Sunday, February 24, 2008
My TV Interview
This is from last month at our university's sports competition. I'm not sure if it will work, but it took me about a month and 4 or 5 different attempts at various (2 different) internet cafes to get it up. So I hope it works.
Please don't laugh at me.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Insert Creative Blog Title Here
So I neglected to mention anything about the Erik Bedard trade. It’s good to see the O’s finally making a committed effort to full-scale rebuilding. To be fair though, until now they didn’t really have two players good enough to get a 10-player haul like this. As it usually goes with them though, chances are all ten will flake out either immediately or within 2-3 years, depending on when all of them will suffer their career-ending injuries and/or decide eating 6 meals a day at McDonald’s is more important than throwing in between starts (I wish you were reading this, Sidney Ponson).
On to (only slightly) more important things here in Kazakhstan. Although I’m busy, in Kyzylorda I’ve found I have a lot of time to myself to think, mostly as I’m walking around the city getting from place to place. Usually I think of what I think are great, hilarious blog topics, but unfortunately I’m not able to record my thoughts as I’m walking; the people that see me laughing and talking to myself already think I’m weird enough. Either they stare at me because I’m obviously American (although I swear I don’t look any different from the Russians here), because I look crazy laughing and talking to myself, or because I carry a Nalgene. No joke, at least half of all people I walk past on the street, if I follow their eyes, are looking not at me but at my water bottle. To people here it is the strangest thing in the world. I’ve had literally dozens of people ask me what’s in it. One student told me a few weeks ago “You know, I shouldn’t tell you this because it’s a big secret, but everyone at the school talks about and wonders what’s in your water bottle.” I found out the hard way that people here tend toward the gullible (read, overly influenced by the Soviet Union’s storied love affair with alcohol) side when I joked that it’s vodka inside, and people didn’t laugh but nodded knowingly. A few times I’ve had to tell them “No I’m just joking.” On that note, I also could very easily have had my host sister still believing that I dated both Jennifer Love Hewitt and Katie Holmes in the late ‘90s, but I felt too guilty keeping the lie going more than a few minutes. When I asked why she believed me, she said “You’re all from America, it’s possible!”
I unwisely deduced from these interactions that people don’t really know about or use sarcasm as a form of humor here, so I decided to do a lesson centered around the theme of sarcasm. As I found out early in the first lesson, it turns out there’s a Russian word for sarcasm pronounced “sarCASM” with the stress on the last syllable instead of the first. This has happened several times, when I think I have to go into great detail to explain a word to a class, and it turns out there is a Russian cognate that sounds exactly the same as the English word (same thing for “irony,” for example). As a result I hear “Yes, we know, we understand, please stop talking” pretty often. This only stops me for a minute though. A couple of the examples of sarcasm I used were when Joanna would dump an entire bowl of sugar on top of her grapefruit in the morning and someone would say “Why don’t you have some grapefruit with that sugar?” or when we would all go to a fancy new restaurant when we were younger and Betsy and I would order the chicken fingers/french fries dish, and we’d hear “Wow you guys are really branching out this time” (I took this opportunity to explain “branch out”). Most of the students seemed to understand these, though they didn’t find them all that funny. The important thing, though, is that I found them funny.
As for the weather here, it actually got above freezing for a few days in a row last week, which made for a nice sopping muddy surface on the streets, sidewalks, areas inbetween the streets and sidewalks, floors of the buses and marshrutkas, and pretty much every surface that humans might potentially need to walk on. I’ll put it this way, I’ve stopped licking the bottoms of my shoes every afternoon when I get home.
Most of the third-year university students in the teaching department are on their “practice” this semester, which means they are teaching at a local school for 8 weeks. I’ve gotten the opportunity to sit in on a few of their lessons this week, and they’ve been thoroughly impressive and entertaining at the same time. For example, during an English Week competition between the seventh grade students at one school, one team gave themselves the name “Happy Britain,” which made me laugh a little. The students were hilarious- I served as a judge for a couple of these competitions, and every time I awarded the highest score, a 5, the members of the receiving team would pump their fists and yell “Yes!” This only made me want to award a 5 to every team, every time, which I pretty much was doing anyway. Another entertaining aspect was that after each round of one competition, a contestant would be eliminated. Based on their performance in that round, we the judges had to choose which student would be eliminated, and after we made our choice, the teacher would say, “Ok, you must leave now.” One time the eliminated student tried to sit down in a different chair and the teacher said “No you must leave the room.” Pretty harsh. I’ve gotten more and more used to this kind of thing, but I still couldn’t really believe it. These kids here must have pretty thick skin; at age 12 that would have at least sent me running to the bathroom crying. Of course I also cried every time I struck out until I was about 15. I’m not sure how either of these things pertain to what I’m talking about, or why I’m writing about them, so I guess I’ll stop. But I just hope I’m asked to attend many more of these English competitions over the next two years.
