First Impressions

04:50 11 July 2008

My entire childhood when it comes to roosters was a lie. I was, as I assume most American children were, taught that roosters gave their signature “cock-a-doodle-doo” at the crack of dawn, once a day. At least with Kyrgyz roosters, this is sooooo not the case (a rooster just crowed as I was writing this). The chicken coop is about two meters outside of my window and I have found that while roosters do crow at the ass-crack of dawn, they also crow whenever they damn please. This means they crow in the afternoon, while we are eating dinner, when I am getting ready for bed, past midnight. Yes, they crow all the time. And yes, it can get annoying. But so far, my largest annoyance with this country has been loud poultry. Not bad.

I slept pretty well last night after writing the previous entry and got to bed around eleven. I was woken up by… you guessed it, Mr. Cock-A-Doodle-Doo a few times during the night and I think after six and a half decent hours of sleep I’ll be fine for the day. Our first day of host family PST is going to be intense. I think we have four hours of language lessons in the morning, come home for lunch, and then have four more hours in the afternoon. Normally the post-lunch time would be technical, cultural, or other information training sessions but the first day or so is incredibly intensive Russian training. Hopefully after today, I will be able to communicate a little better with my family.

Some things I forgot to mention about yesterday: The way my host family addresses me is adorable. In Russian, the closest to Jonathan there is is “Dshonaton” which is all well and good, close to the Hebrew “Yonaton”. However, my host-family has taken it upon them to shorten it, much as many Americans will, to “Dshon”, so I will here them calling me with a really cute “Dhoooon! Dshon!”. Through playing ball, most of the children have my name down as “Dshonaton” and Laura’s as “La-ow-rra” which is also really cute as they elongate the name. I also forgot to mention that I brought a photo-album; it was a superb idea. Mama and Papa were very interested to look through it and so were family friends. The funniest thing to come out of it was when we turned to a High School picture of my family when I had long hair. She kept asking “Eta voi Sistra? Eta voi Mama?” (Is that your sister, your mother?) to which I replied several times “Niet, Eta Ya!” (no, it’s me). This continued until she realized it was indeed, me, and burst out laughing and saying things about hair and how in Kyrgyzstan if a boy were to have such long hair, he would look like a girl. I assured her that it was different in America and she seemed to accept this, though still exhibited much joy in sharing the story of this crazy American’s hair with her friend. I am glad my high school hair style proved so entertaining.

07:30 10 July 2008

Another thing I forgot: Kyrgyz older women are notorious for taking home leftovers. I’ve heard stories of ayjays (the Kyrgyz word of respect for an older woman) loading up thin plastic bags emphatically to a huge comic effect but I was unsure of how true these stories were; that was until the reception at the host family matching ceremony. As we were getting ready to leave, my host mother began taking napkins and scooping up various foods. For some reason, I offered my bag as a receptacle to hold these left-over foods. While the candy she dumped into the pocket was fine, I was a little worried about the not-well-wrapped cookies she placed next to my laptop. Sure enough, as I got home and opened my bag to return the goodies, they had crumbled all over inside my bag. No harm was done and we all had a good laugh, but it was really a prime example of cultural differences. Sure enough, along with delicious fresh milk (still warm from the cow’s udders), sausage, bread, and a Nutella-like substance (I got really excited about it but they didn’t understand), my host mother served a lot of crumbly cookies today. Kyrgyzstan, I think I love you.