th form lesson:
We started by singing “the ants go marching”, which they loved. This country is turning me into someone who actually sings in front of people. We then went over the vocabulary they didn’t know from the song, and quizzed them on it via miming. Then we taught them “need” “want” “need to” and “want to”. We asked them each what they wanted, needed, wanted to do, and needed to do, to get them to practice. The week before spring break, we’d given them a story to read and translate, so I then read it to them, and they followed along on their sheets. We then asked them comprehension questions about the story. For homework, we told them to write about what their family does in the evenings (related to the story we read).
So that’s a pretty typical class for me, for the 5th form, that is. They’re a lot of fun to play with because they’re all so cute and excited about everything. As long as I never get upset that they never do their homework, they’re amazing…
This weekend, I’m going to my old village on Saturday to watch my family make sumolok (a Nooruz tradition, it’s a wheaty thing they boil down for hours – I’ll write more after this weekend). Then Saturday night is the big birthday party, finally. I’m sure I’ll have more to report later.
Happy spring to everyone!