Paula's Adventures

Greetings to All from Turkmenistan!

2007-02-08T05:08:00.000-08:00

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

Mac & Cheese

2006-03-08T19:57:00.000-08:00

I had a totally new epiphany today. I have often wondered why the cheese from the mac & cheese box has the silver lining on the inside of the wrapper. Well, today I figured out why. I was in such a fluster and flurry when I was cooking my gourmet dinner that I just threw in the contents of the box and disregarded to take out the sweet-tasting cheese packet. Now, the water was boiling so I wasn’t about to reach in with my bare hands, I had to take the extra few seconds to 1) scream 2) find a tongs 3) amazing remove the packet from the boiling water that now also had noodles in it. This was a crazy minute, let me tell you. So, I let the noodles be cooked to perfection and then I was ready to add my now-wet packet of cheese. To much apprehension, I opened the packet and its contents were dry; completely. I was in shock that I was almost unable to add the cheese to the noodles and wanted to eat it right there. So, moral is: the cheese packet has the silver lining to act as a waterproofing agent in the instance when it might be dropped into the boiling water. It is always an adventure when I am cooking. A new learning experience at every meal.

Challenge Dinner

2006-03-05T20:42:00.000-08:00

What is a challenge dinner? Well, I went to one. It was actually really fun. It was for the Augustana senior class and put on by the Alumni Association. The food & wine was excellent! The table we sat at was so much fun. We laughed the entire evening reminiscing of old Augie times. Anyways, it really got me thinking how much fun I've had at Augie and all of the great memories created here. Four years has flown by. I can't believe that it is almost over. Augh. Ok - change of thought. So, they tried to persuade us into each donating $100 over the next four years, and of course I'm a sucker. But, it is for a good cause. Then, the FIENDS and I all thought that we were going to be cool and try to start a trust fun. That would be great. If only we could all agree on criteria to give a scholarship to someone and the funds to start it. "The Fiend Foundation" ~ how great does that sound? LOL. Anyways, moral of the story was that it was a ton of fun and I'm glad to cherish the memories. Now, back to studying for a behavioral health exam tomorrow. -Nasty-

Life - Track Championships - & RENT!

2006-03-05T06:34:00.000-08:00

I've discovered that life is flying by at whizzing speeds. I can barely keep up with it all. But, things will be great shortly because my behavioral health clinicals are done (finally!!). Now it is just starting the season with major projects that have deadlines rapidly approaching. Last weekend, I went to a track meet in Mankato NCC Conference Championships. It was totally AWESOME!! I have never been to a track meet before, so there was so much to see and look at. Crazy! My friends totally rocked and did well considering the circumstances. This weekend I rented to movie RENT! and it is amazing. I love it all. Well, writing of RENT!, my actual rent was due um...5 days ago now. I need to get on that and write the man the check.

A Working Keyboard & Medical Clearance

2006-02-24T16:21:00.000-08:00

So today I went to my computer to attempt to check my e-mail. Since my keyboard has not been working recently, this has been quite the challenge. It is a major problem because basically all of the keys that my right hand uses do not work. So, as I began typing in my name and password and the such, I realized that the p & j were working. I was in shock. So, I continued to check my Peace Corps status to see if anything had changed at all. And to my suprise, all the letters on the right side of the keyboard were working. Hoorah. Then, I read the screen and realized that I had received my medical clearance. Another Hoorah. I don't know what I am more excited about, my keyboard or my medical clearance. Both are positives and a benifit for me. Now, I am just one step away from the Peace Corps. I am anxiously awaiting to receive my placement. This can be anytime from now until about August. Augh... I get so anxious for this stuff. I am practicing my patience, though, because I need to work on that virtue. After I recieve my placement I have 10 days to decide if I am going to sign the line or not. Time will tell, but in the meantime, I do not know if I should be looking for a real job or just hoping that this fantasy Peace Corps dream is going to become a reality. Who knows? I'm just going to ride this wave out.

A keyboard that works. Hoorah!