The Introvert at Sea

They say their names, and I smile. I shake hands. I forget to use all of those mnemonic devices that you're supposed to use when you meet new people, and I find instead that my brain is completely blank and terrified. It's been five seconds since I heard your name, and I not only can't repeat it, I can't even remember my own name.

Lots of pats on the back for getting the job at my new school. Lots of "heard great things about you". Lots of offers to help. Help with what? I haven't had time alone in my room to think about what I need. The few things I have asked about (money for math team, scope and sequence of my courses, attendance policy) seem to be decisions I get to make all by myself. I'm lost. I'm used to standing rigid against a wall in a building too dependent upon structure to see the students, and now I find myself with no wall and no structure, and I'm not even sure I know how to stand without it.

Excuse me. I can't remember your name, but I kind of sort of want you to give me some structure so I can rebel against it, especially since I suspect the structure will become apparent only when I violate it. Why don't you just save us some time and tell me what it is, so I can decide how to violate it?

Dating that Feels Like Homework

At new teacher training this week, I found myself surrounded by that usual crew of early-married teachers. They look like people I'll be asking for hall passes in a couple of weeks, shiny-faced, bright-eyed, unwrinkled kids, but they're all sporting diamonds on their left hands. More power to them, I say, but when one of them told me that she didn't even know you could administer the Heimlich to yourself on the back of a chair, I suffered through a brief flash of envy. I've eaten a great many meals all by myself in my little apartment. Granted, I've never choked or needed to save myself, but I know exactly what to do if I ever do.

I've also had a birthday recently.

My birthday was the deadline for the end of the dating hiatus, and I was feeling like it would be nice to forget the Heimlich-on-the-back-of-the-chair trick. Furthermore, I ran into my first true love at the coffee shop on Tuesday. Now there's a scab I can still pick when I feel like watching myself bleed.

It's all driven me back to the dating world.

This time, I've landed on a website that promises me dates with potential. It's not that one with the right-wing Christian gay-bashing dates, but it's a little bit like that one, in that you don't get to search for dates until the website's algorithm determines that your personalities and dating wants and needs match in some way.

So the website sends you some matches, and then you can move a little slider bar right or left to indicate your interest in each person. Only I can't possibly tell how interested I am from a picture and a paragraph - unless they have some sort of obscenely hideous facial hair growing out of their upper lip, or they make horrendous grammatical errors in their essays. I feel like I should be able to tell, but I can't. Or, actually, to be brutally honest, I feel like moving all of the little slider bars all of the way left (to the "no spark" end), but I keep telling myself that I have to be more open in order to actually ever meet anyone, and so I procrastinate on moving any of my slider bars, because it's too hard to make a decision.

Meanwhile, every man who sees my profile and moves the slider bar even the slightest bit to the right generates an email of "interest". Seriously, I've gotten about one auto-generated email an hour from this thing. The emails bring up more profiles with more pictures and more cursed slider bars. I've stopped even opening them. I can't face it.

And what do you get if you both move the slider bar to the right? You get to move on to the free-response portion of the test. You choose some questions. He chooses some questions. And you both write essays.

I keep thinking that there must be a more fun way to do this. It'd be great, for example, if instead of slider bars and multiple-choice tests and short-answer questions, I could get flirtatious banter and dinner and flowers. Why can't dating be more like that?

One Thing She Noticed

I was sitting in the back of the van one day in Kyrgyzstan, next to Daniya, the local volunteer coordinator. Daniya is kind and green and new to her job, and I sensed that she was having a rough time, but she's also very girly, so while I felt like it was important to talk to her, I also struggled to come up with things to talk about.

I had noticed that there were a lot of Korean restaurants in the neighborhood where we were working on the house.

Ask me how I could tell.

Go ahead, ask.

OK, I'll just tell you. It was because I could read the signs in front of the restaurants. The Russian signs.

So anyway, I decided to ask her if there a lot of Korean people in Kyrgyzstan or if they were just concentrated in that one neighborhood. It turns out, in fact, that Daniya's own family is Korean. Originally her family (and a lot of Korean people) settled in the part of the Soviet Union that was near, well, Korea. So, they were living just across some water from their home country, when World War II started, and because Korean people look Japanese (but don't say so to the Koreans or the Japanese), the Russians decided to forcibly relocate them to an interior part of the country so they wouldn't collude with the enemy. Both sides of Daniya's family were left in what must have felt like the middle of nowhere, and they had to figure out how to make a living in the high desert deep in the center of Asia.

