8th of March- International Women's Day!

21:30 8 March 2009

First of all, I just want to say a big “Happy Women’s Day” to all the fine ladies of the world and my readership today. I know that it is not really celebrated in most countries (despite the fact that according to the Soviets it was an international day celebrated across the world- something that confuses the populace when I tell them it is not celebrated in the States) but it is a big day here. I neglected to mention Men’s Day, it fell during my camp so I wasn’t able to participate in the celebrations, but I received a towel from my school as a present because of my anatomy… Anyhow, for Women’s Day, the traditional celebration includes, of course, men putting on a concert for women and feeding them at a big toy (Kyrgyz party). For my part of this, I got together with my counterpart and sang a few songs on the guitar with her. I found out she actually can play guitar quite well and she performed a song that sounded like a Soviet version of Joni Mitchell. It was very entertaining.

That school celebration was two days ago, and the day before I had an additional celebration where the boys from the leadership club I help run got together and laid a table and put on a concert and games for the women (girls) from the club, Saori, and the Director of the Dotz. I actually enjoyed this even more, because the boys literally did everything for the party, from organizing to set up to clean up afterwards and I was really proud of all the effort they put forth. It was inspiring to see that these boys could really take leadership positions in organizing the festivities.

But for the actual holiday, I am actually at my old host family’s house. While I have a good relationship with my host family at site, coming back makes me really miss some aspects of living with my old host family. First and foremost is that, being Russian, and me being a Russian speaker, I understand far more of what is going on that I do at site with the Kyrgyz/Russian mix I hear. It is also entertaining just to watch this family, when I first got to site I was confused and thought that the family was constantly arguing and hated each other. The more I learned Russian however, the more apparent it became that they were not mad at each other, simply incredibly argumentative. “PUT THE JAM ON YOUR BREAD! IT’S DELICIOUS!!!”, “I DON’T WANT JAM ON MY BREAD!!! I HAD JAM FOR BREAKFAST!”, “BUT IT”S VERY DELICIOUS! PUT SOME ON WITH BUTTER!”, “NO!!!” a typical conversation might go.

I digress, spending Women’s Day with my old host family was wonderful as we ate good food, I gave them some gifts, and we talked about life. I’ve also realized how incredibly liberal they are compared to most here. They just got a house dog! It is so cute, and I don’t know if you understand how incredibly rare having a “Domashnaya Sabaka” is here. It was really exciting to play with a dog that was friendly, bathed, and didn’t want to tear off my face. So yay for Women’s Day!