The Big Move

So last Saturday, I moved in with the doctor I'll be working with this fall. She and her husband rent half of an Afghan family's house, so its kind of like living with Afghans too. I am really enjoying the new situation, Dr. H and I are able to leave frequently and another team family lives just down the street, so its very convenient for us to visit them too.

Last night, we had one big dinner together, so everyone could get acquainted. This was quite an experience, as the mother of the family had decided she was going to teach Dr. H how to cook Afghan-style. So we started at 4:40pm and we finished cooking around 7:30-8:00 ish. So when we khoreji (foreigners) go over to some Afghan person's house and the lovely food is suddenly served to us, I now know exactly how much work and how many hours go into it. Its crazy that they are used to doing this every day.

The dinner was great! But this is really abnormal, for Dr. H's husband to be able to sit and eat with the women from this Afghan family, seeing their faces and everything. However, this family just returned from Iran, where they lived for 25 years. So they don't have a problem with it. When I covered my face in front of one of the men, he was like, "Why are you doing that?" Sometimes it is difficult to know what to do here. There's such a range of ideas among families as to what is appropriate and what is not. This family is ok with an unrelated man seeing his wife and daughters. But other families don't let their wives' husbands see their other daughters. So just being flexible and going with the flow is key.

I do love it here. The food is awesome. No sickness as of yet. Its getting so cool that last night I got up around 3 and changed out shorts for pants! It was actually a little cold!

Final Destination

Yay! I have reached where I'll be living this fall and don't have to take any more sketchy Russian plane flights- yikes. As we flew on a Russian airline from the city in the west to the capital, I kept thinking about this tv show I caught about five minutes of where a Russian plane crashed. Luckily our flight was fine. But just yesterday a Russian plane crashed in the Ukraine.

So for the last two weeks, I have been living with a family while the doctor I'll be working with this fall gets settled in (she just arrived back from a short vacation). I will be living in this southern city until December. I don't get to check my email very much so I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up well with the blog! Hopefully, after I move in with the doctor in a few days it will be better.

I am really loving it here! I can't wait until we get into a routine and I'm really excited to share stories about the local people. Actually, it hasn't been hard to switch over to life here. The funny thing is that I thought the worst part of culture shock would be having to take cold showers... which I despise... but actually, since its so hot, my worst fear has turned out to be the best part of the day!

Here's a short story and a few pictures. If the internet keeps working I'll post more.

Independence Day Birthday Party

So last Saturday was the Afghan Independence Day from the British. Complete with fireworks and the singing of the national anthem on Ariana tv. I was fortunate enough to be invited to an Afghan birthday party! Which are usually nonexistent, as Afghan people don't really keep track of birthdays. But this little girl was born on a holiday, and she asked for a party, so she got one!



The birthday girl herself, turning 6 years old.



We can assume it says happy birthday. But who knows really.



I was suprised how alike it was to our birthday parties, and even more so when they busted out the party hats! Ok and this little boy was wearing western clothes, but he's the first I've seen. Every little boy here wears Afghan clothing. 

Hot

Yes, its hot here! But not as bad as it could have been. Its gone from 50 degrees celcius (around 122 farenheit) to only being 38 and in the forties. Yippee!

Pictures

This the view from the plane to the city we're staying in.



This is a little shop that has just about any souvenir you could want. Its called the Blue Glass Shop.



The blue glass from here is famous around the entire world. The art has been practiced here for thousands of years. You can go next door to the shop and watch them melt, throw, and blow the glass.



You can also get a magic lamp. 

Pictures

If you remember Grace from last year, she has only gotten cuter.



Dinner at my friend's house- where Ashlie & I are staying. She just got new toshaks.



We went to the village from Saturday to Monday. This little girl has a heartbreaking story. Her parents have picked out the husbands for all their daughters from their other relative's children. Her husband is now about nineteen, and didn't want to wait for her to grow up. So, they got engaged last year (when she was eleven) and he was allowed to start staying the night. Now, she is twelve, and wedding is coming up soon.



This is what most of the landscape looks like on the drive out to the villages and back.

Jokes

The people from here love jokes. The TB coordinator we just spent three days with is especially funny and loves to tell jokes. One common kind of humor here is when you retell an exaggeration someone else told. So here are a few he told us.