I was still trying to wrap my mind around the massive relocation of Daniya's entire family just two generations ago, and also trying to figure out how to get me an invitation to her grandma's house for some dolsot bibimbap, when I realized that the conversation was lagging. OK, next question. I knew she'd been in the US in college, so I asked her what she noticed most about living in my home country.

After a lifetime of living in Kyrgyzstan, I thought she might have noticed that you could walk across the street in a well-marked crosswalk without fearing for your life. I thought maybe she would have remarked upon the good-tasting potable water that comes from the tap. I figured she'd be impressed with how safe the drivers on the highway are, mostly sticking to their own lanes, and only rarely creating new ones in order to pass other cars. I thought she might notice the green, since she lived in St Louis, and K-stan was feeling pretty dry and brown to me in late July.

So, imagine my surprise when she pondered for less than 30 seconds before answering, in that quiet, halting English, "I think I noticed the segregation first," she said. She lived in a dorm in St Louis. The first two floors were filled with white people, she said. The floor she lived on with her Russian roommate was nearly all African American. She noticed the neighborhoods in St Louis. The places where white people didn't live. The places where black people did.

She got quiet. I felt like apologizing for the arrogance of the question (or at least of what I expected in her answer) and for the inequity revealed by her honest answer. She wasn't at all accusatory, didn't blame me for having white skin, or suspect me of creating an unfair system. She just reported on the facts as she noticed them as an outsider suddenly living inside our country.

And I say unto you, friends and countrymen-and-women, do we really want to live in a country where people from the outside notice first our racism and our segregation? Aren't we all equally hurt by that perception? Isn't it finally time to be done with it?

Pity, Party of One

I've spent the day painting my back steps, and it's the third day I have been so occupied, and all I have to show for it is back steps fully covered in primer. Primer is to paint what knitting the fist sock is to knitting a pair of socks. You get yourself all worked up, you work for days, and when you finally finish, and you look at the thing, all you can think is, "Great. Now I have to do it all over again." Stupid primer.

The other reason to feel sorry for me is that I had to take the car to the shop today. No, it was nothing serious, but as a former owner of a Swedish car, all of my trips to the shop are accompanied by post traumatic stress disorder.

Also, no matter how fast I watch my Netflix, I can't seem to get more than one a week.

And finally, the real reason to feel sorry for me is that my summer vacation ends today. And see above about how I spent that last day of freedom. Priming. Ugh. Too bad I have to wait for tomorrow for Battlestar Galactica to arrive in the mail.

Some Other Things I Like Better Than You'd Expect

So, in addition to Battlestar Galactica, here are a couple of other things I secretly adore, but don't usually advertise, because of my fear of mockery. Now that I'm almost 35, I've decided it's time to let go of the fear and embrace whoever I am. If I don't love myself, who will?

1. Whole milk and whole milk yogurt. Especially organic milk. I know, I know, I'm supposed to say, "Yuck, it tastes so thick and creamy," but I can't make my lips form those words, because my heart is so filled with love for high-fat dairy products.
   
2. Other people's kids. You know the Christmas letter with pictures of your friends' kids, and how you're supposed to be a little bit annoyed, since you don't have kids and so you don't torture your friends with stories of their accomplishments? Yeah, except my wall is still plastered (in August) with those kids' pictures. I like being the fun adult friend. It's amusing to chase little kids until they scream and invent stupid little games that are just repetitive enough that the kids can play along. It's a blast to introduce kids to Choose-Your-Own Adventure stories, and study how they handle the risk of making plot choices as they grow up. Some of these kids I've known since they were little monkey-babies, and so I especially enjoy them now that they seem so human.
3. The Little Giant. Before I got the Little Giant, I dropped whatever I was doing in order to watch the Little Giant commercials. The Little Giant remains one of the most thoughtful Christmas presents I've ever received. I mean what other ladder can safely rest with two legs on the stairs? I used this feature just today. And I'm not 250 pounds, yet, despite all of the whole milk, but it would be totally safe for me to be on the Little Giant if I were.
4. Veronica Mars. Joss Wedon told me to watch Veronica Mars, and so I did, because he's an artistic genius. I found myself with a series of DVDs not a single person in my peer group had ever seen - or was willing to ever see. OK, fine, it is a high school drama but it's still good TV. Same goes for Buffy, but I always had friends who recognized Buffy's quality.
   
