Introducing Roommate #14

This week we got a new roommate, this one is much furrier than any others to date. Meet the cat with many names: Gush (uyghur for "meat"), Aslan (Uyghur for kitten) Bu Yao ( national language for "don't want" - I think the mom of the family we got him from wasn't too thrilled at the prospect of having a cat in their home) and Puss in boots ( sometimes he looks just like the cat from Shrek). We are officially just babysitting the cat for a few weeks while friends of our are back in the states. Roommate 13 has been bugging me to get a cat since she moved in, so she is overjoyed about the new addition to our home. She said it was the best Christmas present I could have given her.

On that note I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. I sure did, although all the parties tired me out.

Going out with a Bang

We are nearing the end of our semester and I was reminded of the struggles we went through to start the semester. The school is trying so hard to formalize it procedures and function more like a North American University, unfortunately with little luck.

This week has been exam week which was anything but normal. My first exam was actually just a reused one from my teacher's fourth year local student's class… all of the questions were written in the majority language, which I can read a little of, but not enough to understand when it says “conjugate these verbs in to the perfect past continuous forms”. Because our class used a different textbook this year, it wasn't really based on the information we had studied. I was also unable to translate whole sentences between these two foreign languages. In other words I bombed it.

In the afternoon on Monday we scheduled to take the exam for our oral Uyghur class, but because the teachers need to hand in hard copies of our exam, it would be a written test. When we showed up to take the exam, we were hustled off to another room, where a bunch of young Russian kids were writing their listening exam (this meant the teacher kept reading passages out loud to them) making the room anything but quiet. The proctor then gave us the wrong exam paper (we thought we were writing an exam based on our oral class and he gave us our grammar exam –which I thought I still had one more night to study for). The font that was used on our grammar exam was next to impossible to read (many of the letters were formed incorrectly because the computer it was printed off of did not have Uyghursoft) and took double the time to read. We tried to tell the proctor it was the wrong exam and that it was illegible, but he doesn’t speak or read Uyghur. He told us not to complain and just write. “Anyway” he said “it doesn’t really matter, these exams don’t count for anything”. IF THEY DON’T COUNT THEN WHY IN THE WORLD ARE WE TAKING THEM?????

When our teachers saw how poorly we as a whole class did on these exams they invited us over to their homes separately (secretly). If a teacher’s whole class does poorly it reflects on the teacher and they will loose face (shame is a very big part of this culture). At their homes we drank tea and corrected our exams together one by one… but we had to have different answers in some places so that it wasn’t so obvious that we had cheated. The whole thing was so frustrating. In the last two day I have written three exams of which I had to re-write two of them. I try not to use this blog as just a place to vent my cultural frustration… but today this is me venting.

No Harm Done

Recently I mentioned that a friend had given us all of her old packaged food goods from the states. I am pleased to let you know that at lunch we made the Mac and Cheese dated 2001 and ate it with no problems. Mind you we had spent a lot of time upfront sniffing, smelling and taste testing it with our figure before we decided to just go for it and give it a try. I was right those dates really don’t mean anything. Seven year old macaroni made my day.

I Don’t Know How Santa Does It

Christmas is drawing near and this year a few of my close friends and I decided not to buy each other gifts… but instead to pool that money and make gift baskets. We were each allowed to choose two or three local friends or families whom we wanted to give a basket to. We spent Saturday afternoon baking, buying fruit and finishing up cross stitch decorations. Each parcel contained banana bread, cookies, crocheted snowflakes, cross stitched winter senses, oranges, pomegranates, and some hot chocolate. We had even practised singing a song in the national language (which could be understood by Uyghurs and everyone else) to greet people with when they came to their door.

We started the night by taking buses from one stop to another, but soon broke down and paid the little extra to go by taxi. We had a lot of stops to make, and our arms were loaded with yet undelivered baskets. We almost had to be rude at each home as we wanted to just sing them a song (which is a lot harder to do after climbing six flights of stairs), pass off the gift, take a picture (which you will notice are mainly from the waist up… as everyone was answering the door in their long underwear) and leave for the next delivery, this was hard with Uyghur friends continually inviting us in for tea (a two hour event).

It was a cold crazy night, the temperature seemed to be dropping between each stop. It dropped so low that the batteries in both our phones and cameras were dying and making it hard to contact those at our next location. But we did it. We made 11 stops in just over three hours, with only one family not home to get their gift. We were all wiped out and very glad to crash at the end of it all. One night around the city was more than enough for me, I don’t know how Santa does the whole world in a night.

