Priorities

As I was growing up my parents always told me that what they wanted for Christmas, their birthday, or whatever occasion was my love and continued hard work in school. They looked at my dedication to my studies as a gift to them. It was a little hard since I couldn’t put a bow on it, but that is what they wanted. They valued my studying and made it a family priority.

I have been seeing how much more that is true out here. The Uyghur people, at least here in the city, value learning English and studying hard. This priority trumps a lot of things in their daily hierarchy.

Two of my teachers have been over in the last few days and serve as perfect examples. One lady is seven and a half months pregnant with their first child. They have been planning for this baby for a long time. Most Uyghur families have their first child within their first year and a half of marriage, this couple though has been married for almost six years and is only now expecting. Both are thrilled at the prospect of having a baby ( not to mentioned the excitement of their extended family, who were beginning to doubt it would ever happen). Her husband, however, has just been offered to go to Australia and study for at least six months. Granted it is a great privilege, and a wonderful opportunity for his language skills, so much so that they have decided he should go. So their first child will be born, and then a month later he will leave. I have an America friend who is engaged and when she heard about this set up she said “I would knock Jonny’s head off if he ever even suggested leaving me alone with our first child”. She might value study, but not at the expense of family.

My other teacher stopped by to see my new place. When she saw I had an empty spare room, she asked if she could move in with me. The question was half in jest half sincere. She even went as far as so ask what I would charge her for rent. This woman is married, with a teenage son, but living and learning from me took higher priority.

I think both of these visits really weirded me out since Uyghurs normally seem to put such a high value on family.

Honk if you Love Driving

The other day I heard my friend’s insightful take on the ‘rules of the road’ out here. After six months of observation he could sum it all up pretty simply. “If you honk your horn loud enough and long enough you can do anything, and go anywhere you want to.” Who needs drivers-ed, or a drivers handbook for that matter, just practice laying your hand down hard on the horn. If you want to drive backwards down the street, just honk. If you want to pass full speed in the on coming traffic lane, just honk. If you want to cut off three cars and a bus, just honk. If you are trying to make a left hand turn on a red light, just honk. The best part is that this rule also applies to cars on the sidewalk.

My Fifteen Minutes

In the past few weeks I have been in three TV commercials/news blurbs, it is not quite the Uyghur movie star exposure that I am aiming for, but it is a start at fame. Actually since living out here I have had more than my fair share of camera time. Counting these three new commercials I have taped seven things ( a two part English interview, two childrens programs and now these commercials). The commercials were all for a foreign run restaurant. The owner wanted as many westerners present when he filmed it as possible, so that it would look like an exciting happening place. The TV spokesperson then wanted to speak to as many people from as many different countries as they could… I became the token Canadian.

My TV performances have even gotten me recognition once in the past, when a lady at a bus stop in another town said she had watched the English interview I had done. Watch out Central Asian Red Carpet, I am riding my fifteen minutes of fame as far as they will take me.

Let’s Start At the Very Beginning

Some friends and I have decided to study Uyghur over our summer vacation. This couple has studied a related language in the past so they are pretty familiar with the sounds and grammar, but it is still a whole different language. I have studied for two years, but after being home for a few months, I feel like there is so much that I am forgetting, or just missing all together. There are so many words that are practical to daily life, that never get covered in your average textbook. Our school books teach us words that are in the daily reading or dialogue, they may not be words that are useful to day to day life. And so we decided to start at the very beginning, to help fill in the gaps.

We are having their house helper/ cleaning lady work as our language nurturer ( we are using the Greg Thompson language accusation material, that is his terminology not mine). The thought was that this woman has not been scared or tainted by traditional eastern teaching methodology. She is open and we can use her to help craft our world of ‘here and now’ understandable language. Sadly though, she does not read either English or the national language, so she can not read the nurtures handbook to know how to teach the class. We have had to explain it all to her in Uyghur.

