aaargh

Sorry, Katherine, etc. Yes, the phone number I gave you had an extra number. I ought to be home tonight, nursing my poor sick head, but i'm locked out and don't know where anyone in my host family is. So I tried to pick the lock with bobby pins, but I'm just no kind of good at being a criminal. So I came back to the city and my hotmail account isn't working again. All this to say, I'd love to hear from you. Any time between 8 and 11 my time is great, then tomorrow morning will work since I'm sick and won't be going to school. The sun rises at about 9:15, so I'll be up by 9:30. Love you all! - Susan

Merry Christmas, Tooie!!

Hi, Susan. This is your sister communicating through blogger. We're having phone issues (thanks for giving the number to a good English speaker! Who was that? Apparently it's the wrong number of digits and we can't figure out how to make it right.). We're thinking of you! Mom and I are wearing matching pajamas. Lindsay came up with a new BINGO phrase: "nobody speaks of civets." It's 11 degrees outside and we're about to go out for a walk, or maybe a sled. So all is well in Ann Arbor, but we miss you. Can you give us the number again? Email Mom or me, we've both been checking obsessively. We love you very much!!

Much love,
Katherine

Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas morning here, so of course I'm about to go to a tutoring session, to the bazaar to get some dry goods, and otherwise through a fairly normal day. But this afternoon the area volunteers are having a Christmas party, complete with Muppet's Christmas Carol. Yay! And last night I was able to go to a Christmas Eve service, where the children sang a stirring rendition of "Deck the Halls with Butts of Holly." I smiled, and I smiled big. They were so proud.

this man

"This man have no thrill. He sad." poor BB

"I like father's day because I love father. I want to father. I will father." - 8th grader who doesn't pay too much attention in class. His mind is on other things.

I get lost again

I can't stop getting lost. The fact is that ever since I've come here, I've only correctly navigated by bus a few times. And that's saying a lot, since I take the bus about 6 - 10 times per week. I get spooked, thinking I've missed my stop, jump off, and proceed to walk for a mile or so. I've probably walked hundreds of extra miles because of this, not that I'd always prefer the bus. Usually I'm better on foot. However, that's only when I'm in a familiar city and it's light outside.

I was locked out of my house in Podstepnoye, so I, being nearly Bohemian, walked around the whole day with my shower stuff, school stuff, etc. I called Ivy, who lives in a nearby village, and she told me to come over to sleep, that she would be home at about 7. So I wandered a bit longer, bought some m&m's, and generally froze. It was very cold that day, and I had decided to wear my light coat instead of my heavy one. ("Why?" even strangers asked all day long. "Because I'm crazy," I would say.) The only reason my body didn't shut down was the m&m's. They were a reason to live. They were also a reason to take my gloves off, which was unfortunate.

Anyway, I stood at the wrong bus stop for a long time, then I walked over to another one and forgot which direction to take it. So I called Ivy again. I got on the bus when it came by 20 minutes later. It had, as usual, 15 seats and 22 people. And there was fantastic ice on all the windows, but it meant that I couldn't see where we were going. It was dark by then. The driver only spoke Russian, and I didn't know the name of my stop in Ivy's village, so I was in trouble to begin with . But I'm a good sport, so I got on and figured everything would be alright. And it was.

The bus didn't stop in the right place, so I walked across an empty field and decided halfway through it that I was in the wrong village. The sky was clear, and the stars and moon so bright they almost hurt. Oк maybe that was the wind. Large, hunched men in black leather jackets were at the street corners. Okay, I thought, I'll call Ivy; if this is the wrong village, I'll just take the 37 back to where I came from. Then I realized - gulp - I'd taken the last bus. I began to envision knocking at a stranger's door and asking for some food and a place to sleep. Whose house looked warmest? I scoped out the little neighborhood. But at the opposite corner of the field there was a store. So I went in and called Ivy again. She told me I was in the right village, but it was a matter of finding her house from where I was.

That's only half of the walking I did, but the rest will be boring. Basically, I could not get un-lost however close I was to salvation. Sad. After what seemed like a week, I was sitting in Babushka Nina's warm house, eating too much and thawing. "Why?" she kept saying. "Why?"

cold

"Ice cream in winter? You will kill!" said a local in Kuzlorda

chilly

"My mushrooms are red from the cold," I told another teacher. I meant my ears.

nice

There is a man in the village who is kind to his animals. I saw him again this morning. His horse and sleigh were parked outside the mayor’s building, and his wife and baby were in it, waiting for him. His wife sat as if she were watching television, and the kid was alternately standing and sitting – this is still new to him, and he’s wearing a snowsuit, which makes him almost as wide as he is tall. The horse is stop-and-stare beautiful. He’s a deep brown with a touch of red, and his fur is so thick and clean that it stands out straight, like inch-thick velvet. His body is short, with very long legs, and he’s quite strong. No dents in his chest from the sleigh rigging, no scars from a switch. And then the man came out of the Akim’s and his dog ran toward him from behind the building and followed him within kicking distance, without doing the skittery dance most dogs here do in the presence of people. He ran on all four legs and kept his ears up. Rare.