It's Back

My annual winter cough is back with a vengeance. I am not really sick it is just the coal dust in the air that causes me to have problems breathing. It makes it hard to visit friends when every time I open my mouth to talk and cough and wheeze like a smoker.

Rejoice with Those Who Rejoice

Over the last week I have spent several days visiting for the holiday. It is amazing the number of neighbours I have met in these few days. Many of them recognize me from around campus- I guess there aren’t many young white women that have been living here for almost four years. Each time I met a new person they commented on how wonderful it was that I wasn’t on my crutches any longer and that my legs seemed to be doing so much better.

I even met up with my old crutch buddy. This woman is in her mid seventies and part of the majority people group (ie speaks the language I am not as good at). She was so impressed to see me up and walking on my own. She is still on her crutches moving slowly but greatly rejoiced with me in my restored health. I couldn't help but think what our good North American Medicine would be able to do for her, if only she had the access I had.

It is wonderful to be part of the community here… not just to realize that all of the neighbours know me (and everything about me), but to have them greet me on the street. The vegetable man salutes me everyday as I pass by on my way to class… the sweet potato man waves from across the street, students run to catch up and walk together, my teacher calls me her oldest daughter and mocks me unmercilessly. I love the fact I get to live here.

On the Bloody Morning After…

In my last post I mentioned that it was Korban Hayt. The holiday officially stretches over three days as family and friends go from house to house visiting. Yesterday I was able to make it to four different homes and was served four different plates of boiled mutton (mainly fat in some cases). It is a fun festival filled with food and visiting friends and family…

but the day after is DISGUSTING. I am very thankful that Asian people see it as rude to wear your shoes in the house, because on the day after Korban, I don’t even want to think about what is on the bottom of my shoes. You really have to watch where you walk outside, there is sheep poop, the sheep guts and intestines everywhere, blood and the contents of the sheep’s stomach get tracked up and down the streets. It really is gross here (This holiday moves about a week or so every year, but I am thankful that every year I have been here it has been winter and all this stuff freezes, as does the smell). If you keep your eyes open, you may even find a foot, head, horn or hoof that they forgot to clear away the day before.

All of the above pictures are taken just steps outside my front door. These same scenes are repeated in ever apartment complex courtyard around the city and throughout the province. It is a bloody, bloody day.

Happy Hate

Today was Korban Heyt (pronounced hate), the Muslim holiday made famous for its slaughtering of sheep. Early this morning my roommate and I made our way towards one of the largest Mosques in town. The Uyghur people treat this holiday the same way many North Americans treat Christmas… even if they don’t believe in God, they might be able to find to a Christmas service of some sort… in the same way Korban is the holiday on which even the most nominal of Islam followers will find the time to practice their religion. There were literally thousands of men lining the streets, blocking traffic and participating in prayer time. Even where we stood on the bridge above the street was getting crowded with men and women and their prayer rugs.

Off to the side of the street are the sheep for sale.

The first day of the holiday is often reserved for family. They gather at the oldest family members house and eat the meat of the sheep that was sacrificed on their behalf. Today instead of going to a bunch of my friends homes, and eating food till I burst, I went to the hospital. I remember as a kid when I was in hospital right up until the 24^th of December, it wasn’t fun to feel like I was missing out on the celebration. My teacher’s sister-in-law is currently in the hospital struggling with cancer. My classmate and I spent the afternoon visiting her and some of the other patients in that ward. We had packed a dozen small bags filled with bread, dried fruit, nuts and other goodies, all things you would normally find on a Uyghur table during the holiday season.

It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas

I got my sad little Charlie Brown Christmas tree put up this week, which really gives the whole apartment more of the feel of Christmas.
Also the huge amounts of snow that was dumped on the city this week went quite far to getting me in the spirit of things.

I was out walking on the first day it snowed (before the masses had gotten out to clean off the roads) and actually went for quite a tumble. I am alright… although I was pretty stiff there for a few days. The good news, if you can say that when you slip on the ice in the middle of the road, is that I sounded local while doing it. Out of all the sounds, noises, or colourful metaphors that could have come streaming out of my mouth in this moment of panic… I screamed “Woi Jan”. This Uyghur expression would most literally be translated “Oh dear”. The guy walking behind me a few feet thought it was hilarious to see a foreign girl scream out like an old Uyghur lady that he was still laughing to himself as he gave me a hand up.

