Guilt Trips Start Early

Our landlord and his wife came by the other day. The pretense was that she had never seen the place and was curious. The story seemed a little fake considering my roommate has been living there for almost two years. She wasn't home at the time so I let them in. His wife kept commenting on how nice the place was, how big it was. She said it was nicer and bigger than where they were living. At that warning lights started going off in my head. As they were taking their tour I quickly called my roommate to find out how long there was remaining to her lease...and report what was up. Her guess was that the landlord was going to try to raise the rent next time. We still have six months before we have to resign a contract, but around here games and guilt trips start early. I started playing along by pointing out flaws and problems with the place. They countered by commenting on its convenience and what not. They left after 15 minutes or so...but the game is on.

Korean Soap Opera Junkie

Uyghur people love to watch soap operas. They tend to be a lot cleaner, and a lot cheesier than American ones. The plot is always one of tragic or ill fated love that overcomes family oppositions or near death. In the end their love is always stronger because of it.

Sometimes when I am out with some of my old lady friends they will start talking about the characters on their favourite soap as it they are real people. In fact, I once asked what hospital a car accident victim was in so that I could go visit her, only to find out she was a Korean soap opera fictional friend.

The other night I had on the TV and accidentally got hooked into watching one of these unfolding plot lines. It was captivating....before I knew it I was hooked trying to figure out who was whose real son, and why he couldn't be with the the girl he loved. The hour was up quickly and so was my study break....only as soon as that episode ended the next one started. I didn't have to wait to find out what happened next. But hour two bleed into hour three and hour three into hour four. They just kept showing the same soap opera. Finally after five hours of sitting there (a wasted evening) the series ended. The next day when I talked with my local friends I finally felt in the loop. I asked if they normally play the whole thing back to back like that. I was surprised to learn that they had started that series Friday night and had played all thirty hours of it over the weekend. I guess I had only caught the last five, but now I know why some of my friends are so busy over the weekends and why they sometimes cancel our plans.....they are Korean soap opera junkies.

Good Connections

In order for me to be able to appear on the TV Game Show, I had to obtain permission from the City Foreign Affairs Officer. Sadly the TV station didn't realize this until the day before it was to air, which caused us to have to do a lot of running around. In the end, like many things in this country, it all came down to who you knew. One guy's friend, knew a guy who went to school with the Head of the Foreign Affairs Department.

In order to fully appreciate what I saw that day you have to understand that most offices out here look pretty shabby. The floors are normally cement, the white wash on the walls (never real paint) is faded and covered in coal dust. They are ofter small little rooms crowded with three or four desks, each person working on an unrelated task. But the office we were ushered into was nothing like what I had grown to expect. It was almost equal to the size of my whole apartment...the floor wore a rich thick carpeting, one whole wall was lined with windows, another with bookshelves, and the other two looked clean and fresh. There was a whole living room area, with comfy sofas and such, and one large richly decorated desk, that could have sat six, but was really only the work space of this one Head Officers into whose presence we had just been ushered.

With the quick snap of his finger this high ranking official was able to get someone to work on our paper work. The TV station employees went out to make sure they got the stamped permission form that they needed,while this leader invited me to stay and drink tea with him. Talk about a good connection to make in a world that is all about who you know.

On TV

My former teacher called me last week and asked me to do her a favour. I agreed only to find out that she needed a Uyghur language student to appear on a local game show program. I would be interviewed in Uyghur and asked trivia questions. Ugh, I was nervous. I don't mind public appearances and I don't mind speaking Uyghur, but put them together and the whole thing seemed a little over whelming.

There were two other contestants. The topic of the day was language learning. One of the others contestants was a Uyghur guy who was studying the majority language in University. The other was a majority guy, who grew up going to a Kazak school who was now studying Uyghur in University (the two are related languages). Both were able to speak much more fluently than I. The station had helped by feeding us some of the answers....but not all of them. I also had to sing a Uyghur folk song (for those of you who know me well you know I should never sing in public, much less on TV for everyone in our province to watch), and talk about some Uyghur proverbs. My former classmates came and cheered me on from the audience.

I ended up winning a Uyghur/English dictionary for my computer and a fluffy, white, lacy computer cover. Those are small compared to my new found fame. It might have only been local television.....but ever since I have been recognized on the bus and in the bazaar. The other day when I was walking down the street people started to sing the same folk song to me.

Do you want my autograph?

Foreign Face Fame

I am going to be on TV again. This time it is a Uyghur program and they are talking about language learning.....they wanted a foreigner who has studies language to add to the discussion. The whole interview will be in Uyghur and I am supposed to wear my traditional atlas dress. I am a little nervous but it should be fun. I guess it is activities like this that help everyone in town fell like they know me.