On to (only slightly) more important things here in Kazakhstan. Although I’m busy, in Kyzylorda I’ve found I have a lot of time to myself to think, mostly as I’m walking around the city getting from place to place. Usually I think of what I think are great, hilarious blog topics, but unfortunately I’m not able to record my thoughts as I’m walking; the people that see me laughing and talking to myself already think I’m weird enough. Either they stare at me because I’m obviously American (although I swear I don’t look any different from the Russians here), because I look crazy laughing and talking to myself, or because I carry a Nalgene. No joke, at least half of all people I walk past on the street, if I follow their eyes, are looking not at me but at my water bottle. To people here it is the strangest thing in the world. I’ve had literally dozens of people ask me what’s in it. One student told me a few weeks ago “You know, I shouldn’t tell you this because it’s a big secret, but everyone at the school talks about and wonders what’s in your water bottle.” I found out the hard way that people here tend toward the gullible (read, overly influenced by the Soviet Union’s storied love affair with alcohol) side when I joked that it’s vodka inside, and people didn’t laugh but nodded knowingly. A few times I’ve had to tell them “No I’m just joking.” On that note, I also could very easily have had my host sister still believing that I dated both Jennifer Love Hewitt and Katie Holmes in the late ‘90s, but I felt too guilty keeping the lie going more than a few minutes. When I asked why she believed me, she said “You’re all from America, it’s possible!”
I unwisely deduced from these interactions that people don’t really know about or use sarcasm as a form of humor here, so I decided to do a lesson centered around the theme of sarcasm. As I found out early in the first lesson, it turns out there’s a Russian word for sarcasm pronounced “sarCASM” with the stress on the last syllable instead of the first. This has happened several times, when I think I have to go into great detail to explain a word to a class, and it turns out there is a Russian cognate that sounds exactly the same as the English word (same thing for “irony,” for example). As a result I hear “Yes, we know, we understand, please stop talking” pretty often. This only stops me for a minute though. A couple of the examples of sarcasm I used were when Joanna would dump an entire bowl of sugar on top of her grapefruit in the morning and someone would say “Why don’t you have some grapefruit with that sugar?” or when we would all go to a fancy new restaurant when we were younger and Betsy and I would order the chicken fingers/french fries dish, and we’d hear “Wow you guys are really branching out this time” (I took this opportunity to explain “branch out”). Most of the students seemed to understand these, though they didn’t find them all that funny. The important thing, though, is that I found them funny.
As for the weather here, it actually got above freezing for a few days in a row last week, which made for a nice sopping muddy surface on the streets, sidewalks, areas inbetween the streets and sidewalks, floors of the buses and marshrutkas, and pretty much every surface that humans might potentially need to walk on. I’ll put it this way, I’ve stopped licking the bottoms of my shoes every afternoon when I get home.
Most of the third-year university students in the teaching department are on their “practice” this semester, which means they are teaching at a local school for 8 weeks. I’ve gotten the opportunity to sit in on a few of their lessons this week, and they’ve been thoroughly impressive and entertaining at the same time. For example, during an English Week competition between the seventh grade students at one school, one team gave themselves the name “Happy Britain,” which made me laugh a little. The students were hilarious- I served as a judge for a couple of these competitions, and every time I awarded the highest score, a 5, the members of the receiving team would pump their fists and yell “Yes!” This only made me want to award a 5 to every team, every time, which I pretty much was doing anyway. Another entertaining aspect was that after each round of one competition, a contestant would be eliminated. Based on their performance in that round, we the judges had to choose which student would be eliminated, and after we made our choice, the teacher would say, “Ok, you must leave now.” One time the eliminated student tried to sit down in a different chair and the teacher said “No you must leave the room.” Pretty harsh. I’ve gotten more and more used to this kind of thing, but I still couldn’t really believe it. These kids here must have pretty thick skin; at age 12 that would have at least sent me running to the bathroom crying. Of course I also cried every time I struck out until I was about 15. I’m not sure how either of these things pertain to what I’m talking about, or why I’m writing about them, so I guess I’ll stop. But I just hope I’m asked to attend many more of these English competitions over the next two years.
