24 October 2007

Wedding bells (well, not really, thank God)

I found out last week that I'm worth 100,000 som and several cows. That's maybe $3,000 plus cows, which doesn't sound like a lot to my American currency-based-mind, but -- I'm pretty sure -- is a pretty tidy sum in Kyrgyzstan. The average teacher, for example, makes 2,000 som a month; a doctor makes maybe 3,500 som. So I'm guessing that, should I decide to take this particular offer for marriage, I would be purchased on credit. I could then sell my story to MasterCard with something like:

Bride price: 100,000 som
Herd of cows: 50,000 som
Wedding dress: 1,000 som
Fluorescent-colored ribbon to wrap around various rented Mercedes: 100 som
200 bottles of vodka: 800 som
Vaguely talented singing DJ: 500 som
Wedding of the year in a Kyrgyz village: Priceless.

12 October 2007

Soap Operas and Ramadan

So I'm currently listening to a Russian version of Coldplay's "Yellow" -- sung by a guy who sounds like a cross between Neil Young and maybe Bryan Adams, or that Italian pop singer Nek (who is way cooler than this guy currently singing) -- which is a nice background for this posting full of the random events of the week...
Today marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting during the daylight hours (plus of abstinence from sex, alcohol, cigarettes, and other vices). So, on my way to the city, I passed several flocks of white-kalpak-ed old men (kalpaks are the Kyrgyz traditional male headwear -- a tall, angular wool hat with Kyrgyz squiggly designs on them and a tassel on top) who were on their way to various homes for guesting. Muslim tradition (at least in this part of the world) says tells the faithful to make up for all those days of not eating by stopping by seven houses for food and fellowship. Kind of a nice testament to the value of community in the Muslim tradition. I personally will kind of miss Ramadan, since it's virtually the only time of year that I can accurately predict what time my family and I will be having dinner -- at sundown, once the call to prayers begins. All other times of year, we have dinner at 5:30 one day and 9:30 the next, which can get annoying (especially on those days I'm at school til 3 or 4 and have tea and stale cookies from the school cafeteria for lunch).
Actually, though, now that I think about it, my family has been following another pattern of determining the evening schedule -- the Russian soap opera "Tatiyana's Day." Even though my Russian language skills currently consist of things like "Check, please," "I don't understand," and "Bitch, please," I can usually follow the show's ever-twisting plotlines, which usually seem to involve falling in love, questionable paternity, or both. My love for the show and its outrageousness was confirmed this week when, after missing a single episode, I found that the main character was pregnant (again) with her estranged lover's baby. Last time, they did a fast-forward-5-years bit to shake things up. This time, they made things interesting by having the new "slutty" girl on the show get paid off by Tatiyana to pretend to be pregnant at the same time so that she can take the baby and Tatiyana won't have to tell the guy. Scandal! This is especially fun to watch with my preschool-aged host siblings and uber-straight-laced host mother...since the little ones don't understand Russian, either, the family conversation goes something like this:
Ermek (4 year-old boy): Grandma, why did that man run over that woman with a car?
Grandma: [avoiding the real explanation that they woman was a huge whore who cheated on the guy, her husband, and broke his heart...which was a huge mistake given his history of violence] She told lies.
Ermek: Oh, ok. [Then proceeds to drive his own imaginary car into his cousin and, just for dramatic effect, crashes into the wall and enacts a lengthy death scene.]

Who says that family life is boring?