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So after that last entry of bubbling enthusiasm, I had a really hard time re-adjusting to site. Much harder, actually, than the initial adjustment. I basked in a week of can-do American spirit and then cannonballed back into a pool of chilling indifference. Rough. But I snapped out of it eventually. One group of students and I are organizing two days of American culture to take place next week: a sports day where we’ll teach the whole college frisbee and kickball, and then a cookout day where we’ll make hamburgers and fries. The kids are super excited, and I’m pumped that they’ve all been so proactive. We’ve had to scrounge around a little to find certain things, like hamburger buns (we finally found a baker willing to make a special order of round buns without sugar, to his utter horror), but so far the planning’s all going well… knock on (a gigantic amount of) wood.

As an offshoot of all this, I have an idea brewing. Frisbee is already really popular among the students; they love it and play even when I’m not free. The problem is that, more often than not, there’s nowhere to play. There’s a gym, but it’s usually in use. The “field” is a grassless patch 20 feet square that’s conveniently placed along the breadth of the latrines (v v pungent). Often the students and I jump over a fence to play in the parking lot of a hotel that’s also the town whorehouse (I can hear you gasping, but that concept is not shocking at all here, sadly).

All this to say that I have my eye on an ice cream cone-shaped piece of land that abuts the college ground and is used by nobody, a little chunk of forgotten earth between two streets. Some students and I played there yesterday for lack of any better place, but it’s barely usable. There’s an old cement foundation, scattered trash, and random ankle-breaker holes. It’s big enough to fit a generous playing field, and as soon as I get back to site (now I’m in Shimkent for yet another PC conference) I’m going to find out how to get my grubby little frisbee-throwing kickball-pitching hands on it.

And now, here are five reasons why I love learning foreign languages, especially multiple ones at once:

1. I know languages aren’t supposed to be cute, but the Uzbek possessive suffix is freakin’ adorable. It’s “niki.” Mine, yours, his, ours = “meniki, seniki, ooniki, bizniki.” In spoken language, if you want to ask to whom something belongs, you say “kimnikidoo?” Sometimes I ask my little sisters about the ownership of various household items just so I can make them say it. “Kimniki? Meniki. Kimniki? Elvinaniki. Kimniki? Papaniki.” It’s like a mini linguistic luau.

2. The phrase “if God wills,” (Khuda hohlasi) is used all the time. It’s meant to emphasize the recognition of the Muslim deity’s omnipotence. Sometimes it’s used in contexts that might be deserving of such a serious qualifier, like “Someday I will live in America, if God wills.” But more often, its usage rings strange, like, “Elzura went to school at one, and she’ll come home at six. If God wills,” or, “So they just bake in the oven for an hour, and then they’ll be done, if God wills.”

It makes me wonder what kind of god they imagine is sitting at the heavenly switchboard. Do they really think their almighty being would not will that the pastries be baked in an hour? Given all the insignificant things that are apparently subject to God’s immediate oversight, it seems that he is a sadistic micromanager reminiscent of one of my old bosses.

3. The word for “better” is “yakhshiroq,” which always makes me think of Jacques Chirac. Actually it only crossed my mind once, and now I can’t stop thinking it. Because of that, I say lots of strange sentences like:

“I definitely think Uzbek food is Jacques Chirac.”

“Really, neither America nor Kazakhstan is Jacques Chirac.”

“Are you feeling Jacques Chirac today?”

4. When you’re quoting someone in Uzbek, you don’t use reported speech (as in, “He said that he would go”), you just say exactly what was said and then say “dip.” I love hearing people tell stories with dialogue. It’s like this: “He: I want to go to the bazaar, dip. And I: No, not now, it’s raining, dip. And he: But we have no bread, dip. And I: Okay, let’s go, dip.” Remember that song? I dip, you dip, we dip.

5. Probably my favorite of all: where we might say “… and stuff,” here you just say the first thing and then say it again with a different first letter. My host father has a bunch of odd jobs, among them driving a taxi. So when people ask what he does, I say “Taxi, maxi.” And people nod in understanding, as if I have said something informative and not a phrase that sounds like a dance from the 50s. It’s great. This could have been so useful at certain points in my life: “So, what’s your thesis about?” “You know, literary theory, piterary theory.” “Ah, got it.”