May 9: Victory Day

Don't ever tell a former Soviet that Americans won World War II. It was the U.S.S.R. that was the most committed, that was dug in the deepest. The former Soviet Union suffered the most casualties during the war, which they call, ''The Great Patriotic War;'' I've been told that every Soviet family lost a family member while fighting the Nazis. Today, May 9, ''Jengish Koon,'' is the day that they are remembered.

Last night before going to bed, my host father, Mederbek-Baike, told me to rest, because tomorrow was Victory Day. I got in his car this morning with he and little Emir, and we drove less than a mile to a white, courthouse-like building, where the festivities were taking place. I was nervous, because I knew people were going to want to talk to me, and I would have to tell them that I didn't understand what they were saying.

The three of us stood with our backs against the building, while kids dressed up in the uniforms of the time and performed choreographed marches and dances. One dance depicted a couple who, at the end of song, parted ways, as the man waved goodbye and went off to fight in the war. I wondered what the elderly women in the crowd were thinking, and what they were talking about.

My host father is a respected man in my village, so he was greeted by many other men, who shook his hand and said a few words on their way past. None of them shook my hand, and I wondered if it was because I was a foreigner. I tried not to let it bother me. I just stood there and did my best to look respectable.

A few speakers said some words to the crowd, in Kyrgyz and in Russian. I didn't understand anything except when one Kyrgyz man, who was a leader of the village, said the words, ''sixty-five'' (''altimish besh''), meaning that this was the 65th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War. It felt good to be able to pick up even a couple words in his speech. It was a small victory. Then, a few soldiers fired their guns into the air, over the building, and the ceremony was over.

A few minutes later, Mederbek introduced me to the important man who had given the speech. They were friends. I can't remember his name, beacause Kyrgyz names are new vocabulary words that take time to sink in, but he was wearing a nice grey suit, with a ribbon pinned onto his chest, commemorating the celebration. I could tell he was successful because he had all of his teeth.

''Salamatsysby,'' he said to me, shaking my hand. Hello. I panicked and forgot what to say.

''Jak shi,'' I said. Good. We both shared a laugh at this, at my botched greeting, and I loosened up a little. There were a couple other men standing with us now, a circle of four, and I recited the Kyrgyz sentences that I am most familiar with.

I told them that my name is Berdebek (people always laugh at this), that I am a volunteer from California, that I'm an English teacher at the school, and that I'm going to be in Kyrgyzstan for two years. One of the men was Josh's host father, an intelligent, artistic K-18 who plays the guitar, and, now, the komuz. It was good to talk to them.

They asked me the standard questions: How old am I? Am I married? No? What do I think of Kyrgyz girls? These questions come up in most conversations, because age and marital status are very important here. It's difficult to explain why I am 32 and not married. I'm going to have to work on that. But, I'm starting to get comfortable with this sort of drilling, because it feels good to know what people are saying to me. It is amazing to actually be able to hold a conversation!

The important man in the grey suit, who had teeth, accompanied Mederbek-Baike, Emir, and I to a small park with grass and trees. A group of women were setting up tables under a large tarp, and cooking. It was a family reunion-like setting. The man asked me a few questions that I couldn't make out. I told him I didn't understand, and he accepted that.

He then brought me under the tarp, and told me to introduce myself to the women, and to tell them where I am from. I'm not sure how I knew that that was what I was told to do, I just knew. I think maybe I picked up one or two words from what was being said, and, despite my efforts, my brain connected the dots. That's what life is like for me right now: reacting to a subconscious understanding of verbal, and non-verbal, cues.

I'm getting used to understanding only one percent of what people say.

I caught the next thing, though. Mederbek-Baike said, ''Berinchi, bys ichebys, anan, bys tamak jebys.'' First, we drink, then, we eat food.

We walked back to his car and Emir and I waited inside while Mederbek-Baike bought some vodka, a couple cups, and a bottle of soda for Emir from the store. Then, we drove across the street and parked in front of a blue, iron gate. We opened the gate, which led into an empty, overgrown plot of land, and walked inside. Mederbek found a rusted, cast iron object which we used as a bench, to hold our drinks.

But first, we had to wash our hands. It is very important here to wash your hands before you handle food or drink. So, he pulled the end off of a crimped hose laying in the weeds, uncrimped it, and rubbed his hands under the water. I did the same. I have no idea where the source of the water was, but I didn't trust it, so I disinfected my hands with the bottle of Purell that lives in my pocket these days, and prepared to drink.

We weren't quite ready, though. The cups had fallen onto the ground when we had first set up our table, and now had to be rinsed out, with the sketchy hand-washing water. I gasped as Mederbek-Baike poured this water into my cup and rinsed it out. Using that cup went against every instinct I've trusted over the years to stay clean and healthy in the wilderness, but it was too late to back down. Later, I would be in the outhouse, bummed, with some explosive diarrhea.

So there we were, my host father, in his expensive blue suit and polished black shoes, a respected man in his village, and I; drinking shots of vodka, before noon, in a small field of weeds and scrap metal out of plastic cups that had been washed out with questionable water from a black hose on the ground, and this was totally normal.

The first shot loosened his tongue, and he explained that, I think, he owned this plot of land, and that in a year, there will be a café on it. Then he said something about Scott, the volunteer who lived with his family back in 2005, that I couldn't quite get. He went on and on, in Kyrgyz, as if I knew what he was saying, slurring words together and stopping every once in a while to ask, ''tooshoondoonbu?'' Do I understand? I wanted very badly to understand, but I couldn't. Then I just wanted him to stop.

We drank our second shot, which emptied the bottle. He tossed it on the ground, along with the cups, and Emir's bottle of soda, and we went back to the party. Littering here is totally normal.

I ate lunch with a few of the teachers I recognized from working at the school once a week. It was nice to see them. They introduced me to some of their friends, who asked how old I was, and if I was married. We drank some vodka together, finished our lunch, and went our separate ways.