Five Months

On Sunday I submitted my Mid-Year Report, which is required of all Fulbright grantees half-way through their grant period. Which means that it has been five months since I landed in Dushanbe, and now there are less than five months left. All of a sudden, ten months seems not long at all, and I realize that I will soon be one of the Sharons and Davids that people here remember coming and leaving. 

Marking January 1st - while fun - was not as meaningful to me. I still measure my life in school years. If I am to measure by calendar year, then I should be reflecting on all of 2012: writing my senior essay and hanging out in our common room and graduating and the Cove and Tajikistan. It is a colorful and exciting collage, but not a cohesive whole. Rather than making New Year's Resolutions, I have made Fulbright Resolutions, or perhaps Fulbright Realizations: what I have realized since August 20, and what I plan to realize by June 13, when I fly back to the U.S.  

My Fulbright Renewals are the result not only of realizing I am half-way, but also the result of returning after a month of traveling. First to Nepal, then return-trip detour to Almaty, then back in Khujand for a week of winter, then to Italy, where I met my family and celebrated Christmas. I arrived again in Dushanbe on New Year's Eve and came back to Khujand three days later when my baggage arrived. 

I was met at the American Corner by a flurry of students finishing their applications for the Global UGrad progam. I was swept into essay-reading and turning away reference requests. In the three weeks since, I have made myself much busier than I was September-November. I now have morning classes, instead of lazy planning sessions. One is my new series of TOEFL preparation trainings (the American Corner as a Public Organization is not legally qualified to teach 'classes,' only provide 'trainings'). That involved a sign-up, a test to scare people away, and fighting away late-comers. I also have a "Reading Club" (read-aloud time) and a Hunger Games book club. I am teaching an advanced writing workshop (we are working on essays, starting with a biography - think middle school). I am trying to start a competitive debate club, rather than my open-to-all debate/ activity/ discussions. I have had extra classes with visiting groups of 30 kids each from two different nearby towns. I have put a lot of time into thinking about how to teach about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the inauguration.

I have benefited from taking to heart another ETA's self-identification as an after-school programmer rather than a teacher. Extracurricular is a better word: you cannot be 'after school' if there is no school. The government declared there would be no school in January this year because it was supposed to be too cold to heat classrooms - something that does not happen every year, but did happen last year. University students are either in exams or on break. The American Corner is crowded. 

This means I come home more tired and stay up late planning - but now I have real coffee to help me get up in the mornings. And when I am teaching, I am moving and thus warmer than sitting in one place. 

January has been milder than (the one week I saw of) December, but it is still cold. My winter wardrobe includes a scarf every day - worn tied behind my head with the ends hanging - plus leggings, pants, turtleneck, sweater, coat, gloves. All of those are worn inside as well as outside. It used to include black boots, but the heel broke and I haven't had time to take it to the cobblers at the bazaar (they fixed both zippers on the same boots for 5 somoni). 

Our water is not the most reliable: pipes have frozen twice, and the pump stopped working once, but now it just ebbs and flows throughout the day so sometimes we have to turn on the pump to get any warm water or even to get enough to wash the dishes. 

I eat a lot of soup. I made some delicious braised cabbage this week. I try to remember to get vitamins somehow, even though vegetable selection is sparse and I forget about the fruit when it is not shoved at me (apples are now 7 somoni a kilo instead of 1 somoni/free in buckets in the fall). I drink a lot of honey-and-lemon. Lemons here are large and sweet and more lemon-y. 

More plans to realize: See a game of buzkashi. Celebrate Navruz exuberantly. Go hiking. Use my binoculars and my new Guide to the Birds of Central Asia. Try to learn more Tajik music. Actually study Tajik vocab. Spend more time with people. 

The hardest questions for me to answer in my mid-year report were in the "Cultural and Social Adjustment" section. 

1. What were your strategies for getting acquainted with the people and the culture? 
2. What kind of changes did you make in order to adjust to the local culture?  

"Were," "did;" do they mean that my adjusting is all in the past? I am comfortable here, and I think I often know what to expect, so in that sense, yes. But while I might be "adjusted," I am merely "acquainted" with people and culture, and I agree - I do not feel that I know much of anything. I ended up answering in the past tense what I was really meant as directions to my future self for the rest of my time: Be available and present with people.  Listen more than I talk. Work on figuring out when and how to hang out with people. Continue trying to figure out everything.

Notes about Nepal

Nepal was amazing. My overall impressions were "Color!" and "So Many People! (including Tourists!)" I have never been to South Asia, and this was a fascinating introduction. 

I was skeptical before we went:excited to go (on the State Department's dollars), but also confused about what we were going to be conferring about and how it could help us. In the end, it was mostly an opportunity to talk with our compatriots in other countries. 