5. Driving stick. Driving at all is passe for environmentalists, but I only just learned how to shift, and it's such a pleasure, please, don't make me hate it. It even turns out that parallel parking with a manual transmission is one of my Special Talents. If I can ever afford a hybrid, I'll have to go back to just steering the thing, which would rob the Earth of my talent. Sigh.

And you? What's your secret delight?

The Darkest Recesses of my Heart

My brother came home early while I was taking care of the nephew yesterday. The kid was napping (Finally, after an hour of sqirking around in the big boy bed, he passed out after a block in the stroller), and I was watching my Netflix DVD in the living room. Well, I jumped right up, turned it off, pulled out the DVD, and stuffed it in my purse as soon as I heard the doorknob turn, but it was too late. He caught me.

"What are you watching? What is that?" Ever the big brother, always able to catch the slightest hint of shame.

"It's, um, it's Battlestar Galactica." Ever the less-than-cool little sister, always apologizing for my nerdiness.

"The TV show?" Disbelief.

"Yeah, well, it's from Netflix. I kind of love it."

And, so, as long as I've already been outed by my favorite older brother, I might as well tell you, faithful readers, Jenn and Jen alike. I love Battlestar Galactica. And no, I am not secretly a man. Women can like Sci Fi, too, you know. Really, really nerdy women, for example.

But, if you want to judge, then at least watch some of it before you do, because if you do you'll see a show in which the humans are driven to participate in suicide bombings, and you'll see main characters argue about the use of the tactic. You'll see secret wartime tribunals meet to condemn accused traitors, and you'll see the danger of the secret tribunal as they almost execute an innocent man. You'll see post-traumatic stress turn Starbuck into a not-so-sympathetic heroine. You'll watch intelligent arguments about genocide and biological warfare. And you'll get to see gratuitous shots of Lee Adama with his shirt off, which just about proves that I'm not the only straight woman watching the show.

So, anyway, I'm not trying to deny my nerdiness. Indeed, I am thankful that it allowed me to watch such an intelligent and pertinent show (gratuitous male torsos aside). I will just say that my name is Alex, and I am a Battlestar Galactica viewer, and I'm proud. Join me. Together we can conquer the final frontier and make Sci Fi safe for women at long last.

Mary Johnson

Our first experience with the previous owner of our house's do-it-yourself tendencies came within two weeks of moving in. At the closing, she said that as a single woman, she always felt safer coming home and parking in her garage if she didn't have to get out of her car to lift the garage door. She bragged that she had installed a garage door opener as a safety measure in her new home. So, one fateful day, coming home late at night, I pushed the button on the much-lauded garage door opener and watched as the garage door was pulled apart by the mechanism that was supposed to lift it. You see, in the old days garage doors were heavy, and they were designed to be lifted from below by the driver of the car. They were not designed to be pulled from above by an automatic opener. It was predictable that the door would fail. Predictable, that is, to everyone except for Mary Johnson.

"Mary Johnson" quickly became a cuss word around our house. When we operated a hole-saw on the door frame of the downstairs apartment door in order to install a deadbolt, and found that it spun helplessly when it hit the folded pages of a magazine that had been used to shim the door in place, we shook our heads and muttered, "Mary Johnson". Then the kitchen sink clogged - because it had been installed to drain uphill - which cost us hundreds of dollars to fix. My sun room painting project turned into an ordeal when I discovered that not only had the wallpaper been painted over, but the bottom 2 feet of the wall had also been plastered on top of the wallpaper. Good one, Mary Johnson. Thanks to you, I had to install wainscoting.

To be fair, the house is nearly 100 years old, so Mary Johnson may not have been the owner for all of the gimcrack do-it-yourself fix-it jobs that have ever been done to it. Life isn't fair, though, so in our minds she always gets the blame. When an outlet sent off sparks in the attic, and I opened it up to find an octopus of wires behind the faceplate, I could only curse poor "Mary Johnson", especially when I discovered that trying to simplify the wiring in that overloaded outlet affected the lights in the living room.

And so this morning, when I had a roofer over to give me an estimate for some leaks, I was quick to point out that the previous owner didn't know jack about flashing. His inspection revealed that not only did poor Mary Johnson know nothing about flashing techniques, her shingling skills were poor, too. I'm shocked. How could a woman who shims with a magazine not know how to shingle a roof? And with all her fix-it skillz didn't she ever hire anyone to do anything around the house?

