Alan Abroad: NSLI-Y Tajikistan Summer 2019

Needless to say I did not get any sleep last night before the flight. Though I was able to sleep on the plane to Dubai. As I write this I am on the plane to Chicago. It’s 14.5 hours of hell. I am not very good at expressing my emotions, but I am very sad. In six short weeks I have begun to feel at home in Tajikistan and comfortable in that environment and navigating in the language. In the Dubai airport I kept trying to speak Tajiki to people, before catching myself and realizing that I wouldn’t really have any place where folks will understand it back in the states. We nearly missed our flight to Dubai as well because our RD’s ticket had been canceled and it wasn’t rebooked. It was quite the scare. In the airport I was wearing my tokii (traditional Tajik hat) and got lots of compliments on it. I think they treated me better at security because of it. In the Dubai airpot I have started hearing a lot of English spoke all at once by people not in my group for the first time. Sometim

The morning dawned too early for our last day in Tajikistan. In the morning we took our final exam (which was really just a chapter test and didn’t contain any cumulative vocab). After lunch, we had the speaking portion. We had decided that we wanted to have a dance party after the exam, but everybody seemed in such a low mode it wasn’t much.             Then we had our re-entry meeting which basically just outline reverse culture shock and had us fill out a reflection. When I get back to normal wifi I will upload a photo of the reflection. Our RD emphasized the many ways to pursue studying abroad in the future, as well as the importance of sharing our experience in our home communities. We even practiced elevator pitches about our NSLI-Y experience, which seemed in my opinion excessive. The worksheet also provided us with a list of potential skills we might have developed as opposed to letting us find our owns ways of measuring personal growth.             After that I

Our farewell party was tonight along with ERLP. It was loads of fun and went off mostly without a hitch. The MC for the ERLP students however spoke very fast and intense Farsi, making her difficult to understand. We performed multiple poems, three skits (at the doctor’s, at the disco club, and a short story about a bear and a lumberjack), a traditional dance, and two Tajik songs (one about a river and the other about flowers). The audience seemed to find it amusing, if a bit weird. An ERLP student stole the show with a traditional Chinese instrument accompanied by three Tajik musicians. We couldn’t hold a candle to them. We dinned on osh afterwards while chatting with our families, other students, and American Councils staff who had also attended. We also gave our teachers, resident director, and local coordinator presents. Our RD and local coordinator also gave each of us presents.             After the meal we played a mix of Tajik and American music and danced with var

Today is the last day of July, and this month has gone so quickly. It’s hard to believe that just 5 or so weeks ago I was leaving Boston without speaking hardly ten words of Tajiki. Now I feel comfortable here, interacting with my host family, peers, teachers, and host country nationals. My comfort with the language has also grown exponentially.             We had rehearsal for the farewell party tomorrow with the ERLP students today, so got to be out past curfew, since they have class until 5pm. When they came they were all speaking Farsi since they have a language pledge. But they switched the English when we asked them to. I am also starting to get the sense that Farsi isn’t has mutually intelligible as people make it out to be. I couldn’t understand quite a bit of what they said, though the fact that they were also learning the language probably didn’t help. But all of them had at least two years of Persian experience. Also of them seemed to be here to learn Fa

I found out where my host grandfather is today. I also thought he had past away since the life expectancy here isn’t very long, and the 2 year old who said “bibi” (grandmother) never said “bobo” (grandfather). But this morning they told me he is on Haji in Saudi Arabia right now. He left three months ago and will be returning in September. Apparently the food there is very bad and he misses Tajik food. I don’t think I’ll miss Tajik food.             We got let out of class early to practice our skits and run the performance. Our class’s skits have yet to come together, after my dramatized version of a short story about a wise vizier we read in class was vetoed. But honestly the skits we are doing know are much easier to memorize.             This afternoon two other students came over to my house to study, but the night ended with them staying for dinner. It was nice to hear them talk Tajiki since I am in the other class and we mostly talk English together.

We had another day of class today, but got let out early so we could rehearse for our final performance on Thursday. We are all reciting a few poems and then singing these two Tajikistan songs. The two classes will also each do a skit. After we did the poems and recitation we got a chance to work on our skits. Our skit will be amount a King and his Vizier and based on a short story we read in class. The college students from ERLP will also be preforming at the party, since they are leaving at the same time as us. We met one of them in a store today. He seemed very friendly and spoke positively about the impending ERLP performance, though he noted he was the only one of the group actually studying Tajik here. Everyone else is either studying Farsi, Dari, Uzbek, Russian, or a couple of other languages. Apparently the HIV researchers are sick, so they couldn’t come to lunch. After class we went to Chatr again and once we got home I spent too long playing with my two