Sometimes Owning is Better than Eating

One of my friends and her husband are moving, which means they are in the midst of cleaning out their apartment and giving away a bunch of stuff. My roommate and I scored all of their old foreign food mixes.

All of our new treats

Packages from home filled with Mac and Cheese, soup mixes, coffee and hot chocolate are one of the most exciting things to get in the mail. It’s like sending all the joy of a North American grocery store in a box. My roommate has been known to say that a care package doesn’t really live up to its name unless it has food supplies.

My roommate and her sister sitting in the midst of all the goodies her sister brought with her

It is so fun to open the kitchen cupboard and see it full of all these goodies we just can’t buy here. As I look at each box I can clearly imagine what the dish tastes like, I start to salivate. Just standing looking at it brings so much joy.

Sometimes the joy of just owning the food is better than actually eating it. If you live overseas you know what I am talking about… the anticipation of what it will taste like, the dreams and images it conjures by merely feasting with the eyes go on and on… but once you have opened the box and consumed the food the dream is over. The box no longer joyfully greets you when you open the cupboard… the anticipation has been met… the longing fulfilled… and dead.

I know I am not alone in this feeling, in fact it would explain why all of the supplies my friend gave me the other day are past their best before date. (Do you think it is safe to eat Velveeta – still sealed- with an expiration date of 2004???). I tend to view these dates as mild suggestions printed to merely relieve the company of any legal obligation. Although I do remember this same friend once making a pie for thanksgiving using shortening that was years old, the end result was just gross. I think in that case she should have held on to it longer and enjoy the dream instead of the reality.

Not Fast Enough

The Uyghur people value the idea of marriage, or at least its statues. I have been told more than once by friends that it is better to have been married and gotten divorced, than to never have married at all. As girls get older they will feel enormous amounts of press to marry and ‘get it over with’.

Traditional Uyghur bride and groom

With this cultural understanding as a backdrop, you will understand why all my friends and teachers have started an outright campaign to get me married off. My roommate thinks she knows the prefect person for me… her ‘perfect person for me’ has a suggestion of his own on who would be a good match. My teachers spent half of our class period the other day discussing the matter. One teacher even offered me her younger brother… which is quite the allowance, considering what a devote Muslim she is (the whole idea of letting such an unclean, pork eater as myself into the family is unthinkable). Thankfully I stopped them before we got to my bride price.

I can pretty much avoid most of the offers with a quick etymological look at the Uyghur word for husband ‘yoldash’. Yoldash literally means ones road mate. It implies that two people have chosen to walk together through life on the same path. When I point out that most Uyghur man walk on the Islamic road, and I am personally on another road, they see that it would be quite impossible for us to truly be road mates.

A few weeks ago after giving this little speech, in attempts to put an end to my teachers match-making meddling, one of my favourite staff members from the school’s Foreign Affairs office walked in. She is a single Uyghur woman about my age. The teachers quickly switched the focus of their inquires to her. “You’re still single, aren’t you?” they asked. “You don’t have a boy friend?” “Do you want to get married?” And off they were again… throwing out names and suggestions of men that might be a suitable suitor for her. I was glad to be out of the lime light on this discussion. But yesterday this same girl invited me to her wedding in January. The matching making, the set-up, the dating, the proposal, and the setting of the date were all done, now all she needs to do is show up. My teachers kept looking at me like it was my fault I didn’t act fast enough, as if to say, “It could have been you, we tried our best.”

Modern bride and groom dancing in a common reception hall

Thankful to be Included

Yesterday was American Thanksgiving, and well it is true that as a Canadian I officially celebrate over a month ago, when the northern climate ushered in the harvest, it was a pleasure to be asked to join others in yesterdays celebrations. Since many of the expates in my community are from the United States, the holiday was actually pretty important out here.

One family that I am friends with was hosting a traditional thanksgiving dinner for ten of their closest Uyghur friends and their own family of four… when they heard my roommate and I didn’t have plans they graciously extended an invitation (because when you are already planning to cook for 15, what is two more).

Before dinner we went around the room asking everyone to express one thing they are thankful for. As normally happens when we try this out here, the responses were much the same. “I am thankful that you invited us to join you for dinner”, “I am thankful for my foreign friends” or “I am thankful for everything God has given me”. They might sound like trite answers, but they are offered from the heart.