Home Sweet Divot

I've had my bed for enough years, and enough of those years have featured me sleeping alone in it, that I've managed to wear away a me-shaped divot on one side of the mattress. There's something comforting about that indentation in my bed. It gives me a thrill similar to the one I feel because my space bar and home keys are shiny with wear. I made this. I did it all by myself, and not because I was trying to, but just because I used these things enough times that eventually they yielded to the weight of my body or to the gentle tapping of my right thumb enough times in just that one spot on earth.

How many nights did it take for me to curve the mattress to exactly fit just the way I sleep? How many words did I type so that my soft skin finally wore away the plastic beneath it?

At any rate, it's nice to be home to the one mattress in the world that is shaped this way. It's freeing to have instant access to the Internet any time I want it (although I'm trying not to want it quite so often, since I should be doing dishes or learning Calculus), and, even though I have had to spend the past two days at a conference for math team coaches, it's wonderful to have some measure of control over my own time again. This morning I ran for 40 minutes in the dog park, catching again that sense of rhythm I get from the sound of my feet on the ground and the feeling of air entering my lungs. I was molding the muscles in my legs not by trying to but by using them over and over again, wearing away a path in the dog park with my running shoes at the same time as the dirt whittled away at the tread on their bottoms.

Safe in London, Folks

I just reserved a hotel at Heathrow (so expensive Buddy may have to switch to generic kibbles) and I'm off to explore these Tubes they have here, as soon as I drop off my bags, rinse my pits, and change for the theatre. See you soon in the MN!


After I wrote these words, I took the tube to Leicester Square, bought a half-price ticket and saw "The Thirty-Nine Steps" at the Criterion. Didn't know that you would be able to hear the tube every time it rumbled underneath during the show. Didn't realize it was a comedy. Didn't think it was all that funny, but I might have liked it better if I had just seen the movie. I also thought one of the actors was an annoying ham, but the rest of the audience loved him, so who am I to judge? (Well, most of you know that I secretly think I am a better judge of acting ability than that loud tourist next to me who didn't even change out of his dirty t-shirt and shorts to watch the theater. OK, OK, it's not a secret.)

Even if it wasn't funny, the theater was a great way to keep myself awake until London bedtime. I was alone on the Tube ride home, so I took a picture. After taking over two hundred pictures in two weeks in Kyrgyzstan, suddenly I think I'm too cool to let anyone see me snap photos in London.

I realized as I returned to my hotel room that my definition of having enough space is being able to pee with the door open and walk around after my shower without a towel. No wonder I felt overcrowded for two weeks. And, yes, some parking lot in London got to see me naked if it was looking, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't.

Do You Have the Time?

I don't have a watch. Tom does and it has local and East Coast time, so I have been using his East Coast time and changing it by two hours to figure out what you-all are doing in Minnesota (usually when I'm up you're sleeping). I am embarrassed to admit that it wasn't until yesterday that I figured out a pretty good trick for figuring out the time back home. When I had Tom's watch, I figured out I could take the current time, add two hours and change the AM to PM to get East Coast time. Then, I had to subtract two hours to get Minnesota time. Some of you math-people might already be there. Here's the trick to get Minnesota time: We're twelve hours off. I just change the AM to PM. Duh.

Not-So-Very-Hot Lake

I dreamed last night that while I was babysitting for Cat and Finn, I lost Finn. The worst part was that the Alex in my dream had all of the panic of the real Alex, but none of the competence, and so there was a lot of aimless running around and moments when I would reach for my cell phone and find that instead of packing my phone I had accidentally stolen the TV remote from my apartment in Bishkek. Anyway, I wouldn't allow myself to wake up until Finn was relocated, which happened not due to the incompetent-Al, but due to a call from an anonymous person who wanted to deliver him safely home under cover of darkness without being identified. Dum dum dum.

My first R and R event of the day was a solitary walk to the beach of Issyk-Kyl at 6:00 AM. I planned to go earlier, but I awoke to find that I was locked inside the guest house compound until the cooks woke up to make breakfast. Issyk-Kyl means "hot lake". It got its name not because it's actually hot, but because it never freezes. There is a big difference between hot water and not-frozen water as you know, but I guess "Pretty Damn Cold Lake that Somehow Still Never Freezes" doesn't sound inviting to Russian tourists, so "Hot Lake" it is. At 6 AM, the Russian tourists are sparse but friendly. The greet each other loudly, laugh at the people psyching themselves up for a morning swim, flirt with the little kids toddling on the shore, and stand chatting on the beach while they take in the beauty of the lake surrounded by ice-capped mountains.

