Gifts and Gossip

My Dear Jess-turk,

Have you received any boxes yet from Dawn and I or were they "Lost".--in a time traveling loop? "Lost" is on tonight, the show with the movable island. The show is really getting interesting now as it dabbles into quantum physics. I love Jack and "Freckles" but Sawyer is okay. I do hope the boxes of materials arrived safe and sound. More stuff to pile in the desert--or you could find ways to help the locals reduce, reuse and recycle.

Dawn said she misses you and hopes you had a happy Valentines Day. You did exchange Valentine's Day card in your clubs, right? Maybe not. But that was fun when I was in primary school in Pennsylvania and Texas. Hey, I learned to Square Dance in elementary school. Maybe you could teach some Square Dancing to your club students? So much time. So little to do. Keep busy "Popeye" and stay confident. Your shape is perfect regardless what you weigh. I could use a hooka (sp?) pipe, for decorative purposes only, if they are permissable to ship or bring home. Aunt Jenny's mother in law, and Mike's mom died, which was a relief as she had agressive cancer and was in hospice. Charlene was more upset by Hedwig Barnes passing than dad's--but familiarity can breed contempt in a wife.

Love,

Billy--Dawn and the Hondo Pack

PS. You should have received four boxes. If, or when, they arrive we have six more to send you, you foxy Turkwoman. I do find the Turkwomen to have beautiful smiles, complexions and figures, which is no small feat in your part of the globe.

Photos!

Alright:  I have made all my photos public so if you've been unable to access them, hopefully it will work now.  I'm trying to upload some more but it's rather slow and this time isn't free, so there will only be a few new photos.  

Here's the link:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/11696456@N08/

Horray!

Please don't be Turkmen and tell me how much weight I've gained :)

About airplanes, Madrid and normalacy

Airplanes are missing from my night sky.  At home we live under a flight path for planes landing at the Harrisburg International Airport ("International").  Planes are a part of life.  Sometimes they're so low coming in you can tell what airline the plane belongs to.  Sometimes when we fly home from travelling, we can spot our house from up in the air.  And in the States, on any given evening, you can look up and see small white pseudo-stars traversing the night sky and imagine the people inside being ferried to all sorts of destinations –adventures, work trips, or romantic rendezvous. 

 

I often contemplate the constellations at night.  In my village there are only 2 street lights about a quarter mile apart.  The light pollution isn't very great and the stars and planets are brilliant.  I can easily find Orion, the Big Dipper and Delphinus.  Venus is really bright right now, too.  But I can see other groupings, too, that I'm sure are constellations and if I only had my star chart, I'd be able to name them all.  I have, however, never seen a plane.  It can be very isolating to realize that no one is flying over my airspace.

 

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It was the Russian dance music that brought back memories of my semester in Madrid.  Well, the Russian dance music and Shakira.  Sitting down to lunch, my favorite Russian song of the moment came on.  My sister turned up the volume and we bopped our heads in time as we ate.  Once it ended, Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" began. I smiled and sang along under my breath.  Shakira's pretty popular all over the world, I suppose, if even Turkmen kids know who she is.  She was a staple in the Spanish bars and clubs I frequented during my four months in Madrid. 

 

Madrid has oodles of bars and clubs and pubs.  I went to many of them.  My friends and I would flirt with European tourists, drink pints (pints!  I think I had my first pint in Madrid [and yes, it was probably cider because I hadn't yet developed a taste for beer]), take shots of tequila and dance the night away until some awful hour when either the metro was about to close or the night buses were soon departing.  Other evenings, I followed Santiago (professor/friend/mentor) around the crooked streets to some hole in the wall bar or restaurant that I could have never found on my own. 

 

Listening to Shakira this afternoon, I remembered how liberated and independent and cosmopolitan I felt in Spain.  How I could navigate the city streets on my own (most of the time without becoming lost) and how I had enough command of the language to be entirely comfortable.   How I felt that, after four months, I belonged in Madrid.  I could survive there; live there happily, be a madrileña.   It was home.

 

My experience in Turkmenistan is outrageously distinct.  Now, it makes me laugh to think that just three springs ago, four months was an eternity.  As much as I loved Spain, I was ready to go home after those four months were over.  I had a boyfriend at the time which complicated things, of course.  But I was in awe of the students who studied abroad for a whole school year!  And who didn't go home for Christmas!   Who doesn't spend Christmas at home?!

