2nd week blues

I taught my first classes this week. I felt really ill for the first time this week. I had my first doubts about being here in Kyrgyzstan this week. Hmm... I'm just glad I survived and didn't break down. Yep... you heard right (read right?) I'm actually having the very doubts that I (naively) believed I could never have because this, joining PC, running away from everything I'd ever known, was a dream of mine. But I had them alright, and I think it was a combination of this week being the most physically and mentally draining week I've had since I got here, and my initial denial that sometimes life in K-stan just...sucks.

My rose-colored looking glass finally broke, and what I see now is definitely not pretty. My back hurts. My back hurts because my "bed" is just a metal frame with a single layer of 1-inch coil stretching from the head to the foot of the bed. My hands are uglier and drier because of the craziness that is laundry-washing here. I'm tired of having to heat up two buckets of water to give myself a bucket bath in a room so cold I can see my breath if I want to bathe more than once a week. I'm lonely, despite how great the people here are. And I don't even want to imagine all the harm I'm doing to my teeth in this country where almost every person you meet has a mouth full of bling....

I have a couple good students who definitely make my job worthwhile. But so many of these kids can't read even the English alphabet, despite their years of schooling in English. I'm just tired. I here that's normal at this point, especially for TEFL volunteers like myself. But I'm not going to delude myself, or you, any longer. I've hit the low point, and I'm not sure if I'm changing direction just yet.