Happy New Year!!!

Where Am I?

One of the things that is most inconvenient for people who are visiting Turkmenistan is that there aren't really many maps of any kind. And if you were wanting a road map, well, that's just a joke. So when you find yourself lost in the middle of Ashgabat (or any other city or town), finding your way is not as easy as looking at an address near you and looking it up on a map. And that's a whole different problem - addresses. These tend to work out a lot better if the streets are named consistently and have signs telling you what the names are. In the case of Turkmenistan (or at least Ashgabat, since it's the only major city I've seen yet) the streets have old names and new names - and neither of these names are actually on a sign anywhere. And now I've been told that all the names have been replaced by numbers. What?!?! But since these aren't really put on signs either, and none of the locals have bothered to learn them, you'll never get directions like "Take 2026 street until you get to 1748 street and take a left". Instead, you'll get directions using the old names for streets. This becomes a problem when you are trying to find the Peace Corps office and all you have is an address (written with the new name, of course) because everyone you ask just shakes their head because they don't know the new name, they know the old one. And they've probably tried to explain this to you, but since you speak Turkmen like a 4 year old and understand what most people say even less than that, then all that just went over your head, and you're standing there, looking confused, with no better idea of where you're supposed to go than when you started. Oh, and I forgot to mention that everything looks the same here. Every apartment building looks about the same as the next, all the government buildings are white marble and pretty unremarkable. Just about every corner has a Dukan (a convenience store). And in the villages it isn't any better - every gate is either blue or green, every house is the same dirty white color. I've lived in Gokja now long enough that I know my way around pretty well, as long as I stay on the west side of the main road because that's where I live, where all the other volunteers live, and where the school and clinic are. But three months wasn't even long enough for me to know hardly anything about the east side of town. I've been over there a few times with the nurses to visit families, but have no idea where I am when we do this. As far as Ashgabat is concerned, it works out pretty well if you know the name of the bazaar closest to where you want to go, so all you have to say is "Teke Bazar akitjekmi?" to the taxi driver (which I can do now, but I still continue to get the answer in Russian because everyone here still thinks I am Russian - but hey, at least I'm fitting in right?). The bus system is MUCH cheaper, so I'm working on learning the routes. And when I say cheaper, I mean that the average cab ride is about 10,000 manats (the exchange rate is about 1$ = 23,000 manats, so that's a little less than 50 cents) and for the bus you just pay 50 manats each time you get on (which is less than a penny). This is getting off topic, but I've become a serious bargain shopper here. I'll never by a 1.5 liter of Coke for more than 20,000 manats (I usually only pay 10,000 or 15,000 manats) and I know where to get a mug of beer for only 15,000 manats, and I occasionally barter the price of cookies down by 500 manats. I forget how little I'm bargaining for sometimes, until I say something like "Wow, there's not way I'm paying 75,000 manats for Nutella! That's so expensive!" and then Brian says "Andrea, that's only like $3." Americans are often ripped off here because they feel so freaking rich after they exchange their dollars for manats - when I change a $20, I get a gigantic wad of cash because the biggest bill in manats is 10,000. I don't know why the Turkmen government hasn't come out with bigger bills - if you want to buy something that costs a few hundred dollars, you can imagine how many bills you'd have to carry with you. So people end up just paying for really expensive things in dollars anyway. Oh, and credit cards just don't exist here - I'm not sure about checks, but I've never seen anyone write one. I was thinking about credit cards the other day and what it will be like to come back home and actually use one. I actually got a little giddy at the thought because after living in a cash-only economy for three months, the idea of a credit card is seriously like magic.


