[Transcribed by Jon’s mom and posted by Jon’s sister]
Today was graduation day at school, with the 10th graders saying farewell. With 3 months of summer vacation, I get to rest too. I will still do a two-day-per-week club for my 6th formers and 8th formers, and a once-per-week art club for little buggers. And the first week of June, I will do a three day camp (songs, games, and art projects for 4th formers.) I also have plans to compile of CD of good classroom songs (along with the lyrics) and sometime in the summer I will take a tour around the country.
Bringing Carrots to America
I was sitting on a small stool in the backyard enjoying the pleasant spring weather and the sprouting backyard crops. A few feet away sat a host family relative, who professed that he was rather drunk.
“I know,” I said. How did I know? Well, aside from the more obvious signs, he had already told me three times already. There was silence, but I felt a thought bubbling to the surface of his mind. Then it came:
“Alright, see that bush over there?” he asked, pointing.
“The pomegranate bush,” I clarified.
“That’s a pomegranate bush. Do you have pomegranates in America? Oh, you do? But yours are no good. There’s no flavor. Here in Turkmenistan, we have the best pomegranates because of the sun.”
“Mmm,” I interjected, the non-committal ‘yeah’.
“Do you have carrots in America?”
“We sure do.”
“Ah, but your carrots are no good!” he complained.
I called shenanigans on that one. “When did you try American carrots?”
“Well, I…,” he trailed off. Yeah, that’s right.
He sat for a few seconds, but silence couldn’t stand up to his percolating thoughts.
“So, here’s what you’ll do,” he said. “When you go back to America, you’ll bring a few kilos of carrots –“
“I am not going to bring carrots to America.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” He said, battling away my objections. “You’ll bring a few kilos of carrots, a few kilos pomegranates, a bag of tomatoes, maybe a few kilos potatoes, and you can give them as presents.” (“Grandma, so good to see you! How are you? I missed you! Would you like a potato?”)
“You can’t just waltz through customs with 50 lbs of produce! There are laws against that.” I tried to explain to deaf ears.
“It’s no problem. Just go get a stamp, it’s fine.”
Granted, I have seen people here take sheep (plural) on planes, so I can understand the Turkmen version of the law. But I don’t want to end up in jail for carrot smuggling. (At the airport: “Do you have anything to declare?" “Yes, carrots.”)
0 comments:
Post a Comment