Friday, February 8, 2008
What a Week
Well the Giants pulled off the impossible. Who would have guessed it? (Other than my subconscious.) Can't wait to watch the DVD of this unforgettable upset and reenact Super Bowl Sunday, in April. Was anyone betting on the Giants, or did everyone lose money? One benefit of being so far away from the action is that I was able to stay even.
A couple frustrating moments this week. The first came when I arrived at school for my 8:30 class Wednesday morning. At about 8:33, as class was closing in on beginning (I’m “punctual” in relation to most of my students) the teacher whose class it was came up and asked me if I’d heard the news. Apparently our dean, who has worked very closely with me and Peace Corps, speaks excellent English, and is an all-around great guy, was being replaced. As I’d come to find out later, he was just moving to a different position in the main building, so I’ll be able to stay in contact with him, but this was pretty unsettling news to hear right at the beginning of the day and on the heels of the start of a two-hour class.
There have already been grumblings about the new dean, a woman that reportedly will walk into every class, not introduce herself, ask curtly “Who’s not here?”, “Who hasn’t paid tuition?” and then yell at the teacher in front of her students. She’s only been on the job one day, so I haven’t had the pleasure of this experience yet, but it’s already happened to at least one of the teachers in our department. Can’t wait to meet her!
Another interesting moment came later that day when I arrived home from the school. A few minutes after I came out of the bathroom and was in my room beginning to prepare my lesson, my host mom gave me her usual “Krees tamak zhey” which means “Chris we’re eating now.” But then she did something unusual: she approached my door and said quietly, and with a smile, “In Kazakhstan we always wash our hands after using the toilet.” Embarrassed, I immediately tried to show her the hand sanitizer on my desk that I use about 37 times a day, but she didn’t seem to understand because she just repeated herself twice. Now, I had a few options here. I could have pointed out that the water in our apartment doesn’t run roughly 95% of the time, making conventional hand-washing a frustrating endeavor, that “in America we eat our food with forks,” or that this was the first full sentence she’d spoken directly to me since I’d moved here three months ago. But, I showed restraint and decided against all three, mostly because she would have gotten bored and left long before I figured out how to say any of these things in Kazakh. After thinking about it I later explained to her that I had soap from America that I always wash with after using the toilet that doesn’t require water. Thinking that earlier she hadn’t understood this concept when I’d tried to explain it to her, I asked if they had such kind of soap in Kazakhstan. “Of course,” she said. Of course, why wouldn’t they?
Then today at the post office, my favorite venue for collecting memorable anecdotes, I had another “Only in Kazakhstan” moment (or to be fair, maybe it was an “only at the post office” moment). I collected a slip from my PO Box indicating I had a package and took it to the front desk, where there was no attendant. Now the people at this particular post office are not world-renowned for their friendliness or customer service, so I was not too surprised and was prepared to be patient and wait a while. Perhaps this is why I didn’t go postal as the following events unfolded.
After a couple minutes, a woman came up next to me also requiring assistance. When she saw nobody at the desk she got impatient and bravely walked through the trap-door opening on the side of the front desk, walking directly into the back room where you could hear a lot of women talking and laughing through the open door. When she came out followed by the attendant that usually mans the front desk, I thought “finally I’ll be able to get my package.” Boy was I wrong. The attendant didn’t as much as look up to make eye contact with me, the only other customer at the counter, but instead focused her attention on pad-locking the trap door the other woman had walked through, then turned around and returned to the back room, being sure to close the second door behind her this time. Normally I think I would have been angered by this, but I’ve been to this post office often enough to know the deal. There is simply no concept of customer service; you get helped when you get helped. Apparently it was lunch time and the workers were not to be disturbed.