superstar

I manage to watch a lot of television here, much against my will, but it’s almost always on in the living room, where I spend most of my time at home. There is a show modeled after “American Idol” which is very hard on me. First of all, the bad singing tolerance here is very very high. People sing into microphones in public, at weddings, on television all the time aklthough they sing worse than a tonedeaf peacock. Hitting the right notes is not a cultural value. So, about 90% of the competitors on “Superstar Kazakhstan” sing worse than I do. And that’s saying a lot. But one thing they can hold over me – they sing with a tenacity and confidence I could never match.
Another feature – horrible makeup. I could go on and on, but let me just say that every girl wears pink lipstick, lots of pink blush, and blue, pink, or both eyeshadow. We need to export some makeover shows, too. It is an opinion which I will never abandon that no one looks good with a Pepto-Bismol face.

school

Ah, and as for classes, things are going just like they go in real life. I think this week was “Try Her Mettle Week,” and now, on friday, my throat is sore. I’ve yelled at every class at least once. Not screeched, I hope, but I used my lifeguard voice, which strains me. I turn quite red. And they stop and are quiet. And later they ask me what the words I used mean, which is very admirable. They’re good students, and know a lot of English. They could certainly be better students, although it’s almost impossible to create a place where 11 – 17 year olds do everything they ought to.
It’s hard, because I’m not a normal teacher. I’m the second in a series of Americans. The first American here was a big man who did things differently than I will – mostly because I can’t do them like he did. I am an average-sized and young, with a soft voice and a high ponytail (because of the mullet situation. Don’t get your hair cut by someone whose language you don’t speak at all). Also, I made the tactical error of going to the public bathhouse when all the girls from the boarding school were there. I thought to myself: “they don’t care, this is normal to them.” And then I heard a couple girls giggle uncontrollably at the thought of one of their other teachers going to bana. Rats. [the thought of an udder is also something to laugh about for a long time.] And I’m wearing intensely clashing clothes today, which pleases me, but I believe it’s something of an issue in 9th grade. Anyway, as a not-normal teacher, I have to make an impact in two years. I think I would be far more effective as a volunteer if everyone adored me, but that is not to be. I swiped up a rather extensive note two students were working on in my class today, and they each separately begged me and sent their friends to beg me to give it back. No.

smut

Today, everyone is preparing for the visitation of some minor officials on Thursday. This involves re-painting everything, redesigning classrooms by borrowing painted boards from other schools (to be returned after the guests leave), and troupes of people coming into classrooms (during classes) and criticizing things like plants and small tears on maps. It involves all staff to spend the whole weekend without meal breaks, repainting walls that were painted in September. And watching while our director gives shrill orders about what may or may not go on the walls for aesthetic purposes, however useful it may be for teaching. Aesthetically pleasing wall decorations include: shelves with large books, and wooden boards with famous men’s faces painted badly. It also involves canceling all of my classes so that the students can wipe off the floors every time someone tracks mud into the school. We are all of us Sisyphus today.

Actually, although my classes have been cancelled, my useless work level is low. I just planned all my lessons for tomorrow and talked to one of the teachers I work with about Thursday. So I am not Sisyphus. But I am a foreigner and it is easier for me to withdraw from such a situation and get away with it. Teachers here seem to have fallen into two categories today: those wearing bandanas and repainting, and those wearing suits and supervising.

I take back the part about my useless work level being low. I just spent three hours translating a chart (not a very useful chart) which is supposed to map the evolution of plants on one side and animals on the other. Most of the time was sucked by trying to get the font and size to perfectly match the hand-painted Kazakh. And this time, it wasn’t self-motivated. The problem is that there’s not a dictionary which translates from Kazakh biological terms into English terms. And on this chart is an extra phyla with a drawing of some indecent creature, pink and lumpy. No idea of what it’s supposed to be or what the drawing is of. So I should have just written “advanced corn smut” for fun and left it, but I tried my durndest and have added a phylum to the annals of biology for the benefit of my students, who will have the chart for a single class period before it’s returned to the other school. Sigh

cat

My new cat is not a lovely cat. She always smells like fish, a little, and always has bad breath. She has enormous hips, and when she sleeps on the fireplace, her bum is always hanging over the side because she can’t fit on it properly. But the most stunning feature is that she can’t purr; she snores. It sounds exactly like a large man snoring, and I give her pieces of bread to keep her occupied, not out of deep affection.

I had a dream about my host mother and the cat last night. I dreamt that we (who? I dunno. Some friends and I who were staying in some posh condo for a vacation) were watching the cats crawl on each other. And the cats were saying “mozhna, mozhna” because Dilda Apa had told them to. But they were acting very rude, hurting each other. And they were all the same cat – the cat who lives with us whose name I just can't get.

At dinner, the cat has been getting bolder and bolder. After all, she lives in a house with four gentle and fairly passive people. The cat will hop up in Shataghoul’s place when she gets up for the sugar, and everyone will kind of look at the cat for a while and then say softly, “kit.” [Leave.] Or, the cat will leap at the table with claws ready and sink them into the dastarhan (tablecloth, loaded with symbolism), while her rear swings. Snoring loudly, she’ll stay there for a few minutes until someone throws her bread.

Slightly related to this topic, when I came home yesterday, the cat was snoring outside the door and pacing like a zoo animal, and when I came into the house, there was a huge bag on the floor smelling like old meat and leaking blood. Yes, there it was. As it turns out, there’s a tradition that a family buys most of an animal every winter and they have a big party which involves eating as much meat as possible at a sitting or two. One of the courses is “bowl of meat.” Another is “Chunks of fat Surprise.” So, of course, the cat was as close to frantic as the cat gets, but was kept outside, out in the world of three-legged dogs. It was a warm night (above freezing) and the dogs were all busy, hopping around the streets and looking intense.