Hidalgo Moments

This evening I was sitting out in our yard enjoying the evening. It had been a busy weekend full of visiting with people and spending time with local friends here. I enjoyed all the social time but was also needing the relaxing evening. I had my book, was sitting in my chair, a couple of the other girls had just finished hanging up their laundry and were sitting nearby listening to their ipods. I glanced over my shoulder a few times to see some dark clouds in the distance. "ooh." I thought. "It might rain tonight. That would cool things off a bit." (it hardly ever rains in the summer here so dark clouds are a very rare thing and worth noting!) I turned back to my book but about 10 minutes later I heard this sound like wind behind me. It kept on going and I looked over to see clouds of dust billowing towards us and swallowing up the tops of the houses that I could see from my yard. I shouted and all of us girls jumped up and began to grab armloads of laundry off the line as fast as we could and as we got inside the dust storm hit and swirled around our house. Right now the streets are empty and there is a haze inside my house as the storm whirls around outside. That's Af-stan for you!

This weekend some of my office staff, a couple of the short-term team members and myself went on a picnic in a nearby town. This town used to be the capital of this area and was a major stop along the silk road back in the day. Alexander the Great resided there for awhile, Genghis Khan and others also made this place home for awhile. There is a spot where there are the old ruins of the walls still partially standing and you can find pieces of broken potter and human bones mixed in with the rubble. I guess so many wars and conflicts happened there. The people I was with said they'd have a war, all the people would die, and then they'd just build a new city on top of them leaving layers of city and bone. It very well could be true. We had a picnic out there, played volleyball, climbed all over the walls and caught some frogs in a nearby stream. I also rode a horse for the first time in Af. It was pretty skinny and a little tired out so he didn't go very fast, but I felt like a true adventurer sitting on top of that horse with the ruins of the old city behind me and the fields of wheat stretched out all around me.

Our lunch for the picnic. Quite nice huh?!


The walls of the old city we visited.


History speaks...more than I want to hear sometimes.


We caught frogs in the river. I've never seen so many frogs at one time.

sick

I just got over a nice little stomach bug. It seems like that is an essential part of re-entry to this place. Fun times.

This week I'm not going to the village because I have friends in town I still need to visit, and I want to see what's going on around my office.

It is WARM here! yikes. And summer is only beginning to set in. My thermometer in my room got down to a low 88 last night but during the day is about 98-ish. That is inside, out of the sun. I'm guessing that it's up over 100 in the sun. Let me tell you, watermelon has never tasted as good as it does here on a hot day, with long sleeves and a blanket wrapped around my head.

More pictures from the village

This picture is all of us girls coming from the girls' school. I'm the second one walking up...the short one!


The donkey is bringing water to our house from the mosque.


Some of the children in the village. They are so beautiful!

Life under the burka

Within a day of returning to my city, I found myself packing a bag for a few days in a village helping with the education projects that I was running during my time here before. We have a short-term team that will be doing the teaching and activities, but I was asked to come along just to help get the teacher training seminar running.

So, we set off in our van piled high with notebooks, pens, soccer balls, jump ropes, and everything we’d need to live the next few days: cushions to sleep on, bottles of drinking water, and a gas stove (which they call a picnic here, because you just take it on a picnic, put the pressure cooker on top and bam, instant hot meal in the middle of nowhere. Let me tell you, these people perfected camping WAY before we did!).

This village project was a bit different as all of us women donned our burkas as we approached the village. It is a bit more conservative and we wanted to convey our respect for their way of life. So, I saw the streets, the few shops, and mosques of this village behind a blue screen about the size of my fist in front of my face. I got lessons from the teachers of when to pull the burka up so I could breathe a bit and have my face exposed and when to pull it down again (pretty easy…if there is a man on the street, the screen is down, no man, no screen).

And this is the fun part of cross-cultural living. There are new ways to learn of doing EVERYTHING, even wearing a burka. Just when I was thinking I had mastered wearing it and blending in on the street, one of the teachers said the whole village knows about the foreign women in burkas because they don’t walk like the local people. To top it off, I nearly walked out of the school one day with my burka on inside out, until one of the teachers called out after me and corrected it for me.

There are 12 teachers in the school and most of them are really young (one girl is 14 years old). Some of them are even still students. So, they study in 6th or 7th grade and then teach 1st grade. This is actually quite normal in the villages as there is a shortage of teachers. I absolutely love spending time with teachers because often they are the only women in the village working outside the home, and they all have a great desire to help their village. I really wish I could show you pictures, but they said they don’t want me to take pictures of them.

Next week the short-term team will be returning but I will stay in the city. There are friends I still have not been able to visit yet and want to have time to see them and I possibly want to spend some time at the university in town doing some observation and talking with them about how things run, for when I return here full-time next year and pursue working in the higher education realm.

I’ll close with a few pictures from the village:

A view of the village.


This mosque is over a hundred years old. This is the view from the window of the house we are staying in.


Coming back from teaching. I think someone caught me off guard or staring or something. I'm not smiling at all...but I was happy!

Asian Arrival

This post will be short as my jet lag is really kicking in tonight. But, I made it to Asia and am hanging out with my team and catching up with all the changes that are happening around here. It has been great to be back and honestly, I feel like I'm home. That's a good feeling in a place that used to be the strangest thing to me. God really blessed me with a good re-entry here.

Here are a few pictures from our ride up from Kabul:

Just because the inside of the car is full, doesn't mean you can't ride along!


This is a picture of the Salang pass on the road north from Kabul. There is still a bit of snow and it was nice and chilly. The high was a cool 103 degrees F in the city I am in now...and it will only get hotter as summer approaches.

We made it safely despite our driver hitting a cow in the middle of the road. The car was dented and the cow just stood there in stunned disbelief but all was okay.