A finer dork every day

Written January 20 (didn't post then because I forgot the flash drive):

So it’s the end of week three at site and the end of my first week as a full-time English teacher. My first act when entering class was to move the desks from their straight static rows into a big (rather lopsided) circle and then had the kids get up and throw balls at each other reciting the alphabet and numbers. I won many a heart and mind by Monday afternoon and the number of kids showing up for each club increased as the week progressed. My schedule is still in the experimentation phase so who I’m teaching, how, when, and with whom tends to change daily (I’m getting used to winging it), but it looks like I’m teaching mostly English clubs to kids aged 10-17 with a few actual school lessons on the side. Basically I’m working a 6 day week beginning at 8:30am and ending in the early afternoon and, for the most part, only teaching the best, brightest, and most motivated students the school can offer. It’s pretty cushy for me, but I hope to switch away from the clubs in the future as child labor is an essential part of most family incomes here and only kids not needed at home (males) have the free time to come to an English club outside of normal school hours.

Even four months in I’m still getting used to the fact that I’m not in Africa. It’s easy to remember I’m not in America (no McDonalds for a start), but pre-service training was, to all extents and purposes, one big glorified semester abroad so sometimes I forget I’m in Central Asia and not back in Africa. And, unlike Kenya, it gets cold here. Actually it’s sub-freezing 24-7. I’m getting used to the cold, though, now that I’m learned to never count on the presence of a heater. The nature of my suburban upbringing led me to assume at first that because gas and electricity are free and radiators inexpensive that all interiors would be heated. This assumption led me to nearly loose toes when I attended a wedding party wearing only tights and underwear under my dress. I made small talk, ate sheep soup and rice, and then danced (waved my arms while standing in a circle of women), all the while contemplating frostbite and whether not feeling my toes was an improvement over feeling the sharp sting of cold. The school is also unheated so classes have been shortened from 45 minutes to 35 so the kids (and the teachers) don’t get sick. I’m also becoming accustomed to sleeping wearing three layers of shirts, two pairs of socks, two layers of pants, and a scarf around my waist all under two blankets and my sleeping bag. Every night I feel like I’m hunkering down for hibernation, swathed in layers of material more snugly than peanuts in a Snickers bar. I long for summer with its release from pounds of clothing and yet also dread the loss of my comfortable cocoon. My host family has fun telling me stories about what I’ll expect from the desert summers here: large bugs crawling on me at night and into the food during the day, a sun so hot even folks with tans get burned in an hour, and the only possible activities while the sun is up being sleep and eating watermelons.

I’m continually surprised when I hear familiar American music and tunes appearing in unexpected places. I can’t tell decide which was the most disorientating: the day when the evening news was introduced with a Turkmen instrumental version of “Memory” from Cats followed immediately by the Star Wars “Imperial March” or the Turkmen Independence Day fireworks orchestrated to the main theme of Pirates of the Caribbean. The daily news begin daily with either the score of “Gladiator” or “Fellowship of the Ring.” I can only imagine the record company reading the copyright request, asking themselves where the hell is Turkmenistan and why do they want to use battle music or evil-villain themes to introduce the weather forecast? It took me a minute or two to recognize the tunes (a day to recognize LOTR) and realize why I felt the montage of picturesque Turkmen floral, mountainous, and holy historical sites were so at odds with the sword-swinging soundtrack. “Jingle Bells” is also everywhere as the generic song for childhood and child-like situations in Turkmen television, film, and music videos. Although superficially associated with the New Years holiday, “Jingle Bells” is also sung divorced from any seasonal context so pops up everywhere. Kids sing it to me in the streets as it’s usually the only English song they know. I’m carefully considering what songs to teach in class as I know whichever I choose will literally haunt my wanderings whenever I encounter students in town.

Another sign that I’m slowly becoming redefined here is that I haven’t had a soda in 10 days. Shocking, isn’t it? The last time I went so many consecutive days without a Coke was a long ago Lent when I tried to give it up and succeeded for little over a week before going to a party and drinking a liter almost single handedly. It’s possible the next time I’m in Ashgabat I’ll do similarly [a note from three weeks later -- I drank a liter and a half when I was last in Ashgabat, vibrated on the taxi ride home, and didn’t sleep all night] but Baharly is rather bare of Coca Cola products so I fight the caffeine and sugar cravings with gallons of tea (good for the body) and lots of chocolate (good for the soul). When I consider how much oil and fat I consume in every meal I can hear my arteries screaming.

I’m going through a “literature made into movies” phase. In the past three weeks I’ve sped through “Fight Club,” “Atonement,” and “Cold Mountain.” The first is a great book, although a bit depressing: its central message is that destruction and pain are the only trustworthy forces in the world and all attempts at beauty and contentment are bullshit. The last two, despite differences of time and place, are so similar in their theme of love and hope enduring despite war, distance, and despair that they shamed me to suck up my own transition anxieties. It’s both fortunate and unfortunate that every movie I watch and book I read here I tend to perceive only in terms of how its message applies to my life and how I can either incorporate it into my experience or reject it as irrelevant or counterproductive. It’s hard to just read a book for itself. Clichéd stories of young people making their way through new worlds and making friends despite obstacles are suddenly deeply poignant while stories of characters whining about their fates and the shallowness of life are so annoying I want to feed their books to the furnace. The exception is Hamlet, whose “to be or not to be” speech has become something like a prayer. I came to the Peace Corps to learn to be cool (and help people, yada yada yada), but I think I’m just becoming a bigger dork. Eh, there are worse fates.