Feathers and Black Eyes

The brain is a funny thing. It hangs onto random, seemingly pointless things like Rihanna lyrics but can’t seem to harbor a 10-digit phone number for more than 20 seconds. One of my recent mental acquisitions came from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, which I read for the first time a couple of months ago. Now, instead of making lists of “pros” and “cons,” I opt for “Feathers In My Cap” and “Black Eyes!!!!” like one of the hapless officers in the book (of course I don’t actually remember the character’s name or why he was making such lists…but I do distinctly remember how splendidly odd his headers were). I realize that this is a kind of odd habit to have adopted, but don’t blame me. Blame my brain. Here’s my list concerning the current state of my life in Kyrgyzstan:

Feathers In My Cap
- My family is coming on Saturday! My family is coming on Saturday! I can’t wait to show them around the weirdly charming place that is Kyrgyzstan…but am also a little concerned about what’s going to happen to them once my local friends and host family get their hands on a bunch of blond Americans. Stay tuned.
- Several of my projects beyond giving English lessons have finally started to take off. Things like teacher training seminars, the completion of the club renovation project, and skills/character-building sessions for my kids look to make my last few months here busy but productive (holiday celebrations and end-of-the-year malaise notwithstanding).
- Soft serve will soon make a triumphant return to my village bazaar. Last summer, soft serve was virtually a food group for me, I ate so much of it.


Black Eyes!!!!!
- I think I wrote a letter a while ago about some of my more amusing lingual mishaps, like my unfortunate tendency early on in my teaching career to confuse the Kyrgyz words for “pig” and “penis” (that made for some very confusing “Life on the Farm” lessons). Yesterday, I was having tea with my 5 year-old host brother, who kept using a word I hadn’t heard before in reference to his cousins – “chichkak.” That this is just one letter away from the word for “mouse” and was used with a group of other animal words (e.g. “I am a lion. My cousin is ‘chichkak.’”), I assumed that this word referred to some sort of rodent. To my confusion, he was completely unable to answer questions like, “What color is it?” and “Where does it live?” and “How big is it?” Finally, when I started miming different kinds of body parts, he responded enthusiastically to my pantomime of a long tail. We dropped the matter until dinner, when the word came up again, this time with the whole family around the table. After we adults giggled at the kids’ antics (which included calling each other various names, including “chichkak”), I asked my host mom what kind of animal a “chichkak” was. Everyone then began laughing hysterically at me, because “chichkak” is not a rodent. It is diarrhea.
- Although one of my classes has heretofore been unable to master things like the use of the “to be” verb and present frigging tense, they have learned to forge my handwriting.
- Another class argued today that they “had to cheat” on the test because they “don’t know English well.” Bollocks.
- Seriously, men and women of Kyrgyzstan, I know that you mean well and I’m sure that your sons and neighbors are very nice boys, but I really don’t want to get married anytime soon. I understand that this is not considered to be normal behavior from a 24 year-old woman, but I ask that you bear with me the way that I try and bear with you. I mean, we just met 2 minutes ago and I’m not really comfortable having this conversation with a total stranger. And, by the way, Kyrgyz guys, lines like “I’ll give your parents 100 horses and 200 cows” or “I’m dark, you’re light…our kids will be normal!” really don’t do it for me.
- Need. Variation. In. Diet. I'm pretty much adhering to the complete opposite of Atkins Diet -- noodles, potatoes, and white bread for every meal, nearly every day of the week.