Get ready for pics

May 26, 2009

Back in my training village. Nothing much has changed. My little sister is off visiting relatives so it has been very quiet around the house lately. Yesterday Thomas, me and a few other volunteers decided to go into the city to use the internet. We are supposed to call our Kyrgyz teachers before we leave our village just to inform them we are going... but after a week of being in Talas and not having to call, we forgot. We and called right when we got into the city. Our teacher reminded us to be sure to call when we got back in our village (always the rule). But again we got back home and forgot. Our curfew is 9pm. And sure enough our teacher calls frantically at 8:45 wondering where we are and if we made it back. I felt awful... especially since we had been home since 6:30! Then today we accidentally left both teachers in the village when they were supposed to accompany us to our training session. We all felt horrible... again! So we invited them to go out with us on Friday. We are going to hit up this local Georgian resturaunt... they have great food, a bar, music and dancing. When we invited them one of our teachers responded, "Yes I will go get down and boogie!" I love that she knows phrases like that. Our two teachers are the most awesome women ever! I really admire them.

Today we got together at a local school and led an English Club. English Clubs are really popular here. It's basically a time for students who want extra help learning English get together with a teacher and play games to improve their language. So we led a club about animals.... animal vocabulary, animal sounds, then we tried to play pictionary with drawing animals. It didn't turn out so well. Half the time the student would read the word out loud and a third of the time they drew the wrong animal. One girl drew a monkey that looked a lot like a penguin. Then I accidentally told the club that a zebra didn't make a sound, because I couldn't remember that a zebra sounded like a horse.... duh! It was fun even with all of the oddities.

Our family has been very busy lately. Both parents come home from work around 7pm. And now it's planting time so they spend about 2 hours in the garden planting onions, tomatoes, carrots and potatoes. So we eat dinner pretty late every night. Tonight we ate at 10pm. Hmm.... I want to kick my brother in the butt and get him to get out there and help. He doesn't work or go to school... or help his parents... but that complaint is for another venue.

I expected to get the package my mom sent today... but I didn't. It was a bummer. Mail is a big deal for all of the volunteers because we all have so little contact with anything familiar. Even a package with a volunteers favorite magazine is a huge deal. We're starved for the familiarities we left in America. Especially the familiar voices...

I got a nice comment from Catherine the other day. I spent the rest of the day reminising about the amazing times I had in Gretna with her family. That led to thinking about Love At Work and the past 2 summers. Sometimes I feel like I'm coming out of fog. Like I've just been in a routine where I don't think to much about the time that is going by... then it's like I wake up and all of a sudden I realize how much I miss people I knew.... It's a wierd cycle that keeps going around and around.

I am so exicted to finally get to post pictures! I have been wanting to share this place with everyone.... it's such a beautiful country!