October 10, 2007

October 10, 2007

So tomorrow we get to go into Ashgabat and get the second round of vaccinations and a lovely tour of the Peace Corps office. Being the person who I am I naturally left all the emails I needed to write to tonight and OF COURSE the electricity just went out. Of course.

So now I’m sitting here, in the dark, in a compound full of unruly loud children who love to randomly throw open the door to see the weird American girl sitting in the dark in front of the computer that now has about 80 percent battery life left.

But nevertheless I’m going to blog until I possibly can’t anymore because Internet is a precious, precious thing that I have been looking forward to for an entire week now and I’m going to get out as much as possible.

Today I got to spend some time in the school I’ll be working in for the next three months. The second I walked in, twenty 12-year-olds jumped to their feet and yelled at the top of their lungs, “GOOD AFTERNOON, TEACHER!”

It was pretty awesome. I might even say that was the highlight of my day because it was so damn cute.

The children were so eager to learn…they were waving their hands around like crazy hoping to get called on. Every girl wears a green dress and white apron, with her hair tied in two braids and a little hat on top. Boys’ uniforms consist of black pants, white shirt, tie, jacket, cute little hat and shiny black shoes. They’re absolutely adorable!

The food thing is just taking time to get used to…I suppose it’s my body’s way of adjusting to the new bacteria in the food, or the lack of preservatives since everything here is natural. In the morning I eat eggs that are from the chickens in the yard, bread that is baked in the oven outside, etc.

Turkmenistan is known for its melons…I think there’s around 1100 different kinds here, and I’ve had about 3 of them so far which isn’t bad for a person who doesn’t really like fruit, but the desert air and the gastric calamities have caused me to be dehydrated so I’m forcing myself to eat anything that has lots of water.

I see different camels every day to and from school…either tied up in someone’s yard or just randomly wandering throughout an empty lot of dirt, grazing on random plants here and there. The first time I saw one I jumped up and down in excitement…then by the 6^th or 7^th time it started to not matter anymore.

Our country director came and had lunch with us today, and the nine of us sat around the large tablecloth on the floor of Liz’s host mom’s house and ate plov and drank tea and soda. He told us that he was standing at a bazaar one day and a kid asked him if he was American. When he responded that he was with the Peace Corps the child told him with excitement that his English teacher was with the Peace Corps and that now he is planning on going to college in America because of her.

Because of HER.

To one person, you may be the world.