Celebrate Good Times

In the past I have been quick to publish all the gruesome and bloody pictures from Korban festival (the yearly Muslim celebration remembering Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, by once again offering a lamb). It might sounds like a gross holiday, but when you live here it is easy to get caught up in the excitement and joy of it all.

Days before the actual holiday I was walking through the bazaar buying dried fruit and candy for our table, greeting neighbors and talking to sellers about the meaning behind the holiday. There was electricity in the air rivaling that of a mall in North America the week before Christmas. Everyone was talking about the holiday and their plans; everyone was preparing their home for guests and generally enjoying the idea of something to celebrate. I was so caught up in the fun of it all I didn’t even mind having to step through the piles of sheep poop that are everywhere as the streets are flooded with these wooly creatures.

On the morning of Korban my roommate and I headed outside to interact with our neighbors and participate in all the activity. As we step out of our stairwell the kids came running toward us.

“Big Sister, Big Sister, come see my sheep”

“That one over there is ours” said one boy as he ran after his sheep and swatted it on the bottom, laughing when the lamb complained in a loud voice.
The next day these same kids talked the parents into coming to visit at our house. Everyone celebrates the holiday here by going from one home to another visiting family and friends and helping them eat their freshly slaughtered lamb. The kids dragged their parents up to our apartment, even before they made it to their real aunt and uncle’s place. We pulled out our leg of lamb to serve them meat, and gladly told them the story of the three sacrifices. They kids even borrowed our Uyghur copy of the Prince of Egypt movie. Other than the stomach ache from overeating it has been a great week.

Flood!

The building I live in is only seven years old… but by the amount of problems it has you would swear it is a lot older. For instance I woke of this morning to the sound of water dripping form somewhere up above (thankfully in the hallway and not right in my room). I found out that someone’s faucet on the fourth floor had burst and water was everywhere up there. I spent a good two hours helping my friend dry out her room.

This brought back memories of last year. Two weeks after I moved into this building the guy across the hall from me had a leeky squaty potty, sewer water was coming out into the hallway. He was home in the states so we had to clean up for him. It was so smelling and gross and happened repeatedly over three days.

The second flood of last year was in my own room. Our heaters in the rooms are pipes with boiling hot water constantly being pumped though them. Every few days you have to release the extra air in the pipes. Only when I tried to do that the little knob fell off in my hand and within five minutes my whole room was under three inches of water. Even though the room is small it took seven people three hours to get it all dried out(including the uyghur man from down the hall who didn’t want to get his pants dirty so worked in his stripped long underwear).

Exactly six months to the day of my first flood, my room was once again covered in water. This time the room next door’s toilet tank would not shut off. Because of the way the floor is slanted in our building (as I said it seems old), hardly any water went into her room, but I was once again completely flooded. This time the owner of the building was waking me up at three in the morning. After that I gave up buying carpet for my room, it is just to hard to pull out the dripping drenched mess. From then on it has been tiled floors for me.

Floods I guess are a common part of life here. I am now an expert water remover.