Talas Update 2

May 20, 2009
Today was my first official day visiting Talas. It was one of the most overwhelming days I have had since coming here. First off, the accent in Talas is different and hard for me to understand. Before coming here I thought my language was progressing so well and I was really proud of my communication skills. But now I am not so sure that I am as good as I thought. I visited the school I will be working at. It is a secondary school (1st-11th grade) with about 300 students and 20 teachers. My host mom walked Thomas and I both to the school and then introduced us to EVERY teacher. I met my co-teacher who is incredibly nice and speaks some English. There are 2 English teachers at the school so I will probably end up teaching with both of them. The other English teacher was absent today because her daughter was sick. After we met all of the teachers, my co-teacher had 3 of her best English students show us around the school. They also showed us the small museum in the school that is dedicated to the man the school is named after. There was one boy in the group of students who had fantastic English and told us he wanted to study to be a doctor. He asked us if we knew Kyrgyz and we told him we were learning. He responded "we will learn together". It was nice. I think I see the makings of an English club with those 3 students. After visiting my school, we all (me, thomas, host mom, and co-teacher) walked down to the boarding school that Thomas will work at. My co-teacher was nice enough to come along and help translate what we didn't understand. The Director of the boarding school was out sick and no one else seemed to know what Thomas' exact job would be. They kept asking us what he would be doing. He was like "I guess that is up to the Director but I am supposed to be teaching about health." It was a little wierd that they didn't know. There was a volunteer that worked at the boarding school before Thomas and they told us that he only taught the kids one day a week and spent the rest of the time with the teachers. Also a little wierd. It was a nice school though. It is a state run facility for children with developmental disabilities. Their parents send them to study and live at the school and they go home on holidays. While they are there they learn skills like farming and handi- craft making. Tomorrow we will go back on our own. I will observe a few classes taught by my English teacher and draw a map of the school. Thomas will hopefully meet his Director and find out what he is expected to do. Then we have to go into the city to open a bank account. One of the current volunteers here is going to help us.
We went to the bazaar (open market) with our family today. It was rather large and had everything I could possibly think to buy.... food, clothes, pots, pans etc. When we come back to live permanently I will probably buy a few skirts for the summer so I can blend in and not be too hot. Our family has been very accomodating so far. They always ask us what we want to eat before they cook a meal, even though we keep telling them we will eat anything. Today they bought us some apples, apricots, an ice cream and a blanket for our bed. They also refused to let us pay our portion of the taxi, even though we are supposed to. We are not allowed to help cook dinner or clean up either... they told us that right now we are visiting and we are guests but when we come back to live permanently we wil be family and then we can help. Talk about serious hospitality! The only thing I can see being more difficult here than our training site is that there is no water in or around the house. There is a pump about 5 minutes down the road that we will have to walk to to get water. And with the host son moving to Bishkek soon, I am sure we will be fetching a lot of our own water. I think we got a little spoiled in our training village.
Today was overwhelming but I think it can only get better now!
I miss familiarity!