Language Barrier

On Friday all the volunteers had to have their language skills tested. In years past, volunteers in Turkmenistan were only required to reach the Novice level for their training to be considered a success. The T-16's, however, have been held to a higher standard - they want us to reach at least Intermediate-Low. The difference in Novice and Intermediate levels is that a person at the Novice level can communicate, but mostly just using individual words to get their point across. A person at the Intermediate level, however, uses full sentences. Since the grammar rules in Turkmen are completely different than those in English, this is a tough goal, but I'm proud to say that everyone in Gokja passed! Brian even got Intermediate-High, which basically means he gave more complicated sentences. I was really worried about my score because I blanked a little on one of the questions, but apparently I did well enough. And this week I start my Russian lessons, but I'll still have to use Turkmen for a while until my Russian gets better. I'll be getting plenty of practice in every language once I get to my permanent site because I'll be using Turkmen at work (and maybe some Russian later), I'll have to use Russian at home, especially with the two boys, and Mahri (who is "technically" my host mom, but she's too young for me to call her mom) wants me to help her with her English. I'm really excited to learn Russian for a lot of reasons - the first being that I'm tired of people speaking to me in Russian all the time because of my blonde hair and me not understanding a single word, the second is that I really want to know what Jelil, my 5 year-old brother says to me when he pulls on my arm and whispers something to me (because it always sounds so important), and the third is that Russian is a much more valuable language to know in the long run because there are so many people all over the world who speak it (while Turkmen is only spoken by the Turkmen people, and therefore only really helpful in Turkmenistan). Oh, AND if I can learn it well enough, I may be able to pass myself off as Russian when I'm traveling, which would be good since the current American government has made all Americans look pretty bad in they eyes of most countries around the world. Hahaha, this is off topic again, but poor Anita - she's from Texas, and one time she tells this to a Turkmen, the first thing they say is "Oh! Bush!". Ha, on yet another side note, all these languages being mixed together is actually kind of fun, but really strange. I was trying to ask Clemens the other day if he speaks French, in French, and what came out was "Tu parle fracaismi?" which is a mostly French phrase, except for the "mi" on the end, which is the Turkmen ending for any yes/no question. Ok, so this may only be funny to me but it's just one example of how mixed up it all gets.


Music in Turkmenistan

Generally, there are two subgroups of music that is considered Turkmen - the traditional and the new popular music. Of course, many Turkmen also listen to music from other countries, especially Russian, India, and America. The traditional Turkmen music is alright - it sounds a bit like a mix of traditional Irish music and Indian music. It's usually played with an instrument somewhat like a guitar (it's called a dutar) and maybe a few traditional drums and sometimes a singer and sometimes this mouth harp thing. The new music is very rarely (if ever) entirely original. They take popular American, Russian, or Indian songs and put Turkmen words to it. Sometimes they'll keep some of the English words by the original singer too. My favorites so far are the Turkmen versions of: that song by WHAM! that goes "I don't ever want to dance again, guilty feet have got no rhythm", 50 cent's "Candy Shop", Rhianna's "Murderer", Eminem's "Smack That", and then there's a whole bunch of Nsync and Backstreet Boys covers that are fun. Me and some of the other volunteers actually got to go to a live concert the other night and it was awesome! They even had a comedy act in between each of the set changes. Unfortunately they didn't play any of my favorite songs, but it was still a lot of fun. Then we went to a fireworks show. Oh, that reminds me - Turkmen claim to have the best of a lot of things, like the best wine, the best horses etc. And while a lot of the time this is somewhat of an exaggeration, there are at least two occasions when I would agree. The first is the melons - they mean it when they say they have the best because I don't think I'll ever really enjoy a watermelon in America again now that I know what they're supposed to taste like. And the second is the fireworks. WOW it's just incredible. They last for at least half an hour, and they coordinate them with lights on the buildings and music and I've never ever seen anything like it in my life. I literally stood in awe the entire time. The four of us standing there were acting like little kids seeing a fireworks show for the first time - we were all "OOOOOHHH" and "AWWWW man! That was awesome!!!" and "Oh my god did you see that one??" I'm sure we looked ridiculous, but I don't care, it was fun.


I HAVE A CELL PHONE!!!!!

