Day 2: First day with Host Families, June 23rd 2019

Today was the first day with our host families, and I think it went really well or at least better than I thought it would. This morning, I woke up crazy early since jet lag is still affecting me and I had made the mistake of taking a short (read: 90 minute) nap the day before. Also, I was super nervous. The vocabulary and grammar we know is so limited. It is very difficult to have any sort of conversation, despite everyone’s best efforts. I was limited to the few words we had been taught and the words I had written down on an index card (shower, family members to describe photos, hour, etc). I was the last to be dropped off, giving me plenty of time to get even more nervous, unfortunately. I was dropped off around 11:45am I think, but truth be told I wasn’t really paying too much attention to the time. This left us with 10 hours of conversation to make with our families with our limited vocabulary. My host mother greeted me and we went inside.

The house is super nice, and I have my own room, which is really nice as well. There’s a courtyard. In the courtyard and frequently poking through the broken shade in the kitchen window only to be shoed away by my host mother’s daughter in law is a grey cat named Tom. First, we sat down and went over photos of me and my family. One of the first questions my host mother asked was how old my parents were. It was a frankness I was not used to. At a certain point, there were only so many pictures and she could only correct my pronunciation of khohar (sister) so many times, so we sat in the awkward silence I had predicted. Thankfully we have triangulation! She had brought in a tray full of nuts and a platter full of fruit. We spent the next hour or so with me pointing to a nut or fruit and her telling me the Tajik word. She introduced me to her daughter-in-law, son, and their two children. 

By far the funniest moment of day was when my host mother’s two-year-old came running up to me with a pan of his pee. Since I had arrived he had been saying “Aka” a lot, which I thought meant “here” or something like that, until his dad told me that it meant “big brother” which was really cute. “Apa” also means “Big sister.” So when we were sitting down for dinner, my host mother’s adult son and the two-year-old grandson were in the other room. Then I see him running up to me saying “aka, aka, aka” and holding this white pan. By the shape, I could guess what it was, but my suspicions were confirmed when he placed the pan on the seat next to me. The yellow liquid could only be one thing. His mother realized what was happening and quickly whisked him and the pan away. As she moved him away, I finally remembered my Tajik and turned to the disappearing kid and said the first thing that came to my mind “Rahmat” (thanks). This cracked up my host mother and her granddaughter. When his mother returned, she explained that they were potty training him so whenever he went in the potty they praise him a lot, so he will show people when he goes in the potty to get praise. It was actually one of the first Tajik explanations I understood, which was cool. To be fair the miming alongside the words really helped.

All in all, I have learned so many new words today. I must have gone through half a stack of flashcards. My host family is very consistent about correcting my pronunciation and teaching me new words. I know all these new nouns now, but I am still behind on the verbs. Right now I am communicating mostly using nouns with the occasional “to be” verb that we learned during the pre-program course. Tomorrow is our first day of class, so hopefully we will learn some more helpful verbs there (go, eat, have, and sleep would be particularly helpful I think). When I as my host family, they only give me the infinitive even though the present stem is often different. I am excited for class, but nervous because I don’t know all the vocab of the preprogram course nor the order of the alphabet (though I can read Cyrillic pretty well now). Sorry for such a long post.