A Teacher's Journey

 There is an amazing bazaar down the street from the hotel.  It's a wonderful place to walk around, get lost, smell and hear and have all our senses activated.  Much more than a farmer's market in the US - this bazaar is open all the time, full of people doing their shopping and hanging out.  Here are some pics and a video, with some comments.  I'm not great at formatting, so we'll just go with what we got here. I took this video as I was walking along.  Look at all the bread.  OMG, so much bread.  My students told me it would all be sold by the end of the day.  Bread is revered here in Uzbekistan.  It is served at every meal, crumbs are picked up and eaten (a student told me that practice hearkened back to times of severe poverty/famine, when nothing was wased).  At the end of the video are boxes full of little white balls.  These are called curd .  Salty cheese (like parmesan) with extra salt.  I did actually try on...

 I set three goals for myself for this Uzbek gig: try a lot of new food meet lots of great people break out of my introverted tendencies I don't think extrovert/introvert is a binary.  I feel it's more of a spectrum.  I can totally be extroverted: in front of my class, presenting at a conference, professional stuff like that.  Socially though is a different matter.  It takes some effort and awareness to get my extroverted side to shine through in social situations.  But I have to make an effort, and sometimes I'm not able to make that effort, and other people interpret that as aloofness.  Sometimes I just want to be inside my own head where it's warm and comfy rather than out with other people.   I decided that on this Uzbek gig I was going to really work at getting out of my warm comfy head and go out and be social.  I vowed to actually go out to dinner with my team (there are five of us teachers from the US as well as Jesse the boots-o...

 Being a dumb, middle class Ammerican white girl, I am able to move about the world with a certain amount of privilege, surrounded by conveniences that I take for granted, never noticing them until they aren't there any more. I knew that Uzbekistan would shove me out of my comfort zone, but I didn't really unnderstand how far and how often I would be shoved. So, without further ado, here are a litany of privileges I have in the US that I don't have here.  In the US: I can turn on the faucet and get clean water that I can drink from the tap. I can take a shower with water that is hot. I can walk into a building or a room without breaking my leg.  (Notice in the picture the pipe on the floor across the doorway.  I'm sure you can imagine how I entered the room). I have access to a bathroom with a flush toilet near my classroom rather than down two flights of stairs and across the courtyard. I can go to a restaurant and be given a menu printed in a language I can read. I...