So, there was once a village that had a watermelon patch. One of the watermelons kept growing and growing and growing, until it was so huge, that it outgrew the village. The villagers got a truck with a big knife, but they couldn't cut it off the stalk, so they brought in an airplane, with an even bigger knife, and were able to cut the watermelon off its stalk. Then they brought in 360 trucks, because they had used the big knife to cut the watermelon into 360 pieces, and each piece was so big that only one would fit on a truckbed. So that is how they were finally able to get rid of the watermelon that was bigger than the village.

There was also once a man who wanted to buy some rabbits. His friend told him that he shouldn't buy any rabbits, because rabbits multiply really quickly. The man said he would buy some anyway, and his friend said, "Well, I once knew a man that bought two rabbits. These rabbits multiplied so quickly that five weeks after he had bought them, anytime anyone walked through his yard, every time they took a step they killed TWENTY rabbits."

Pictures

One day, we woke up and got to go to a nomad camp. There are nomads that migrate all across Afghanistan. Not too long ago, I read Caravans by James Mitchner, so this was like a dream come true. I just wanted to enjoy the experience, so I didn't take any pictures of the nomads or the camp, but this is the view looking down from where we trained one of their women to be a health worker.



Ashlie greatly enjoyed our trip to the villages. This picture was actually taken in Turkmenistan. The last place we spent the night is really, really close to Turkmenistan and we went to the border and ate melons by a stream.



So, I also didn't want to invade this family's privacy by taking a lot of pictures... but our last night, we stayed with the TB coordinator's family. I stayed with them last year and I love this family. I think of all the places I stayed in Afghanistan, this was definitely the most hospitable family. They are amazing. Unfortunately, none of the women are allowed to leave the house although there are rare exceptions. They wanted to henna our hands, but first I asked our hostess if I could do her hands. She agreed, so the picture above is actually my version of Afghan henna on her hands.

Emails and the Village

Thank you everyone, so much, for the emails. I am a little overwhelmed by them right now and may not be able to write back in a timely fashion, but I am so thankful for the thoughts you've all sent my way.

Tomorrow, I'm going with a friend who is a nurse to some villages. We won't get home until next week and then Ashlie and I are leaving this city. I am so excited that we get to go to these villages- we will actually get to stay overnight with the same family I stayed with last year, a family that lives so close to the border of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan that we were able to visit Turkmenistan last time. Hopefully we will get to again. We are going for longer this time and hopefully I'll have some fun stories soon. Be thinking of us though, because the village is usually where you get sick.

Sorry there are no pictures yet. If I can find the cord that connects my camera to my laptop I will get some up.

Dance Party

One of the best things about this country is that everyone loves to dance! Since I love to dance, this works out perfectly. Last night, a friend of mine who lives here had five girls over from a dorm next door. It is really uncommon in this city for college-age girls to live away from their parents, but these girls were accepted by a local university, and because they are from all over Afghanistan, they live together in a big house. The five of them that came over had various majors- engineering, agriculture, medicine- and they are all in the middle of mid-terms. But they came anyway and we had a great time. We served them an American dinner, and then taught them some American dances. The electric slide didn't go over too well, but the Macarena was a huge success.

One of the girls was trying the Macarena, and poor thing, she just couldn't get it. Another girl finally came behind her and stuck her arms under hers to try and teach her. They ended up just laughing. But then suddenly, this girl busted out the Afghan dancing to the macarena music! We were mesmerized. It was amazing. I think all the women here learn to dance like that when they are really young. Which unfortunately makes them bad teachers since its more instinctive than something they were actually taught. Luckily, this girl let me video her while she was dancing, and although I can't post it on the blog, at least I have something to learn from now.

Hello

We finally arrived in the city we will be staying at for the next few days. It feels so great to be off of planes!

We got to the guesthouse yesterday around 2 pm, and after eating fell asleep... I woke up to the most excruciating pain shearing through my calf muscles. I had no idea what a charlie horse felt like. I was screaming, half because of the pain, half because I didn't know where I was. Ashlie was asleep on the couch next to me, she heard me yelling, lifted her head and squinted her eyes, then collapsed to back to sleep. Then I realized where I was and stopped yelling. Well, now I know to get up a little more often on those long flights.

Today we're going to go shopping so that Ashlie can get a chadar namaas. They are the long black garments women wear in this city. Although the women are still very modest, when we arrived yesterday, it seemed to me to be much different than last year. The women were wearing fewer layers. It was encouraging, to know things are changing, although its only been ten months. Hopefully more to come soon.