Holiday Galore!

 Salut,

Somehow February is already basically over, and by my next post, it will be entirely over. My last post was relatively short mostly because a lot wasn’t happening. The last two weeks have been insanely busy and eventful, starting with Chinese Zodiacs and ending with classic French dances and a Coco film reference. Read on. 

My host dad and brother have been trying to sell their black car. To my knowledge, they still haven’t sold it yet, and they for the last two weeks have been going in and out of the city to do miscellaneous work of sorts. Merder, my host brother, replaced Daniel, my host nephew (but I call him my brother because everyone is a host brother/sister), and the vibes of the house have been the same. 

The weather has been pleasant. The snow finally disappeared and it started to warm (we even had a high of 61 one day). I quickly became accustomed to permanently cold weather (every day it’s usually around 29-40 degrees, and I’m used to that by now), a rarity back in Houston and Austin. But then when I ducked my head outside it had light snow again, and I think we’re due for one more snow day and then spring should be here. Unlike Naryn which has been blanketed in snow and cold weather for so long. Alihan and Adelya usually never go outside in cold weather, and Aidana has them put on these thick jackets and thick shoes despite it being 55 degrees. Anyway, they began to hack away at the remaining snow with their toy shovels. One late afternoon, I went running after them in the sports field by my house and ran into some 3rd and 4th-grade students (1st-5th grade students have classes in the afternoon so they’re the only ones hanging around the field that late) who got to meet my host siblings. Alihan and Adelya are itty bitty so they don’t interact with any of my students. 

Okay, so more onto the interesting stuff. The last two weeks have been a large amalgamation of American and Kyrgyz holidays, resulting in two very chaotic weeks trying to sort them all out and trying to hold different events. February 10 was Chinese New Year. Stephanie, a member of K-28, suggested activities to do with students. I don’t know if many volunteers chose to do anything, but there are a few volunteers who can speak Chinese or to whom Chinese New Year means anything. I grew up celebrating Chinese New Year and felt it was a great opportunity to celebrate it. This week, Gullia eje has been using the school projector to practice for her competition (the date we still don’t know). Other teachers have been making handouts for her lesson which looks super cool. Baktygul and I gave her advice on improving her presentation, mostly on rhetorics and changing tone to keep audiences interested. 

I stole the projector and for Chinese New Year, I showed my students a video explaining the history of Chinese New Year and also dragon dances. I do think I’m one of the few volunteers to have such a strong connection to Chinese culture (mostly being that my younger sister is Chinese, I studied Mandarin for 3 years, and got my degree by writing a capstone about Chinese politics. I have middling answers about whether I can claim any Chinese heritage, and the answer is it’s a small percentage, as I’m overwhelmingly Viet but DNA tests are finicky). Regardless, my mom always brought us to Ace, an old Chinese restaurant, and watched the dragon dancers during the Lunar New Year, and she gave us red envelopes with money, a tradition she continues still today. My students found the video of the dragon dancing interesting. We discussed the Chinese Zodiac, and it’s the year of the dragon! I’m the year of the horse, and we told students their year. We then made red Chinese lanterns. Each student made one, so we ended up having a large amount of red lanterns all over our classroom. Gulbara eje, the teacher who uses our classroom after us, I hope she didn’t mind it. 

Amidst Chinese New Year planning, I also went to American Corner. Amidst all the holidays, I hadn’t done anything for Black History Month and feel wary about doing it at my school, as a lot of the history is deep and complex, and I was not sure how to do one or two lesson plans to succinctly talk about it and how to incorporate it into my English lessons. American Corner reached out to me to go to their office and class and talk to their students about Black History Month, which I did. Compared to the last time I went to talk to students, the experience was all right. The hardest part is that despite the university students having much better English than my own students, they’re very shy and it was difficult on my own to get them to engage and talk to me. I used the opportunity while I was in the city to buy paper and materials for my students. By the way, my director often talks about and insists that we (we being Baktygul and I) decorate more often, and yet I’m often the one who has to buy all the school materials, paper, markers, etc. to do said decorating, as they never give us money (they pay for printer ink and that’s it). 