After several more minutes had passed, another customer came up behind me and started knocking loudly on the counter hoping someone in the back room would hear him and come out. They did, and the same girl came out and said something in Kazakh before turning back around and returning to the party room. Finally after about 25 minutes of us standing at the empty counter, she decided her break was over and finally came out and angrily took my parcel slip. It then took her and her coworker only about 45 seconds to realize that my package was at the other post office on the other side of town. This has also happened before, so I wasn’t too surprised, and actually relieved because the workers at this other post office seem to have souls, unlike their crosstown rivals. Then the weirdest thing happened: as I was waiting for the other woman to bring my slip back, this first woman, who always works hard to give off an impression of hating everything about the world, especially anyone unfortunate enough to be her customer, started chatting me up about where I was from and what I was doing in Kazakhstan. She even smiled as I struggled through my introductory Kazakh responses. I have no idea how to explain this or make sense of it, or what is going through this woman’s head the other 23.9 hours of the day, other than to simply write the whole thing off as another cultural experience I couldn’t begin to understand if I tried.
The story has a happy ending though as I made it to the other post office without incident, picked up my package, and later watched my new “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” DVD for about an hour (thanks Mom/Dad!).
And finally, a funny moment from class this week: another teacher and I gave the students an assignment to draw pictures contrasting the differences between eastern and western cultures. In class I had shown them a number of pictures I’d gotten in an email where one side represented an eastern attitude or belief, the other side western. In one of the classes the students were especially creative, showing a Kazakh man spotting a pretty girl and dreaming in a thought bubble of making her his wife. The opposing picture was of an American man spotting a girl in a bikini and dreaming of a bed. So it’s good to know they think we Americans are so morally upstanding. Several other students' pictures showed Kazakhstanis returning home to a house full of people while their American counterparts returned to an empty apartment. I wanted to correct this oversimplified belief, but then I remembered that for the two years before I moved here I usually came home to an empty apartment myself. So I had to agree.
It's been a busy week, and I'm starting to realize I should have never complained about having nothing to do over break. All of a sudden every citizen of Kyzylorda wants to learn English in private one hour lessons. Luckily for me they mostly forget to show up, which leaves me enough time to eat and occasionally sleep. Whoever told me that in Peace Corps you'll probably have a lot of time to yourself to study the language or read was either a liar or a dirty liar. But truthfully, I don't mind being busy. In the end it's enjoyable working with so many people, trying to get to know their culture and the way they operate, and maybe helping them pick up a little English.
A couple frustrating moments this week. The first came when I arrived at school for my 8:30 class Wednesday morning. At about 8:33, as class was closing in on beginning (I’m “punctual” in relation to most of my students) the teacher whose class it was came up and asked me if I’d heard the news. Apparently our dean, who has worked very closely with me and Peace Corps, speaks excellent English, and is an all-around great guy, was being replaced. As I’d come to find out later, he was just moving to a different position in the main building, so I’ll be able to stay in contact with him, but this was pretty unsettling news to hear right at the beginning of the day and on the heels of the start of a two-hour class.
There have already been grumblings about the new dean, a woman that reportedly will walk into every class, not introduce herself, ask curtly “Who’s not here?”, “Who hasn’t paid tuition?” and then yell at the teacher in front of her students. She’s only been on the job one day, so I haven’t had the pleasure of this experience yet, but it’s already happened to at least one of the teachers in our department. Can’t wait to meet her!
Another interesting moment came later that day when I arrived home from the school. A few minutes after I came out of the bathroom and was in my room beginning to prepare my lesson, my host mom gave me her usual “Krees tamak zhey” which means “Chris we’re eating now.” But then she did something unusual: she approached my door and said quietly, and with a smile, “In Kazakhstan we always wash our hands after using the toilet.” Embarrassed, I immediately tried to show her the hand sanitizer on my desk that I use about 37 times a day, but she didn’t seem to understand because she just repeated herself twice. Now, I had a few options here. I could have pointed out that the water in our apartment doesn’t run roughly 95% of the time, making conventional hand-washing a frustrating endeavor, that “in America we eat our food with forks,” or that this was the first full sentence she’d spoken directly to me since I’d moved here three months ago. But, I showed restraint and decided against all three, mostly because she would have gotten bored and left long before I figured out how to say any of these things in Kazakh. After thinking about it I later explained to her that I had soap from America that I always wash with after using the toilet that doesn’t require water. Thinking that earlier she hadn’t understood this concept when I’d tried to explain it to her, I asked if they had such kind of soap in Kazakhstan. “Of course,” she said. Of course, why wouldn’t they?