Real Time

This blog is coming at you live, today, right now, from my own hand because ... I AM ON LINE!!! While I was home this summer I heard more and more people were being driven to take a Stay-cation because of the economic downturn. While people in my province are being driven to take a Web-cation. Some people leave the province for a weekend just to get connected. Right now I am in Thailand renewing my tourist visa and surfing the web.

The last two months worth of posts were sent to my mom in an e-mail that my friend carried out of the province. My mom has been sparingly posting on every few days. Which means the red in my hair had almost faded by the time that made the blog. Sorry there haven't really been any pictures, they are just too big of files to have some one send to my mom. While I am out I have another ten posts or so ready to go to mom. So even though it is currently the Islamic holiday of Korban... you likely won't hear about it for another month or two. Sorry.

We can connect some using a long distance dial-up connection, but it can be both slow and expensive (not to mention that it is a round about way and still not officially allowed, aka- illegal). So I have basically gotten out of the habit of getting on line. There are some days I really miss being able to look anything up at the touch of a button, but I have almost an extra hour or more everyday to work on other things because I am not tied down by writing emails and such.

Red Head

We get a little bored around here without internet to entertain us. I think for that reason more than any other, one of my friends finally talked me into using henna to dye my hair. I have dyed my finger nails several times in good Uyghur fashion, but I had never done my hair. Henna on black hairs gives it the faintest hint of red that reflexes beautifully in the sun light, but on white hair it is a shocking orangery red that looks more like it belongs on a cartoon character.
My normal hair colour is somewhere in the middle and I was always afraid, it could either look good or REALLY bad. One night my roommate and I decided to go for it and dyed our hair together. Our Uyghur teacher even came over to help. She mixed the dye henna powder with strong black tea, an egg, and a little honey and started to slather it on our heads. She then tied a plastic bag on top to keep it from dripping or drying out, and had us wear a head scarf on top of that to keep it warm. We had to sit like this for four hours or so before washing it out.
For the first few days it seemed like a little too intense of a red. But for the next few weeks every time I washed my hair I could see the water turned red and more and more colour came out. Now almost a month later Anne Shirley would be happy to know "it has settled into a real handsome auburn."

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Goes by a Dismal Pace

Macbeth had it right, sometimes it seems like tomorrow will never come, especially here where tomorrow really might mean next week, or a month from now. This culture is famous for its expressing time in shorter increments than what it will really take.

For instance people are always telling me they are 'on a horse' getting the job done. It means that they are doing it as fast as they can, or that they will be there right away. When I first arrived I thought this expression meant that they were only minutes away from having the job done, or right up the street in a taxi. I have since learned that if someone is 'on a horse' it will be at least an hour before they get there maybe more. In fact, I have started to use the expression. Some days I am still in my house puttering around when someone calls, I tell them I will be right there "I am coming on a horse". I hang up, finish my cup of coffee, have a nice hot shower, pick out my clothes for the day, and slowly make my way to the bus stop, nothing hurried.

They mean the same thing when they say "tomorrow". If you don't know something will be ready, or when someone will be back you can just put the person who is asking off by saying 'tomorrow'. Both you know and they know that it is really not going to happen the next day, but
it sounded like a good answer.

I was recently out with a friend and we were told an official we need to talk to would be back in two days. I was all excited to have an actual time frame. But my friend who is a local told me that I had to learn what times expressed like this really meant. I told her I understood that "right now" was in an hour or so, and that tomorrow wouldn't be until at least next week, but this lady gave us a qualified number of days so it must be true. "No," said my friend "in two days is just double the uncertainty of tomorrow, this person might not be back for a month or two".

Fake ID

The other day while sitting outside chatting it up with a bunch of my new neighbors the topic of my arthritis came up. They all suggested that I move to a more southern part of our province, because the dry weather would be good for me. I tried to explain how protective the government was, and why it was hard to obtain permission to live there. One guy suggested that I just wear a head scarf wherever I go and no one will notice (yah, right I have tried that before). I asked him what I should do when I go to a check point and the police wanted to see my personal ID card, and all I had to show them was a Canadian passport. His solution was "Don't worry, I know a guy who could make you a fake ID card...for a price, of course."

Now I never had a fake ID to sneak into bars or anything...but students that do in North America the worst thing that can happen is that they are kicked out of their choice party location for the night, the card is confiscated and they have to buy a new one. If I was ever caught with a fake ID card here I would likely be kicked out of the country and never able to return. The risk really isn't worth the joy of living south.

