Greetings to All from Turkmenistan!

I hope this letter finds you all doing well. I have been at my permanent site for a month now, and most days it seems to have flown by. The first three weeks were a little rocky, simply because I was adapting to this new independent lifestyle and our internet didn’t work. But, amazingly – again – I got through it. Life out here in Bairamaly, my new city, is alright. Some days are definitely better than others, but that is life. I am now working on my own and creating my own schedule, which is a blast to do. I work at a women’s fitness center at the local clinic. It is great, because I get to workout for my job and teach other women how to work out. Except for my director, he’s not a peach, but life can’t always be peachy…right? Two other local volunteers come to my center to teach tai chi, aerobics, and yoga. For me, it is hilarious to learn these new workouts that I’ve never tried before. Some of you know about my dancing ability, and I’ll just say that my hips still don’t know how to dance over here (I’m no Shakira, because my hips don’t lie – and yes, that is a crazy popular song over here and I hear it constantly…yikes). I also teach the teachers at a local kindergarten during the children’s naptime. On Friday’s I have my girls club, which is for girl students in grades 7-9. We have fun exploring health topics and playing fun Luther Dell games. I can’t wait to introduce them to Mighty Mighty Scoop Noodle Challenge later on. Each PC volunteer has a main project that they focus on for the duration of their service. The last volunteer focused on writing a grant and putting the fitness center together. Since I cannot write another grant to obtain more equipment for the same fitness center, I’ve decided to write a book. Yes, and we all know how wonderful my English is (it has gone downhill since I’ve been here to make it even worse). It is going to be a fitness book that describes nutrition, stretching, the importance of working-out and many different exercises including specific exercises for certain ailments. I am going to take pictures of the Turkmen and Russian women doing the million different exercise poses, so that the book will be more appropriate than any American book that we have over here. Many fitness books feature people who have very little clothes on, so this new book will be more culturally appropriate. I am going to combine a lot of information from all sorts of books to put together a great big book. I am very excited for this project. Oh, the best part is that it is going to be Tri-lingual: English, Turkmen, and Russian – yikes. It is a good thing that I have the support of the local people to help me with the translation. Half of the women who come to the center only speak Russian, so it will a huge benefit to also have it in Russian. At the end of February, I have a week-long conference in Ashgabat at the hotel again, to discuss our projects and learn how to acquire funding for them. It will also be the first time in two months that we will get to see our friends from other velayates (states).
As for the weather, it has been 60*s F for the last 4 days, it is amazingly warm outside ad I’m not complaining one bit about that right now. On the downside, we are in the middle of a huge windstorm, and with the wind, there is sand (remember I live near a big dessert). Wearing contacts right now is not an option, either the contacts will fly out of your eyeballs or there will be so much dust in them, that it just scratches. It is crazy, clothes just fly off the clotheslines, which makes for an added challenge when doing laundry by hand. Oh, on Friday, I had a huge blister on my middle finger from hand washing my clothes. It was gross and I didn’t discover it until I was teaching at the kindergarten…I hope they didn’t notice.
Well, I celebrated my 23rd birthday last Friday. It was fun. I went to work and then afterwards, I went to another volunteers house and we had cake and watched Mr. Mom (a hilarious 80s movie). But the real celebration didn’t begin until the next day. We all met over at Stephanie’s apartment, and then we went over to a Turkmen women’s house (Nuriya’s) and she made us amazing food. After that, we went back to Steph’s’ house. The volunteers gave me “birthday boxers”. A pair of Banana Republic, white boxer shorts that they had all signed with birthday greetings and I was required to wear them for the rest of the night. It was great and made for some fun pictures. I also received a few birthday calls from America and that was great to talk to you guys and greatly appreciated.
You guys always request a funny story from me, and I don’t have any that are extremely funny. But here is a story to try an amuse you. My host-family and I were making manty (similar to our ravioli, but without the sauce) and we ran out of the dough to put the rest of the manty goop in, so my host-mother, as a way of improvising, laid out a long strip of the dough that we had left, and packed the rest of the manty goop in it. Then, she rolled it all up and it looked like a snake made with silly puddy, and then she coiled it up and put it in with the rest to cook. Well, when we were eating, no one wanted to eat the uly manty (big manty). And now it is the running joke of the family not to make big food, because no one will eat it. That is about it for my funny story. I told you it wasn’t that funny.
Oh for New Year’s I think I should tell you what happens here. People celebrate New Years here like we celebrate Christmas in the states. They even have New Year’s trees and Santa Clause with his Snow Princess (even though they don’t get much for snow). It is basically a children’s holiday and people exchange small gifts. My host-family cooked a bunch of food in preparation for people to come over and go “guesting”. And we also went “guesting”. Basically, what it is, is that everybody goes over to each other’s houses and eats a little bit of their food, drinks some tea, and chit-chats. It was great, because my host-mother told the people that we visited that I don’t eat fatty meat or oily soup (which are very common here), so I wasn’t forced to eat a lot of the food and it was great. My host-mom is great when it comes to food for me After that, around 10pm, I went to my room to read a bit and then go to bed, yes, even before the New Year. But, don’t worry, I was awakened at midnight with the loud pops of many fireworks going off in the streets, so I knew when the New Year happened.
So, that is about it from here. Not too much news besides that things are going well. Continue to keep me in your prayers as they are greatly appreciated. If you could also pray for the first elections of Turkmenistan, that would be great. They are “electing” the new president on February 11, and it will be interesting to see how it turns out. Thanks for all your support and letters. I miss you all and love you, too. Keep in touch.

Peace.
~Paula

Here is my address out in Mary. It works to put both address side-by-side. The second address is in Turkmen :-)

Turkmenistan, 745400
Mary velayat
Mary City
Central Post Office
Mail Box #24
Peace Corps Volunteer
Miller, Paula

Turkmenistan, 745400
Mary welaýaty
Mary şäheri
Merkezi poçta
Abonent #24
Parahatçylyk Korpusynyň meýletinçileri
Miller, Paula

*Don't forget to include "Par Avion" and "Via Istanbul" to help it get here faster