Salut and à Bientôt

Salut,  So, I think that’s how the phrase goes? In for a penny, in for a pound? I’ve been trying to teach my counterpart acronyms and idiomatic expressions. She said the only one she knows is FB for Facebook haha. We’ve reached the end of the first quarter of school (technically, it’s this week, but I have a lot to cover in this blog post so sorry).  So, two major things happened this week. Firstly, the Peace Corps has descended into Jalal Abad these last two weeks. Saltanat eje, I forget her official title, but she’s the one in charge of managing the English teaching we do, she’s the liaison between the schools and the ministry and PC and us volunteers. She’s been traveling across the country for the last several weeks, and last week, it was our turn. Again, because there’s another volunteer in my village, it made the schedule wonky. Saltanat came to my village on a Tuesday, where I have classes in the afternoon, for a meeting with my counterpart and director. I wasn’t sure w...

  I aptly titled this post The Power of Observation primarily because I started taking notes of things I was seeing and just how necessary I find it to be when language barriers are so strong. In some ways, the last two weeks, I feel like an observer, watching on the outside and sometimes to my detriment.  I had been pondering, as I often do in moments when my host family is talking amongst themselves, their fast words and flurry of speech drowning out unintentionally behind my ears, what my family enjoyed. I knew how to ask them, I had indeed many times, what their hobbies were, etc. They all gave me numerous answers: cooking food, reading, watching movies, etc. Yet I’m here with them and in their company for all but the 20-30 hours per week I work and out of the house, so I should know what they do just by what they actually do. I had forgotten the most important and powerful lesson: it’s what people do, not what they say. I could learn purely from watching, something I did ...

Salut, It’s toi season, so I’ve been told. As I said before, a toi is a party, usually referring to a wedding, but it can also be a party for other large life events (like funerals, the birth of children, circumcision, etc.). I had been to a toi during the summer, but it was at my family’s house. The act of going out and guesting is still relatively new. Even here at my new house, despite the wonderful and large family, we still don’t go guesting a ton. My host mom and dad do a fair amount of guesting but have never brought me before, and I’ve never been in a circumstance to join them because I’m usually at school.  I went to my first wedding! It was a colleague’s son who was marrying. I also got the chance to visit a bridal party for our cafeteria lady’s daughter. Weddings here have evolved significantly from what I understand, and they can happen in regular venues or at home. My host mom married over forty years ago, and she said she married at home. The wedding I attended was at...