Traffic Laws

My goal is to write something here every time I get to use the internet... So surprise! I am in the city right now buying train tickets (to PARADISE) to Shymkent for the end of March. I will experience Kazakh culture as they celebrate the New Year (which begins March 22nd) and most importantly, I will experience warm weather and sun on my arms and legs for the first time in months.

So this week I made a pretty important discovery. Over the summer my village got its first traffic lights. They have created a safer environment on a couple of our most busy streets, they have also caused a lot of angry cursing from people who are used to whizzing by without giving our town a thought. Anyway, I was walking home, about to cross one of the newly-lit intersections when I looked up to see a horse-drawn sleigh approaching. I'm used to the horse-drawn things, but I suddenly thought "does the horse-drawn sleigh have to stop at a red light?" And I know he SHOULD, but will he? So I stopped dead in my tracks and stared (because if I've learned anything about the culture here, it's that it is never inappropriate to stare at anyone or anything) intently, waiting for my answer. The answer is no, the horse-drawn sleigh does not pay attention to the red light. Nobody was coming to cross, so there was no one to challenge its decision, but there you have it. Drive a cart or sleigh and you can speed on through.

My new Banya Buddy

I’ve been taking banyas instead of showers for a long time now. I have banyaed in several different banyas (which, I’ve found, is kind of unusual, but my host family keeps telling people that I like the banya so I get invited to… bathe at other people’s houses. It is weird but I’m not complaining). I have banyaed with counterparts, family members and other PCVs. I am used to getting beaten with the oak branch and I know how to return the favor. I can even sit in the sweltering heat for 30 minutes now compared to the 5 I could handle when I first got here. All that said, I felt it was time for a banya challenge.

Our family’s cat is really, really dirty. I know cats are supposed to be self-cleaning, but this one, for whatever reason, is not. The last time I can remember my host brothers taking him into the banya was sometime in October. And ever since the beginning of this year I’ve joked about how I was going to banya with the cat, but the cat would be out of the house on banya night, or I would forget, or I would be at some stranger’s house banyaing because they wanted me to see their banya. There were all kinds of reasons, but this weekend, Ricky (the cat) was sitting right in front of the door as I was getting ready to leave for the banya. It was meant to be. So I scooped him up and marched us out into the cold to cross the yard to the banya.

A banya (as I am typing this on my computer I can’t go back and check my other posts to see if I’ve already covered this, but here it is again if I have) is a series of rooms all around a coal or wood burning furnace. The first room is where you and your new best friends take off all your clothes and hang them on hooks. The second room is the wash room with a water pump, buckets and a bucket of sorts that is sitting on top of the fire to provide hot water. If there is a third room, it is like a sauna. You are supposed to go into that room and sit and sweat out the week’s dirt. If that room doesn’t exist, you take the buckets and set them aside as you sit and sweat in that second room. While sitting there you get beaten with an oak branch to exfoliate, and you beat your friend. It’s a really good time. After you have sat long enough/until your heart and head can’t take the heat anymore you go into wash mode. You choose a good bucket and combine your desired amount of boiling water with cold water combo and soap up and rinse off. Go back, put your clothes on and you’re good for the week (or two).

I was, perhaps, a little over-confident in my task to clean the cat in the banya. I thought, no problem, I cleaned the dog at home all the time (ha, ok, like 5 times ever, but I’ve done it) so I kind of had an idea how this would go… There were a few problems that came out of my over-simplified comparison. For starters, in America I could wash the dog in a bathtub with a running faucet, I could trick her into the bathroom by using the leash and dog treats, and there’s the painfully obvious fact that dogs are not cats. As much as my dog hated getting a bath, it was never painful. I never had to wash her in an environment that hot and steamy (I lost the cat at first, it was a particularly steamy banya), and the dog never meowed like I was performing some kind of bathing torture. The cat was obviously not pleased to be there, sitting in a bucket full of water. And remember that beyond that second room humans and cats are not wearing any clothes, and cats have claws. Getting into the second room in itself was a challenge because he attached himself to the doorframe. When I pried him off he waved his paws around frantically trying to reattach to something. And that something wound up being me. It was the worst idea I’ve ever carried out. Whatever, now we’re clean, and the next time I clean that stupid cat will be in the summer when I can simply dump water on him in the yard.

Slokim Parum! (This is what you say to someone after a banya, it means “with steam!”)

Consistency

A couple years ago when I was researching Peace Corps I read a lot of blogs. I mean, just an embarrassing amount of personal information about individuals’ experiences while serving in different countries. And I noticed a really weird trend. After about one year of service, they all stopped writing. Some not entirely, but almost suddenly there would be very little information and it was infuriating. “What happens during the second year?” I wanted to ask. And now I find myself in the same position, and I think I know what it is. Everything seems normal now. The things that last year made me want to immediately tell someone “you can’t believe what I just saw” are now commonplace, and the “we’re-not-in-Kansas-anymore” moments grow few and far between. And even the things that do still surprise me are overshadowed by that really exciting thought – that in ONE year from RIGHT NOW I will be somewhere completely different. Then I start to worry about where I will be, what I will do, and the incident is shoved somewhere in my memory to be taken out at a later date. So when I sit down at the computer, I try to think, “What would be interesting to the people who read my blog?” Nothing comes to mind. Because it’s all stuff I’ve heard before.

So I’m going to try to write more. I’m sorry for being lazy about this and I’m going to be better.
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Every so often I have these moments where my old self looks at what my now-self did and says something like "Gross," or "Uhhhh" or "Really?" Yesterday I had such a moment. I was lying in bed, thinking about how my stomach hurt and what I could have possibly eaten to make it feel that way. And as I thought about that day's food... I remembered the two pieces of bread I'd eaten with mayonnaise and Louisiana Hot sauce as a sauce on top… and nothing else. It tasted so good at the time, and now that I think about it, it sounds just so disgusting. It's really the dead of winter, when anything that isn't meat or potatoes is delicious and mayo tastes good on EVERYTHING.

All my best intentions

So I had this really great idea about a week ago for a post and got it all ready on my computer at home, then got the internet place to upload it and the power went out. Twice. Then I forgot the flashcard today. So I'm just going to blab a bit about what I've been doing... It's pretty much business as usual now. My site mate and I had our first successful combined English club at the center library last week. This is significant because we've been showing up since December with the intention of having a club and nobody showed. But see what perseverance and relentless self-advertising does? You get one student who comes on purpose and three students who wander in on accident and wind up staying because it's fun. I'll let you all know if we get more this week. One of my students came into class Thursday talking about the club, "It was so cool! We played games, we watched part of an American television show!" Then he turned to me, "Miss Jessica, what WAS that yesterday?" So with my new signs, and that student talking it up, I think we'll have a real club this week. He doesn't even know what fun is yet.