I have a cell phone that works here in Turkmenistan with calls from America! I talked to my mom for about an hour last night and it didn't use up ANY of my minutes! So, it might be a little expensive for you to call me, but you won't have to worry about it costing me anything. If you would like the number, post a comment on this blog with your email address and I'll send it to you. Or, if you know my mom, ask her for it. I would LOVE to hear from all of you, so don't hesitate to ask for the number. I just don't want to post it here because this blog is open to the public and anyone who has access to the internet at all can be reading this, not just my friends and family. EDIT: For Christmas, I received calls from my family and it did charge my minutes this time. But it was less than $20 for an hour, which isn't bad. So, you can still feel free to call me, but I might have to answer and just tell you that I'm out of minutes (I have a pre-pay plan, so when I run out, that's the end of my calls - I can't go over even if I wanted to). As of Dec. 26 at 7pm (my time) I only have a few dollars left, so I'll need to buy more before people can call me.


Christmas and the New Year

My Christmas morning was spent hanging out with the other T-16's at our country director's apartment in Ashgabat, which was amazing! We did secret santa and sang carols and ate lots of food. Then I went shopping and bought myself a nice Christian Dior knock-off purse at one the bazaars. I also went to visit my new host family, where Mahri helped me celebrate christmas by bringing out several different types of cakes and cookies and chocolates, which was really sweet of her. Then I went back to hotel where I got to talk to both sides of my family, which made the day pretty much perfect. After that we all went down to the disco to hang out and say goodbye to each other since everyone else had to leave very early the next day. Overall the only thing I really missed about Christmas were completely intagible. There are Christmas trees everywhere, and I even got to open and give a present, but a phone call is just a poor substitute for actually hanging out with your family. So I was sad for a while, but I expected that. And then there was New Years. For Turkmen, this is the biggest holiday. All of their Christmas trees are actually New Years trees. There's even have a giant one in the middle of Ashgabat. New Years is a celebration where they basically smash all the holiday traditions we have in the states all year round into one insane night. So, they take the Christmas trees from Christmas, they make rediculous amounts of food and stuff a bird like we do for Thanksgiving, the Russian kids on TV all dressed up like kids in the US do for Halloween, and then everyone has sparklers and blow up fireworks like we do for the 4th. Oh, and of course they stay up until midnight and go crazy when the clock strikes 12. For me, the day started up pretty well. I went to work and we ate lots of cake and drank lots of juice. Then I came home and we had a great lunch with snicker's cake for desert (yeah, Mahri is amazing). Then we all took a nap so that we could stay up late that night. When we woke up, we started watching Harry Potter, which the boys love. All night they went around waving pens saying "Expecto Patronum!!", which was adorable. Oh, and for some reason, the name Harry is changed to Garry in Russian. I have no idea why. Then, Mahri started bringing out the food, which never seemed to stop - there were about seven different types of salads, some of which included chicken and pickled fish. And then there was the stuffed chicken and then the chicken roulettes. And then the shashlik. All of it was great and I ate WAY too much. Then some of Mahri's relatives came over and hung out with us for a while. After they left, we started dancing and being pretty silly. Russian music is kinda hard to dance to, but it was fun just the same. The channel we were watching had a New Years Eve show with all the most famous singers from Russian in it. While all of this was going on, Ata would occationally come in and give the kids sparklers. That were lit. In the house. So that was exciting. And at midnight we all went outside and blew up some fireworks, as did all of our hundreds of neighbors - it smelled just like the 4th of July outside. And each person was expected to give a toast. The boys did theirs in Russian, of course, but Ata and I did ours in English and then he translated for everyone else. I ended up passing out earlier than everyone else because after 5 beers and then a few cups of relaxing tea, I was just done. I think the rest of the family finally went to sleep around 2 or 3 in the morning. So, my New Years was pretty awesome and made up a little for the slightly sad Christmas. Sadly, I didn't have anyone to kiss at midnight, but considering what I was expecting from a New Years in Turkmenistan, the reality was much MUCH better. I really hope everyone else had a great time back home as well. :)