On day one I told her, in Uyghur, that the point or phase one was to just listen to the teacher and her pronunciation. That we were not going to say anything for the first 100 hours of class. We were going to show her pictures or items and wanted her to tell us the name or action in one word. We wanted to listen to her say that word and we wanted to play games where she asked us to point to different items or pictures to make sure we were understanding. I asked her if she had any questions, and then we showed her the first picture. The picture was a man pointing at himself. The elicited word should be “I” or “me” or some type of first person reference. But because I had given such a detailed explanation of the whole language learning process in Uyghur, the teacher figured I must already know those words and went off in a totally different direction. In the end we had to subtlety suggest that maybe this picture best represented the word “مەن” . The founder of the program would not approve of our coaching the nurturer on what word to teach us. Oh well, that is summer school for you. But we are finally off and running. So here is your own little Uyghur lesson. Good luck!

Trading Spaces

As many of you may have heard, while I was home in Canada I met a Uyghur man who had a three bedroom apartment for rent right on my university campus. Talk about ‘coincidental’ I took one look at the place and decided to move out of my small 7 ½ foot, by 7 ½ foot dorm room into a nice new place. The apartment is in the prefect location, near the centre of campus and on the first floor.

Just take a look!

Outside my front window

My Living room

My Dining Room

The Kitchen ( the sink and the stove are both out on the balcony)

My bedroom ( there is a spare bedroom too, but it is still a mess from moving)

And my favourite room: the office with floor to ceiling built in bookshelves on both sides of the window.

Flash back to 1984

Over the last few days Canada has felt like it is a part of another universe, one that is far far away. I am reminded again how special a person’s rights to privacy or freedom to come and go as they please are. We tend to take these things for granted in the west. Since my return is still relatively recent I still figure I am due these privileges. But this past week has reminded me that they are just that, privileges. A different culture or a different country can not guarantee the same freedoms or way of life.

I have had to pull out my passport more in the last few days than ever in my life. Twice yesterday just to come on to my university campus, I was stopped at the front gate, by a man with a red arm band asking me to prove that I am a student of the school, or that I have a reason to be on campus. This has never happened in the four years I have lived here. But the man was serious, unless I could prove that I attended the school they were not going to allow me to return to my home.

Also the city has hired a whole new workforce to man the buses. Previously each bus just had a driver, now a second person has been hired to sit in the front seat and check everyone's bags as they get on the bus. We are all expected to stop at the top of the stairs and open up our purses, backpacks or shopping bags so that the man with the arm band can glance at what you are bringing on the bus. It is actually kind of funny since so many people use the bus system, the single person assigned the task of looking in bags on each bus doesn’t really have time to do a through search of everyone’s belongings. So they give a casual nod in your direction after you have undone the zipper or snaps. To top it off there are also desks set up at every bus stop with another attendant whose job it is to monitor who is getting on and off the bus.

Everywhere I go someone is watching.

Big Bottoms

We made a rather odd discovery about sheep on our trip last week. Sheep here have externally large bums. When six people have nothing to do for hours on the train, it is surprising how much conversation can be filled by speculating on sheep butts. Why are they bigger in this part of the world than anywhere else? How did they get to be that size? Is it genetic? Are they engendered that way? Is it natural selection or breeding? Is it their diet? Do they all naturally waddle when they walk, or is that a learned skill? The questions just go on and on. Well we reached no definite conclusions, I think it is wise to warn you if you ever come out for a visit to steer clear of the back ends of sheep.


I will say this for big sheep bums, they taste great Barbecued and served as kabobs.

Snowball Fight in July

On our trip we took a bus up to a small city in the mountains. We were at about 15 000 feet with mountains stretching another 10 000 feet above us. The view was breath taking. I was also a little cold. It had rained all day on our way up, when we came down the mountain we saw many places that were covered in snow. We stopped to enjoy the view and take a few pictures. As I was talking to an older Tajik farmer, who was out with his 200 grazing sheep, one of my friends threw the first fist full of snow. This meant war. Both the Tajik farmer and our driver thought we had gone a little crazy, but really how often do you get to have a snow ball fight 14km from the Tajikistan border with a Tajik farmer, a Uyghur driver, five Americans and one Canadian in the middle of July at the base of one of the world's tallest mountains. Let's just say it was a first for me. What started out as a fair fight quickly digressed to all against one guy.

