No Cockroaches

I went to one of my old favourite restaurants the other day. I didn’t recognise it right away since they have renovated the place. The outside really isn’t that much nicer, but inside it is clean. During our whole meal I didn’t see a single cockroach on the floor, wall, or table. How exciting is that!

The students at school have a saying about the cafeteria: “You know you are in first year when you get a cockroach on your plate and refuse to eat your dinner. You know you are in second year when you use paper to pick it off your plate and drop it on the floor. You know you are in third year when you use your chopsticks to shove it to the side of your plate. And you know you are in forth year when you are excited about the extra meat.

Even though I am in my third year of language studies, I am still like a freshman in so many ways.

Asian Gifts from North America

I went to the dollar store a few weeks ago in preparation for my return. I mainly picked up stuff from their Canada collection. It is always fun to give someone a key chain or a pencil that is symbolic of where I live. The one thing I have to watch for though, are the items that come marked “made in Taiwan” “made in China” “made in Indonesia”. Almost everything you buy in the dollar store is made in one Asian country or another. I try to buy the ones that have it written on a removable sticker so my friends here won’t know. The irony is not lost on me, that these cheap little gifts are made in the east, shipped to the west and then hand carried back here to the east.


It wasn’t as funny yesterday when I gave one of these key chains to this lady who has become my friend. She held the key chain in her hand, rocking back and forth, muttering “oh my, oh dear”. When I asked what was wrong she started to cry and said “such a great gift. I have never owned something for a foreign country before. Oh, thank you, thank you.” She then took the key chain and touched it to her forehead, which is a way the Uyghur people honour a gift and the person who gave it. She seemed so impressed with the small token of my homeland that there is no way I could have told her it was really an Asian gift, which had been just temporarily for sale in the North America.

The Gift of Re-gifting

I have learned a lot over the past three years about getting and giving gifts when visiting a home. I have bought bags and bags of fruit and nuts to give to different hosts. I have bought material for dresses and suits. I have bought bread. Likewise I have also got a number of different things. I have been given four liters of milk, candy, and once I was even given nylons.

Since coming back from being home, I have spent a lot of my time with some of the retired teachers on my campus. They all treat me like their daughter and invite me into their home for tea or lunch. The first few times anyone visits a home it is expected that they will bring a gift. Yesterday I started at the fruit lady’s stand and after visiting for 20 minutes or so I bought some bananas and headed off to visit others. I gave the bananas to the lady at the first home that I went to. Before I left, that lady made sure I had some grapes to take home with me. I went right to visit my next friend, and I presented her with the grapes as my guest gift. Before I headed out the door she handed me some cake she had just made that morning. When I arrived at the next house I handed off the cake. After several rounds of gifting and re-gifting my gifts I headed home with bread in hand. The whole concept of re-gifting really saved me a lot of money and time (instead of always running back to the fruit stand) it’s like a gift in itself.

Hot Pot makes it official

I have been back a whole week, but now I know I am officially here. I went with some of my friends to have the best meal that this part of the world has to offer, Hot Pot. If you are at all the germaphobic this entry might be a little much for you to handle, but trust me the taste is out of this world.

You sit at a table with a hole in the centre, each table has its own gas burner. They then place a big pot on top filled with spices and add water. As it starts to boil you can select what types of meat and veggies (all raw) you want to put in your soup. They all come on individual sticks so you can decide how much or how little of each food you want. Once you have made your decision you stick them in the water and watch them cook. Don’t worry about picking up raw meat with your chopsticks, if you leave them daggling in the water for an extra minute the germs will get boiled away. When things look ready everyone goes fishing in the soup with their chopsticks to pick out their favourites.

The longer you sit there the hotter you get. I have to wear light layers when I go just to survive the heat. In fact the restaurant is so hot inside that the windows (and your glasses) are constantly fogged up. The smell of soup is so strong in the air that you have to wash your clothes after a visit… but it is all worth it for the taste. After having hot pot I know I am home.