Blanket Making Outside

Since I have moved into my friend's house across town I realize I no longer know all of my neighbors. I had lived on campus for almost three years and spent a lot of time becoming part of the neighborhood. In order to once again establish this relationship with the people about me I have been taking my cross-stitching and crocheting outside. I sit on a stool and wait till people walk by and ask what I am working on. I am making both projects as wedding gifts for friends. It is a great way to start up a conversation and get people use to seeing my face around the area. I have been taking my stool and sitting in different places up and down the street.
Sadly the weather is starting to change and it is getting chilly. The blanket my roommate and I are making is sadly granny squares, which are too small to really keep us warm as we work outside. Within the next week or so I will have to find a new way to meet my neighbors, or freeze trying.

Working the Gossip System

I mentioned in my last post how my neighbors talk about me behind my back. It is not out of malicious motives, it is mainly just out of curiosity. Last year when my roommate's fiance came to visit I learned how to spin the stories in my favour.

After watching Hollywood movies most people out here assume that most North American have loose morals. I have to dress more conservatively and intentionally not spend time with single men outside in order to fight this stereo type and still have my neighbors see me as a 'good girl'. That is why i was worried about what they would say about how much time her fiance was spending at our house. I knew they would notice the times he was coming and going. If he happened to stay really late one night or came early in the morning, before they were at the post watching, I was scared of how they would repeat the story. So I went outside a few days before his arrival and joined the older ladies on the bench. I said "Oh my roommate is so excited; her fiance is coming to visit in a few day. He is going to be staying at the hotel here on campus, but she is already making all of his favorite breakfast foods in preparation....you know there is no kitchen in the school's hotel rooms. So she is hoping he will come early every morning and eat at our house. It has been months since they have seen each other. My guess is that they will sit in the living room and chat until late in the night. I think the hotel shuts the door at 11 o'clock or midnight. My guess is he will head back right at the last minute. It is so cute to see how excited she is."

For the rest of the week when we walked by you would hear things like "who is that guy?" "oh he is engaged to the one girl, he came to visit and is staying at the hotel here on campus".

I won! I knew they were to gossip about us, but I was able to put my own spin on what was being said.

Known Everywhere

I really feel at home here and often can be lulled into the illusion that I even look like I belong. I will be sitting on the bus heading to my destination when I realize the whole bus is starring at me and that I am the only person with light hair or white skin out of the forty of us packed like sardines on the bus. Add to that my slight limp and I am surprised with how many people know me, or at least know about me. I have gone into stores and had a shop keeper say they know to deliver my stuff to the University campus. Other times I have gotten in the taxi and the driver asked if I was heading home, they also knew to head towards my school, a few guys even knew to go right to my building since they said they had driven me in the past. These people are not really stocking me, but it does feel a little creepy at times.

The best was when I went south a few weeks ago to talk to the office about the fact I won't be working there, and collected my stuff that I had started to send down. I was walking down the street with my friend and we could tell that the three ladies coming toward us were totally starring at us. I nodded and smiled at them. As soon as they had passed I heard one lady say "oh that girl goes to ....." and she named my University. This city is a twenty four hour train ride from where I live at the school, and yet this lady recognized me. I didn't know whether to be scared or impressed with how many people feel like they know me, or like to talk about me behind my back.

Update

Some of you may remember that I returned to Central Asia on a Tourist Visa with a lot of decisions that needed to me made really quickly. I spent the first couple of days in the country Capital with friends and from there was able to learn that my school was not welcoming students back to study. They were also not letting foreigners stay on campus. This meant even before getting back into town I knew I was going to have to move. Thankfully I have a good friend who had an extra bedroom. One of the benefits of where she lives is the nice police office under whose district our place falls. As foreigners we are expected to report into our local police office. At my last home the guys in the office were kind of jerks and often told me how much they "liked Canadian girls" in a leering gross voice. Other people live under the rule of demanding local police who on every visit ask for 12 copies of your passport and a hundred and one other pieces of paper work. But here our local police officer is really nice. He registered me to live at my friend's house even though I only have a Tourist Visa (I really should have to stay in a hotel). This took off the added pressure of having to find a job right away. So for right now I can live at her house without hassle for three months.

As far as the job situation goes, the company I have been talking with down south for the last year, took my paperwork in to be precessed and it got rejected. This means it will not be possible for me to move south at this time. The company does have an office here in the city where I have been living. Since the company has been promising me a job for almost a year now (paper work takes a long time out here) they are going to hire me to work here instead. This means over the next month or two I will be spending a lot of hours running from government office to government office collecting the signatures and necessary stamps of permission to work here.

In the Dark

The province where I live is still very much under a cone of silence. We still don't have access to the Internet and international phone calls are hard to both make and receive. This blog post in fact is only able to be posted thanks to the help of many people. Two of my friends left the province for a few days on what we have come to call "Internet Vacations". They sent an email to my parents which included several blogs I had written to be cut and pasted over the next few weeks into my blog. It is weird after blogging for more than two years I now think of my life as a series of blog postable events. Even though we don't have Internet there are several time a week I say to myself "that would have made a funny blog post". In fact I was getting so many of these that I started writing them down.

