Friday, September 5, 2008

Anywhere is the Center of the World


Hello All,

It’s a daunting task to try and keep this blog as up to date as I’d like. I looked at my posts since arriving in Kyrgyzstan and realized how few, though lengthy, they’ve been. It’s hard to really feel like I’m keeping everyone back home up to speed on what’s been going on and what I’ve been up to, but I’m doing the best I can. The highlights (and one low point) of the last three weeks have been: suffering a week long bout of bacterial something-or-other in my intestines (from which I’ve fully recovered), finding out where my permanent site will be, visiting my permanent site and hiking through the hills to a neighboring lake with my site mate, Joe. Finding out where our permanent sites was a breath of fresh air. This pre-service training phase can be a real grind sometimes with only one day off per week, and meetings the rest of the six each week. But it has its perks as well since all 60 of us K-16ers get to hang out often without much transportation needed. Having just finished college, PST definitely took the proverbial wind out of summer’s sails – at times it feels like I’m still in school, only I’m in another country.

But my permanent site and site visit is mostly what I’d like to report on. I couldn’t be more excited and pleased about where I’ll be living and working for the next two years. I’m living in a larger town located in the bottom of a mountain-bowl. If you can’t see a mountain while you’re there, then you need to open your eyes. The scenery is quite breathtaking. A 20 minute walk from my permanent house is a hilltop that looks out over a valley covered with patchwork farmland, beyond which are mountains and a sizeable lake. The city is clean, there’s a large bazaar, a handful of cafes and IP Telephone offices (where there is supposedly free internet I can use just because I’m a foreigner. We’ll see how that works out.), and a beautiful well-shaded park next to the town square.

My buddy, Joe, from my language group in PST happens to be my site mate. The next closest Peace Corps volunteers are at least a 4 hour drive away, so we are definitely the two most isolated volunteers in the country (remember that this country’s only the size of Nebraska, though the mountainous terrain makes a short distance a long drive). The funny part is that this town, even though it is quite isolated, has a very urban, even European feel to it. During our visit was the Kyrgyz Independence Day, and there was a large parade in the town’s center. Everyone was very well dressed (women in dresses and men in suits and/or ties) and gathered in the square for the parade and the shashlik (shishkobob) stands set up all over the place (which smell and taste amazing). There’s a pretty good story from this day: as my host father and brother were walking me to the parade, I called Joe to see if he was going to be there so we could meet up. When he answered and I asked where he was he said, and I kid you not, “Yeah man, I’ll be right there. I’m carrying a banner in the parade.” Sure enough I look up and see him coming down the street carrying a banner for the school he’ll be teaching at. Supposedly the director of his school knocked on his bedroom door that morning, woke him up, walked him to the parade and handed him a banner. I’m still cracking up about that one.

But, of course, scenery and parades aren’t the only things that make me excited to live and work there. I’m teaching at a gymnasia (sometimes called lyceums), which are advanced schools in Kyrgyzstan. They are smaller than normal schools, and the students have to pass advanced learning tests to get in. This means that the students are generally very motivated and anxious to learn. I will be teaching two 7th grade English classes, and one 8th grade English class Monday-Thursday mornings. Two of these classes are Russian students. Not ethnically, though. All of this town’s population is Kyrgyz, through and through. But for some reason students in schools here are divided into Kyrgyz and Russian courses, meaning that all of their classes are either in Kyrgyz or in Russian, but not both. I’m not sure why. But anyways, the director at my school wanted me to work with the Russian speaking students primarily since at this point my Russian is far better than my Kyrgyz, though I feel like it’s getting better day by day. In the afternoons I will teach English clubs to the advanced and intermediate students who #1 are very anxious to learn English and #2 will be competing in the country-wide English Olympiad in November, which is a big high school competition in Kyrgyzstan. Supposedly the school I’m teaching at won first place in its oblast last year, so the bar is set pretty high already.

My host family at site consists of a grandma, a grandpa and three grandkids who are living long term with them while their parents are off working in Moscow. My host (grand)father is quite the Kyrgyz national. He doesn’t leave the house without his suit, tie and kalpak (traditional male Kyrgyz hat) on. I think he was someone of major importance in the town before he retired because when I’m walking around with him everyone shakes his hand and greets him. I have a young host sister, Kanishai, who’s 6 years old, another, Kanikei, who’s 14 and studies at the gymnasia where I teach, and a host brother, Azamat, who’s 15 and is really anxious to learn English (he also goes by his second name, Semetei, the name of the Kyrgyz epic hero’s son, like Telemachus). My host brother and sister know Russian, but my host (grand)parents don’t speak it, so I’m glad that the opportunity to get better at Kyrgyz is there. Kyrgyz people fall in love instantly with any foreigner who speaks their language. They expect all white people to speak Russian, so the Kyrgyz garners lots of smiles and an occasional shocked stare. There are only about 4 million Kyrgyz speakers in the world, so I guess they don’t exactly expect the rest of the world to know much about it.

On a more personal note, it’s been really satisfying to see what work I will get to do with my service here in Kyrgyzstan. The work during PST is well worth it, despite my complaining, since in just a couple weeks I will begin to teach – something I wouldn’t be able to do in the states unless I returned to grad school for a couple years. Teaching has been a goal of mine for a long time, and in less than a month I will get to begin the struggle of finding my place in front of a classroom and all of the frustration and satisfaction which will accompany the profession.

Leaving my training village host family is going to be hard. Three months has been plenty of time to get attached to them, especially with the toddlers who are always around to entertain with their continuous “hello”s sung at me. A month ago my host sister had her second baby, and it has been a real honor to be here for all of the excitement that’s accompanied the occasion. My host family asks me to visit them whenever possible after I move, and my host father tells me all the time that when (he never says “if”) my parents and friends visit me then we can stay with them at their dacha and stay with their family that lives on Lake Issyk-Kul. My host brother Maxat really doesn’t want me to leave, and he even called me during my site visit to ask when I was coming back, but I think he understands that I need to start working like he does.

It’s funny to think that coming into this country I knew I would miss my family and friends in Minnesota a lot (and I sure do). But I never really guessed that I would soon be capable of missing people I was about to meet in Kyrgyzstan. Now I know that that’s a reality of living in this country where people treat you like family even when you can’t speak their language. I don’t feel ready to leave my current host family, but there are also some great things on the horizon in Kyrgyzstan.

I thought about a lot of this while I was at my permanent site and took a walk to the hill where I could catch a panoramic of the valley and mountains beyond, and I thought about where I’ve been, and where else I might get to go, and it all felt a little bit like a dream. If you look at a map of Kyrgyzstan, you can place a finger anywhere on it and there’s somebody there who would take you in as their own son or daughter. There are landscapes here that I’d never dreamed of existing before I came. Soon I’ll be living in one such landscape in the mountains while standing in front of eager students.

I miss everyone and everything in Minnesota very much, but I'm so glad to say that I'm very excited to be doing this right now, and right here.

Be well,
With Love,
Jonathan