June 30, 2019 (Last day of June!)



  • ·      Rose: Not being sick as a dog anymore. Don’t physically feel like trash!
  • ·      Thorn: For dinner, we had since stuffed peppers. My host mother made some with meat and some without, but all in the same pot, since they are cooked in a soup broth. Not only am I pretty sure it was an animal broth, but there were also little pieces of beef floating in it. As a vegetarian who hasn’t eaten meat since God-knows-when this was very tough
  • ·      Bud: Internet café tomorrow! There’s so much I need to do. I didn’t realize how much not having internet access would affect me and how many little things I use it for.
  • ·      Bee/Pollen: Someone who helped you and how they helped you
  • ·      Roots: We went to a Sufi Muslim shrine today and we basically walked around and there were men sitting at various places around the compound. We would approach them, sit, and they would talk in Tajik for a bit. Then they would sing a prayer. In Tajikistan, they pray by cupping their hands, while saying a prayer, and then cup up over their face. The men would always do this while singing their prayer and so would our local coordinator and resident director, but I didn’t know if we should as well. I am an atheist, raised in a relatively atheist (teetering on culturally Jewish) home, and, truth be told, don’t have much exposure to religion.
  • ·      Soil: something in your environment that had an impact on you today
  • ·      Flower: Nothing really, when I got home I went to my room and just studies, only having two short conversations besides meals and playing with my host siblings. I feel like I am not making the most of this experience, but also these days are so exhausting.
  • ·      Garden Gnome: funniest moment

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reverse Culture Shock

They talked about in our "re-entry meeting," but I didn't think it would be super noticeable but it is. A few things that have really stood out to me once I've been back. I was hiking, and we reached the summit I went off to take photos. When I looked back I saw my trip leader down in child's pose, doing yoga, except I thought he was praying. In Tajikistan, I awkwardly walked in on people praying so frequently that I just assumed. The first reasons my brain thought he wasn't praying was because I noticed he wasn't facing east (the sun was setting so it was easy to see the cardinal directions), even though in Tajikistan they pray facing west. It was only after that thought went through my head that I remembered I was in the U.S. that ever few hipster yogi white men are actually Muslim, and he was actually doing yoga. I kept putting my toilet paper in the wastebasket in my bathroom instead of in the toilet since I had grown so used to doing that in Tajik...
Read more

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 ...
Read more

Pre-Departure Orientation: Day 1

Image
I left Boston in the mid-morning, arriving in Chicago at about 1pm Eastern time and 12pm central time. After wandering the truly massive airport including a moving walkway with flashing rainbow lights, I finally made it to baggage claim, found my bag, and was met by Alexey, a soft-spoken Ukrainian man, who worked for the organization that is implementing the scholarship. A group of students were already there. We then took a shuttle to the hotel were our orientation is taking place. There was a lot of waiting around for the second half of the group to arrive. We are twelve in total--some interesting demographics: 2 redheads, 2 Minnesotans, 2 from Massachusett, and 2/3 girls matching the nationwide trends in the gender of those studying abroad . The orientation kicked off with a lot of discussion of the rules, including the classic making our own group rules/expectations ("confidentiality" and "be respectful" came up a lot). We also were reminded of the drug and al...
Read more