July 31st, 2019

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 Farsi and not Tajiki. The guy we saw at the store yesterday wasn’t there because he was practicing his musical act elsewhere. According to one of our teachers I think, he is a talented and experienced musician.

            We are very unprepared for the performance tomorrow. Not everyone has their poems memorized (mine is memorized but the deliver has much room for improvement). Four of NSLI-Y students were sick today (including one that might have been my fault since one was a student who came over for dinner last night). Most of us also don’t really know the Tajik dance, since we have only had two lessons. I am lucky since I am a guy and the guys don’t have to do much, but the for the young women on the program they have to remember a much longer routine before we young men even come in. The skit I am in has not quite come together yet, though I am sure it will. It is loosely based on a story I told in class about the time I read in a club in Spain instead of dancing (exchange trip where we stayed with host families for a week). The teacher to whom I told the story found it very funny.

We are also only allowed to invite one person from our host family to the farewell party since the courtyard of the house is so small (we are having it at the school). But we heard the ERLP coordinator telling his students that they could invite any or their family’s or Tajik friends, which is weird since it seems like the family’s of high schoolers would be more invested in their performance.

We had our weekly meeting today, even though it’s a Wednesday. We talked about some airport logistics, and we were told to say all our good byes to each other before getting on the flight to Chicago since in O’Hare making connections from an international flight is a madhouse. But generally the meeting made our impending departure seems very really, which is kind of scary. I have gotten so used to be here and seeing this same group of people every day. It hasn’t quite hit that I am about to leave though.