no school!

My school has been quarrantined! It is closed until December 7th because sooo many teachers and students have the flu! Thanks to medical, I have my handy, dandy flu shot. So hopefully that will keep me safe. I also started taking vitamins and buying oranges (which are FREAKING expensive). Now I need to come up with ways to occupy my time for the next ten days. I am thinking that since I am fresh from IST that I will start creating materials for my future lessons. Like maybe go through all of the resources I got at IST and start making some of the games and activities. That way, I will save time in the future, just being able to grab the pre-made activity, rather than having to sit down and create it. I also want to start writing a calendar plan for next quarter. The one my counterpart wrote for this quarter just isn't working. There is way too much reading and translating texts. Not enough grammar and speaking.

Tomorrow is ait. A muslim holiday. I will go around from neighboor to neighboor with my host mother eating food and fruit and candy and bread until I absolutely, positively cannot eat anymore (actually takes longer than you think!). Having lost 15 pounds since being here, I think I can afford it!

Thanks to all the fantastic friends and family who have send us packages recently! We have enjoyed lots of tasty American food! And we have gotten really good at making things last. It took us 2 weeks to eat a package of Oreos. Actually it really isn't me at all. If I had my way I would have eaten them in two days. It is religiously sensible Thomas who helps me have oreos for an entire 2 weeks!!!

I am thinking about starting a girls club at my school. Just an all encompassing information club where girls can get together in a safe environment and chat and ask questions. It's really hard for them to get information, especially about female health or reproduction. The tricky part is I need to find a local woman, who speaks English, who would be interested in helping me. The language barrier is really difficult. I could understand and answer questions in Kyrgyz but I don't think I could expand on any scientific or medical reasons. Also it might be a little risky for me to lead the club alone. Especially if the girls want to talk about sex or any other "taboo" topic.

I want to do so much and be so proactive... but it's so slow going. There's so much involved in cross cultural exchange, gaining trust, language aquisition, etc. This is when I feel like my social work education comes in so handy. A lot of volunteers can't see that all of that stuff goes hand in hand with sustainable development work so they rush gung-ho into a project and when it doesn't work they get frustrated and bitter and they blame everything on the local people. It's actually a big problem in PC. So many volunteers leave bitter and hating their time here. I DO NOT want to be that person. Just spending time with those kinds of volunteers is draining and frustrating.... and unfortunately there are a lot of them!

It started snowing here. Just a little, but it is beautiful! I am a tiny bit excited for winter... and a lot a bit scared!!!

If you are interested in sending a Christmas package, I could really use some sweaters, a cute skirt or 2 (atleast knee length), and brown or black tights. Thanks!