21:45 22 July 2008
Part of our PST includes biweekly sessions on cross-cultural connections. These sessions cover both Kyrgyzstan specific cultural items and overall adjustments that we will encounter in service. I realized today a few things from one. I’m finally starting to fall into a routine: wake up, wash face, eat, brush teeth, attend school, eat lunch, go to XYZ PC session, come home, rest, review language or do homework, rest, eat dinner, drink chai, and go to bed. However, our session today was about PST culture and how right now we are adjusting to a cultural climate that is substantially different from what our actual service will entail. This is true, while we live in very authentic Kyrgyz villages, we are interacting with other Americans on a daily basis, with host families that are aware of our culture and its differences, and in a kind of cultural bubble. It’s a stepping stone into the real world of Kyrgyzstan. This is, for some, a very necessary process, and for others, a frustrating experience when they want nothing more than to be thrown into the mix and left to fend for themselves. I have yet to tire of the idea of PST, but I am sure that, much life college orientation, by the end of it I will be tired and just want to go to (my) class.
As this temporary routine develops, I will also have less to write about other than the minor day to day variations and minutia that spell doom for online readership. To avoid this deadly prose, I’ve decided to focus on certain aspects of life in Kyrgyzstan. I feel like I have been giving you all an accurate but vastly incomplete portrait of what living here is like. I was talking with fellow trainees today and they felt the same way. We can paint pictures and upload photos, but these daily descriptive entries do little more than brush the surface. I won’t start tonight (it’s almost ten and I’m tired) but I think the first entries I wish to write about are a five part sights, smells, tastes, touch, and sounds of my experience in Kyrgyzstan. I’ve mentioned all of these senses in passing in different entries, but I feel a (somewhat) comprehensive analysis of any one of these senses could make for a more complete picture of my day, and give a better sense of what it is like to live here as a PCT. Anyhow, it’s about my bedtime and nighttime is descending. Sweet dreams and pleasant tomorrows.
2 comments:
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for sharing your blog with me. I'm really enjoying it. It brings back memories of my experiences as a PCV in Togo some 30 years ago. Some things never change. You reminded me of my changing attitudes and desires vis-a-vis other Americans (varying degrees of desire to interact with and to avoid them), of what a pleasure it was to go to the hotel in the nearby town when I had the runs so as to be able to sit on a proper toilet, of how often I had the runs (which now gives me the benefit of having a pretty resistant stomach), of the pleasures and frustrations of trying to interact with the local population... At the same time, what a difference time makes. Of course e-mail didn't exist then so instead of blogging I would exchange letters with my family, which could take 6 or 8 weeks to travel from Togo to California (and vice versa). To make a phone call I had to go into town, to the post office. I did that maybe 3 times a year. At least in Togo you could get a call through in 20 minutes or so. In next door Ghana you had to make an appointment to make a call 6 weeks later! And I was given a motorcycle by the Peace Corps, something that I hear is now forbidden, but which gave me fantastic mobility. You noted that before long the ordinary will become mundane. You are absolutely right. My family came to visit me in Togo after I had been there for about a year and a half. They remember all sorts of things from that visit that I don't remember at all, because for me those things were ordinary. In effect I have lost some of the experience for that reason. So I would encourage you to keep writing about the mundane. Thirty years from now you will value being able to look back and read about it. All the best,
Mark (Woodward)
OMG. hahahhahaha my dad was talking to you about diarrhea. *facedesk* i feel awkward.
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