Camel Grazing and Important Realizations February 11, 2009

11 February 2009

Hey all! So I wrote a blog last week and then I was a jerk and didn’t post it. Sorry I forgot my flash drive at my house. But bonus news for you all… an extra blog about my happenings!

So every Sunday I take a walk around my village just to get out of the house and into the community a little bit. Well, this Sunday I had quite the awesome experience. I found a little road on the far edge of my village that led off to the mountians. I discovered that my village is even closure to the mountians than I imagined which was really exciting. It wasn’t as exciting as what I saw in the field between my village and the mountains though, I saw this huge herd of camels (probably between 50 and 100) grazing in the field with goats and sheep. It was so beautiful! For one, being American and not knowing much about camels I had no idea that they actually grazed like cows and sheep, but they do! For two it was so majestic and beautiful to see them all against the beautiful back drop of the mountains. It was wonderful! Unfortunately for you all, I am stupid and forgot to take my camera on this walk so I don’t have any pictures of this glorious site so you can’t really see what I saw (though I am not sure a picture could truly capture it). I will try again next week though, I am certian that the camels were not wild and odds are their owner takes them to the field daily. So hopefully next week I’ll get a picture.

Which leads me to another cool thing! As you may know the internet here is extremely slow and it makes uploading pictures for you all very difficult. Well, I sent my parents a CD of all the pictures I took from October until my Swearing In Ceremony and they are now in the process of uploading those onto Flicker for you all to see. My account is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tstancarmean Feel free to check those out and hopefully one day I will go through and tell you all what exactly you are looking at. I’ll be mailing CDs home every few months so Dad can upload them for all of you. I hope you enjoy them!

Now back to my life here in T-Stan. With the help of Mayagozel I can to an important realization yesterday as to why my older students don’t come to my English clubs (even though they want to) and why it has been difficult for me to have any student clubs here. After an again failed attempt to get my older students to come to clubs I asked Maya for her imput on my problem and her frankness blew me away. She said “Abby, you are the first volunteer in the village. Village life is difficult for students, especially older girls because they are expected to go home after school everyday and work at home sewing and cooking. Their parents don’t want them to go to clubs because they don’t think that English is important. Your job as the first volunteer there is to tell the community is to pave the way for future volunteers by showing the community that English is important. It’s difficult, but you are strong and you will do it. I know it.” All of this was things I knew deep down, but was kind of refusing to accept. Now hearing that from someone that actually grew up in a village and understand what it is like for students in a village I understand, I can empathize with my students more. I can have a clearer understanding of my purpose here and just in general of what I need to do. I also learned that I need to accept what is good that is going on here. In my prayers last night the Lord led me Philippians4:8 “Whatever is true, whatever is nobel, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable if any is excellent or praise worthy think of these things.” Except the Lord told me to Cling to these things. Cling to the good that I have and He will take care of it all for me. It was a nice humbling realization. So that is now what I am doing.

“Abby?! Where are you?!” February 11, 2009

4 February 2009

Hey all! So it’s been a few weeks since I’ve updated this thing. Sorry about that, it’s not like there haven’t been things to update on it’s just that I’ve been a little busy actually working which is awesome.

Before I get into the work business though I want to give a huge thank you to my family and friends who contributed to my Christmas Photo Album and Notes. I just received it today and I can’t tell you how overjoyed, overwhelmed, and blessed I was to read all of the messages and see all of the photos. I’ll admit there were a few tears shed while reading it. I have said it many times; I am so blessed to have a supportive family and supportive friends. That book really put it over the top though; words truly cannot express how that made me feel. you so much for the wonderful messages, beautiful smiling faces, and just for the overall love you constantly supply me with. I’m a very lucky girl. God is so good to me.

Anyway, as I said I have been really busy for the past few weeks and it is a very good thing. I am finally teaching classes regularly and my counterparts and I are trying to set a good rhythm of team teaching and planning together. It’s an interesting process because some of my counterparts are really receptive to this idea while others just want me to teach for them so they don’t have to do anything (just to let you know that doesn’t fly). I also have a really good group of about 4 teachers that come out to my school once a week for a teacher’s club, which mostly turns into me trying to teach a complicated grammar lesson (emphasis on complicated) while they chat about the many things wrong with the education system (all in Turkmen). They are receptive to the lesson though and always appreciative of being able to speak a little bit of English weekly.

On top of the teacher’s club I also teach technically two students English clubs. I say technically because nobody comes to the first one. The first club I tried to start was designed for the older students (14-16) and for some reason no students show up to it. I don’t think it’s that the students aren’t interested in English or me, but I really think it has to do with educational values in a small village. Unfortunately, many of the kids in my village are very poor and will never be able to go onto university. Thus, education isn’t valued and the students feel an obligation to go home after school to help their parents instead of staying an extra hour to learn English. This is extremely unfortunate because what a lot of these kids and parents don’t realize is that if their child speaks English they have a better opportunity to get a job in a city like Ashgabat (only 30 mins by marshrutka from my village). So my goal is to try to get out in the community more and meet these kids families and talk to them a little bit about this issue, hopefully then I can actually get some kids to come to my English club. It starts with the parents though.

I absolutely love the one club where students show up though! I have a really good group of about 20 little 12 year-old-girls who come twice a week to my club and it’s so much fun. They actually enjoy spending time and learning (mainly because I trick them with grammar games). It’s cool because I can actually see a bit of improvement in their language abilities as they can now all sing the alphabet song by heart, greet one another with the proper greeting (good morning, ect), and introduce themselves. Two weeks ago I would say only half of them could master just one of those skills, but not all of them. Thus progress is being made there! I am putting my heart and soul into this club because these girl are so great and precious, they work hard and so will I.

On top of doing all the teaching I am also working on my own language and building some cool friendships with host country nationals. For the past three weeks I have gone into Ashgabat on every Saturday and played soccer with my PCV friends Tess and Andrea and a group of young Turkmen women with Tess’s Women’s Soccer Club. It’s fun to play soccer again, but it’s a ton of fun to watch the Turkmen girls learn how to play! I am building some good friendships with the girls that I am sure will last for a lifetime. The Soccer Club has also gotten me in contact with an awesome Turkmen Tutor, her name is Ayna. I met Ayna during PST because she was an LCF for a different training group, I thought she was a really cool person during PST, but forgot to get her contact info before coming to site. Fortunately, Tess, wasn’t that forgetful and had invited Ayna to play soccer, anyways, long story short Ayna is now helping me improve my Turkmen and I am helping her improve her English in exchange. I meet Ayna at least once a week (sometimes twice) and she teaches me Turkmen and I am helping her apply for grad programs in the US. It’s a really cool exchange and I am excited to just have a cool new friend (also a really cool friend who promises to eventually teach me Russian).

In closing I would just like to say that I live a really cool life. I am living in Turkmenistan teaching English and making a difference, I’ve got an awesome support system back home and am making a really cool support system here, and to put icing on the cake… I am actually getting paid to do live the life of my dreams! Wow… I am totally blessed. Thanks again everyone for everything. I love you all!