The Beginning of the Turkmen Summer aka “It’s hotter than Hell and it’s only June! I might die in July or August!” June 20, 2009

Hey there readers! Well, I’m back in the T-stan after a minor mishap getting back from Thailand. I am safe and overall doing well. I’ve been back for about 2 weeks now and honestly have nothing to report work related because I really haven’t done any work! My first week back all of my teachers were repainting their classrooms and insisted that I didn’t help, though I did help a little bit. Then this week all of my English teachers just kid of disappeared for some reason leaving me to just sit at school by my lonesome. It was ok though because I occupied the time by fighting with paper mache and a balloon to make a pinata for my summer camp next week. Which was a pain to try to explain to the other teachers because there isn’t really a word for paper mache in Turkmen and they were all thoroughly confused! Anyways when I do work at the school during the summer its only for about 3 hours a day, just liek the other Turkmen teachers. You really can’t work much more because its way too hot, this week I’m certian that it was about 105 degrees F! No humidity thank goodness, but still hot!

I have been finding other ways to spend my time though, unofficially working. I’m trying to spend more time in the community just walking around and visiting houses talking to people. Yesterday I had a nice dinner with three of my students and their parents (the mother is also a teacher at my school). Its nice to have time to just go out and walk around the community, if only for like an hour in the evenings. I am finding my walks are becoming increasingly more difficult though as sometimes I just want to walk, but everyone wants me to sit and drink tea with them. Alas such is the life of a PCV… everyone wants to be your friend.

I’ve also been able to spend some quality time with my family. Every evening I help them in the yard to pick cherries and appricotes from our trees so we can make jam and juice. Its overall good times and makes me think of Good Ole Cedar Michigan and Uncle John’s Cherry farm. As a kid I never really had the opportunity to go and pick cherries (probably because as my mom would put it “You would whine the whole time there!”) so its been nice to get that experience that many of my cousins and aunts and uncles had in their childhood. Beside from cherry picking my family and I also had some good family bonding a few nights ago when we went to Turkmen Disney World! Now, I am 24 years old and have never been to Disney World, I know to some of my friends (mostly Liz and Jacki) thats almost a crime against humanity, but we just never did that growing up. But I can say I hav been to Turkmen Disney World! The actual name of the “theme park” is Fairytale World, but everyone calls it Disney World, I’m sure the Disney Corporation Loves that! Anyways, in American standards TDW is nothing more than a county fair. There are the standard rides like the tilt-a-whirl, ferris wheel, and merry-go-round. There’s even a small rollercoaster and mini Splash Mountain. So nothing too extreme by our standards… it’s no Cedar Point by any means! But the way my family carried on about this place you would think they were at Disney World! They loved every minute of it and I just loved watching them have fun. My sisters thought I was so crazy when I had my hands in the air on the rollercoaster, but after they saw that I survived they tried it too and screamed their heads off the whole time. It was seriously great!

Next week my sumemr schedule should start to pick up considerably. I am having a summer camp at my school titled “Travel the World in 5 Days with Abby Teacher!” It’s basically a 5 day trip in the classroom around the world stopping to visit different cultures. we’re going to learn about China, Austrailia, Africa, USA, and finishing off the week with a Mexican Fiesta complete with a pinata (hence the need for paper mache). I’m really excited about it and I have talked to a lot of kids in my village who are excited to come too. I’m hoping to get a good turn out. After that week I will be really busy with working with other organizations and their summer camps and working with my teachers (who should re-appear soon) to do some good lesson planning. Then on August 15th I will fly out to meet Mom, Cherelle, and Danielle Drumm for a girls week in London! Overall its going to be a good/hot summer!