Then today at the post office, my favorite venue for collecting memorable anecdotes, I had another “Only in Kazakhstan” moment (or to be fair, maybe it was an “only at the post office” moment). I collected a slip from my PO Box indicating I had a package and took it to the front desk, where there was no attendant. Now the people at this particular post office are not world-renowned for their friendliness or customer service, so I was not too surprised and was prepared to be patient and wait a while. Perhaps this is why I didn’t go postal as the following events unfolded.
After a couple minutes, a woman came up next to me also requiring assistance. When she saw nobody at the desk she got impatient and bravely walked through the trap-door opening on the side of the front desk, walking directly into the back room where you could hear a lot of women talking and laughing through the open door. When she came out followed by the attendant that usually mans the front desk, I thought “finally I’ll be able to get my package.” Boy was I wrong. The attendant didn’t as much as look up to make eye contact with me, the only other customer at the counter, but instead focused her attention on pad-locking the trap door the other woman had walked through, then turned around and returned to the back room, being sure to close the second door behind her this time. Normally I think I would have been angered by this, but I’ve been to this post office often enough to know the deal. There is simply no concept of customer service; you get helped when you get helped. Apparently it was lunch time and the workers were not to be disturbed.
After several more minutes had passed, another customer came up behind me and started knocking loudly on the counter hoping someone in the back room would hear him and come out. They did, and the same girl came out and said something in Kazakh before turning back around and returning to the party room. Finally after about 25 minutes of us standing at the empty counter, she decided her break was over and finally came out and angrily took my parcel slip. It then took her and her coworker only about 45 seconds to realize that my package was at the other post office on the other side of town. This has also happened before, so I wasn’t too surprised, and actually relieved because the workers at this other post office seem to have souls, unlike their crosstown rivals. Then the weirdest thing happened: as I was waiting for the other woman to bring my slip back, this first woman, who always works hard to give off an impression of hating everything about the world, especially anyone unfortunate enough to be her customer, started chatting me up about where I was from and what I was doing in Kazakhstan. She even smiled as I struggled through my introductory Kazakh responses. I have no idea how to explain this or make sense of it, or what is going through this woman’s head the other 23.9 hours of the day, other than to simply write the whole thing off as another cultural experience I couldn’t begin to understand if I tried.
The story has a happy ending though as I made it to the other post office without incident, picked up my package, and later watched my new “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” DVD for about an hour (thanks Mom/Dad!).
And finally, a funny moment from class this week: another teacher and I gave the students an assignment to draw pictures contrasting the differences between eastern and western cultures. In class I had shown them a number of pictures I’d gotten in an email where one side represented an eastern attitude or belief, the other side western. In one of the classes the students were especially creative, showing a Kazakh man spotting a pretty girl and dreaming in a thought bubble of making her his wife. The opposing picture was of an American man spotting a girl in a bikini and dreaming of a bed. So it’s good to know they think we Americans are so morally upstanding. Several other students' pictures showed Kazakhstanis returning home to a house full of people while their American counterparts returned to an empty apartment. I wanted to correct this oversimplified belief, but then I remembered that for the two years before I moved here I usually came home to an empty apartment myself. So I had to agree.
It's been a busy week, and I'm starting to realize I should have never complained about having nothing to do over break. All of a sudden every citizen of Kyzylorda wants to learn English in private one hour lessons. Luckily for me they mostly forget to show up, which leaves me enough time to eat and occasionally sleep. Whoever told me that in Peace Corps you'll probably have a lot of time to yourself to study the language or read was either a liar or a dirty liar. But truthfully, I don't mind being busy. In the end it's enjoyable working with so many people, trying to get to know their culture and the way they operate, and maybe helping them pick up a little English.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
The Latest
Today is a bit of a sad day for me. For the first time since 1990, I’m missing the Super Bowl. Now I know not everyone can lay claim to the fact that they haven’t missed a Super Bowl in 18 years, so let me just reminisce out loud for a minute. It has been quite a ride.
I was there in ‘91 when the Giants (and Scott Norwood) shocked the Bills, in ‘95 when the ‘Niners shocked no one, in ‘97 when Brett Favre gave this bandwagon fan an AIM screenname (PackOs97), in ‘04 when the Patriots held off the Panthers, I was even there in 2000 to see the Titans come one yard short against the Rams. I know many on the east coast claim to have “lost power” and “missed that game” perhaps because of the “severe ice storm” that “shut down most of the mid-Atlantic coast” but to me these are all nothing more than hollow excuses, shrouded in cloaks of embarrassment and despair. I was there, sweating out every second right along with Jeff Fischer, Steve McNair, Eddie George, and Kevin Dyson. I was there.