I commented to our farmer friend how fortunate he was to live in the mountains and be able to go walking with his sheep everyday amongst such magnificent peeks. He responded by saying "All of you foreigners think it is so pretty here, but really I think your home town is lovely" Lovely really? A clear sight of downtown Detroit has nothing on these snow caped heights.

I've Been Through the Desert on a Camel With No Name It Didn't Feel Good to be Out In the Rain

One of our adventures on the trip was riding camels in the desert. We got up early in the morning, layered our skin with sunscreen in preparation for a long hot desert journey under the scorching sun. We then took a two hour bus ride to the middle of nowhere.

While on the bus we were the entertainment. Since we were travelling cheaply we took the local bus, which was filled with farmers and such, many of whom had never seen a white skinned person outside of the TV. They stared at us like we were aliens until some of the other girls started to feel uncomfortable under their intense gaze. I always figure in these situation it is best to confront it head on, and try to answer their questions, instead of being stared at the whole trip. So I struck up a conversation in Uyghur. If foreigners were fascinating, an 'American' girl who could speak their language was even more unbelievable. For the rest of the trip I was fielding questions from all over the bus. I think, by the end everyone knew where I was from, where I currently live, what I am studying, what I hope to do in the future, how much rent I pay, how much tuition I pay, how old I am, how many people are in my family, what job everyone in my family has and how much they enjoy their jobs, where we were going, why we were going, how long we would be gone for, how much we paid for our tickets, how many times I had been in that part of the province, how many years I had studied that language, and likely a dozen other things. I was like a circus freak, that just kept answering questions. Unfortunately having all this information did not stop the man from starring at us in disbelief, if anything it just intensified their gaze.

Once we got off the bus we headed out to the desert for a camel ride. But as we approached the camel owners it started to rain. They wanted to charge what I thought was an exorbitantly high price for an hour long ride... so I tried to talk them down. I complained about the rain, commented on how few people would actually go riding on a wet day like today. I tried and tried but they would not budge. I turned to my friends to find out what they wanted to do... only to find one other girl still standing with me. Now you have to understand, when it comes to hard core bargaining there is always strength in numbers. The more people you have, the more business they would lose if they don't agree to your price. The more people you have, the more intimidating you appear. And yet despite that well known fact we were just two small girls trying to negotiate with all the camel owners. We regrouped, grabbed our friends and started again. It didn't matter that our friends couldn't speak the language, and couldn't understand what was being said we had more people. This time I took another approach, I played the "we are poor students" card. It is universally true that college students everywhere are known to be broke. I even went so far as to tell them how much the school charges foreign students to study and that we had to take the local bus to get here. When they still didn't move, We walked. This can be a risky move, because you actually have to be willing to leave and not get called back. But we called their bluff and headed for the bus. In the end our small bus driver friend told them to just give it to us. So we each got a third of the price knocked off.

Which was good considering how cold and wet it can be in the desert. It was pouring and we all got drenched as we rode our camels with no names (I asked) though the chill damp desert sand. What a day.

On the Road Again

I spent last week travelling, again. This time my two new neighbours in the dorm building were planning a trip to the southern part of the province. I love it down there, so it didn't take too much work to convince me to come along as translator. Because of people's different schedules though, we only had five days (or 120 hours) for the whole trip. We all agreed we wanted to travel relatively cheaply, which means we often opt for the slightly slower modes of transportation. We spent over 64 hours of the last week in some sort of transportaion (train, bus, car). It was a tiring but great time. As I get pictures from the rest of the gang I will post more about the trip. I however forgot to take my camera with me.

Different people, different trip, the same good old hard sleeper on the train.

No Matter Who My Friends Are - They Aren't Welcome

As most of you probably already know I have have been living in dorm for the last three years. It really hasn't been all that bad ( even though the main room is only 7 1/2 feet by 7 1/2 feet). I have the room all to myself and it even has its own bathroom. But despite all this luxury I have been contemplating moving into a real apartment where I could have more room to host guests and cook meals. Last week I found a place with a lot of potential, and this week I was pushed to make a final decision.