Amidst Chinese New Year, I had heard rumblings from Tahmin and Ben that their raion, Bazar Korgon, was having a Manas competition. Manas, for the uninitiated, is the longest epic poem ever written and is about Manas, a legendary folk hero of Kyrgyzstan. He’s a bit like King Arthur, a symbol of a nation but more legend than real even if it’s possible he did actually exist. (Raions are like districts, and Tahmin and Ben work in a different raion than I do). Manas as such is one of the most famous and illustrious works to come from the country, and it is their pride and jewel. Naturally, students have competitions for it. Two of my students in 8th grade had been missing my class to practice and prepare for it. Like lots of other things, I wasn’t sure when my raion center competition would be, just that it would be soon. Last Friday, to my surprise, the Kyrgyz language teacher at my school and the 8th graders were preparing to leave to go to the contest that was that day. I scrambled and got permission from my director to go watch their competition. Luckily for me, the competition was at Frank’s old school (Frank being the volunteer who used to work in my village) which was a 10-minute walk away, so she agreed. For the competition I watched, it was like a trivia game almost. I didn’t understand the vast majority of what was going on, mostly because I have never read Manas (it’s literature so much more difficult to understand than normal Kyrgyz). Schools came in teams of 3 and then compete against other teams in rounds and are asked by an MC questions about the poem Manas. After looking at my students’ notes, the competition seemed very difficult, the questions being very detailed and hyper-specific. I guess a good analogy would be having Odyssey or Shakespeare trivia games and picking specific acts and lines from the text to dissect. My school did poorly, as my students told me with such disappointment in their faces. 

The next day, I went to Tahmin’s village where the competition was being held. We watched their trivia game too, but then his teachers showed us to the Manas recitation part of the competition. I hadn’t gotten the chance to see this at my Raion competition, but 5th-grade (and maybe 6th-grade) students, rather than doing trivia, recite Manas. It’s poetry recitation. It’s difficult to describe how kids recite Manas; they almost enter into a trance and usually take a minute, adding inflection and emphasis, becoming storytellers in their Kyrgyz national outfits. After completing the competition, they even had students recite Manas in Uzbek, Russian, and even English. The students who recited it in English I could half understand. I really loved watching the Manas competition, it’s such a unique aspect of Kyrgyz culture. After the competition was over, we went to Tahmin’s house. His family fluently speaks English which is such a huge advantage and comfort I think. We spoke to his family half in English and half in Kyrgyz. We played Scrabble, which I completely flunked at because I’ve only ever played it a few times on my phone, but Ben and Tahmin are champs. 

We visited Bazar Korgon, their raion center, which was interesting, to say the least. A lot of the raion centers I’ve been to are relatively similar to each other, but I love traveling around the South and seeing the variety. That Saturday their bazaar was closing down, and their center felt strangely empty. It was lovely to see though. 

Unfortunately for me, that weekend, I fell sick, probably with the flu. That Saturday, I had been hacking in the taxis. I spent most of Sunday in my room sleeping, knowing I had to plan for Valentine’s Day. I missed Monday, which I felt very guilty about on behalf of Baktygul, but I simply couldn’t get up and spent a lot of time sleeping. 

So this past week was English week. If you are a recurring reader, several entries ago, I also had an English week in like the middle of November. I think that was mostly Baktygul’s idea. Regardless, the national English week was this last week, so all of us volunteers have been in full swing doing prep for it. It’s a national English week, so lots of schools put tons of effort or energy into it. Missing Monday, I fell behind, and I also had to plan Valentine’s Day stuff on top of it, so I ended up doing most of the lesson planning, and Baktygul did a lot of the English week organizing. 

Like our last English week, she had each grade choose a country and write a report/presentation about the country in English. 5th grade chose South Korea and Australia. 6th grade chose the United States, 7th grade chose India and the United Kingdom, 8th grade chose Spain, 9th grade chose Italy, 10th grade chose France, and 11th grade chose Argentina. On the second floor of our school, we have a small English office/classroom that Baktygul and I use to store our school materials and conduct English club/Olympiad lessons as opposed to our main English classroom on the first floor. Students throughout the week came in and out of our small room, painting and decorating their flags. A lot of them did superb work! I’m so impressed by my students’ ability to exhibit such creativity with such little instruction or prompt given. 

