Naryn? Nope. Narnia.
So, my plans have been thwarted once again. Lately we’ve had a lot of travel restrictions due to roadblocks and political demonstrations. I can’t get into the specifics but if you’re interested I’m sure you can find information online. Let’s just say that ‘stable’ isn’t the word that I’d use to describe the situation. I wanted to go down to Naryn because we have 4 other volunteers down there serving from JMU. One of the girls is leaving in late May so I wanted to go before she leaves to take a picture of all of us together. My plan is to write an article about our service here and send it into Montpelier, the JMU alumni magazine. I know. I’m a dork. Hopefully our restriction will be lifted by next week. Even if I wasn’t going to go anywhere anyway, it’s just hard knowing that we can’t leave our houses (except to go to school) even if we wanted to. Oh well, Phil just gave me the complete Chronicles of Narnia so at least I have some good reading to do.
I think I experienced another one of those moments where the information I received was, ‘lost in translation.’ So I think I have started to understand why Bocktaer’s 15-year-old sister came here. It wasn’t to work in Bishkek, it was to work in our house. As much as I complained before about the ants in my distiller and how the house was always a mess I feel even worse that this 15 year old girl is solely responsible for cleaning up after everyone in the house. We are all young able-bodied people who should be self-sufficient at this point. I have started to pilfer my dirty dishes so she doesn’t clean them before I have the chance. Here, when milk comes from the local cow, it isn’t exactly pasteurized, which means that you have to boil it before you drink it. Well, I was in the process of transferring it from the pot back to the clean jar but when I went to grab it 10 seconds later, it literally vanished. Now that’s odd. Where could it have gone? It was only she and I in the house so I thought I was going crazy when I couldn’t figure out what happened to it. Finally, I asked her if she knew what I did with it and she told me she put it away. I feel like she’s walking around behind me with a dustpan at my heels. I have now realized that the discomfort I feel for the house being spic and span is far greater than the discomfort experienced by a few drowned ants.
On top of that, I recently realized I can’t even communicate with her. Since she’s from Kochkor, a pretty remote place in Kyrgyzstan, she hasn’t been exposed to Russian all that much. When she first came, everyone was like, she’s shy, she’s shy. She’s not shy. I’ve seen her talk quite a bit and she even belts out singing when she thinks no one’s listening. I guess they were just trying to save face because she and I don’t speak the same language. Trust me though, if it’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that there are a million ways to communicate that don’t involve words. Since my Russian is improving I haven’t had to resort to charades or silly little pictures anymore but I have no problem dusting those off. Some of the best conversations I’ve had in this country were in the first month when I could only say 2 (very broken) sentences in Russian. I hope she warms up to me eventually.
On a totally unrelated note, some of other volunteers and I have noticed that our English has actually deteriorated since we’ve been here. I know, that seems impossible, we’re English teachers. I’m so used to speaking Russian that I have found I can’t come up with anything besides super-simplified, over-annunciated sentences in English. It just took me 2 minutes just to think of the word “deteriorating”. I ran this by a few other volunteers and they said it’s happening to them as well. Charlie actually had to spell the word, “hospital” in his head before he wrote it down. I said that shouldn’t be right though, my vocabulary should be at an all-time high since I’m ingesting so many books so quickly. I guess recognition is a lot easier than recollection. My worst slip-up was when (I’m SO ashamed to admit this) I wanted to say “better” and actually dropped the word, “gooder”. I know. I know. Charlie and Rick slowly turned their heads towards me with faces that registered reactions somewhere between disbelief and disgust.
Me fail English!? That’s unpossible!
I think I experienced another one of those moments where the information I received was, ‘lost in translation.’ So I think I have started to understand why Bocktaer’s 15-year-old sister came here. It wasn’t to work in Bishkek, it was to work in our house. As much as I complained before about the ants in my distiller and how the house was always a mess I feel even worse that this 15 year old girl is solely responsible for cleaning up after everyone in the house. We are all young able-bodied people who should be self-sufficient at this point. I have started to pilfer my dirty dishes so she doesn’t clean them before I have the chance. Here, when milk comes from the local cow, it isn’t exactly pasteurized, which means that you have to boil it before you drink it. Well, I was in the process of transferring it from the pot back to the clean jar but when I went to grab it 10 seconds later, it literally vanished. Now that’s odd. Where could it have gone? It was only she and I in the house so I thought I was going crazy when I couldn’t figure out what happened to it. Finally, I asked her if she knew what I did with it and she told me she put it away. I feel like she’s walking around behind me with a dustpan at my heels. I have now realized that the discomfort I feel for the house being spic and span is far greater than the discomfort experienced by a few drowned ants.
On top of that, I recently realized I can’t even communicate with her. Since she’s from Kochkor, a pretty remote place in Kyrgyzstan, she hasn’t been exposed to Russian all that much. When she first came, everyone was like, she’s shy, she’s shy. She’s not shy. I’ve seen her talk quite a bit and she even belts out singing when she thinks no one’s listening. I guess they were just trying to save face because she and I don’t speak the same language. Trust me though, if it’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that there are a million ways to communicate that don’t involve words. Since my Russian is improving I haven’t had to resort to charades or silly little pictures anymore but I have no problem dusting those off. Some of the best conversations I’ve had in this country were in the first month when I could only say 2 (very broken) sentences in Russian. I hope she warms up to me eventually.
On a totally unrelated note, some of other volunteers and I have noticed that our English has actually deteriorated since we’ve been here. I know, that seems impossible, we’re English teachers. I’m so used to speaking Russian that I have found I can’t come up with anything besides super-simplified, over-annunciated sentences in English. It just took me 2 minutes just to think of the word “deteriorating”. I ran this by a few other volunteers and they said it’s happening to them as well. Charlie actually had to spell the word, “hospital” in his head before he wrote it down. I said that shouldn’t be right though, my vocabulary should be at an all-time high since I’m ingesting so many books so quickly. I guess recognition is a lot easier than recollection. My worst slip-up was when (I’m SO ashamed to admit this) I wanted to say “better” and actually dropped the word, “gooder”. I know. I know. Charlie and Rick slowly turned their heads towards me with faces that registered reactions somewhere between disbelief and disgust.
Me fail English!? That’s unpossible!
posted by Katie P. at 2:09 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home