My job involves me teaching English as well as teaching about aspects of American culture. Most of the time teaching about American culture has taken a backseat, but I just could not resist last week. In all of my classes I introduced Halloween. During most classes it was only for about fifteen minutes or so, but with some of my 11th form students I threw a Halloween party.
The party was at school, during the last lesson of the day. My students arrived early- it gave them a good excuse to miss class- and started setting up. They blacked out the curtains and put candles on the desks, it was very atmospheric. I carved two jack-o-lanterns, which was the rest of the decorations. With my class we went over Halloween related vocab and then played games. My other classes showed up about halfway through, as well as the other English teachers, and so most of my students got to participate in the games. We played pin the bone on the skeleton, the mummy wrap game, and bobbed for apples. During bobbing for apples, all of the students were afraid to get their faces wet, so none of them could get an apple- I had to demonstrate by dipping my head into the bucket.
After the party I went with several other volunteers to a village on the other side of Jalalabad. The volunteer who lives there, lives in an abandoned boarding school/ orphanage. It was the perfect setting for Halloween. We watched Halloween 4, and snuggled for warmth. When we woke up the next morning we went for a hike through the nearby walnut forest. It was foggy, rainy and cold, but it was worth it. We hiked into a gully and built a fire and ate hotdogs before traipsing under the walnut trees.
On Sunday, I came back to my village, but went over to Ariel's house (the other volunteer in my village). Together with her awesome counterpart, Umut, and the other volunteers near us, Joni and Leslie, we made pumpkin samsas and potato and cheese samsas. I had been planning on staying for only a couple of hours, but didn't go home for six hours. Umut made making the samsas look really easy, but it wasn't. None of us could do it, even after practicing. She was secretly laughing to herself about how inept we were at folding.
After lunch, I headed home to my host sister's 17th birthday party. The party was in full swing. All her classmates came, they are also my students, and they ate and made toasts with coca-cola, but went to the balcony and drank vodka when they thought no one was looking. The party was in the room next to mine, and only ended at around 1 am because the electricity went out. They were blaring the most ridiculous music, which for the most part was Britney Spears' "Gimme" song, over and over again. They all kept knocking on my door, a few even trying to open it, and screaming at me to come dance with them. I finally relented, but got blocked into the room when I tried to leave after a couple of songs. It took some ingenuity to get out of there.
On Tuesday I did my laundry, which normally would not be an event, but I hadn't done laundry in several weeks. My host mom pulled out this soviet-era washing machine, which does not require a water hook-up. We simply boiled water and poured it in. It was so much better than doing laundry by hand. The only downside, to laundry in general, is that it is now Friday and my clothes are still not dry.
This last week has been a bit annoying on the work front. My counterpart forgot to tell me that they changed the schedule, and my class with my host sister has become uncontrollable- they just blatantly ignore me. And I had to use the school bathroom, which I won't even go into how gross it is, but I was desperate- never again!
Guests arriving at the housewarming party.
Some cousins.
Kyrgyz party set-up
How I do work in the evening, by candle.
The booty from the housewarming party.
The family at the Sunday party continuation.
My host sister and mother, dancing Kyrgyz style.
My two host grandfathers.
My students at the Halloween party.
The finished mummies.
Making the mummies.
Two of my eighth form students.
One of my classrooms.
Walnut forest
Enjoying the view during our hike.
Building a fire-thank goodness for the two eagle scouts.
Some of my 11th form students.
My 6th form students at the Halloween party.
Pumpkin Samas
Leslie making a Samsa
Umut rolling out the dough
Apparently there's a view of mountains in the background...