 

Tomorrow is February 1, 2009, my four month anniversary.  I can't imagine going home tomorrow.  The time has not caught up to me yet; I still feel like I've just arrived.  I guess this just means my subconscious knows that I'm here for the long haul and so I'm adjusting accordingly.  That's relativity for you, right?  And, of course, the Turkmen kids don't even know who Einstein is…

 

After four months in Turkmenistan, I certainly don't feel very cosmopolitan, but that's hardly surprising because I live in the boondocks of the boondocks.  Certainly I can survive here and while I had a huge linguistic advantage in Spain having already studied the language for 6 years before I went, I can communicate (more or less) effectively in Turkmen.  And most of the time I'm content.  But I miss the feeling of absolute freedom – the feeling that anything is possible, the options endless. 

 

What do I mean?  Knowing that the world is small and large at the same time. Knowing that more exists outside of my small town, my state, my country. Understanding that there is much more to life than what I see on a daily basis.  Waking up and decided to go to Europe or Australia or Colorado or just the mall and being able to do so.  Having my own money, knowing how to buy a plane ticket or being able to plan and successfully complete a road trip.  But I don't really miss these things for myself – I miss it for all the girls I know who will never have these experiences.  The feeling of total freedom this knowledge gives me is something few of them will ever experience.  And they will be happy and their lives will go on, they'll get married and pump out babies, but for most of them, travelling to the other side of the country is as exotic and foreign as they get.  They think Ashgabat is the most beautiful city in the world because it's the most beautiful city in Turkmenistan and the only real city they've ever seen. 

 

I still blows my mind to think that every week I took an art history course in the Reina Sofia museum and so many people here wouldn't even know a Picasso or Dali if they saw one.  God, I miss Spain.

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I gave my first test this week.  It was an exercise in patience, that's for sure.  There is no word in Turkmen (that I have in my dictionary) for cheating.  Going into the test, I knew that in school cheating is rampant – although is it really cheating if it's accepted?  I told the students no talking, no peeking, no looking in notebooks.  I split them into small groups and tried to give each student his/her own desk.  I threatened low scores.  And still they cheated.  Blatantly.  And repeatedly, even after I'd caught them.  So I took off five points for every student that I saw cheating and told them that in the end, it doesn't really matter if they cheat or not, but it does mean that they're not learning English. 

 

Some students didn't even bother to answer the test questions and I wonder why they even come to club?  But on the other hand, why do I bother to give tests?  Luckily the students haven't figured out that the tests are pointless; the school isn't worried about their grades, only me.  There's no real incentive though, except for the students who genuinely want to learn English.  And there are some exceptional students, and I want to help them as best I can.  Jobs are so scarce here that if I can help someone get a leg up, I'll feel like I've achieved something good.

 

I've also noticed in clubs how many kids are unable to think independently.  They incessantly ask me in which notebook they should be writing.  They copy from the blackboard exactly what I've written.  If I've run out of room and continued on another area of blackboard, they'll do the same, even if their notes are disjointed and unorganized as a result.  Some of them think that because I print, they must print, too. It makes a teacher want to bang her head against a wall sometimes.  Or drink beer, which is what Elliott did last Sunday to my great relief.  Still, it's pretty pathetic and thus it's another goal of mine to show them that they can in fact make their own decisions and that it's okay to deviate from what I do.  I don't think it will be easy, especially if this is the way their teachers expect them to behave in school. 

 

Have I mentioned before that they all write exactly the same way?  Everyone forms their letters exactly the same way.  Everyone writes in cursive.  Turkmen don't print. This school is so normalizing!  And all the schools are the same.  I've started readingLenin's Tomb which I got for Christmas and though I'm not very far along, reading about all the normalization that was carried out during the Soviet Union makes me wonder if this uniformity is left over from the Soviet school system.  I would feel so stifled!  But if I were Turkmen, I probably wouldn't know any better!   

 

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A few days ago I learned that all our non paper trash gets taken out to the desert and left there.  I can't stand the idea of adding to a pile of non-biodegradable stuff.  Guess who's going to come home in two years with a suitcase full of empty plastic bottles and toothpaste tubes? 

 

Hugs from the other side of the world,

Jess