The soup (it comes in both spicy and mild)


The sticks of veggies and meat


The enjoyment ( yes this is a file photo from when Mel came to visit in fall '05)

Silence in the Noise

I was out for a walk today and couldn’t get over how quiet it was. Mind you as I walked by sellers were still calling out prices loudly from their booths, the breaks on the buses were still screeching and grinding as they came to a halt, cars were honking at each other, the children were still running, laughing and playing, the old women still gossiped and greeted each other on the street, and music still flowed from the restaurants enticing people to come in, and the general bustle of big city life buzzed around me. Yet despite it all, I was amazed with how quiet it was, and how much I was alone with my personal thoughts.

I remember thinking the opposite back in March right after I went home. I was at a conference eating dinner and could barely focus on the person next to me from all the noise and distraction around. It may have only been the sound of forks scraping the last morsel of food from the plate, and the sound of people talking amongst themselves, but it seemed overwhelming. It was the talking I couldn’t tune out. Everyone was speaking English, and without even intentionally doing so, I found my self eavesdropping on everyone's conversations. I could have told you what the lady at the table behind us made for dinner the night before, or what was wrong with the guys car across from me. I knew how much the teenage girls paid for their new purses, and I knew the score of the hockey game. I was so overwhelmed with the amount of information that was coming at me.

I hear just as many people talking here, but my brain can not compute foreign languages at the same speed it can English. I still have to work to understand what the person I am talking to is saying, much less understand the guy across the street. In some ways it makes for a much quieter walk, to be able to enjoy the silence and self reflection. But it other ways it saddens me. Before I left I felt like I was making head way in the language, being able to carry on a conversation, but the silence in the midst of noise reminds me how far I have to go.

I’m Back

After 30 hours on the go I have arrived safely with all my bags here and intact, which is quite amazing considering how tight of a connection I had in Vancouver. In local time I got into my dorm room at 10:30 p.m. I amazingly still had energy (I think I had hit a fourth or fifth wind), and I started to clean my apartment. It was all still packed up with boxes everywhere, since I had thought I was going to move. By 1 a.m. I had found the bed and a clear path to the washroom and decided to get some sleep. I had visions of sleeping in as long as it took me to get over the jet lag. But the construction workers in my building had other plans. By 6 a.m. the crashing, banging, and sawing had begun. No matter how many pillows I put over my head, the sound would not be dimmed.

This was the look of my hallway when I returned. It took a little work to carry all my suitcases over the rubble.

We Have a WINNER

In the latest KSA Querterly I said . I will still give a prize to the first kid that learns to say my name. But it seems that no matter how long they sit on my lap and I whisper “Karen, Karen” all that comes out is “mama”. Yesterday I got a phone call from my old college roommate. I answered the phone and she said. "we won. Listen to this. David, David come here.... who is this in the picture?" A small voice responded "Aun' Karen" Way to Go David you did. Check your mail for a free small french fry coupon at McDonalds.


Here is Our WINNER David Baptist

Some of the runners up (and equally loved kids I have meet this summer)

An Intellectual Challenge

For the last five weeks I have been on the road. I have visited Brantford, Ottawa, St Tomas, Cambridge, London, and Toronto. On of the highlight of my trip was getting to attend class. I have been called a professional student, others have suggested that studying might be an addiction in my life that has a stronger hold than coffee. But the truth is this past semester (January- May 2007) was my first semester since 1984 that I have not been a student. I have been suffering withdraw pains, but thankfully for me this year September came early. To help celebrate my back to school endeavours my old college bought me a bright neon flower power binder (very seminaryish).

For the past three years in Central Asia I have been a language student. It was a very humbling experience to go from Graduate studies where every day I was thinking, critiquing, and incorporating information, to language school where I learn how hard it is to count to 10 and say hello. I audited both of my classes which means I listen to the professors, participate in group discussion, and not have to do any of the assigned homework. The nice things about my classes this past month is that not only where they intellectual challenges, they challenged my heart and how I was going to use and apply the information.

Earth’s Loss is Heaven’s Gain

On Saturday, April 28th my grandfather Lionel Arthur (Art) joined the praising crowd around the throne of God. At the age of 85 he had lived a long and full life that was an example to all of us who loved and admired him.

While he may be gone, the lessons that he taught us about life and faith will carry as a legacy for generations to come. I feel fortunate to have been raised in the shadow of such a great cloud of witnesses. I hope that I will be able throw off everything that hinders because by faith Art lived his life as an example for his family.

