It's getting a little better

Thursday, 29 September 2011,

So it’s now been about a week since I typed up my previous post, even though I just posted a few minutes ago, there have been a few more things happen nothing really eventful though. It’s almost the end of my 5^th week in Kyrgyzstan and still don’t have keys to the front gate or door, I asked my host mother for them and she said she would get them made on Friday or Sunday—that was last Friday or Sunday. My teacher has said that if I don’t do one more assignment she is going to call my contractor—I have only not done one assignment in the 4 weeks we have had class—she also still doesn’t understand why I can’t remember 300 new words perfectly after 4 weeks, and how all my letters are a different size no matter if they are cursive or print. I think if I didn’t have my iPod and iTunes I would have tried to quite this year, I helped one of my ginger mates not quit her year in Italy.

My tennis lessons are getting to be more fun now, that we are starting to not play with the wall as much because I suck at that part, when it’s a normal person I am not so bad because they can hit back differently than a ball bouncing off a wall. I finally got money to pay for the lessons, I have now paid for September and October, since I don’t have the money to pay for November and I may not have lessons in November because I might get to go to Mumbai for 36 days with Rotaract.

I now get 125 bucks a month, since my parents decided that it seemed hard to live off of just 100 bucks every other month from them and my monthly 25 from Rotary. I pulled the 100 this month and got it converted at suckyish rate or $1 = 44.80com—I did it over my 25 minute rest period and it took me longer then I thought to get to and from the place because I took a 45 minute break which my teacher didn’t like I could care less what she thinks at this point I would just like to either move to a different group or hitting her with some sort of large object—on my walk home from school that day I saw places that where $1 = 44.95com and when you convert $100 that’s 15 more com that’s almost a round trip on a bus here. With this money I paid for tennis I have factored out 400com for the month to cover my 336com needed for all my rides to and from school and that extra 64com to cover trips around town and stuff, also I bought tooth paste with Propolis, a tall shampoo bottle that cleans and lifts hair to add volume and life while leaving it smelling like Satsumas, Lemons, and Oranges, a box of 100 variety of fruit flavoured tea bags for my Kyrgyz friend whose in the states for her first year of college after her exchange last year to my district, and a chocolate bar which I am going to cut out to front cover of it and tape a part at the stop so I can stick a safety pin through it to attach it to my blazer since it was my first chocolate bar I have had here and it has Russian on it J. Today I have to buy an umbrella because I think the rainy season is about to start which means next month or if I have enough money this month I need to get a winter coat and some boots, and gloves, I have a hat, flannel lined khakis, and under armour cold gear top and pants.

My visa expired on the 26^th, and they have my new one all done they are just waiting for the 300 bucks to pay for it and an approval letter from the Ministry of Justice. Mika, my YEO’s personal assistant, has been really nice and helping me get it worked out and everything. I learned my geography has really gone down the drain since I left England because I thought Dubai, which is where my Rotary counsellor is moving to in July, was in India when it’s in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). I learned where all these countries where in sophomore World History but we didn’t have to know any cities in them, but if I need to figure out the capitol of random Central Asian Countries I can just go and ask my English 11 teacher he spent his summer learning them for some random reason but this is the same man who would be dancing and singing and hopping around the class room at 8:30 in the morning.

School sucks so badly here, my teacher doesn’t like that I am having trouble learning my third/fourth alphabet and that I can’t remember 300 words in a month when most of my class mates, whom are also foreigners, are having trouble with all the words and parts of the alphabet. I have done all but one of the assignments she assigned us, and the one I didn’t do she was all like “why you no do homework? You need to do all homework! It is good for you! If you don’t do another assignment I am going to call your contractor.” So my school sucks since I have one teacher and I have to put up with her for two hours Monday through Friday I really hope that in a few months when I feel strong enough with my Russian that I can learn the rest by talking with people outside of the class room and if I mess up they correct me, and I can change and take Turkish and then to practice it I can talk with my rotary counsellor, she is poly-lingual. She knows Kyrgyz, Russian, Turkish and English; she used to work for the Turkish Embassy in Kyrgyzstan which is how she kept up her proficiency in it also she attended the Kyrgyz Turkish University and learned English in the schools here and then she got into rotary which taught her the rest over the years of helping with it.

I am still working on making friends but it’s hard right now since I don’t speak Japanese, Chinese or Korean and that’s what the people in my class speak. They all are really nice and friendly but none of us can really talk with each other except the Japanese girl who can speak Chinese.

That’s basically my first full month in Kyrgyzstan, nothing too exciting has happened yet. I am hoping that things will get batter next month since my Russian is slowly getting better since in class we learn some of the most random stuff, like we just no started verbs, and all we have are the verbs for to do/to make, to work, to rest, to listen, to read, to repeat, to understand, to think and to know. We haven’t done numbers yet, which logically you would think first you do your alphabet then you do your numbers and then start verbs, but no we did alphabet for 3 weeks, and this week we started verb work. Also, the teacher expects us to memorize long passage and redic long names overnight, or in 2 minutes or 5 minutes and then come stand next to her in front of the class and repeat it perfectly using the pictures she has, and she goes “many pictures, it’s easy.”