I talked a while with a paunchy Russian and a middle-aged Kyrgyz man. We quickly used up all of their English words - and my Russian was exhausted at "good morning" - and so the conversation ended with "American women, beautiful. I love you." Then I jumped in the lake.

I swam again after breakfast, but at that time of day the beach has too many Russians with too much junk in their trunks (and a spare tire up front). Still there is something appealing about a culture in which it's OK to wear a skimpy swimsuit no matter your body type - not visually appealing, mind you, but appealing nonetheless. The Russians all had terrible sunburns. During the hour I sat on the beach, I saw no one apply a drop of sunscreen. I guess their skin cancer can heal during the nine months of winter.

A little before lunchtime, we piled into the van again for a trip to the Kyrgyz version of the Katy Daly - only with a more powerful diesel engine and a deck large enough fpr a table that seats twelve. It was the first relaxing part of the R and R, and we took advantage of it by lounging on the deck and stuffing piles of grilled meat, bread, and salads into our guts. At one point, the capatain stopped the boat, and some of us jumped in the lake again. The water at this depth was startlingly blue and crystal clear. It was a lovely - if cold - third swim of the day.

Now we are all back in Bishkek and I have moved into my new apartment. Dean and Suze left this morning. The trip is winding down. We just have one more day to stroll the city, one more day to work, andthen we fly home. I spend a night in London on the way home, which will be an adventure, but I miss my Buddy and my bed - although not necessarily the smell of Buddy in my bed.

Everybody Forward!

After horseback riding it was difficult to imagine our planned whitewater-rafting trip. I didn't want to be wrong again, but it just had to be a disappointment after the horses.

The trip began with the van pulling off to the side of the road where we had to scurry across the highway, down a ravine, and across some railroad tracks to three lean and muscular Russian-Kyrgyz men in skimpy bathing suits. They ferried us on a raft across the river to their camp, where they outfitted us with wetsuits, life jackets, and helmets. They made what sure sounded like surly comments about us in Russian. Our translator/guide confirmed that they were in "bad moods."

They guided us back to the raft, where six of us got to paddle on our knees with straps holding us in place. The rest of the crew straddled an inflatable bench in the middle of the raft and held onto straps. Four strong guides joined us as paddlers at each of the corners. The lead guide said, "You: left side" - pointing at my side - "You: right side" - pointing across the raft. "I say: left side forward, right side back paddle. I say: right side forward, left side back paddle. I say: Everybody forward. I say stop, you stop. Pay attention. Dangerous place. OK?" - slight pause, and then, "Right side forward, left side back paddle." We did as he said and the boat turned towards the current. "Everybody forward!" We were in the whitewater within seconds. "Stop!", and the four guides took over steering us around rocks and safely through the rough water. I was drenched immediately from the splashing waves.

Before 20 minutes had passed, the guides steered us to shore so they could reinflate the boat. Then they huddled together with the lead guide giving instructions (or so it seemed to the non-Russian speaker), and then they all laced their arms over each others shoulders and bowed their heads for what appeared to be one last prayer for safety. Nice effect, because we listened a little more carefully when we were allowed back on the raft and the lead guide pointed ahead with his paddle and said, "This very dangerous place. Pay attention. Everybody forward!" We followed his instructions and we were rewarded with a nosedive down the next set of rapids. When my paddle reached out only to find air, I reached a little bit further, because all I knew was that if I wanted to survive, I had to obey that calm, certain, and heavily-accented voice over my right shoulder. He knew where every hidden boulder lay, and if we listened to him he was going to navigate us safely past them and down the river - no matter how crabby he was.

We had two hours of near-constant rapids. It was two hours with a little bit of terror, but mostly great fun. I wanted it to last longer, but my knees shook like jello when I finally unstrapped them from the boat, so it was probably a good thing that we were finished and ready for another nap in the van and a drive to the lake.

Finding My Sociable Self

I thought about staying behind in Bishkek while the crew went on holiday. I was having fantasies about empty apartments, privacy, and unscheduled time. Then I spoke firmly to myself. "Al," said I, "You are being a hermit. Get over yourself. You might actually enjoy yourself if you do." Thank goodness I listened, because I was right.

The first stop of our vacation-within-a-vacation was horseback riding. I was expecting lazy nags plodding through a well-worn trail through a forest. I was expecting to be afraid nevertheless, and I was expecting to be thrown from my nag and wind up trampled and dead on the ground. I was wrong.