Mexrep in Canada

This past week I travelled out to Vancouver for a conference and got to hang out with one of my friends. I also meet some of the Uyghur community that have immigrated to that part of Canada. They were having a large party, often called a Mexrep, which just means there was a lot of good food and dancing.

When I first arrived I had was shy and decide to not mention to much that I had lived in Central Asia, or spoke the language. So I was just asking people questions about the food, the culture, and there clothing. When I got to the end of the serving table I heard a person yell “Mehrigul” (my Uyghur name). The girl severing drinks also formerly lived in my dorm building at the university. Next thing you know she was speaking Uyghur to me a mile a minute, and everyone looked shocked. Before the end of the night this girl had me up front singing a traditional Uyghur folk song ( and if you know me at all you know I should not be up in front of anyone, singing any song in any language).




Dinner at My Uyghur frinds house

It turned out to be a great trip. My friend gave me the grand tour of Vancouver. Neither my home in Central Asia or here in Canada are surrounded by such beautiful mountains and rivers.






I can't belive that I actually crossed that bridge.

And This Little Piggy Ran WeeWeeWee all the Way Home

Yes that's right I am home; back in Canada. Some of you might still be asking “what happened?” A few weeks ago I mentioned I wasn’t sure where I would be spending this next semester. I had applied for a job in a small town twelve hours from where I have been living. We waited for several weeks and in the end were informed the school was not able to obtain the proper work visa’s for us. By the time they told us, however, the school semester had already started and I was to late to apply to study for another semester. So I decide to head home for a little while. It has been 2 ½ years since I was last here.

One of the bonuses of being home is my freedom to once again eat pork. The Uyghur people are Muslims. Most of them may never have read the Koran, nor do they always pray five times a day, but every Uyghur knows that eating pork is wrong. So wrong they will not even say the word, they call it ‘the big meat’. So for the sake of my friendships I have chosen to give up any pig product while I am in Central Asia. Whenever one of my Uyghur friends asks if I have ever eaten or tried it I answer “yes. in my culture we eat it quite often. We believe that it is not what you put into the body that makes a person clean but what comes out of it.”. I do tell them that all of the dishes in my house are ‘clean’, never having touched pork, nor do I ever go into restaurants that serve it. I promise them I will not eat it while living among them because I value their friendship and respect the culture

But that doesn’t stop me from partaking all I want when I am home. Since returning a week ago I have had bacon, pork chops and Ham. This little piggy really has come home.

This picture was sent to me by one of my classmates over a year ago. He had left Central Asia and stoped in to visit my parents. My mom made a great home cooked dinner with lots of ham, and my classmate took this picture to to rub it in.

A Taste of Home – Or Atleast as Close as You can Get

Since I am still hoping to move south in the next week and a half or so, I am trying to soak up all the joys and luxuries of the big city. Once I move to Aquk everyday will be laghman and pollo with hardly any variety in the daily menu. But while I am still in the city there are choices.

There is KFC, there is Pizza Hut(except it is not hala) and there are three foreign restaurants run by other foreigners. Ones like the Vine- which has a Caribbean feel, The Rendezvous – which has borsch on the menu and Texas Café – I guess they are not really tastes of home, but they’re about as close as you can get. I can take my computer down there, get on their wireless connection, catch up on emails, and spend a couple of hours drinking real coffee. So during the meals that I am not out with friends saying goodbye I am trading in my noodles for pizza and hamburgers, I better enjoy it while I can… all good things must come to an end.


Relaxing at The Vine with a Friend

The Front of the Texas Cafe

The Bigger the Butter the Better

Buying real butter for cooking is kind of hard our here, and when you do find it at the couple of participating stores, the price will nearly knock your socks off. Other foreigners in town have found that you can buy it in bulk. One family will buy the block and then cut it up and sell it to the rest of us in usable amounts. The other night I was on hand when the bulk load of butter was being cut up and sold. The original block was 50kg, and about 2 cubic feet in size. You can just imagine the type of knife needed to cut that baby. It was huge, it was the bigger butter.

It Sounds Like a War Zone Out There

Yesterday was considered the last day of the Lunar New Year. Chinese New Year is celebrated all over Asia, and the 18th day marks the finale. On this night everyone lets off firecrackers. Trust me when I say that July 4th has nothing on this party. Every family lets off fireworks. I didn’t even know they made so many different kinds until I moved out here. Some are long strips that people hang on poles from their windows, others are cases of sparking type fluid, some can be shot into the sky like a gun. I always thought fireworks were meant to be beautiful, but last night I learned some are just loud and bright.

