Thursday, November 22, 2007

Underground Lake


A few Saturdays ago all 37 of my fellow PC T-stan trainees gathered at Kow Ata, an underground lake west of Ashgabat. There are only four other trainees living in my village, so it’s always really exciting to be with a big group of people, all of whom I have the language skills to converse with. Also, I have friends in other villages that are always good to see. We spent the morning just hanging around outside the mountain, being really loud and wearing jeans (It’s not really acceptable for men or women to be wearing jeans in the village; they get relegated to being your special Ashgabat wardrobe). We also had a cross-cultural session on generalizations and the differences between Turkmen and Americans, and then binged on all the non-meat filled food at lunch—hooray vegetables!

Kow Ata is basically a big sulfurous pool in the bottom of a mountain. To get there you simply walk down a long, steep staircase into a dark cavern. About two-thirds of the way down is a changing area with a few plastic shower curtains (I think I went behind one with purple dolphins; a festive touch). Below that is another flight of stairs that lead directly into the lake, which is as warm as bathwater and smells like the boiling mud at Yellowstone. Other than a single light near the base of the stairs, the lake itself isn’t lit, so after about 2 minutes in the water I got out to get my headlamp. Bringing a headlamp was my friend Shannon’s idea, and it was a good one. Along with a group of trainees I went exploring to find out how big the lake was (at most it was a 50m swim to the far wall). It was really cool to be able to swim around in a dark cave with just one little flashlight, and at one point I turned it off and it was completely black. The PC safety officer got concerned and swam over to tell us to come back towards the light because there might be dangerous things in the water (sharks?). After that I ditched the headlamp and dove off a big rock a few times. But eventually I started to feel and smell like a hard-boiled egg, and it was time to get out.

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Friday, November 2, 2007

men chagalar


For the first time ever I am living with small children and learning about what that entails. Luckily, my host children are pretty cool. My host brother and sister-in-law, Hatija (also very cool), have two kids ages 5 and 2. Sometimes I feel a little like their aunt, but most days I feel more like a sister, another trouble maker that Hatija has to take care of.
Gulshat is 5, has really short hair (she just got it cut again this week; it looks—neat), and wears awesome leggings. She likes to talk really fast and say a ton of words to me, most of which I have no chance of understanding. Whenever I say something to her in English she acts like she understands and says “yes,” which is nice. This week she picked up two new habits: giving me a thumbs up all the time, and kissing me on the cheek really forcefully. She also spends a good amount of time following me around and yelling my name. Basically she’s the reason I don’t have any alone time and if any of my stuff gets broken/destroyed it will probably be her fault. Regardless, I love this kid and I have to give her props for showing my how to do things when I first arrived.
Yslam, her little brother, is one of my favorite people ever. He does not wear diapers, he does not have a high chair, he does not wear a bib, he does not have a sippy cup, he doesn’t even wear pants half the time. He’s always moist, either from the constant drooling or frequent pants wetting. He is usually eating something, and spends the day doing dangerous things like playing with broken glass or running in the street barefoot. I know more words in Turkmen than he does so hanging around him makes me feel a little smarter; when he says things like “grandpa!” I understand. He also likes to dance and make high squeaky noises. Adorable.