The leader of our building is a difficult man to work with at the best of times, but of late he has been on a bit of a power trip. The other day he stood at the front door of our building with his arms tightly crossed across his chest and a stern face in place. He seemed immovable and impassable. He was refusing to let anyone enter the building who did not live there.

My next door neighbour was expecting her tutor, who eventually called to say she had been stopped at the front door. My neighbour has only been here a few months and her language is still in progress so she asked me to come along and try to figure out what was going on. At first the leader of the building said it was because there had been thieves and he didn't trust anyone to come in. When I pushed him, and asked what had been stolen and from where, he quickly changed his story and said that they were doing construction on the building and it wasn't safe to have people coming and going. So of course I asked "is it safe for us to be living here?" "Oh, yes you have paid your rent, you are safe here", he responded. Finally I tried to figure out who had instituted this new rule. He told me I had to talk to the Foreign student college, that it was their rule.

So I called the head of the foreign student department and said that by not allowing our friends to come and visit us they were making dorm feel more like prison than a home. But the leader of the department had never even heard of this rule. He also told me he has no control over the dorm and I would have to go back and speak with the stern faced impossible dorm leader. Grrrshk.

But instead of dealing with him the next phone called I made was to let the landlord know that I would take the apartment I had looked at.

Which means: I'm moving. I'm moving to a new home where all my friends no matter who, or how old will be welcome.

My People I Thought Were My Friends Aren’t Really My Friends

How do you define friendship? Who are your friends? Who can be your friends? We don’t often contemplate questions like these, but recently I’ve had reason to do so.

In North American culture, it is possible for a person from one generation to become friends with a person from another generation. In high school I was always better friends with a lot of my teachers than with my fellow peers. I have also always had a strange affinity with the retired generation (I think it has something to do with talking about our aches and pains).

Apparently, that’s not the case in Uyghur culture. A person from one generation would not consider a person from a different generation - whether lower or higher - to be a friend. Yes, they might act the same toward that person as they act toward their friends in their own generation, but they would not think of using the term “friend.” That would be disrespectful. The same would apply between a student and a teacher.

A couple weeks ago my friend Liz (yes I can rightly call her my friend since she is a 20 something American girl) was talking with one of her Uyghur college students. In the course of her conversation Liz mentioned how much she was going to miss all of her friends(referring to her students) over summer vacation. . The student was quick to respond and correct her mistake, “Oh no, we’re not your friends; we’re your students.”

Then just a few days ago I was out walking around campus with a young Uyghur lady my age. Part way through our walk we passed Patigul, a 72 year old woman that I spend a lot of my free time with. I exuberantly greeted her kissing both cheeks and asking numberous times about her health and family. She seemed likewise generally pleased to see me, and even invited me to stop over for tea later that afternoon if I had time. As we resumed our walk the young lady I was with asked “who was that?” “Oh, Patigul,” I said “she is a good friend of mine.” That brought on gales of laughter from my companion. I thought that maybe I had pronounced something wrong, but no, it was the concept itself that brought on the laughter. Apparently it is a ridiculous idea that I could be friends with someone several generations older than myself.

In fact the young woman informed me that I should never call some one like that my friend. I could call her my “teacher”, or my “mother”, but I must never call her “friend”. Suddenly things started to fit, pieces were coming together in my head. Even my tutor who is 12 years younger than Patigul calls her “teacher” or sometimes “big sister” instead of “friend”. If twelve years is considered a big enough gap that it is disrespectful to simply call some one a friend, then I realize I have a lot less friends out here than I thought.

It seems that, in Uyghur culture, even though you might be friends with someone older than yourself, it’s not acceptable to call them your friend. You can think of them as your friend; you can act friendly towards them, and do all the things that friends would do, but you just can’t call them that. That would be disrespectful. It just means I have been spending an immense amount of time cultivating relationships with people who have turned out not to be my “friends”. Oh well I still love them. The relationship doesn’t have to change, just its name.

