merry christmas and happy new year!

Hi everyone,

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I don’t really get internet access very often, so my updates will be few and far between, but everything’s going well. I’m in the far southern part of the country, so my weather is nothing to complain about compared to the rest of the country. But it is snowing, the temperatures now are only in the high 20’s Fahrenheit. By January it’ll probably get down closer to 0 Fahrenheit, but the rest of the country is already there. In the North the highs are at 5 or 10 degrees right now (and the sun doesn’t stay up very long up there). In the South it gets really hot in the summers, though.

My work is going fine. I teach English at a small college located in a run down Soviet era building. The college has a bunch of different majors; I only teach to those studying English. The students range from 16 to 20 years old and are almost all girls (82 out of 85 students). This is because all of my students will probably be English teachers in primary and secondary schools (even the ones who can’t speak any English) and teaching is a female job here. Many of the other volunteers around the country are teaching at secondary schools (6^th to 11^th grades) which brings different challenges than the ones I have. At the college, I teach classes in their 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th year of college. Each class has very good students and many who are not so good. (But discipline isn’t really a problem at this level like it would be with younger kids.) At the same time, out of secondary school the best students go to universities in the cities. A few of the better students at the college will too, but for the most part they’ll all stay in the village for most of their lives. In the 2^nd year course, you can’t tell that some of the students have ever studied English, but a couple are better than some in the 4^th course. The 3^rd course is generally decent. I only teach spoken English to the 2^nd and 3^rd courses, but I have to teach a bunch of different subjects to the 4^th course because they’re supposed to understand English at that point. These include phonetics (Mr. Eric: “Yeah, that sounds right. No, that doesn’t… and I don’t know why.”), history of the English language (directly from a book, never really read about the lexicology of Old English in my free time), foreign literature (simplified Sherlock Holmes stories, etc), and a class on America (We did political parties this week so I wrote a political opinion survey and assigned it for homework. I have a feeling they’re all gonna come back raging conservatives. Don’t think they do abortion around here.). The best five or six students (including one of my sisters) understand most of what I say and write on the board and they’ll translate to the rest of the students (even if you tell them not to). No student ever fails a class here, so there are quite a few students who don’t know anything, but it’s not something I’m stressing over. There are four other English teachers at the college. My counterpart is a guy who speaks really good English. He could be teaching at a university in the city but he wants to stay closer to home for now and gives private lessons on the side to compensate for the pay cut. The three other teachers are all women younger than me. Their English is good enough to teach from the book in class, hopefully it will get better as we talk more out of class. Two of them are married; one of them is pregnant and the other will be soon (she just got married). Oh, and a bunch of my students are married, too. I have successfully convinced them (I think) that Americans are weird and don’t get married until they’re 30. For a guy here that’s not unheard of, but if you’re a woman you’re spoiled meat if you’re 25 and single.

My host family is great. I have a grandma, a grandpa, mom, dad, and five host sisters. Grandparents always move in with their youngest son when they retire. Daughters leave the family and join their husband’s family. This is why it’s a bit of a crisis if you don’t have a son; it’s like a retirement. Maybe my parents can come back to the States with me. (My mom already introduces me to everyone literally: “This is my son who came from America”) I kind of look like the locals, too. Still working on the speaking part. The second oldest daughter is pretty good at English, she can explain anything I need help with. The third and fourth daughters are in 7^th and 8^th grade. They just started learning English; every other night or so we’ll sing songs off my laptop together. (Including Garth Brooks, the Dixie Chicks, Allison Krauss, and the Kingston Trio) The other week I heard one of them singing one of the Dixie Chicks songs to herself and I texted (with cellphone, that’s how we keep in touch) another volunteer here and said “chalk another one up for America”.

As for language learning, my family (and two-thirds of the village) is Uzbek. They all know Kazakh but speak Uzbek at home. The two are pretty close but there are definite differences. Once I learn a little bit more Kazakh I may switch over to Uzbek so I can actually understand more of what they’re saying. Because Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet Union and there is still a large Russian population here (especially in the North), everyone speaks Russian here. All Kazakhs and Uzbeks speak Kazakh (and the government’s trying to push it more), and only Uzbeks speak Uzbek. Hopefully that’s not too confusing; it makes sense when you’re here.

Last tidbit: the issue of national food. The Kazakh national food is Besh Barmak. It’s wide flat noodles on a large tray with chunks of meat on top with some soup broth poured over the whole thing. It’s pretty good, too. The Uzbek national food is Polow, which is basically fried rice. By far Polow is my favorite food here (we eat it every Friday). One of the first questions people ask about America is “What is your national food?”. You can either explain that we have many national foods because we’re all mixed, or you can just say “hamburgers!” I do some of both. So far the only thing I think I miss is Mexican food, but a leafy green salad may be next after a winter of preserved vegetables. And the only beverage I drink here is tea (black, though there is some green around too). I probably drink two or three pots per day; we’re talking every meal and anytime I sit down. This is an issue on weekends: I can’t sleep in past 9am because I have to get up to pee. (And the outhouse is way outback, you have to actually wake up to get out there.)

Also, I am the first Peace Corps volunteer at my college and I did not replace another volunteer in my village. This is good because I don’t get compared to anyone else or told how much my language sucks compared to someone who was here for two years. But there was a volunteer at a secondary school in town a couple years ago. He worked with a lot of the teachers in the surrounding region, many of whom I’ve met. This is really good because they’re all familiar with Peace Corps volunteers and what we can (and can’t) do.

In sum, I’m doing fine and I’m still in good spirits. It doesn’t really feel like Christmas here because there’s nothing around to remind you of it. Everyone has a celebration for new years, too. I miss you all and hopefully you’re all doing well. Family pictures are important here; I show everyone all of the extended family pictures I brought. Everyone seems to like all of the Chan/Jan cousins, especially (the numbers of cousins is about equal to any Uzbek or Kazakh family). Keep in touch, either through e-mails or letters. Even if I don’t respond it’s always great to get stuff. With that said, the rural postal system is questionable at best; for now I would say don’t send anything more valuable than a letter until I actually get the letter my parents sent a month ago. Take care, Love, Eric