The drive to the stable should have convinced me of how rugged the trail was going to be. We traveled across narrow dirt roads up into the mountains. At one point, our van, laden with thirteen people and their gear lurched across a bridge made of logs. The logs rolled under our wheels as we passed. The driver just laughed when we gasped. "We do this all the time," said our English-speaking guide, and I tried not to imagine all of those previous trips weakening the structure of the bridge.

I climbed up on my horse apprehensively, and received instructions. "Chu" means go, and "Prrrr" means stop. I barely had time to hope that my horse would be understanding that my American tongue just doesn't roll its R's. And then, within five minutes, we were climbing mountainous trails and viewing breathtaking scenery. I clung to my saddle with my arms and legs as we descended into valleys, and I relaxed my grip ever so sligtly when we headed up the hills again. It was two of the most thrilling hours of my trip so far - the view so gorgeous and the transportation so exciting that the time passed quickly. It wasn't until we reached the shephard's hut where we were to sleep, that I realized how hungry I was. My hunger had been anticipated and a giant feast lay before us when we entered the hut. We ate with gusto, appreciation, and good humor.

And so it was that I found my sociable self inside of an isolated hut in the middle of the remote mountains of Kyrgyzstan.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?

The last day of floors is complete!

On Monday we move on to ceilings. We had a traditional Kyrgyz meal at a restaurant with Kamile as our translator. I complained to Jim about feeling overcrowded in the Penthouse. After our R and R trip to the Lake, I will move into the apartment that Jim and Suze and Dean share. Suze and Dean leave on Sunday morning because their flight got rescheduled, and I will have my own personal space for the last two days and three nights of the trip. A room of one's own, as it were.

Donning the Rose-Colored Glasses

I've gone from living alone with my Buddy to living in a 2-bedroom one-bath apartment with three other people, and taking all of my meals with nine other people, and I can be flexible and roll with the punches as well as anyone, but I sure do miss my alone-time these days. Seven days of togetherness appears to be just about my limit. Suze tried to tell me to take an antibiotic yesterday, and I gave her that sneer of dismissal patented by my family, which I instantly regretted. Lindsay asked me why I was so quiet at dinner and I snapped, "Because I'm an introvert and being with all of these people all of the time drains my energy." She didn't talk to me again all through dinner. Way to go, Al. Making friends and influencing people halfway around the world just like you do at home. Sweet.

Yesterday we worked on the floor some more. Because the lumber is so bad, we had trouble making the floorboards fit. Every board has to be flipped and rotated to see what the best fit is, and then it has to be wedged into place to eliminate the gaps before it's nailed in place. Our team got a rhythm going by the end of the day (and included Lindsay who forgave me for being such a downer at dinner), but we still weren't able to finish the job by the end of the day.

We spend our down-time on the job exchanging language lessons with our Kyrgyz co-workers. We can how say "Malatok" which means hammer, and they can say "crowbar" with a delightful roll of the first "R". All of us accompany our new foreign language skills with self-conscious laughter.

On Thursday, we leave for a little R and R at Lake Issyk-Kyl. I will post when I return. I just hope I don't throttle anyone during our little vacation - at least part of which will include all ten of us sleeping in the same room. If you are at home in Minnesota and reading this, shoot me a comment or an email while I'm gone so I can remember that I'm still lovable even if I am sometimes a bit prickly.

In Which The Team Searches for Ice Cream, but I Don't Write About It Because I Don't Want to Sound Crabby

The volunteer coordinator made us all nametags to wear on the jobsite. They're written in Cyrillic letters because they are for the Kyrgyz workers and homeowners. We had a new translator today, and because I am constantly practicing my reading (which is slow like a small child's), I sounded out her name. She caught me staring, so I said, "Is your name Snora?" and she laughed. "This is in English," she said. "My name is Chopa." Then, she threw me a bone. "But you'd be right if it were in Russian." See what problems are caused when they pervert our letters?

We started nailing in the floorboards today - the first semi-skilled labor of the trip. Men kept taking my hammer and my skill saw out of my hands - the universal language of sexism is fluently spoken here. There is a bit of a shortage of hammers. The good news is that I was allowed to continue hammering after they saw me pound in a few nails. The bad news is that the Kyrgyz kid who took my skill saw is less than 20 and used it with no eye protection. Maybe his imagination isn't good enough for him to picture a splinter sticking through his eyeball, but mine is.

Dinner was a long and tedious process, followed by a slightly embarrassing trip to icecream, which is not on the BRAT diet and, therefore, made me crabby since I wanted to go home, but we won't talk about that...

Get Your Own Damn Letters, Comrade!

