Happy 100th Post

Yes, for those of you who have faithfully been keeping up with the KSA Daily we have finally hit the big mile stone of 100 posts. But as I reflect on the last almost year and a half of blogging I realize that maybe the KSA Daily is a bit of a misnomer. A year and a half is roughly 548 days. That means I have posting something new once every 5 ½ days. Maybe I should rename my blog “KSA Every 5.5 Days” or the “KSA Occasionally”, maybe the “KSA Whenever I Feel Like It” or the “KSA Only If Something Somewhat Interesting Happens In My Life” would be closer to the truth.

Seriously though, I started the blog to help communicate some of what my life is like on the other side of the world. Since I have been home many of my friends have let me know that Blogging is so ‘out’ compared to face book. I will be taking a few weeks away from the blog as I go into the hospital for surgery. While I'm gone I ask that if you still bother to occasionally check the “KSA Somewhat Regular”, that you leave a comment to let me know weather or not this is worth my time and energy.

Letting My Guard Down

Where I live in Central Asia my biggest safety concern is pick pockets. They are everywhere. I always have to make sure that my purse is shut tight and clasped closely to my side. I get use to watching my shadow to make sure no one is getting to close to my backpack, or keeping my hands on anything valuable in my pockets. But since coming home I have started to let my guard down a little. I will now hang my purse on the back of my chair at a restaurant without fearing that someone on their hands and knees behind me will try going through my stuff.

Last week when I was up in Cambridge my friends Becky and Tom treated me to a nice dinner at Swiss Chalet. We were all very hunger, but no one was apparently as hunger as their toddler Ben. When the waitress arrived to our table and started putting the full platters of food down, Ben was ready. Before my plate was even fully on the table he had nabbed one of my pieces of bread and had it securely in his mouth. For a girl on her guard I didn’t even see that one coming.

In the national language out there we talk about pick pockets and being small thieves, and Ben is certainly the smallest thief yet to get his sticky hands on my stuff.

Lost in My Own World

If you read my last post then you know I have done my share of travelling. I am familiar with hopping on and off trains, catching flights and being on the go. In fact one of my friends once said that if she was ever on the Amazing Race she would want me as a team mate. After yesterday they may want to rethink that decision

Yesterday I was scheduled to take the morning train home from Brantford to Windsor. Sadly to say I miss read my ticket and showed up half an hour late for my 8:55 train. I had to pay $15 to change my leaving time to 1 o’clock in the afternoon. The weird thing is that the Brantford train station closes for over an hour in the middle of the morning. I had to go to a local coffee shop and sit and wait (there was no Timmy’s within six blocks, so I ended up at some Kelly’s Korner Koffee, let me say it is just not the same).

Oh how the mighty have fallen, there will be no race across the world for me when I can’t even read a simple train ticket printed in my mother tongue.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I haven’t done much blogging over the past month but here are a few numbers to better help you understand what I was up to in January:

Planes = 25h 15 (not counting layovers of another 16h)
Trains = 57h (give or take a few minutes)
Automobiles = 20h (cars, taxis, buses, and sleeper buses all included)
Meeting = 47h 30m
Doctors/ Hospital = 14h
Different beds slept in = 12
Number of Boarder Crossings = 10

So how am I doing now… I’ll let you do the math.
12.25
16
57
20
47.5
14
12
+10
------

Growing up in another world

Happy New Year. I spent New Years Eve with some of the ex-pat community. It was a great evening that included multi different countdowns to the new year. As I have mentioned before we live in two different time zones simultaneously so we can count down at 10pm and midnight. We also can’t watch Dick Clark’s Rocking New Years Eve Party, so we really had no set times and guessed.

We played Catch Phrase and I was struck by how much a young person’s world view can be affected by growing up on the other side of the world. Some of my favourites were: “ It is what the ground is made of” we were all guessing, things like dirt, earth, grass and such, but the answer was cement. Also “First you kill the sheep, take off the skin… then you can cook this to eat”, the answer of course was meat, but it was a really odd clue.