Free to Fly

One of the most frustrating parts of spending time in Canada, for me at least, is getting around. I don’t have a drivers licence (sorry dad), everything is very spaced out and far removed from each other, and the bus system is… well… lets just say ‘its less than positive’. All of these things added together make it hard to be mobile when I am at home.

Today I experienced the joy of going from place to place here in Central Asia. Unlike in North America the number of people here who have their own personal car is a very small percentage. Since there are so many people packed into a small geographical space, most places are compact and close together. The bus system is also the most amazing thing you have ever seen. When my brother was here three years ago he stood at the bus stop out front my school and averaged out how often a new bus pulls in. He figured that every thirty seven seconds a bus will arrive at my stop. With that sort of frequency I never have to wait, or even chase after a bus. If the one I want is already at the stop and I am still half a block away I just let it drive off and know I can catch another one just like it in a minute of two.

There is great freedom in being able to move around at will and not have to depend on someone else to drive you, to be able to jump from one bus to another with no hassle, to walk from destination to destination without getting tired. Everytime I come back I feel like I grow wings.

View of the street from inside a bus

I'm Back

I am writing this blog from the other side of the world. I flew out of the Windsor Airport on the morning of July 2nd and have safely returned to my 'other home' in Central Asia. Despite the thick layer of coal dust that lingered in my room after six months of not being touched, this years return was not as traumatic as last years.

Packing

In Canada we have so much great stuff at our finger tips. I am reminded that 'Greed is Eternal'( ask Bruce it is some type of Star Trek quote). I went shopping for Bath soap, deodorant, coffee, chocolate, books, vitamins, wrapping paper, random food supplies, new clothes, and about a million other things I can't even remember. Too bad not all of this stuff fit in my suitcases.

Kids in the Kitchen the Next Generation

Several months ago I mentioned wanting to learn to cook Uyghur food. In fact at that time I even had my tutor spend a day of language lessons teaching me how to make the most famous Uyghur dish. While the food was good the lesson was a bit of a flop, since all I was allowed to do was stand there and watch.

But since being home I have stepped out on my own and attempted to rule the Uyghur food challenge. Three times now I have very sucessfully made 'big plate of chicken'. And last night I tried my hand at pollo. All in all the flavour was great, but the texture was a little off. That might have something to do with the fact that I did not follow the directions. I tried to prepare it in the crock pot instead of on the stove.

One important lesson I learned from all of this is: Don't tell your guests what is wrong with the food. The whole time I ate it with my family I sat there complaining about the rice being to gloppy and sticky. But when I took some over to my freinds house I refrained from making any comment on the texture. Since they had never eaten Uyghur food before, they assumed I had done it right and were filled with praises for my handiness in the kitchen.

It's Here

I now have both a visa and tickets back for July 2nd. Relief.

A Disappointing Day

After pushing through all the Red Tape mentioned in my last post I was finally ready to make my way to the embassy in Toronto and try to apply for a student visa to return to Central Asia. My father and I drove as far as my Aunt's house on Tuesday night and then we took off early Wedensday morning to face the hoards of people communting into downtown TO.

We arrived at the Visa Office just moments before it opened and waited in line with the others. I made it to the desk within five minutes and two minutes later I was leaving the visa office with an empty passport.

It seems that my school in Central Asia had sent me the wrong paper in the mail. Well not really the wrong paper, just the worng coloured copy of a paper. All offical paper work over there comes in carbon copy triplicate. The white, yellow and pink copies are all meant to go to different departments. The school had mistakenly sent me the yellow copy when what I really needed was the white one

I know that in today's world, governments and powers need to have strict rules and regulations for immigration and visas. I know that not all bureaucratic red tape is pointless and that structures needs to be in place; but it was hard to remind myself of that after driving over 4 hours to Toronto. It was hard to remind myself as I fought back the tears. It was harder still to remind myself as I tried not to yell at the lady behind the visa desk and tell her how unfair it was that I was not allowed to apply because I had the right application form on the wrong colour of paper. It was hard to remind myself as I tried to write a gracious letter to my school asking them to send the correct coloured form.