I myself reflected on how thankful I am for my new knees. Since I came back in July I have repeatedly been amazed how much easier it is to live out here when I am not in constant pain. I can now make it to my fifth floor classroom with out hassle. I can climb on and off the bus, with out holding up the whole line.

I was also thankful for the real turkey that we were eating. We normally can’t find a whole bird out here, and well out hosts did admit to me later that they likely spent double on it than they would have if in America… it was worth the price to watch friends join in the tradition for the very first time.

False Advertising

Advertisements rely on the power of suggestion. Knowing that a picture of a large cheesy piece of gooey pizza will make you want some. That is why restaurants often decorate their walls or menus with big colourful photos of their products.

So naturally after moving here I expected that the food in the bright colour ads on the wall was food that they sold at that particular restaurant. WRONG. One of my old favourite Muslim Restaurants (pork free) had a large poster of a breakfast table complete with bacon and eggs. A friend of mine was joking with the staff and asked them to bring out a plate of what was in the picture… he got the eggs, but the bacon was sadly no where to be found.

I have since learned not to trust these attractive ads… and sometimes actually have to look away so that the power of suggestion does not make me long for the juicy, mouth-watering hamburger, that the hack saw chicken restaurants has plastered all over its walls. I wonder if I can sue for false advertising out here???

The Baby with All the Hair

My mother has always told me that I was the ugliest baby she ever saw. In fact in her telling of the story even the nurses at the hospital where I was born couldn’t find a single complementary thing to say about me. They never said “Oh she is so cute” or “what a beautiful baby you have.” Instead the nicest thing they could think of was “Oh so you're the mother of the baby with all the hair.”

Me when I was a baby

I found myself using the exact same line the other day in reference to my friend’s baby. Not because she wasn’t an adorable child, but because I was trying to honour my friend, her baby, and their culture. For the Uyghur people, it is very rude to gush over a child and claim how beautiful the baby is. They have a great fear of demons and the evil eye. The belief is that if you compliment a person too much the evil spirits will notice and perhaps attack the person. I wanted to thank my friend for sending me pictures of their child (they had to send the photo over email because a Uyghur woman and her baby are not allowed out of the house for 40 days after the birth). But I didn’t want to scare them into thinking I was casting a curse on their baby… so I settled for the good old comment that had often been made about me "Oh, look at the baby with all the hair."

My friend's child

To us this sounds like a very strange belief… but it is very real in Uyghur culture. My roommate went to visit her friends in the countryside a few months ago. Most of the neighbours had never seen an American and everyone who met her commented on how beautiful she was. The neighbours made such a big fuss about her big blue eyes and her gold hair, that when she got sick the next day they were sure that all the attention had attracted the evil eye. The grandmother of the home then performed a bread ceremony over her to try to rid her of the demons. No one ever seemed to realize that drinking the water straight from their tap might have negative effects on her stomach.

In class the other day my teacher was saying they often lie and call a child ugly just to keep the evil far away. Maybe that is what my mom was doing all along. I wasn’t REALLY ugly; she just said it for my own sake. (haha)

When You Read You Begin With FXBETKEOJGLHT

I remember when I was in college and studying Greek, the first time that I learned that they had both a middle and a final character to represent the s sound I was thrown for a loop. I thought it was crazy that a language would have two ways to write the same thing. Later when I got into reading old documents in English I was floored to find out we use to have the same thing. At the time it seemed so confusing. But now I find myself longing for those simpler days.

Uyghur is not a language for the faint of heart. In fact it has three distinct alphabets, some of them have two and three different forms… not to mention that most letters in those alphabets have both a beginning, middle and final form.

For years the Uyghur language was written with an Arabic script, but in the 1960’s the government introduced a new Latin based writing system. This quickly became known as the ‘new script’. But in the 1980’s the Uyghur people longed to get back closer to their Muslim roots and started once again using the Arabic script (in many ways it was similar to the original, but a few alterations were made to the vowel system). This is the writing that we find in our textbooks and all around town. Unfortunately this new Arabic script is so closely linked to the former one, which they choose to call the “old script”. This means the old script is the current one that people use, and the new script is now passé (or old). However since we can’t really use the Arabic when typing on cell phones and other modern devices, they also have standardized transliteration to Latin script (which not surprisingly is different than what was used in the 60’s and 70’s). Finally on the other side of the border they traditionally use a Cyrillic script to express this language. I told you it would make your head spin.