I am Canadian

I remember back when I was in grade ten or eleven our school hosted citizenship court. I helped plan the ceremony and serve at the luncheon after. I remember it being the first day I really thought about how fortunate I was to be born in Canada. Our school gym was filled with people from nations all over the world who had left their home in search of something better, in search of a new life. They all clutched so tightly to their new Canadian citizenship paper as they took pictures with everyone and anyone (I remember a few people even asking me to be in the shot, and I was just serving punch that day). Their joy that day was contagious, and their love for my home land really made me stop and give thanks for my nation and nationality.

Today I was over visiting one of my old Uyghur friends. She had new pictures her daughter had just sent from Canada. Among them were shots of the whole family at citizenship court. The looks on their faces were no different than what I had seen that day at high school. Without thinking I blurted out “Oh look, your daughter is Canadian now!” I was sure this older woman must share in the relief and joy of knowing that her daughter and grandkids now have official citizenship in such a great country. But instead of seeming grateful she seemed upset. To her these pictures did not represent a day of celebration, but a day of doom. In her mind her daughter had turned her back on their culture, their nation, all the history she had tried to pass down. “Why did they do that?” she asked, “they didn’t need to be Canadian, they were already Uyghur.” For every person at court that day, there was a family back in the homeland worrying and wondering how this was pulling their family away from them.

My friend saw nationality as a major definition of who a person is. The more I thought about it the more I was glad that while yes I am Canadian, that is not my number one citizenship.

Bling for my Birthday

For me dressing up means putting on my jean skirt instead of just my jeans, it means my black jacket, or maybe a nice sweater. I like to fool myself by calling it an ‘elegant, understated sort of style’, but to my Uyghur friends it is just plain, simple, and boring. Dressing up requires more, it needs sparkle and colour and zing. All of the Uyghur ladies I go out with will have on makeup and jewellery; their dresses are often caked and incrusted with sequence and glitter.

This semester I have had a real journey to try to add some bling to my outfits (I don’t want these ladies embarrassed when they introduce me to their friends). I don’t know how many times I went to the stores to look. I always wanted to get the smallest delicate necklace I could find in the shop, but the sales ladies would often pick up another one and tell me how much more beautiful it was. The war inside would begin: I knew I should get the one the local people like if I really wanted to fit in, but I just didn’t like it that much. Normally the frustration and tension inside would mount to the point that I would give up and leave the store empty handed.

The truth is that jewellery is more than just a status symbol with the Uyghurs, it is a way to care for your family. Every girl at a rather young age is given a pair of gold earrings by their family. The logic is that if the girl ever finds herself desperate for money, the family has provided something she can sell to survive. So the glitter also has a practical side.

The other day for my birthday my tutor (and Uyghur mother) gave me a pearl, jade and diamond necklace, which might sound like overkill but is actually really pretty. Now she doesn’t have to be as ashamed of my drab appearance in public. But really it is more than that, the pearls are all real, so now my Uyghur family has helped take care of me.

McDonald's at Midnight

Last night my classmate came back from a more populated part of the country. The airport that she flew out of had a McDonalds. As a very thoughtful gesture she stopped and got McDonalds to go. It was than a five-six hour flight across the country. When she came back we ate our cold hamburgers. Even cold they are still an amazing taste of home.

T’is the Season to be Jolly

This semester as I have been getting to know some of the older ladies on campus I was surprised to hear three or four of them tell me about the same Christmas party they had attended many years ago. I guess there had been some other foreign students who had thrown them a party. They had played silly games like the “I’ve never” game, or little Christmas presents in the middle. They had eaten Christmas cookies and listened to Christmas music. It sounded like fun, but nothing really special. The thing that amazed me though was that all four of these ladies still remembered the night in such detail almost nine years later. Some of them even claimed they had never had that much fun in their life.