I'm learning to read the Russian script. It's not that hard, since it's phonetic and it's not like I have to memorize thousands of Kanji. I hate not being able to read, and the tourist maps are all written in our letters while what few street signs there are are in Cyrillic, so the only way to get un-lost if you can't sound out the signs is by asking a loal, and I've found quite a few locals who don't know what the streets are called, either. And so, in short, I'm becoming literate.

I still remember the day in Sri Lanka that I finally sounded out the words "Seat Covers" on an advertizement we passed every day in our van. It was a thrill. The comparable thrill came today when without consulting a map, I read that we were on "Pavlov" street.

I do have a beef with the Ruskies, however. I don't mind if they borrow some of our letters. It makes it easier for me to memorize them, actually. But if they want to use our letters they should have to use the sound, too. Instead, they're all: "Oh, I like your P. It's really pretty. Let's make it sound like an R." and "Ooo, that B is so curvey and bubbly, it sure would make a nice V. Oh, and let's make it sound like an F at the end of a word, too, OK?" Bunch of pinko Commies, if you ask me. We have an R and a V and an F. Why don't you just take those?

Anyway, the gang (except for Rice Girl) shopped for picnic food at the Osh Market, and then we drove an hour to a park up in the mountains to eat it. Unfortunately, it started to rain as soon as we unpacked the food, so we sheltered under some trees until it was safe to walk back to the van, where Suze led us in a meditation which I tried to follow, despite my inherant skeptism, until I heard Tom, who is nearly deaf, whisper loudly to Denise: "Now, what are we waiting for?" He couldn't hear a word of the tranquil meditation. I decided to have my own meditation watching the rain drops on the van window merge and drip down the glass. It's difficult for me to suspend my disbelief during a group mediation in the best of circumstances.

Then we visited a tourist yurt in the middle of a monument to Manas. There was instense wind blowing against us all the way to the yurt, and when we got inside we discovered that the yurt had been damaged by the wind. Somehow I think that an actual, non-tourist yurt can withstand a wind storm. In the yurt, the crew played dress-up with the costumes available (put there for that purpose?), while I tried not to think about my intestines and took pictures.

I'm still on the BRAT diet this morning, because I had pizza for dinner, and it didn't sit well, but I've broken down and taken an immodium, so I can work today. There was a BBC special on our apartment TV this morning about Cordova. I'm already planning my next adventure. Now I need some Spanish lessons to go with my Cyrillic ones.

In Which I Try to Remember what BRAT Stands For

Our second work day was much like the first, but with more heat and less water. The water delivery to our job site failed to arrive twice and so it got to be 11:00 and we were working hard in the hot sun, and the water still hadn't come. You want to see some crabby Americans? Deny them potable water. Our apartment was also short on water this morning, so my personal water bottle was already empty when we arrived. Sadness. Thirst. I volunteered to work inside to keep away from the blazing sun, and so I wrapped wires around nails and dug holes and stayed away from the concrete.

The water eventually arrived, but the afternoon just kept getting hotter. Paulina experienced some sort of heat exhaustion and had to lie in the shade and still we worked (although I did keep her company in the shade for a bit longer than strictly necessary).

All of it made me feel old and tired, and so when the young women and Denise went out for cocktails after dinner, I opted to stay home and sleep instead. My sleep was hard and sound, but interrupted by frequent, urgent trips to the bathroom. We have a tourism day planned next. This could be the day I discover the joys of the BRAT diet.


P.S. Don't worry, Mom. I haven't written the next post, yet, but I will spoil the ending and tell you that I found some rice at the market and ate bananas and apples and rice all day. My intenstines have straightened themselves out. I mean, they are still wrapped up inside me as they should be, but they are no longer reminding me of that fact every 20 minutes.

The Work Begins

The house is even less finished than I imagined. They build with concrete here, not wood, and in its current state the house looks like it has been carved out of dirt. It is house-shaped, but otherwise feels like a cave.

We had three teams again with three different jobs. Denise, Elyse, Tom, and Paulina stood outside in the blazing heat and mixed concrete. They hauled dirt in a tool I have named the "barrow" because it's a wheel-barrow with a second set of handles in place of the wheel. They dumped the dirt into big troughs along with cement powder, added water, and then stirred the trough with shovels and hoes. It's grueling manual labor, and it's hot, since the temperature reached at least 90 degrees, and the troughs are in the sun during the worst heat of the day.

