Party Party Party * I added pics to help illustrate*

It has only been two weeks since the English clubs have begun but I already feel like so much has happened. In every club the students are so curious as to what America is like, so I’m going with the flow and using the reoccurring theme of comparing Kyrgyz traditions with American lifestyle. For example one day we compared Kyrgyz wedding traditions to American wedding traditions and I gave them new vocabulary like “bride”, “groom” and “engagement”. These clubs have also been a great resource into the community for me; for example last Monday while we were describing our weekends I found out that the airport was a great place to go running- who would have thought! Also through these English clubs I have met some really awesome students including two young women who extended invitations to birthday parties and weddings to me. I gladly accepted both, so this last Tuesday I attended the 17th birthday of one young lady and the following day I attended the wedding of different young woman’s sister!

The day of the birthday party I jumped onto the marshuka after work with the birthday girl’s sister and went to their apartment. The prior week she had mentioned that she had never tried pizza and she asked if I could make it for her someday (I get the impression that the Kyrgyz view hamburgers and pizza as America’s national dishes) so I decided a homemade pizza would be an awesome birthday present! When we arrived, the sister and I went straight to work. I began making the pizza dough and she started preparing the rest of the dinner. I always get nervous when I prepare food for people because I know -a little too well- how quickly a meal can go downhill, but when I pulled the pizza out of the oven I was happy to find the cheese had melted beautifully and the crust didn’t have a single burnt spot on it. Also in my favor, since these girls had never had pizza before there was no benchmark to meet. It went over pretty well too; the birthday girl went back for seconds and thirds. With the pizza they also served their national dish; plov (which is fried rice with vegetables), fresh salads, fruit and cake. As dinner continued a few more of her friends came by, and her older brother also joined in with his young family. It was so flattering to be invited into someone house to share a celebration with them.
The following day was the wedding, so I left work a little early and took a taxi to a little village about 40 minutes out of the city where the wedding was. When I arrived my friend was still running around the house catering to guests so I was ushered into the house by her family and told to sit at a the foot of the feast and to eat. For special occasions, like a wedding, the Kyrgyz will set up a meal on a beautifully embroidered sheet on the floor, all the guests will sit on long cushions and enjoy the meal cross-legged without chairs or tables. They are also very hospitable in the sense that they won't let their guest leave hungry so through out your stay in a Kyrgyz household they will insist that you should eat. Its pretty funny, I could have a mouth full of food or bringing a fork to my mouth and the Kyrgyz will still be telling me to eat as if I hadn’t taken a bite of food all day!

For most of the morning guests were just eating and chatting waiting for the groom’s arrival and eventually, a little past noon, the groom and his party made their grand entrance. You could hear them before they had even turned onto the street because they were honking their horns announcing their arrival. When they pulled up to the gates the first person to jump out of the car was the wedding singer with his accordion who was singing Kyrgyz songs at the top of his lungs. The rest of the party was right behind him and jumped out of the car already dancing and singing along. They were greeted with trays of bread, candy and vodka and then ushered into a yurt that had been build especially for this wedding where there was a feast awaiting them. After they had eaten, it was time to retrieve the bride from the house but in order to do this the whole groom party had to enter the home singing and dancing. The bride this whole time had been waiting patiently in the house dressed in her beautiful white gown, comparable to a western wedding dress, with her brides maid at her side the whole day. After quite the serenade, the groom finally made it into the house and was able to kiss his new wife. Afterwards the family said prayers and gave the new couple their blessings and began feasting again. While enjoying probably their third or fourth meal of the day (it was only 2 pm) the groom and his party were presented with baskets of food, drink and a freshly slaughtered sheep that he was required to buy, the two parties squabbled and bargained over prices but eventually the groom paid for the food.

But the party was still not over, before going to the café where the wedding would continue the whole party jumped into their cars and drove to a local monument where they all had their pictures taken with the newly married couple. Finally we all arrived at the restaurant where we were presented with more food, music and dancing. I swear I have never seen so much hip swinging, pelvis thrusting or arm flailing in my life; the dancing was phenomenal!!! By the time it was all said and done I had been at the wedding for almost 14 hours, I was exhausted!!!

For the rest of the week I kept a low profile and continued with the English clubs and working around Jalal Abad until Friday when I went down to Osh for a Halloween party that a local club was putting together. Almost twenty other volunteers attended as well, all in costume, and for the last time that week I danced the night away!

Wedding Season

Oodles of drinking, eating and dancing; that is really the best way to describe the wedding. All Thursday, Friday and Saturday there was a constant flow of people through the doors of our house where they would be greeted by the bride, sit, eat and toast to the expanding family. As far as I can tell there was no actual ceremony per say, it was more of a three day celebration…I think, even after three days of witnessing this event I am still confused because my language skills are not far along enough to decipher the elaborate traditions of a Kyrgyz wedding. But fortunately for me this is wedding season and I have been invited to another Kyrgyz wedding next week by a young woman who has beautiful English. This time around I’m attending just one day of the ceremony rather than the celebration marathon that I just finished! Hopefully after my third wedding in country I will finally start to understand what the hell is going on.

