pizza Thanksgiving

Most of all, I’m thankful for my amazing life with wonderful family and friends.  I miss you all more than I can say.  This is the first Thanksgiving I’ve been away from Ty and Stu and I can’t stand it, ugh. 

I’m also thankful to be an American.  There are so many basic things that I’ve taken for granted in my comfortable life, especially in beautiful Boise, like clean water and food and an overall high standard of living.

Weird stuff just happens, usually surprising me, and leaving me with more questions than answers. 

I’m about to leave for the night, I learned yesterday, to a destination an hour or more away.  The department of international relations is going hiking tomorrow, so Bailey and I are also invited.  The only details we were given: bring warm clothes and our passports.  I've gotten 3 phone calls on the bring warm clothes part.  I was planning to join other PCVs for a Thanksgiving celebration on Saturday afternoon, so I’m disappointed to miss that.

nontraditional Thanksgiving
(my counterpart teacher: 1st guy on left)

We celebrated Thanksgiving here last night at a newly opened western style bar/restaurant, Helen’s, with pizza and beer.  Our very international group included American, British, Chinese, French, Irish, Korean, Russian, Kazakhstan, and Belgium teachers and students.  It’s a fun bunch and I’m happy to know them.  English is the universal language, but almost everyone speaks several languages, often mixing them.

"Zoe," me, Jessica, Jason

international pizza Thanksgiving 

confirming that Americans are strange

Last Friday I sat in on my counterpart teacher’s translation classes.  I found it really fascinating that the students all came up with something different when they translated a single passage.  I learned that a correct translation depends on knowing the culture, not only because some English words don’t translate into Chinese, or the other way, but also because words have cultural connotations.  For example, several students translated, “the teacher was intimate with her students.”  I explained that American teachers would go to jail for that.

Another weird thing that happened this week was a site visit from my program manager who has been out of touch while she deals with some serious health issues.  It wasn’t weird that she came; she will visit all of the PCVs in her area, it was the school’s reaction.  Immediately after she called school officials to schedule her visit, my phone started ringing.  My counterpart teacher suddenly wanted to include me in his office and more school activities.

I’ve been trying to be low maintenance by being agreeable, cooperative, trying to solve problems on my own, asking for little, making due with what I’ve got, and offering to help in any way.  Nothing remarkable, it’s just what the PC expects.  It’s like a “say yes” policy.  So, in the last 2 weeks, I’ve said yes to doing an oral English evaluation of freshmen in the department, where I learned one student’s brother won a gold metal in ping-pong.  I said yes to being a “question master” in a speech competition, where I also read an Obama speech for students to interpret and I gave an impromptu speech to the audience of 400.  I said yes to using the UN simulation room, where my student practiced speaking into the microphones while the class was filmed. 

This doesn’t mean I’m without problems, challenges, or frustrations; there are many.   But, when I saw my program manager with her physical problems, I felt that whatever I have going on just didn’t seem that important.