A frog slowly boils

School has begun once more after a week of idle relaxing and sleeping until mid-afternoon. So I feel somewhat jet-lagged, having to once more fit my bio-rhythms into a lifestyle that includes being awake with the sun. It’s amazing how quickly the body and brain adjust to having no demands on them and then how slowly they readjust to moving, thinking, and planning. A week of stress-free easiness has at least stalled my excessive eating and my race toward obesity has slowed a little (at least for this month).

The great thing about living so close to the capital is that while other volunteers in more distant regions had to negotiate train tickets and air-fares to reach the Peace Corps office during spring break, all I had to do was catch a taxi and then wait around the computer as friends came to me. Although I didn’t plan ahead enough to really take advantage of their presence and stay the week in the city, it was good times for the brief period I could see some new faces. They came bringing new perspectives (Baharly is a really good site, apparently, with great people and decent facilities) and new stories of piss, shit, and sex from the lives of other volunteers. I’ll be a good friend and not broadcast these stories over the internet, but write me a letter/email and I’ll share (sans names) full details. If I have learned any small token of worldly wisdom here it’s that Americans (may be all people) do very strange things when in foreign countries and that these stories are always more funny than the same event occurring on their home turf.

I ate sheep intestines today at lunch and discovered that my “yuk” reflex is broken, or at least blessedly temporarily turned off so that I can enjoy my meals in peace. I also realized that I have forgotten what most fruits and vegetables, along with all Mexican and Chinese food, tastes like. I remember how the food made me feel, but not the actual flavor and texture. There was a time during training when I thought longing for my mother’s vegetarian chili and a good rare burger with all the trimmings would make me go insane, but except for an occasional dream where I’m eating a pizza I can’t taste, I’m getting over it. Hooray for cultural adjustment. Signs that I became cultural adjusted without noticing it (like a frog slowly boiling) have been abundant in the past week. I walked from my co-teacher’s house to my own busy with my own thoughts and realized when I reached my front gate that I couldn’t remember a single moment of the journey – the kind of “following my feet” phenomenon I used to only get when driving around my MD hometown. Last night I knew I had at least four distinct ants crawling on my legs and stomach, but I fell asleep anyway. I also no longer leap in my skin when I see in the corner of my eye the abnormally large frog that lives in our bathroom.

The last sign of my cultural adaptation is in details of my transformed personal appearance. It’s not just the weight gain (which is considerable), but my hair has grown out enough that it can be formed into a perfect bun every morning, pulled to the base of my skull so tight that the edges of my hair-line are sore. With two new Turkmen summer dresses (in garishly bright-colored material that I didn’t choose – one has flowers ­-- but matches my host-sisters’ tastes), I now have a full Turkmen wardrobe to respectfully teach in all seasons. I also bought my first pair of Turkmen shoes. In winter there are 15-20 styles of black shoes available in the market, styles which everyone recognizes, knows the price, and the expected wear (my nondescript and boring American shoes caused a stir simply due to their novelty). In summer, however, there is only one style of shoe (in different colors) which every female from age 5 to 75 wears: three dollar “Chico’s Italian-Made” plastic sandals with one strap across the top and a buckle. The largest size available is a European size 40 (I’m a 42, 44), so my toes drag the ground in the front, my heel pokes out the back, and I hobble along the street on thin red plastic platforms which are made to fit more conventional feet. If I was a character in a novel then this detail would probably have profound symbolic significance, but as it is, I just have dusty toes, a sore in-step, and a growing sense of irony that I joined the Peace Corps to become more materialistic.

For the record, my host uncle brought over his bicycle and it is absolutely possible to forget how to ride a bike, but falling off stays fixed in muscle memory forever.

And the latest installment in the thrilling adventure of “what is Annie reading this week” is that “Billy Bathgate” by E.L. Doctorow is a great book that has amazing cinematic potential (1930s gangsters and hustlers), and “The God of Small Things” deserves its Booker Prize (amazing story). “Possession” by A.S. Byatt is a poetically-written reminder of why I didn’t become an English major and what is at stake if you go straight to grad school and lose touch with real life: you can get utterly overwhelmed by fiction, literary criticism, philosophy not grounded in real life experiences, and whiners. I can add “Possession” to the short list of books which make a better movie (along with the original “Zorro,” all three “Lord of the Rings,” The 5th Harry Potter book, “The Scarlett Pimpernel,” and “Emma”), because you only have to endure its melodramatic plot and obnoxious characters for two hours rather than fifteen.

A moment for a Turkmen language lesson, brought to you by my helpful “Colloquial Turkmen” textbook which gives me all the phrases I could ever need for life:

Balagynyzy utuklemalimi? Shall we iron your pants?
Men bagyrm agyrar. My liver hurts.