Blogs from Tajikistan, Asia - page 11

This story begins with a little girl, a girl who, while her friends collected fuzzy bagworms on a dusty Oklahoma playground and put them into cute jars and tried to feed them grass, cowered in a corner, horrified. This girl can't tell you where or when or how it developed, but she suffered from a blinding fear of caterpillars. They haunted her waking and sleeping hours, covering floors with their writhing bodies in her nightmares, seeking her out like heat-guided missiles on family picnics, making her humiliate her coming-of-age self as she ran and screamed like a maniac to escape them. This little girl grew up, and in the process outgrew many things, but not this phobia. "Sarah, they can't hurt you!" her friends would say. "Sarah, they're cute! Sarah, they turn into butterflies!" But reasoning ... read more

To quote a British friend here who, on a recent night celebrating that Britishest of pre-Lenten festivities (Pancake Day? I'd never heard of it), said that it seemed we all were coming down with a case of the midwinter blues. It's been cold for a while, though I can't blame the cold for my lack of internets communication--mostly I blame busy-ness. Lots more classes this semester, lots more extra stuff I want to do, especially as I see the end of my time here swiftly approaching. I feel--and I'm sure I'm not the first one to feel it--that just as I finally get my Tajikistan-legs, my perfect personal mix of individual strength and cultural respect, of hardness and kindness, it'll be time to go back to my wonderful home, and get a new set of legs ... read more

A picture is worth a thousand words, so please allow me to share many...much love!... read more

A brief anecdote that I was thinking about when I woke up this morning, maybe because I was dreaming about it, I don't know: I spent Friday in a village that had not seen a foreigner since 1977, and it was great. After visiting some schools and an English program, we were driving back to the family where I would spend the night, and the sun was setting so they were bringing all the cows in from the fields. I asked my student, "Whose cows are those?" "The whole village cows are coming in." "Really? How do the people know which cow is theirs?" "The cow knows! Cow goes to his house by himself. He knows his home." Oh to be so lucky...... read more

Quick quiz: which of the above-mentioned place names is NOT actually a place in Tajikistan? Strange place names out of the ancient past aside, I have finally arrived (as of last Wednesday) in the place I will call home for the next 10 months. And what a home it is! Khujand is in—well, right next to—the mountains, so the air is clean and fresh and not as dusty and dense as the capital. With the help of our hard-bargaining embassy liaison, we found an apartment so cute that it may beat out any apartment I’ve lived in in the states (even—yes Britt, it’s true—our lovely pad in Fountain Court, remember the days?). In contrast to many apartments we looked at, it has a wide-open kitchen with tons of sunlight, a washing machine, and windows that seem ... read more