So my life here is really beginning to settle in. My weeks are spent with my horde of volunteers, watching them canvas, studying their language, and spending time with my fellow volunteers. The big variable here is my family. Sometimes I see them a lot, but sometimes I’m just too busy.
Just today, I rushed off to work and had to skip breakfast, much to Grandma’s chagrin. But once I got to there, and people started asking why I looked so tired, I realized I had a headache, a runny nose, and every other symptom there is for the common cold, not to mention quite underdressed for the weather.
So I took the day off and headed back home. My Grandma, seeing me walk in says, “So, who’s in the big hurry now?” My mom tells her I’m sick, and then the fun began. Just like my Grandma at home would have done, and every Polish babysitter I ever had: my family brought out the food – tea, bread, jam, sugar, honey, candy, last night’s dinner and a tomato with salt.
“Eat food! Saaleeep!” My mom said, in the long drawl she employs for the English words I’ve taught her.
In my room, I found my sister, cleaning her things from my closet. She stopped to tell me about how she doesn’t speak Kyrgyz very well, on account of mostly Russian schooling. How she wants to learn English, and be a translator in America. As we talked, the little ones kept poking their heads in through the doorframe, one on top of the other, like smiling cartoons. So my sister shoed them out and shut the door, then insisted on showing me how wonderfully curly her eyelashes were.
So I spent the day at home, no work, no American friends – just me and my family. I slept off my cold, and then brought out my Kyrgyz books. I came to the living room to find my sister just beginning an older movie called “Final Destination,” where some college students cheat death, only to have death track them down.
I tried to point out the not-so-subtle clues as to who would die next, but they seemed happy to just cry out at the horrible deaths of this silly, 90’s era horror flick. I must have seemed like an insensitive monster, laughing at the fun and creative ways the movie came up with for the characters to die. Though watching them cringe, I couldn’t help but think of the seven cows that were butchered by hand in their garage yesterday, or the smell of fresh flesh that generally fills the backyard.
It is so wonderful to have the luxury of a sick day, and a big family to spend it with. What more could a young man, flung so deep into the Earth’s greatest vortex of mountains ask for.
Oh, and I forgot to mention in last week’s letter that yes, Michael Jackson is dead, and yes, everyone here mourns him. Go figure.
Originally Written June 30th, 2009
