Lessons in Life

June 19, 2011

 

I consider myself many things, but "domestic" isn't really a title I can boast. However, last week I moved out of my host family's home and into a teacher's guesthouse.  That means it is now my responsibility to cook and clean and generally care for myself like a big girl.  Oh boy… this is gonna be a bit of a challenge.  In a week alone, this is what I've learned:

 

1. Milk goes sour in 2 days time if you don't have a refrigerator.
2. Pasta noodles are darn cheep, but apricots taste way better.
3. You can't bake cookies on a stove (I don't have a working oven either.)
4. It's a really good thing my mom taught me to fry a chicken starting with the whole chicken because I'll probably never find frozen chicken breasts at the bazaar- but I have some rudimentary knowledge of how to cut the thing whole.
5. If you cook with garlic, it keeps flies out of your house at night.
6. When they don't have the correct change at the shop, they will give you boxes of matches to make up the difference.  I LOVE THIS!!!  When you use a gas stove, matches are infinitely valuable!

 

All this and it's only been a week… good gracious! Think of where I'll be in a year!

Eyebrows

June 11, 2011

 

I saw a two-year-old at the bus stop who had a faint blue line drawn across the bridge of her nose between her eyebrows.  Her mom didn't seem concerned, and had no desire to clean her daughter's face.  After seeing my inquiring eyes, my friend gave me a crash course in Uzbek culture.  Apparently, the blue ink stimulates hair growth. 

 

Wait a minute, a blue line drawn between your eyebrows to stimulate hair growth?  That's gonna give you a UNIBROW!!! 

 

Part two of the lesson: To Uzbeks, thick unibrows are a symbol that God smiles upon you.

 

Well, that's new!

Uzbek Immersion

June 10, 2011

 

Bet you didn't expect to see that blog title, huh? Probably thinking, "Wait, I thought Anne was in Kazakhstan?!?!"  Well, you are right, I'm still here. But in the summer, if you're an education volunteer, you pretty much scatter to the four winds to lead summer camps.  This week I landed in a town in South Kazakhstan with a huge Uzbek population.  Seriously, I feel like I left the country!

 

Uzbek and Kazakh culture are closely related, but there are obviously gonna be some differences.  Uzbek houses are kinda like Spanish haciendas:  The house is divided into several compounds and they all open into one main courtyard.  In the courtyard there is an elevated platform with a roof… maybe like a simplified gazebo, except not at all.  Anyways, people eat and sleep on the platform in the summer when it's too hot to be inside.  I love that!

 

Just like Kazakhs, Uzbek people are enormously hospitable.  Even though I'm not from this neck of the woods, I managed to get an invite to an Uzbek wedding.  The party started with an open house at the groom's house. Many times, the whole ceremony is at the house and people congregate in the courtyard. But for this wedding, we went to a reception hall after the house party.  When the bride and groom arrived, four men blew ten-foot trumpets with some choreographed movement.  There was a microphone to amplify the noise, but I have no idea why they did that.  I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be deaf for the rest of the day. 

 

After the bridal party entered, the wedding was pretty standard: Eat, dance, eat, eat, dance, give a toast, dance, eat.  There were fewer toasts than I've seen at my Kazakh parties (as in, I didn't have to give one.  Bummer J), and the music was definitely not Kazakh.  It would probably take a few months for me to master Uzbek wedding dancing if that's the music they play every time!  But it was an awesome experience.

 

Southern Kazakhstan has a lot of Kazakh pride, but if you move around a bit, you manage to find little pockets of diversity that you would never expect.