Hike on our third day: from Telkot to Changu Narayan.

We were technically attending the "Fulbright South and Central Asia Regional English Teaching Assistant Enrichment Seminar." It involved not only the ETAs, but also teachers leading sessions on teaching skills and tools, some of which were very helpful (I was inspired by an energetic and wily older British woman who has been an English teacher in Nepal for over 30 years; one potential future self).

The Tajik ETAs strike a Lenin pose in front of a view on the hike.

We spent all week talking about our teaching experiences - the difficulties - and bragging about our host countries - why you should come visit us. For some it was a mental health break from hard posts. For us, it was an exciting window into other cultures. In the words of one of my colleagues (sorry, a common word here): it was a good kick in the butt. Though our experiences are so different in different countries, so many of the other ETAs were inspiring, or at least exciting to get to know. 

One of our teaching sessions with a Senior ELF in the courtyard of our hotel.

There were 40 of us: we four from Tajikistan, two each from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and then eight from our Nepali host country, four from Bangladesh, five from Sri Lanka, and fifteen from India. We were all together during our Pre-Departure Orientation in Austin last June, but we were also grouped with Sub-Saharan Africa, and countries tended to flock together, so I don't remember meeting anyone in the India group. We are all at different stages in our grants: the India group left the U.S. two days after our Austin meeting, while the Bangladesh group haven't even started teaching yet. Even more diverse are our teaching placements: Tajikistan is the only country where ETAs are not placed in schools. Elsewhere in Central Asia, they are in universities as well as American Corners. In India and Nepal, they are placed in elementary school classrooms, often with classes of 50-70 kids, dealing with first-graders and 10th-graders. So our teaching challenges are very different. But sharing was still worthwhile. 

Areebah and I gave a presentation on Debate in Tajikistan. Others 
presented on different classroom techniques and challenges.

We felt a responsibility to let the rest of the conference know that Tajikistan exists. We started our presentation acknowledging that no one in America knows it exists.  I also put forward a (fragile) hypothesis that we are the fulcrum of cultures that makes sense of South and Central Asia together. We are closer to the rest of Central Asia and the post-Soviet culture, but the Persian language and culture connect us to South Asia and via language (Urdu is heavily influenced by Persian) and visual culture (i.e. clothing: Tajik kurta and izor are similar to shalwar kameez).

Tajikistan group presentation with the slide showing the above link.

The conference was technically only four days: Monday-Thursday. We were supposed to arrive Sunday and leave Friday. But, of course, there are not many flights from Central Asia, so we had to arrive Saturday (which meant leaving Dushanbe Friday, which meant leaving Khujand Wednesday night to make sure I arrived in time). Then we wanted to spend extra time, as long as we were flying such a long way, so I stayed until Sunday, and the other Tajikistan ETAs decided to stay until the next Wednesday. [In the end I arrived back at the same time as the others, due to my travel glitch.]

A Nepali (Buddhist?) traditional parting gift during our closing ceremony.

The four Tajikistan ETAs.

It was also a luxurious vacation: I had real coffee most days, and there was WiFi available for friends with smart phones. Food was made for us. We talked furiously the whole time in real, fluent English. I went to a movie theater, where I saw Life of Pi in 3D (and it was amazing) (and in English). I spent money on souvenirs in Thamel, the shopping area fiendishly cheap and enticing. An area I actually wanted to shop: scarves, warm woolen things (pashmina, cashmere), and handmade paper goods (stationary! journals!). I got to see tourist sites and learn about cultures I know nothing about. I learned about Hinduism and Buddhism - or just the hints at how little I know, and how little of the temple iconography I understood. 

Holiday Card photo at Bhaktapur.

The photos are mostly from our more touristy excursions: Boudhananth, a Buddhist stuppa where I couldn't stop myself buying two thanka (Buddhist paintings), Pashupati, where Hindus burn their dead, and Bhaktapour, an old city nearby filled with temples. Areebah and I also went on a plane flight and saw Everest. I could say more about all of them, but this is already too long - I recommend going yourself.

Boudhananth stuppa.

At the thanka workshop next to Boudhananth.

At Swayambunath when it got cold, with a new scarf.

At Swayambunath.

View from the plane. Everest is the pyramid-shaped peak in the back-right. What was amazing was not so much Everest as the many mountains that are nearly as tall, and the many peaks down below the clouds.

Everest is the pyramid-shaped peak in the back-center. Apparently these flights don't have the best safety records, but we just had to do it.

Because if you didn't get a certificate, then it didn't happen. This is something we see a lot here, so Areebah and I laughed to be given certificates after our 6 a.m. flight. (Yes, it is "Yeti Airlines".)

[More photos of Nepal from my friends are on Facebook, since I am bad at remembering to take photos]