After hearing all their stories I decided to throw a party of my own. The goal was not to out do the one from years before, but to add another good memory to the season. It was a small party, only three ladies. We eat cookies I had decorated, listened to music and played the game where you wrap a small gift in each layer of paper and then pass it like a hot potato, when the music stops the person holding the gift removes a layer and gets to keep that gift. You would have thought I had invented the light bulb with how much they gushed about what a great idea that was for a game, and how much fun they had. Before they left I gave them all scarves that I had hand knit for them.


I hope some of the real light of Christmas shone through the simple party we had.

My Amazing Mind Boggling Abilities

I was invited to join my teacher at another Chai she was giving. However this time she had to go early, and I had a few earns to run first, so I promised to come on my own later. We were meeting at the same restaurant as last time (which is only three bus stops down from my school).

When I arrived one of the women was very surprised to see me. She had assumed since I didn’t come with my teacher I wasn’t coming at all. The whole idea that I a rather young (I think she thinks I am only 18 or 19) foreigner could find my way around town with out being guided by a local, seem totally impossible. She kept questioning me: “how did you get here?” “I took the bus” “What bus did you take?” “101” “How did you know to take that bus?” “Because we are only a few stops down from my school” “How did you know what stop to get off at?” “Because I have been here before, so I knew where the restaurant was” No matter how many questions I answered this woman still remained totally amazed at my ability to make my way down the street on my own. The fact that I had been there before, or that I have now lived in this city for over three years, the fact that I can speak some of both of the local languages, or that I ride that bus at least once every single day still left her flabbergasted.

May I Have Your Autograph?

The other day my teacher and I went book store hopping after class. We were in search of a dictionary of Uyghur idioms (which we never found by the way), but we did find a number of other interesting books. It seemed that every book shop we went into my teacher would pull a different book off the shelf, look at it and laugh, then open the front cover and show me that she was the author of the book. Some of them were books that she had worked on almost twenty years ago, and she was surprised you could even still buy.

The area of uyghur scholarship and the printed word is just starting to explode, but for years the number of books was very minimal. I guess that is how I can know so many famous authors. In fact all of my textbooks from the last three years have been autographed by the author. I wonder what sort of a price a signed copy of “Essentials of Uyghur Grammar 2” will fetch someday on e-bay?

Contestant Number 6

Yesterday I took part in my school’s Uyghur speech contest. When I was in elementary school and high school I was big into the speech scene. So in many ways yesterday was kind of a flash back for me. The only difference was that this time my speech was suppose to be in another language.

My teacher had forgotten to mention the contest to me earlier so I had exactly four hours to prepare (all of my fellow contestants had been busy memorizing for three weeks). All of the other contestants were students from the majority people. It ended up being a very uneventful night. I sat there for two and a half hours listening to speeches I couldn’t understand well, either because their pronunciation was so poor, I couldn’t make out what they were saying, or they copied the text from such a high level book, that it was still way above my head.

When I arrived I was quickly ushered to a seat up front and given a cup of tea. I told the student severing me, that I was also a contestant in the competition, and therefore shouldn’t be being given tea. I ended up sitting right next to the judges and teachers, and was introduced along with them as “our foreign guest for the evening”.

My speech itself was a mess. I was planning on just reading the text I had found and written out (my teacher had said that would be okay since I had just heard about the competition that day). It was the story of a father who had two sons. The youngest takes his inheritance and foolishly spends it. But in the end it is a wonderful picture of forgiveness and acceptance. Thankfully I knew the story well, because I couldn’t read my own hand writing, and I had to tell it from memory. The grammar was all wrong, but the judges seemed pleased to be listening to something other than another over acclimating piece about ‘unity in diversity’ or ‘world peace’.

After I was done sharing, one of the senior students got up and gave the others a lecture (in the national language) encouraging them all to study as hard as I do. So that one day all the students in the room could speak as well as our ‘foreign guest’. Talk about wanting to eat your face off.
I guess I don’t have to tell you that I came in first place. I think the minute I walked into that room with my ‘blond hair’ and foreign passport the whole thing was rigged. This means I have to go back tomorrow for round two and sit through another couple hours of speeches.