I have spent most of my time focusing on learning the Arabic script that is currently being used on this side of the border. In fact I have been using this language so much that my Uyghur typing speed is almost as fast as my English speed. But in the last few weeks I have been helping a friend transliterate a document into Latin script. Which means I am looking at the Uyghur I am use to reading, but trying to type it with an English like script. I have to read it all over so slowly because sometimes when I am typing Uyghur a F is an A, or sometimes an A is an A, and other times an A is a H... that is of course when the H is not a X and the X is not a SH. I am now so glad that my high school typing teacher taught me to type without looking at the keys, because at this point they would only confuse the situation even more.

Here is a small sample:

سىز مېنىڭ دوستۇم Arabic

Latin transliteration: Siz me:ning dostum

English Translation: You are my friend

Cookies for Class

This week one of our study mates has been away... that means our young Uyghur tutor guy has been left alone with my roommate and I. We have taken learning to a whole new level. In the last little while I have played Settles of Cantan, Jenga and the Ungame all in Uyghur. Today we put the boy to work in the kitchen. He loves eating chocolate chip cookies, so we explained how to make them in Uyghur and made him follow the instructions (which is a little more work here since you can't just buy chocolate chips at the store... we have to buy chocolate bars and take the time to cut them into pieces).
I think he was actually enjoying himself until two Uyghur guys came to fix our water pressure. He was so embarrassed to be caught in the kitchen having two girls telling him what to do that he stopped talking altogether. His hair and eyes are light enough coloured that if he doesn't say anything people sometimes take him as a foreigner as well. There was a minute there I didn't know quite want the repair guys wanted... and I was hoping my tutor would jump in and help, but he just stood there looking dumbfounded stirring the cookie batter. Thankfully both the cookies turned out well , and we now have enough water pressure to have a shower again.

Stalkers

This morning before 7 a.m. my cell phone started to ring. It seemed like a weird time to get a call and I was a little worried about what might be wrong… but when I checked whose number it was I discovered it was one of the many English leeches that had somehow gotten a hold of my phone number. Anytime I have spoken to this girl, all she does is laugh and try practicing a new sentence she learned in class. She likes to prove to her family and classmates that she knows a foreigner. Since I was in the middle of my quiet time I decided to ignore the phone… but she kept calling more than six times in 10minutes. When I finally did decide to answer, she asked me how to pronounce a word. It wasn’t anything important or earth shaking, it was a class question from a near stranger, but she felt free to call me repeatedly before seven in the morning.

Another day I was walking down the street and I had the creepy feeling that someone was following me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a man walking very close behind; even in the midst of a busy crowd you can tell when someone is intentionally trailing you. I thought he was after my purse, so I ducked into the closest shoe store and appeared incredibly interested in a pair of red high heels. After a few minutes I left the store, only to find that the guy was a few feet ahead, standing off to the side pretending to talk on his cell phone. The second I walked by he fell back in step behind me. I tried turning quickly down another street, but he was still tracking me. I finally came across the entrance to a much larger store, as I started on the stairs I could tell he was planning on following me in. As I crossed the threshold I heard “you speak English? Be my friend” This man had been stalking me down the street for over twenty minutes, just trying to get up the nerve to speak with me. This is common that a total stranger tries to practice their English skills with me wherever I am. I have had some students recite whole dialogues from their textbook as I walk by.

Once I had a knock on my front door and it was a Uyghur boy insisting that I HAD to teach him English. When I said “no, I didn’t have time”, He stayed planted in my doorway insisting that he wouldn’t take “no for an answer”.

It is like I am a movie star with the press herding behind me. People who I have never met and don’t even recognize know my name and where I live. I was at a dumpling restaurant across from my old school. The place was crowed and I sat down at a table with a couple of strangers. I made small talk with my seat mates, asking them if they were students at the school and what major they were studying. When I mentioned that I use to attend the same school they said they remembered. They were able to tell me that I had been there three years ago; they knew my name and even where I had lived on campus. I had never met these young ladies, but they seemed to know all about me.

Most days that I live here I long for obscurity; I want to be able to just blend in with the crowd, instead of being pointed and stared at, to be left alone instead of people assuming that my white skin is an invitation to intrude on my solitude.