During all of this, I planned our Valentine’s Day lesson. I am so upset we missed Mardi Gras and now want to do something for it next year. So, in addition to English week, Valentine’s Day, and Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday, Kyrgyzstan also celebrated Liberation Day (maybe that’s the name, I just saw it on Wikipedia because I had trouble understanding it when I came to school). So, this last Tuesday, I walked into school prepared to have my 4th-5th grade English club in the morning, and I saw my 10th and 11th grade students dressed in military getups going to the gym, where we have most of our celebrations.

2024 is the 35th year since the ending of the Soviet-Afghan war, so our school was celebrating the coming of peace. 

I wasn’t able to understand enough to figure out any deeper political or social commentary, but it seemed to generally just be lamenting about the loss of men, praising peace, etc. The older students had a whole little play, showing men coming back to their wives and children with flowers and food. The younger sisters sang patriotic songs and performed dances. At the Zavuch’s (vice principal/vice director) behest, she corralled me to sit at the front and then had me hand a gift to guests we had. I think they were retired veterans or illustrious government workers in our village, maybe both. The official celebration was February 15, though I heard only a few other volunteers did or had any sort of celebration for it. 

Wednesday, the one weekday I don’t work, I came in, as did Baktygul to help decorate. Baktygul got the students to decorate the halls and walls with English words, phrases/idioms, pictures and images, and vocabulary words, along with English-speaking country flags. I bought over 150 chocolate cookies for my students (which was absurdly expensive, by the way… the things I do for my students). When it came to Valentine’s Day, coincided with Baktygul’s desire to do more for English week. We taught students Valentine’s Day vocabulary and had them complete word searches, crosswords, word scrambles, etc. Students get really into word searches/crosswords, even the students not traditionally very active or involved, which I appreciated. For the last period, we had both our 7th-grade classes compete against each other in a game of Jeopardy. Baktygul wanted us to have open lessons (open lessons- carefully planned or overplanned lessons that teachers, including Zavuches and the director, watch to give feedback over), so we had them watch our Jeopardy game. 

During all of this, I talked to my host family about Valentine’s Day. I think Valentine’s Day is a thing in Russia or at least Valentine, the saint, is known in Russia, as whenever I mentioned it, my family and my students had some limited knowledge about it. I told my sister-in-law that my sister’s bf bought her flowers, chastising my host brother. “My sister’s boyfriend/fiance bought her flowers, what did you buy your wife?” I joked. Aidana, my sister-in-law, laughed so much, waiting patiently for her husband’s answer, and he, trying to wash the car, insisted that Kyrgyz people don’t celebrate, which I don’t think Aidana found to be a satisfactory answer. Later in the evening, I made Valentine’s Day hearts and flowers to decorate my classroom. I used to be an origami enthusiast back in middle school, and I remember how to make a tulip. I made one for Adelya, and then Alihan got all snooty and demanded I make one, and my host mom asked me to. I refused, telling her that Alihan is 4, and I, knowing him, he would crush or rip anything I made. She said he wouldn’t, so I relented, taking the 6-8 minutes to make him a flower. To my host mom’s surprise, and not to mine, but to my misfortune, he took it, took one look, and then crumpled it in his hands and threw it in the trash 🙁. 

For the English week celebration, we had a concert in our sports gym. I have learned to embrace the chaos (next week there’s another Kyrgyz holiday, so hopefully I’ll have more to tell in my next post). As such, not much got done that Friday, as students were running back and forth throughout the school, preparing for the concert. Unbeknownst to me, our *English* week devolved, not unhappily, into an International week. Remember me saying students tend to run with things? Well, with Baktygul’s instructions to give a presentation about a country, our students decided to showcase their chosen country and then also do *more*. 

My 5th-grade boys performed a Russian folk tale in English (it’s called Little House). My two best 6th-grade girls sang Diamonds by Rihanna, which they slayed!!! Bakdolot, our 8th grade power ballad singer, sang Lovely by Billie Eilish. My 7th graders did a rendition of Cheri Cheri Lady, which I had never heard of before despite it being a popular English song. My 7th graders are something else. The other half of the 7th grade did India, and two girls performed a Bollywood-inspired dance and wore what looked like saris. The 8th graders went above and beyond and presented Spain and made Spanish food for the teachers. The girls also performed a traditional Spanish dance. 