As much as that is true it is nice to no longer feel like I am chained to my computer....there are no emails to answer, no pressure to post something, and now way to look up "what else that actor form the movie we're watching was in". It is quiet. But I also feel like I am in the dark on my family and friends lives. I also don't know what is going on in the world, nor can I easily let people know what is going on in mine. I might as well get use to it though, the Internet was shut down at the beginning of July and if rumors are correct might not be back until either the New Year, or maybe even as late as April. So the blogs to follow over the next few weeks are ones I sent my parents.

I'm Leaving On a Jet Plane

All my bags are packed and I am ready to go, today is the day that I start to make my way back towards Central Asia and my home away from home. I will be stopping in the capital city for a few days to visit friends and gather some more information. In the last few days I have heard that the tensions and ethnic struggle that brought me home for the summer, is still rearing its ugly head in some places.

Don't know when I'll be back again. Not only do I not know when my next trip to Canada will be, I don't know when I will next get a chance to update this blog. While I am in the Capital with friends, I will still have access to the Internet, but after that who knows.

Tell me that you'll wait for me... or at least check back in with this blog periodically over the next few months to see if I am up and going again.

Pincushion

On Wednesday I had an appointment with my rhuematologist. Even though she is a very "in-demand" doctor with a long waiting list for appointments she always tries to fit me in when I am in Canada. The other day she gave me five cortisone shots one in both of my angry ankles (as she called them based on all the swelling) and one in my shoulder. I was expecting five needles, so I actually walked away less of a pincushion than I thought I would be. Today I woke up and could tell the drugs had started to work, my shoulder didn't hurt for the first time in months and had actually let me have a good night sleep. So I am very thankful and am in good shape to head back on Tuesday.

I Want to Win Coffee

Tim Horton's, my all time favourite coffee place, is having a contest this summer. We had to write a true story about how our summer road trip included Tim Horton's. My trip home at the end of July might not count as a 'Road Trip" per say since I flew the whole way... but it did make a good coffee story.

You can check it out, my story is entitled "Friendly Stranger". Please feel free to vote for me. One of the prizes is a years supply of coffee. I hope they are willing to send that overseas if I win.

What's Important

I think we have all been asked that good old ice breaker question: "If your house was on fire, what three things would you try to save?" The question is meant to test ones values and point to what is really important in life. In my case the question is better asked "If you only had 50lbs luggage weight allowance, what would you take with you to the other side of the world?"


Everyone answers that question differently. The other night I was helping my friend at an English corner he and his wife run for new immigrants. One of the girls that participates is from a near by town in Central Asia. I happened to notice the pen she was using to take notes was a very famous local brand from that part of the world. I jokingly made a comment about the pen looking familiar and she said "Oh I like these pens, so I brought a bunch with me." I have to admit that at first I thought it a bit of a waste of her precious suitcase space... but then I remembered I have also taken good ball point pens, or one year I took a lot of scotch tape. Sometimes we are just more use to the quality and style of things we grew up with.

So I am in the midst of packing and creating my wish list of things to take back. The guest bed room is starting to be over run with my shopping for new shoes, books and other goodies. It is hard to anticipate what I might miss or have a craving for six months from now. So my question is: What about you? What would you have packed in your suitcase?

Visa Road Trip

Monday morning dad and I got up at 2:30 in the morning and did the crazy road trip all the way to Toronto in order to submit my visa application. We were standing in line outside the front of the consulate before the doors opened. I handed in my paperwork with no problems and paid the extra for same day processing. After meeting up with a friend in TO for lunch, I was able to go back to the consulate and pick up a six month double entry tourist visa. The only down side was the $30 parking ticket we found in our window.

As soon as we got home yesterday I got on line and started looking at flights back. Last week I had seen a ticket for only $500. I hadn't bought them since I didn't have a visa yet... but by the time I was ready to make the purchase the ticket price had gone up to $968. Talk about frustrating. Oh well I bit the bullet and paid the price, and now I have both Visa and tickets in hand. I will be heading back September 8th.

Restaurants Open for Lunch

We are now officially in the month of Ramadan. This is when Muslims world wide fast from sun up to sun down every day for a month. They will raise early in the morning before first light to have breakfast, and wait until after dark to eat dinner. The fast is such an important part of the year and peoples schedules, that local restaurants often close right down.

Even during the years I have chosen not to officially participate in the fast, my eating habits have had to conform to when the restaurants around me were open and serving food. During these times I have had to resort to sneaking snacks in my own home to help tie me over. Which is why I was so surprised when I realized Ramadan had already started this year. Being home in Canada means every restaurant is open at lunch.