The good news is I was not denied a visa; I was just not allowed to apply for one. I have already recontacted my school asking for the white copy of my application form. They assure me it is 'in the mail'

So now I am back to waiting....

A Love Hate Relationship with Red

When I first moved to central Asia I was overwhelmed with brightness of the decor. Everywhere I turned my senses seemed to be struck with intense colour. Red is the colour of celebration and happiness. It is everywhere. Signs and banners are made of red, clothing and carpets, bags and everything you can imagine feature some shade of brilliant ruby hue. After being inundated by its joyfulness for the last three and a half years I can feel myself succumbing to it power.
A quick look at some of my own recent purchases will demonstrate how this continental wide love affair of the colour red has sunk deep in my heart as well. I will now buy almost anything that has a smattering of this vibrate colour.
( I didn’t keep all seven pairs of red shoes, mom was purchasing them for me while I was in hospital. I tried them all on and returned the pairs that didn’t fit. But for a while I was the proud owner of seven pairs of red shoes).

Despite this growing love affair with the colour red, I have recently come across something that I loath.

Now that my health has improved I have started to work on my visa process to return to Central Asia, only to find many of the rules have changed. In the past I have entered the country on a tourist visa and switched to a student visa within the first month of my arrival. This always seemed the easiest way to navigate my way through foreign policy. However, my adopted country has recently changed it requirements. A person applying for a tourist visa must produce round trip tickets and full itinerary while in country including proof of booked and paid for hotel accommodations. All of which is a waste of money since I have my own dorm room and no intention of returning in the next few months. They have also introduced the rule that a person can no longer apply for a student visa while visiting the country on a tourist visa.

So I had to scrap my old means and resort to plan B. I am now working on trying to apply from here for a student visa. My school sent me a copy of my original application (unfortunately it has my old passport number on it) as well as a letter of invitation. I will be going later today for a full physical including chest x-rays and an ekg to make sure I am healthy enough to study in their country.

All of this is doable if not a bit of a pain, but then I learned more news. I can no longer mail my completed application to a visa service in BC (they can now only accept visa application from BC and the Yukon) as I have done repeatedly in the past. Instead I will have to drive the whole completed package of information up to Toronto to both deliver and pick-it-up in person. This just adds to the hoops I am trying to jump through to get my return visa.

In the process of all of these application and forms, appointments and searches on the internet I have learned that there is one red item that I loath… RED TAPE

Mug Shot Me

The other day I went to the passport office with all my needed paper work in hand to apply for a new passport. Among my many documents were two recently taken photo’s of me. What is it about passport pictures anyway?!

When I go through international customs, I normally walk up to the desk and greet the man behind the counter with a big smile and a friendly ‘hello’ in his language (if I know how to). My hair is normally down about my shoulders and my glasses are in place. I like to think that I come off as a rather un-intimidating presence.

So why in the world when I went to get my passport photos taken did they insist that I jump through hoops to make myself look nothing like me? First I had to make sure my hair was back and that both of my ear lobes were visible. Second I had to remove my glasses (which makes me blinder than a bat, I couldn’t even see where the lady was pointing when I had to look straight ahead). Finally I was told not to smile. No teeth, No smirk, no nothing, just a plain straight almost bordering on sour looking face.

The pictures she handed me three minutes later look nothing like me. They looked like they should be flashed across TV screens at the beginning of "America’s Most Wanted". Or that I should be holding a number and dressed in a black and white striped jumpsuit preparing for my incarceration. The person staring back at me looked angry, and hostel and just …BAD.

One of my best friends had her passport renewed last year. The picture looks like a complete stranger. Whenever we go through customs the officers stop her and ask extra questions as a means of verifying that she really is the person pictured in front of them. You would think they would want the most natural look possible, so that it would be a real and accurate piece of identification. If a person wears glasses they should have them on in the photo and so forth.

I had thought about scanning the photos and posting them so you could all see just how bad they really are… but then I got to thinking. Isn’t it embarrassing enough that complete strangers dressed in uniforms all over the world for the next five years will be subjected to looking at such a horrible version of me. I really don’t need to immortalize it on my own web page for friends and family to mock.