We were walking to my friends house after dinner, and had to watch our step, sparks were falling from the sky, firecrackers were popping up from the sidewalk, some were bouncing off windows, cars had to drive slowly so that they didn’t get set on fire. It was a crazy night, but the celebration is now over, and the ground is covered with red paper from the light display.

Hands in My Pocket, Hands in My Pocket!

If you read the Lonely Planet guide to this city you will be warned about the number of thefts in the downtown area. All of the travel books suggest locking your backpack, carrying it in front of you, and keeping an eye on it in case someone tries to slash it. While I have never gone to these sorts of measures the truth is that you do have to watch your bag closely. One of my friends has had two cell phones and three wallets nabbed from her, someone else had their palm pilot taken. Thankfully I have only lost one cell phone, but there have been many other times I have felt a hand at my side.

It is most important to be careful on busy street corners or crowded buses, anywhere someone might accidentally bump up against you. Whenever I feel someone going after my bag, I slap his hand as hard as I can and yell in the local language, “this is not okay”. The thief does not want to be noticed, so he will quickly fall back into the crowd and try someone else’s pocket. If you are on the bus you may witness someone stealing from another passenger, if you confront the thief he might threaten you, the best way to intervene in the situation is to step on the foot of the person who is being stolen from, this way they will move and hopefully the thief will no longer be able to reach their pocket.

As foreigners we often get together and share our pickpocket stories. My friend told me the best one last week. She was on the street shopping when she felt the light brush of a hand against her side, she quickly moved, and looked down at her purse. The zipper had been opened a couple of inches. She quickly started checking the contents of her bag to make sure nothing had been taken. While searching through her purse she came across a pair of long handled tweezers that did not belong to her. When she pulled them out to examine them better a man tapped her on the shoulder. He then asked in Uyghur if he could “have those back”. My friend was so shocked that the man had the nerve to ask, and that she was actually able to understand him, that she gave the tweezers back without thinking. But if you give the thief his tool back he’ll live to pickpocket another day.


This is where I got my cell phone stolen, it may look like a peaceful part of town, but in turth it's a crime scene waitng to happen.

When Does School Start?

I was talking to my parents on the phone this past weekend and they asked about this coming semester. Mom wanted to know when I would know if I would be moving down south. These ‘when’ questions are hard to answer out here. Today is the last day of February and the new semester is suppose to start the beginning of March. I still have no idea if I will be moving south to teach or if I will go on being a student.

Time and scheduling work very different in Uyghur culture. In our North American mind set if something is important you have to tell people early enough that they can set the date aside in their day planner. The further ahead you book the more important the event must be. We would hardly ever think of cancelling something that has been inked in for months. Out here the later you tell someone about an event the more important it is. If you are invited to a wedding two days before you know you are an honoured guest. If you are told about a meeting a few hours ahead of time you can bet it is important. So I guess if we do get the job we can assume they must really want us as teachers to have left it this late.

Me and a group of Uyghur students I taught English to two years ago.

I Survived the Police

Today I had to do one of my least favourite tasks of all out here, go to the police station. It was time to renew my visa, AGAIN. I have been here two and a half years and this will be my 8th visa. Every time I had to get a new one I had to go to the police station twice and face the music. I am proud to report that I have only cried on two of those occasions and today was not one of them. One of those two times was when my visa was nine days over due and I had been illegally living in the country.

I am thinking about having T-shirts made up that say “I survived the Police station”. I can wear it whenever I have to get my visa renewed. Thankfully right down the road there is a KFC where I always drown my stress in a cup of coffee. The new visa I applied for today is only a one month visa, so I can already look forward to my next set of visits. But thankfully none of these trips to the Police office have ever lead to this:

A long Road Home

Early in the morning of January 17 I got on the plane and headed to the warm weather. The first stop was Hong Kong, (where we had originally hoped to process our new work visa’s for the coming semester but since the paper work did not go through in time) we ended up just hanging out. Hong Kong is a huge city. We where able to stay with one of my friend’s family. Although I was a little offended when her 80 something year old aunt suggested that I was a country bumpkin lost in the big city. I just kept staring at everything, tall buildings, Subway systems, shopping malls and crowds pushing their way through it all.



