Thursday, August 18, 2011

home alone

Summer is starting to wind down and the beginning of a new school year is on the horizon. I look forward to teaching my second year in a foreign country. These past few weeks I have been preparing for lessons and how my counterpart and I want to run our classroom. I am really looking forward to working with her this year because last year at this time I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I thought that I was going to work with one woman and a few days before school started I was told that I was working with another one. It turned out to be a great change of plans and over the past year we have really bonded and learned a lot from each other. Each time that we get together to write lesson plans and curriculum we work for a few hours and then she takes the time to teach me how to make Kyrgyz food. It has been a great experience for me. At the end of break I plan on teaching her how to make some American food so she can make it for her family!
Over the past week things have been very different at my house. My host sister and her three children went to Bishkek for vacation, school shopping and looking for a house to buy. I guess all the houses they looked at were too expensive or too old and not worth the money. I’m sad that they couldn’t find a house, but at the same time I’m really excited because that means that they will still live here with me. This house would be way to quiet without those girls!
My host mom left to go stay at the lake for 10-20 days (that’s exactly what they keep telling me). Whenever I ask about the place she is staying at they just say it’s a house with one other woman and a doctor. She has been very sick and I think this is part of her getting better. I am excited for her to come home because my Kyrgyz life is better when she is here!
My host dad took my host mom to the lake and came back. They were very worried for me because the left me here one day alone. They had my host sister call to make sure that I was ok and I wasn’t scared. It was really sweet. I kept telling them that I lived alone for a year but they still think that I will get scared. I didn’t even stay alone. I had two friends who live nearby come over and we made pizza, banana raspberry bread, cinnamon rolls, and granola. It was a tasty evening. My host dad was supposed to stay for two days and he came back early and I think it was because they were nervous for me. While they were gone I had to take care of the animals. Feed the chickens and the horse and collect the eggs from the chicken. It took me back to when I was kid and would take care of my best friend’s family’s horses and dog. Well for the past few days it has just been my host dad and me here. I don’t know how to make Kyrgyz food and I know if I cook food that I like he won’t like it because he doesn’t like any flavor in anything. But the cute thing is that he baked the bread (it’s unheard of for men to even boil noodles so the fact that he made the bread is amazing, and it’s not too bad). We have hard boiled eggs for dinner every night and during the day we pick raspberries and black currents. My host sister and her kids should be coming home soon (or so he says), and I hope it’s sooner rather than later because I can tell he is really bored without anyone here. It’s been great for me because I get some time to myself and I have forgotten how much I like that.
While my host mom was here the neighbor women came over to prepare the wool for Kyrgyz rugs. I wanted to help them, but they were always drunk. That didn’t really sound like fun to sit with them as they were drunk and try to talk to me. I can’t ever understand them anyway. One day my host mom told me that they were bad workers because they always showed up late and when they were there they worked slowly and they always showed up drunk. Well, the day before I taught my niece comparatives and so she asked me what the English word for drunk was and then proceeded to use it in the grammatical form that I taught her. She said, “Gulanda is drunker.” I told her that she needed two things to compare to so she said, “Gulanda is drunker than Mairam.” HAHAHA. I think she understands it! I laughed so hard!!
After they finished the wool my host mom asked me what color I wanted my Kyrgyz rug to be and she told me the colors she had. We decided on sky blue and white with brown piping. When she comes back we will make the rug together. It will be a great project for me and a great thing to bring back to America with an awesome memory!
Sorry that this blog entry is a little scattered, but so has been my summer!