This picture was taken three years ago at the last school speech contest I attended. That time they ended the evening by having a special photo shoot for all of the "foreign guests" and judges.

What’s Hot and What’s Not

As I mentioned in my last post I have been coughing a lot from the coal dust. My constant hacking however does inspire the concern of a number of older Uyghur ladies. All of them are full of ideas and suggestions to help me feel better. They keep underlining how important it is for me to eat hot food. Some sicknesses need hot food to help with recovery and others need cold food. The problem is that I still don’t really understand what is hot and what is not.

In our western way of thinking a food is hot, if the temperature is hot. We talk about warming up with a hot bowl of soup, hugging a mug of coffee, eating stick to your ribs steaming porridge, or settling down with a cup of hot chocolate. We believe all of these will warm a person up from the inside out, because they are foods that are served hot.

Eastern thought doesn’t care about the temperature of the dish, they care about the food itself. The Uyghurs believe that some foods warm up your blood and some cool you down. I still have not learned how to tell hot food from a cold food, I am just slowly starting to learn what category the foods I like fall into. For instance, mutton and horse are considered warm meats, where as chicken and beef are cold. Even veggies can be separated into these two categories, apples and cucumbers are warm, and mushrooms are cold.

Therefore you can have cold dishes that are hot, or hot dishes that are cold. After walking out in the snow, I often am tempted to stop for a hot bowl of beef noodle soup, however, according to my friends this will only make me colder, since beef is a cold meat.

It is all way to confusing for me, I just know that if I don’t want to have older Uyghur ladies lecturing me for an hour on how I am not taking good care of my cough, I need to watch what I am eating in their presence.

Black Lungs and Tight Abs

Winter is here. The coal dust is thick in the air and thick in my lungs. But you know what they say: every cloud has a silver lining. It has taken me three years to find the silver lining to my annual winter hacking cough that develops as a result to the bad air condition, but I have finally found it; tight abs. Yes all the coughing and sputtering is better than any crunches, sit-ups or gym membership. The bright side of coal dust is keeping in shape.

The Season has Started

Yesterday may have only been December 1st, but the Christmas celebration has officially begun. My classmate and I held a decorate my apartment party for some of our friends. We started the night by watching the classic Charlie Brown Christmas special. The girls helped us make popcorn strings, and paper chains with words related to Christmas like love, light, hope, peace and such written over them in three different languages. They enjoyed hanging the shiny decorations, and tying bows, and some of the girls even cried at the official lighting of the tree (we did it up right, turned off the lights, counted down and plugged in the tree).




Okay confession time: the girls worked hard to decorate the tree last night; I left it for all of 10 hours before I ripped it apart and started over. As much as it was fun to have them around and to share the experience; there are certain ways to decorate a tree and also ways to not decorate a tree (like three gold balls all hanging from the same branch, while there is a huge bald spot right beside it). If I am going to look at the tree for the next month, I needed it to look reasonable. Just in case the girls come back over, I did leave the big love sign on the top (mainly because I don’t have a star or an angel).

More Insight on Underwear

Today in class I experientially got more insight as to why local people wear so many layers. Our classroom was freezing. In fact my teacher and fellow classmates don't even bother to take off their coats any more. They spend the whole four hours of class time bundled up tight enough to go sledding. I just can't do that. It is too hard to sit comfortably for that many hours with my winter stuff on. But if the heat inside is going to be that ineffective I can understand a little better why people might need extra layers.

The average classroom here is nothing more than cement floors and walls, nothing fancy and nothing warm about it. These pictures were taken in the summer, but they do represent the average classroom here.