And today, out of all the recent Super Bowls, I’m missing the one I would have wanted to see the most. I’ll note that there are two things in football I’ve wanted to see since I started following the NFL in about 1991: The Giants win another championship, and a team go undefeated. Today, one of those things will happen. And I won’t see it, unfortunately.
I dreamt the other night that the Giants held off the Patriots in a furious defensive battle, 9-6. This probably proves how little my subconscious has paid attention to the NFL this year, seeing as how most betting men would have more than 15 points being scored in the first 4 minutes of the game (mostly by the Patriots). But until I find out the actual outcome, I’m going to pretend this is what actually happened. This is one of the perks of living halfway around the world. You can make things up in your head and tell yourself they’re true, because there’s no Sports Center to give you the highlights or “results.”
Anyway, enough about football. I hope it’s a good game. In honor of the shrimp dip I’d be having if I were in the US, today I sprinkled some Old Bay into my imitation-Ramen. It was almost the same, except my body is probably screaming for something other than salt and carbs at this point. The most common meal I have here is rachki, a mix of pasta, carrots, potato, and a small helping of meat. Sometimes there’s a curve thrown in and we have rice instead of pasta, pumpkin instead of carrots, or sometimes camel instead of cow meat (which is actually really, really good). I end up eating out a lot too, relying on the local cafes to fulfill my body’s need for the kinds of nutrients found in cucumbers and tomatoes. There’s a really good Korean dish here called “kookcee” that has become a favorite for me, McKenzie, and Cho, the other Americans here in town with me. But wow, what I would do for a giant bowl of spaghetti or a hand-tossed Domino’s pepperoni pizza delivered fresh to my door.
As for a school update, after two weeks of classes, I can say that this semester (knock on wood) is going much better than last semester did. On the first day of class (which was really the second day, since I found out the hard way that most students miss the first day of class after a long break) I laid out my eight rules (in honor of Cal, and also because more would have been too many) and we played a true-false game to make sure they understood the rules. A little condescending maybe, but they seemed to enjoy the activity and understand the rules, and with my blood pressure reaching unsafe levels last semester it was necessary for me to do this. We also discussed our goals and the theme of "Why I'm Here." The second lesson focused on job interviews, which the students also seemed interested in. Hopefully I can come up with enough interesting, practical, and relevant activities to last me 13 more weeks. Creativity was never my strong point, so suggestions are always welcome.
What else? Something that’s been on my mind- I heard a lot about “Kazakh Hospitality” before coming here and in my first few weeks here. I’m realizing that hospitality can manifest itself in different ways according to what culture you find yourself in. For example, my host family has a clearly defined view of hospitality. Most Saturdays they say to me, “Here, why don’t you just stay here with this cat we both know you hate while we all go off to our parents’ presumably much nicer house we’ve never invited you to....but we left food for you.” Of course I say this a little tongue in cheek- my host family is great - they invited me to Shymkent for New Year's and generally take good care of me - but the word “hospitality” with them, as with many other families here, seems to depend more on how well they feed you than, say, how much time they spend talking to you. I think this is a cultural difference between our two countries, one that I’m slowly learning to live with. And one that my almost non-existent ability to speak Kazakh is still at odds with. I always kind of assumed that my language skills would just naturally improve the longer I stayed here; I never would have thought I’d be speaking English 98% of every day. Though this is disappointing for me right now, the way I’m coping is by bragging to all my friends about how good my English will be when I move back in two years. Most of them don’t care, but I tell them this anyway.
Well this was a long one. I guess I had to make up for my two-week silence. There’s plenty more to talk about than I have time to write right now, so I hope to post another update later in the week. Til then, go Giants! If they don’t win, please don’t tell me. Remember I’m still living in a fantasy world and will find out everything that’s actually happened in America when I come back in ‘09.