Snowball Fight

Well winter really is here now. Today the snow not only fell, it stuck and actually accumulated a few centimetres. It is funny because in class this past week our teacher had been explaining the Uyghur tradition of throwing snow balls. These are not the wet cold ones that we envision picking up from the ground… they can be paper, or even phone call snow balls. On the first REAL snow fall it is tradition to challenge your friends. When you “throw the snow ball” you are literally asking them to give you something. It’s like saying “I threw the first snow ball so now you have to bring me candy…or give me chocolate”. I can’t say I totally understand the connection, but they all seem to love the game.

Today when my friend was over she must have had five different people call her to ‘throw snowballs” and celebrate the start of the winter season. She thought it was so much fun that she suggested I try calling my friends. I did call the teacher that mentioned it in class the other day…I will have to wait until I see her on Wednesday to know if she will actually bring the chocolate I asked for.

While phone calls and slips of paper were passed with furry I did notice a few young kids out side enjoy a traditional revel in the winter wonderland. I even took a walk in the winter whiteness and had a little fun along the way.

….. is the Mother of Invention

Sometimes I think living overseas must be similar to being pregnant. I have often heard of expectant mothers being hit by food cravings. Once the thought gets in you head it is hard to forget. Living here is the same way. Sometimes the memory of a well loved dish from home enters my thoughts and I can't function well until I have had some. The only trouble is not everything is available out here for real western cooking.

One of my latest longings is for cheesecake. This is not a new thing for me, and over my years here I have discovered how to make cheesecake in a land where cream cheese is foreign.

When I first started to describe cream cheese to my local friends two years ago, they seemed to think I was crazy… in fact they wondered if butter would do the trick (also a hard to find item, but somewhat more well known). Some suggested a Kazak cheese product that might work… but in truth it is way to hard and sour to make a good cheesecake (trust me we tried once).

However, I have learned from my Kazak neighbours that they make their cheese by cooking milk and yogurt together and then hang it up in a bag for a week or so. Based on this simple practice I had heard that you could make creamcheese simply by straining yoghurt through a cheese cloth.

The first time my classmate and I tried this method we had quite the contraption hooked up to our clothes line. There was a bag of yogurt hanging three feet in the air (It might be more accurately described as a large blob of yogurt wrapped up in cheesecloth, bound together with safety pins, string and clothespins). Every so often a drop of water would drip into the metal bowl we had sitting beneath it. The sound was madding and actually drove us from the apartment. The other problem was that we had to leave it out for several hours and feared that our yogurt would go bad as it sat out for a full day in the heat of the summer. This method did work, and while it was cumbersome to hang the bag of yogurt and the constant dripping did get annoying, the cheesecake was sweet, and almost perfect.

It was my current roommate that moved us one step closer in reinventing the wheel of cream cheese production. The smarty that she is, thought to put the cheese cloth inside the strainer and set the strainer in a deep bowl. The whole thing can slide nicely into the fridge were it can sit for the required length of time, still cool and clean (the door even insulates the noisy drips).

The ladies at our local store now think that all North Americans do is eat yogurt. We buy large amounts to strain down to various consistences to make cream cheese, or a sour cream based veggie dip and so many other things.

And so food cravings, the real mother of invention, has found a way to bring cream cheese to a land that doesn’t know cheese from butter. And the black bottom cup cakes my roommate made this week have gone a long way to meeting my dessert needs.

Nobody Calls Me Aunt

The other day I was standing in line at a shop… if you could really call it a line. The whole concept of lining up has not fully been grasped by the general population out here. It is much more of a first come first served, push your way to the front, no one else matters sort of line. You have to find your place, hold your territory and push as hard as the guy behind you or you will be run over.

As I was saying, I was in line the other day, only to realize that the two different masses of people were trying to push to the same cashier after the second one closed. No one wanted to lose their hard fought for spot, myself included. In the midst of the of the crush one college girl grabbed my arm and said “here aunt stand with us”. I thanked her for the spot, but it took a moment for her word to really sink in .

AUNT- is a term they use out here as a sign of respect to the former generation. Normally it is applied to someone who is several years your senior. At home we might say miss, or madam, but the subtle under tone is the same it means you're old. I am use to being greeted by toddlers on the street who smile and wave and call me their aunt. But college students… how old did these girls think I am??? I am still often taken as a college student myself, there is no way that I look old enough to deserve that title. Grrshk.