Some Cute Pics

Last week my classmate and I had a number of girls over for American thanksgiving dinner ( I love living in a international community that lets me eat thanksgiving dinner twice a year). We had stuffing, sweet potato casserole, green beans, gravy, rolls, roast chicken, cranberries and more. We had made a ton of food, but the only thing the girls really ate was the sweet potato and the roast chicken. Why those two? Because they are most like Uyghur food. In fact with the chicken we kind of cheated and just bought two already roasted chickens off the street from the Uyghur version of Swiss Chalet. We had also bought the sweet potatoes on the street. Come winter men walk about the street with these large metal drums filled with heated coals, the use the drums to make baked sweet potato. The smell is so intoxicating. I had bought the potatoes from him to save time and just added the extra milk, butter, and sugar. The girls seemed to like the party, but in truth they only ate the food they were use to.

One of the girls had studied up on American holidays before coming. She was asking me to tell her more about the chocolate eating holiday. At first I thought she meant Valentines day, but she looked it up in the dictionary again, and really wanted me to tell her all about Easter. As you can see she listened quite intently though my whole explanation.

WANTED:

I almost got a job this week at the top university in the province. Halfway though the semester they realized they were short an English teacher for four hours a week. When I heard about the crunch they were in I offered my services. NO one asked for my school transcripts, my English teaching certification, or a resume. In fact they didn’t really even seem to care about that… all that mattered was that I was a native English speaker. Talk about a demanding standard and a competitive job market. The top school is willing to hire profs part time, who just volunteer to teach. They were offering to pay me 100kuai an hour, which is more than three times what I pay my tutor, who is a real retired prof from the school. The guy in the office said he would try to work out the students’ schedule to match mine and get back to me. The day before I was suppose to start to teach I went into the office to make sure everything was set. I needed to get the text book for the class, and know what building and room we were meeting in. I arrived only to find out they had already hired another Canadian guy without telling me. When I inquired as to why I didn’t get the job, they said “oh, the other guy had more free time on Tuesday” (that is what I call a superior job qualification).

Goodbye Mountains, see you in Spring

Our annual pilgrimage into darkness has begun. The mountains and backdrop of the city is fading into the haze. The city I live in is surrounded by large mountains that can be seen from all over town, or at least in the spring. I was walking down the street today and realised I could no longer see any of them. The coal haze has gotten too thick. It is time for them to make it snow and clean out the air.

Long Underwear Fashion Show

When it gets cold here people pull out their long johns. It makes every one look like they have gained several pounds since all of their pants fit tightly. Underneath everything there are two or three pairs of long underwear. This layered looked makes a person comfortable when they are outside in the frigid cold, but makes it a little too toasty when they come inside. That is why stripping is considered totally appropriate. Not only do people take their shoes off at the door they sometimes take their pants off too.

Yesterday our teacher came over for dinner and to watch a movie. After we had finished eating my classmate invited her to get comfortable to watch the movie (she meant grab a pillow or feel free to put your feet up on the bed and stretch out), our teacher looked relieved at the invitation and stripped off her skirt. I guess it was too tight with all her pairs of tights on underneath, she was also getting pretty warm.

Another time I went to visit my friend’s home, it was the first time I was going to meet her parents, and she assured me they were very excited about the visit. When I arrived my friend greeted me at the door wearing her long johns, but it wasn’t just her both of her parents were walking around the house the same way. It was hard work keeping a straight face throughout my visit as her dad sat across from me wearing purple long underwear.

A few years ago when my room flooded the older Uyghur guy who lives a few doors down came to give me a hand. He helped me scoop water for three hours, the whole time wearing nothing but matching top and bottom stripped pink, green, and blue long underwear. While I was thankful for the help, it was a little too much information about my neighbour.

In this way I am not doing the best at enculturating myself. I still refuse to wear any long underwear. In my mind it is a ten minute walk to class I would prefer to be cold for ten minutes and comfortable for the four hours I am in class, or any time I am inside. Needless to say I get told hundreds of times a day, and in a variety of languages that I am wearing too little, that my clothes are too thin. Well I might be wearing too little, but at least I am wearing real clothes. For your sake I am choosing to not include pictures with this blog. I think I have created enough of a mental long underwear fashion show, that we can skip the real thing.