I think 9th grade ran out of ideas, or they came up with something last minute. I have to paint this picture for you, or else you would not believe me because of how unhinged it was. 9th graders are not my favorite grade, as I don’t teach them, and they are very loud and difficult to discipline. They did a presentation about Italy, so naturally, maybe they’d make pizza or sing an Italian disco song? The idea writes itself. So imagine my surprise…. when one of their quietest students grabs a guitar, dons a red jacket, paints a white and black skull on her face, and then decides to lip-sync the *Mexican-Spanish* song Un Poco Loco from Disney’s Coco in front of all the teachers. It was *something*. 

10th grade takes the cake for being the most original, and they won (the teachers gave them certificates for which presentation was the best/most creative, etc.). They did France, and all the girls dressed up in black and wore berets and styled their hair. They did a French dance, and one of the girls gave a presentation about France, first in English, and then in French. Props to them and her for attempting that, all things considered. They then sang a song in French, which was brilliant for them. 

11th grade is a small grade but they made Argentinian food, I think. Being a teacher, I insisted our group wouldn’t be unrepresented. Still recovering from being sick, I made the terrible decision to sing All of Me by John Legend, resulting in me being offbeat and not hitting the chorus notes, but my students love me so they gave me a standing ovation despite my singing being terrible. I then did the thing I had been wanting to do for forever and that was dance a cha cha, so I danced a cha cha to the song Katchi by Ofenbach and Nick Waterhouse. This is one of those moments where I’m glad that despite Baktygul having very good English, she probably didn’t understand the song, because it’s got some innuendo in it. Again, throwback to my remarks about sometimes being the only one in the whole room who can understand the English songs playing. The whole thing was a fever dream. 

On Saturday, I went to Osh, as Tess invited us to her house for a sleepover and to make pizzas. I have grown to love being in Jalal Abad because I love how much of the country I get to see and call home. I consider my village and house my first home, Jalal Abad city a second home, Bishkek a third home, and Osh now a fourth home (and my raion center a possible 5th if I visit more often). I come in and out of all of these with such frequency that I know them well. After recognizing my own students many have never been to Bishkek and some have never been to Osh, and despite only being here for 7-8 months, I’ve been immensely privileged to see so much. I met Tess, Zoe, and Michaela in Osh, and we ate ramen. We took Tess and Michaela’s taxi to Tess’ house. We all helped Michaela make snickerdoodle cookies (by help, we filled in the gaps while she did a lot of the preparation and work). We then made our pizzas, and Tess’ mom made us ash. Tess lugged her family’s TV into her room and we watched her younger brother’s lacrosse game. 

Today, I made my way back to my village. I remember feeling as if Halloween was a ride, as it was the first American holiday I celebrated with my students. Here, this time I had less popular, less well-known holidays to explore and show my students. I personally have never held much attention or love for Valentine's past 5th grade, yet being here, it changed. I feel more need to represent American holidays to my students even if they aren’t personally totally meaningful to me. Not all my students got into it, but they loved the chocolates. The boys especially liked to make the red lanterns and do word searches, a brilliant way to get and hold their attention. Besides the holidays I brought, witnessing the way they celebrate their own always centers everything. It feels oddly incongruent, seeing their traditional oral recitation of Manas in national and nomadic clothing by 5th graders, and then celebrating a holiday as commercial as Valentine's, and then, in turn, commemorating their Soviet history in Afghanistan. Plus, on top of it, the wild international dances and songs they added (Cheri Cheri Lady is an English language song but it’s by a German band). The past two weeks have been some of the most meaningful celebrations I’ve seen, in their variety and in the genuity I see. As someone who constantly observed Valentine's and Lunar New Year, they lost their allure, but in my student’s eyes, I see it all anew, and through them, I happily dance more cha chas and chill through all the chaos. 

À Bientôt,

Grace

PS. More Music

1. 16 Carriages- Beyonce
2. Unrecognizable- Saysh
3. Boston- Owl City
4. Feels- Calvin Harris and Sam Smith
5. Head Underwater- Tom Walker
6. Lush Life- Zara Larsson
7. Venus- Zara Larsson
8. We Came We Saw We Conquered- Sam Tinnesz