Is Solitude Possible in Turkmenistan?
So far, no. I’ll let you know if I ever experience it.
LPI
This week we have the LPI (language proficiency interview) test. Someone will interview us in Turkmen for fifteen minutes and see how well we can speak the language. We’re supposed to score intermediate low or better. However, if we score at the novice level, we still pass training and get to swear in, but we’re supposed to get a Turkmen tutor when we get to permanent site. I’m not too worried about the exam, but the process leading up to the exam is exhausting. We’ve been stuck in a classroom (actually, it’s a storage closet) for eight hours a day for the past several weeks and now it’s cram session after cram session. I still don’t have all the suffixes down for person and tense and there are way too many verbs and nouns I don’t know. I’m planning on making and using flash cards tonight and tomorrow morning before the exam tomorrow afternoon. I left class early today to walk to a sunny, grassy spot to study on my own. Unfortunately, the only grassy spot in Anew is the stadium and there were kids playing there. So I went to the make out point, which is kind of like a park, but it’s all cement and dirt. But there are benches, so I sat on one of those and listened to Christmas music on my mp3 player. It was probably in the high 60’s maybe low 70’s today. Not Christmassy weather, but the music was soothing.
LPI (part 2)
Yesterday (December 2) was the LPI. I think I did poorly. We’ll see, I guess, but I definitely did not feel confident. Still, everything looked brighter today now that it’s over. We get the results sometime next week. We started to learn a little bit of Russian today to help us along. Mostly it will be helpful in restaurants. It seems that most, if not all, menus here are in Russian. Until now, I just asked if they had șașlik and hoped that they did (I think they pretty much all do), but it would be nice to be able to branch out. And the café in Așgabat where PCVs hang out has a lot of workers who only speak Russian. So now I’m tackling Turkmen and Russian while, I fear, I’m losing my English. I find myself unable to pull the English word I’m looking for, and I’m definitely not getting fed good vocabulary like when I had access to shows like MI-5.