Suze, Jim, and Homa were the wall crew. They drove nails into the rough concrete walls and then tied wire to the nails in a diamond pattern. They were preparing the walls for the layer of smooth plaster that will make the house more home-y and less cave-y. Unfortunately, they had to reuse nails from another project, and so part of the job included trying to hammer out the bends in old nails. It was frustrating work, and Suze looked positively bitter by the end of the day,despite looking OK with life in this photo.


Who knew the hole-digging crew would have the most satisfying job? My team dug holes into the hard-packed dirt floors in one room. We had to dig 40 holes which were to be 30 cm by 30 cm by 30 com, and about 100 cm apart. Lindsey, Dean, and I worked with some silent Kyrgyz family members. In addition to trying to dig through hard, dry baked earth, we also got to watch the progress of lunch outside our window. The mother in the family cooked a giant wok full of "plov" for us over an open fire.

It was a more manual labor filled day than I expected, but we got to watch our progress, first in adding to the number of holes and then in filling them up again with concrete for the footings. And we got to eat plov under grape vines with views of mountains peeking through the leaves. What could be better?

In Which We Meet the Team

Why do I have to be Judy's daughter? I love my mother, and I feel lucky to have inherited every trait I could from her, except for one: I keep waking up ridiculously early. You could blame jet lag. You could easily blame the trains which are less than a block away, or the barking dogs in our neighborhood, or even the ticking clock on the wall. However, as the daughter of a woman who rises every morning at ever more ridiculous hours, I know that the real culprit is genetics. Or possibly nurture, since she also used to stand and watch me sleep in the morning, until those I'm-being-watched senses started tingling and I opened one eye - to which she would respond "Oh, Al, I knew you'd be up," which such enthusiasm that I was forced to join her for some pre-dawn mother-daughter time. Anyway, with no mother here to keep me company, the pre-dawn has become my writing time.

The rest of our group arrived yesterday, and we all met for the first time (finally!) for a team meeting at noon. We learned that we will be finishing a house for a family. I'm not sure what this means, but I did meet an American woman on the plane whose daughter bought a house in Bishkek and then had to finish all the details on it herself. I'm not talking details like shower curtains and grout. I'm talking installing bathtubs and light fixtures, putting up drywall and mud. So it might be something like that, which sounds a little more high-skilled than is ideal for volunteers, but we'll see.

We then went out for a big lunch under a tent at a restaurant with the authentic Kygyz name of "Edgar's". I had a pizza, with sour cream and mushrooms, in an attempt to choose toppings that the locals might eat, but it arrived swimming in grease, which was a bit much even for me, and I like my fat.

After lunch we went on a shopping spree for breakfast food. It was all paid for by Habitat (or, more accurately, by us, but a long time ago when we paid our trip fees), and our only instructions were to "be reasonable". It was like some kind of reality TV show. We divided into three teams and descended upon the grocery store.


Our team - "Team Penthouse" - consists of Tom, Paulina, Denise and me. It is the most age-diverse team, ranging in age from 20 to 70-something. We also each have our own breakfast needs, but we're all pretty aggressive and not at all jet-lagged having been here for two days, and so we managed to do pretty well for ourselves, operating like a well-oiled machine, and finding sweet and savory breakfast options. Denise even side-lined as the group organizer for staples like coffee, sugar, and water for all the teams.

The "Seasoned Travelers Team" consists of Jim, our team leader, and Dean and Suze, a married couple from New York. Jim had few needs, mainly yogurt and bread, but he had to man the cart for the whole group. Dean and Suze shopped well together because they already knew each other's tastes, but they wasted precious time looking for soy milk (soy milk?!).

Meanwhile, "Team Jet Lag", with three women in their twenties weighed themselves down early with a giant watermelon. Homa and Lindsey went to Bowdoin together and graduated the same year, and then coincidentally both signed up for the same random trip to Kyrgyzstan. Lindsey also spent nine hours in the Moscow airport with Elyse before the 8 hour flight here which arrived at 5:00 in the morning. Despite their jet-lag this group of acquaintances manged to leave the store with a full bag of groceries - and one giant watermelon.

By the time we packed up all of the loot, it was nearly time for dinner even though none of use was really hungry after that big lunch. Still, we piled into the van and made our way to one of the fanciest restaurants in Bishkek for a welcome banquet. We were greeted with a three course meal, and giant platters of food, including, yes, some plates of grilled meat. Mmm, meat. We also got to meet the local Habitat bigwigs, who were very kind and grateful to our team.

And then, because I am Judy's daughter, and it was nearly 9:00, I fell asleep before I could even finish one chapter of my book.