But outside of weddings, life has begun to feel normal here! It’s hard to believe that I have already completed my first whole month of service. I started Russian lessons and English clubs this week so it seems overnight my schedule has began to fill up. My NGO found a Russian tutor who sits with me one-on-one and works through grammar and vocabulary for an hour and a half every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday morning. My instructor is this tall, bleach blonde Russian woman in her mid-fifties. The first thing I noticed about her was her attention to diction, when she speaks every syllable and letter is pronounced perfectly at quite a loud volume to make sure that I don’t miss a single sound that comes out of her mouth. In addition to her perfect pronunciation she is also very animated and will get up and start acting out a verb if I don’t know what she is say (she doesn’t speak English) or she will hold my hand as she talks to me. Its kinda funny picturing myself in a small classroom with this large Russian woman holding my hands as she shouts Russian grammar rules at me!

So I start my day with these intensive Russian lessons and end it with an English club. The first couple of club were dedicated to getting to know each other. We also made lists of topics that we could use as a theme to each meeting. By the end of the week we started choosing some of the topics the students had expressed interest in and ended up having some fairly intense clubs. The university group wanted to talk about youth and deviance so we spent about 45 minutes defining deviance and giving examples of youth deviance, we then ended the club with a 15 minute debate on types of punishment for youth who break the law. The high school students that I am working with spent time coming up with ideas to promote an anti-violence awareness campaign that my NGO is hosting events for.

In addition to my work picking up, things at home are getting easier too since I’m starting to feel like I have a handle on cooking in a Kyrgyz kitchen. The other day I bought a giant pumpkin at the bazaar and made copious amounts pumpkin bread and pumpkin soup! To my surprise it actually turned out really well! I will say this, cooking with canned pumpkin was much much much faster!

Its only Wednesday?

Beginning with the earthquake that struck Sunday night, these last couples of days have been a bit chaotic! Over 70 people died in the earthquake on the southeast Kyrgyz and Chinese border. Although I am living in the southwest region, that evening even I felt the earthquake. To be honest I had been running around the house and didn’t actually feel the ground shaking, rather I saw a light hanging from my ceiling swaying violently. According to reports the earthquake had a magnitude of 6.6 which is the largest earthquake in the region since 2003. For me this earthquake was a big reminder that those beautiful hills and mountains are still growing. It’s intimidating feeling the earth reshape itself under your feet.

After the initial shock and discussions of where people were and what they were doing when the quake struck, life seemed to continue on in Jalal Abad. My house has a constant buzz of excitement as the wedding approaches. During the day the whole family is busy repainting the house, repairing cracks in the walls, weeding the garden and cooking. My God, there is so much cooking going on right now! I can hardly step into the kitchen to make breakfast without feeling like I am disrupting this intricate system of preparation! At night is when friends and family start arriving to celebrate the upcoming wedding. They stream in through the gates with bags of deserts, fruit and vodka. Last night I was pulled in to celebrate with shots of vodka after I had eaten dinner. Toast after toast, the guest gave speeches to celebrate the new couple, wish them many children and to rejoice in the growing family. Interestingly enough, for all this celebration the new wife was nowhere to be seen because she busy working in the kitchen and cleaning up after all the feast preparation. There is still two days before the wedding begins, which will be a three day celebration, and I cannot even fathom what I am in for!

On the other side of town I have experienced a quicken of pace at my NGO. Yesterday eight highschool students came by and took a language evaluation that I created so I could place them in an English Club (with an underlying theme of human rights, volunteering, and community service) which I will be hosting on behalf of the NGO. The evaluation consisted of four questions; tell me about yourself, who do you admire and consider your hero, what do you want to do in the next ten years, why do you want to join this English club? There was a wide variety of answers, in the self description section they all described how much they liked music and hanging out with their friends (not so different than American teenagers) and one young woman stated her horoscope sign and proceeded to describe the characteristics of an Aries (horoscopes are followed very dutifully here!) As for what they want to do in ten years only half claimed they wanted to travel to Europe and America but they all described how they wanted to find the love of their life and live happily ever after! All the young women of the group but one young woman described their mothers or sisters as their hero. The exception in the group described her respect for the courage, strength and loyalty of Harry Potter!

In addition to the earthquake, wedding and English evaluation, this week I stopped by the American Corner at the University of Jalal Abad which is a resource center sponsored by the American Embassy where students can borrow English books, movies and practice their English. With the intentions of introducing myself and seeing if they wanted any help from me, I was suprised with their immediate assumption that I was there to serve! The moment I walked in I was welcomed and informed that they had been waiting for me despite the fact that I had made no appointments to come by! Within the hour I had agreed to help with three English clubs (a beginner, intermediate and a conversational club.) I also initiated a movie club where every Thursday we would watch a movie in English, discuss it and answer any questions about it. It was decided that I would start next week! As I was leaving the American corner the director asked me to come by the following day so he could introduce me to the Vice Director of the University. The next day after work, I returned to the University and met with the Vice Director of the school. He was a middle aged Kyrgyz man who didn’t speak English so the director of the American Corner translated for us. We discussed how I liked Kyrgyzstan, what I had been doing before the Peace Corps, what I wanted to do with my life after Kyrgyzstan, my family and basically everything else under the sun! Towards the end of the meeting he purposed that I start an English-Business Club for the business school where students could talk about western business practices, I nearly fell out of my chair when he said that! I have been itching for an opportunity to put my finance degree to use and this looks like the perfect opportunity!

A lot of community development volunteers have been hesitant to host English clubs because they feel teaching English is not their role in the Peace Corps but I’m totally pumped up about my five clubs!!! For me, these clubs have the potential to be my entry into the community, a great way to explore the Kyrgyz culture and finally there is obviously a huge demand for English practice here. I can only hope that projects that are requested by the community and are sustainable will turn out to be successful projects!