I learned that there are only two things to do in Hong Kong: eat and shop. We sure did a lot of the former.




From Hong Kong we flew to Thailand. Bangkok has one of the most amazing hospitals in the whole world; in two hours you can see a doctor, get blood tested, fill your prescriptions, have an eye exam, review the results of the blood test with the doctor and drink some Starbucks coffee, no appointment necessary.



I spent two weeks in class/conferences which were a lot of fun and encouraging. I learned that if there is an American idol night to stay as far away as possible, if you don’t go you can’t be asked to sing a song you don’t know in front of a group of people. My performance was more like a laughing hyena than a song. It was wonderful to be surrounded by sunshine and friends



There were many more exciting steps of the trip along the way, but I am just so thankful to be back home.

Letting It Go to My Head

Anytime I step into a room, or get on the bus I feel like a movie star since every head turns and all eyes are focused on me. Since white western foreigners are still some what rare in this part of the world, I tend to draw a lot of attention.

I mentioned in my last post a group of women my classmate and I met when we were Hati lopping. When I entered the room these women all stared at me. One of them touched my hair, amazed with how "yellow" it was. Two of them sat across from me commenting to each other. "look at her nose, it's so big" and "look at her skin she is so white and pale". I don't think they realized at the time that I could understand every word.

When I first started understanding local languages, it was a real struggle to over hear people talk like this about me. It took me a while to realise they meant it as a compliment. In the west we don't see being repeatedly called a big nosed pale white person as a compliment, instead it is a sign to get a nose job and go to the tanning parlour. I was really self conscious about my appearance and how often and openly the people around me were discussing my flaws. But the truth is everyone here has slightly darker skin, and they believe the whiter you are the more beautiful you are. So every cream in the store has a whiting ingredient in it. They also think people with tall noses are beautiful and lucky (if you have looked closely at my nose in profile you would know just how lucky I am).

These same woman who asked my friend if she had had plastic surgery, sat across from me for over an hour saying I was so beautiful, that they wanted a nose like mine. They asked if I rubbed milk on my skin each night to keep it this white. By the end of our visit my classmate way very afraid I would have gotten a big head from hearing for an hour straight how gorgeous I was. Thankfully in Uyghur when you tell someone they have a big head it is also a compliment meaning they are very diligent and organized. Who knew I was an organized beauty.

Have you had Plastic Surgery?

I mentioned in my Christmas post that a lot of what Uyghurs know, or think they know about western culture comes from what they see in movies. This point was further verified to my classmate and I recently when we went visiting over the holiday. Uyghurs do watch a lot of Hollywood movies, (likely because they are sold in the underground DVD market real cheap) but their favourite of all is Korean dramas. All of my teachers are addicted to Korean dramas, which have all been translated into Uyghur and are daily shown on television. Uyghur culture and Korean culture are very similar in how they respect elders and the lack of public displays of affection on TV. When we visit student's dorm rooms they have large pictures hanging above their beds of their favourite Korean actors, and our teachers are always talking about what happened on the latest episode.

My classmate is Korean American and so people are always asking her questions about Korea and the latest drama. When we were visiting over the holiday we went to a friend’s house. She had four or five other women over visiting, all of whom live in the country side. One of these women knew a lot about her favourite movie star and therefore she figured she knew a lot about Korea in general. She looked my friend up and down and said, “you are pretty, when did you have your plastic surgery done?” (it took us a while to understand since plastic surgery was not covered in our textbook). My classmate was rightfully a little shocked and taken back. The woman went on to explain that she had read some where the large percentage of Korean actors that have plastic surgery, and that even a lot of none actors are starting to also have surgery. Her own reasoning therefore said “they must be an ugly people group if everyone needs plastic surgery”. My classmate, however, was not ugly so she figured she must have had work done to get that way.

It just goes to prove that you can’t believe everything that you see on TV, and have to be very careful about drawing assumptions from a limited amount of knowledge. This is a good rule for me. In the last few weeks all of my local friends have been busy preparing for exams and studying so my new favourite pass time is watching Uyghur movies. It is great since now I can actually understand some dialogue and see some of the culture played out in front of me.