I was there in ‘91 when the Giants (and Scott Norwood) shocked the Bills, in ‘95 when the ‘Niners shocked no one, in ‘97 when Brett Favre gave this bandwagon fan an AIM screenname (PackOs97), in ‘04 when the Patriots held off the Panthers, I was even there in 2000 to see the Titans come one yard short against the Rams. I know many on the east coast claim to have “lost power” and “missed that game” perhaps because of the “severe ice storm” that “shut down most of the mid-Atlantic coast” but to me these are all nothing more than hollow excuses, shrouded in cloaks of embarrassment and despair. I was there, sweating out every second right along with Jeff Fischer, Steve McNair, Eddie George, and Kevin Dyson. I was there.
And today, out of all the recent Super Bowls, I’m missing the one I would have wanted to see the most. I’ll note that there are two things in football I’ve wanted to see since I started following the NFL in about 1991: The Giants win another championship, and a team go undefeated. Today, one of those things will happen. And I won’t see it, unfortunately.
I dreamt the other night that the Giants held off the Patriots in a furious defensive battle, 9-6. This probably proves how little my subconscious has paid attention to the NFL this year, seeing as how most betting men would have more than 15 points being scored in the first 4 minutes of the game (mostly by the Patriots). But until I find out the actual outcome, I’m going to pretend this is what actually happened. This is one of the perks of living halfway around the world. You can make things up in your head and tell yourself they’re true, because there’s no Sports Center to give you the highlights or “results.”
Anyway, enough about football. I hope it’s a good game. In honor of the shrimp dip I’d be having if I were in the US, today I sprinkled some Old Bay into my imitation-Ramen. It was almost the same, except my body is probably screaming for something other than salt and carbs at this point. The most common meal I have here is rachki, a mix of pasta, carrots, potato, and a small helping of meat. Sometimes there’s a curve thrown in and we have rice instead of pasta, pumpkin instead of carrots, or sometimes camel instead of cow meat (which is actually really, really good). I end up eating out a lot too, relying on the local cafes to fulfill my body’s need for the kinds of nutrients found in cucumbers and tomatoes. There’s a really good Korean dish here called “kookcee” that has become a favorite for me, McKenzie, and Cho, the other Americans here in town with me. But wow, what I would do for a giant bowl of spaghetti or a hand-tossed Domino’s pepperoni pizza delivered fresh to my door.
As for a school update, after two weeks of classes, I can say that this semester (knock on wood) is going much better than last semester did. On the first day of class (which was really the second day, since I found out the hard way that most students miss the first day of class after a long break) I laid out my eight rules (in honor of Cal, and also because more would have been too many) and we played a true-false game to make sure they understood the rules. A little condescending maybe, but they seemed to enjoy the activity and understand the rules, and with my blood pressure reaching unsafe levels last semester it was necessary for me to do this. We also discussed our goals and the theme of "Why I'm Here." The second lesson focused on job interviews, which the students also seemed interested in. Hopefully I can come up with enough interesting, practical, and relevant activities to last me 13 more weeks. Creativity was never my strong point, so suggestions are always welcome.
What else? Something that’s been on my mind- I heard a lot about “Kazakh Hospitality” before coming here and in my first few weeks here. I’m realizing that hospitality can manifest itself in different ways according to what culture you find yourself in. For example, my host family has a clearly defined view of hospitality. Most Saturdays they say to me, “Here, why don’t you just stay here with this cat we both know you hate while we all go off to our parents’ presumably much nicer house we’ve never invited you to....but we left food for you.” Of course I say this a little tongue in cheek- my host family is great - they invited me to Shymkent for New Year's and generally take good care of me - but the word “hospitality” with them, as with many other families here, seems to depend more on how well they feed you than, say, how much time they spend talking to you. I think this is a cultural difference between our two countries, one that I’m slowly learning to live with. And one that my almost non-existent ability to speak Kazakh is still at odds with. I always kind of assumed that my language skills would just naturally improve the longer I stayed here; I never would have thought I’d be speaking English 98% of every day. Though this is disappointing for me right now, the way I’m coping is by bragging to all my friends about how good my English will be when I move back in two years. Most of them don’t care, but I tell them this anyway.
Well this was a long one. I guess I had to make up for my two-week silence. There’s plenty more to talk about than I have time to write right now, so I hope to post another update later in the week. Til then, go Giants! If they don’t win, please don’t tell me. Remember I’m still living in a fantasy world and will find out everything that’s actually happened in America when I come back in ‘09.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)