Pishkyekistan

I've decided to resort to humour as a means of survival.   Six months here in the third world.  Consider this my plea for marriage...I mean, help.  Sorry about that Freudian banana, people here seem to consider the two terms, help and marriage, synonymous.  I'm trying to make the best of life, but people here don't even know what tacos are.

"Not just no, HELL no."  That's what my amazing and cranky English teacher used to say.  Can anyone help me with a Russian translation?  My future wife will thank you. 

What do you say to a kid who looks depressed about YOUR love life, like you were an ideal person until he figured out you have commitment issues or I don't know, haven't lived in one place for more than 9 months in the last four years?  Fo' rizzle.

So seriously people, the third world:  this is how it works.  There's the first world, i.e., the USA, i.e., We're number one, didn't you watch the Olympic basketball tournament?  There's the second world, which consists of Europe, Australia, and Canada.   You know, 2nd best, like, you would be cool if you provided the world with more quarterbacks and weapons of war, but you're kinda sissy.  Then there's the fourth world:  that would be like Russia, China, and all those other upstarts who think they're better than the United States.  And the fifth world, wherein a pending US or French invasion or airstrike is imminent...places like Mali, North Korea, Montana, and Iran.  And then there's everyone else:  i.e., here.

According to the CIA, the average person here makes like $1,000 a year.  I don't think the CIA accounts for goats and horses though.  Oh, that's something you should know, people have a horse fetish here.  The national drink is Komuz, which is alcoholic mare's milk.  I would tell you that I have tried horsemeat here, except that it's too expensive--it's for rich people, i.e., not me. 

In the 1st world, I would be making like 20 times what I make here teaching.  Recently one of my friends tried to pitch me a nice social worker job, that would be making 1/10th of what I make now.  So I don't have it so bad, I mean, really, if I could make $200 a month extra giving plasma like I did in Oklahoma, I'd be set.  I should ask our American neighbors about that.

Yeah, the airport.  My first sight when I came here was a fleet of US Air Force C-17s.  Somebody in foreign relations here is a real clever guy.  This country's largest profits come under the auspices of a Canadian gold mining company.  The people here like revolting, they were on the streets in the fall trying to get the gold company nationalized.  However, I think the lack of gobs of wealth is probably healthy, and the reason we don't have a dictatorship like every other country in the region.  Anyways, so the country's elite institutions of higher learning are American and Turkish--although there's also Korean, German, and European-funded private schools.  Larger companies with foreign investment are mostly Turkish and Russian.  And best of all, we rent out air force bases to the Russians and the Americans, while the Chinese are building our first real freeway across our Eastern border straight to the capital.  Can you say World War III?   Well, probably, except for the fact, that only the Kazakhs care about horses that much, and they're much too busy swimming in oil money and taking bribes to care.

What is living in the uncivilized world like?  If only words could describe.  Occasionally, cows get mixed up in traffic.  The people are revolting.  The other day we were at school and there was rioting downtown.  The teachers were like "hmm...maybe another revolution?" before taking another sip of tea and proceeding to check their "Odnaklassniki" accounts.  (It's like Vkontakte, the awesome Russian Facebook, only much worse...worse than Myspace even.)

If there is one thing that speaks to the barbarism of this place though, it's the smoking.  Seriously people, who you do you think you are, James Dean?  Ugh, I haven't inhaled this much second-hand smoke since I dual-enrolled at the University of West Florida.  About three times a week I want to walk up to a cute girl and say "you'd be gorgeous without that cigarette."  I'm thinking I should try it, just to see if it works as a pick-up line, I could solve the country's problems and all my personal problems if things went well.  I figure if marriage will solve all my problems, why stop after the first one?

Speaking of James Dean, men here wear two colours:  blue jeans and black jackets.  Anything not brown, black or blue jean, everyone stares.  I'm thinking the next time I go to the United States I will purchase my friend Tim's wardrobe.  Tim has a different color pair of pants for every day of the week--salmon, red, turquoise, green--I feel like, somebody needs to convince the men of this country to allow for some variance in appearance.  Vo ob-shey. (Which means "Fo' Rizzle," in Russian).

Anyways, as far as I can tell, the other thing that's a dead giveaway you're in the third world is that everyone thinks their life will be better if they could only move to Los Angeles or Manhattan.  I.E., they haven't seen the Jersey Shore, they've never sat in traffic for five hours, they've never seen a Manhattan apartment ad ($$$$), and their musical literacy is so low they don't realize how awesome it would be to live in Brooklyn.  One of my students turned in the lyrics to "Whistle" by Flo Rida as a homework assignment.  If this had been New Jersey, that would've been a dirty joke and the kid probably would've asked if anyone wanted to perform oral on him after class.  My student, however, remains blissfully ignorant.  None of my friends here know that Mumford and Sons, Florence and the Machine, Lecrae, Josh Garrels, Ellie Goulding, or Jenny and Tyler (i.e., all my favourite bands right now) even exist.  They probably think Sufjan Stevens is a new age guru.   But everyone knows what dubstep and Gangnam style are...

Anyways, what I'm thinking is that I should start my own local business empire:  first, I'd open an indie record label and a Mexican restaurant.  Then I'd start a secret society that would burn all black and brown clothes in the nation, causing severe shock and eventually another revolution.  With James Dean as my holographic puppet president (Hey, they brought back Tupac.), I would outlaw cigarettes.  My propaganda machine would extol the merits of Sufjan Stevens, publish my poetry as mandatory reading for university students, invent a new religion that involves watching westerns, and last but most importantly, show foreigners talking about how the main reason that Pishkyekistan is a horrible place to live is that local people believe that it's a horrible place to live and can't wait to leave and won't leave English-speaking eligible bachelors alone in their headphoned Florence and Machine paradise, but instead ask you a million times a day if you miss America and if you've heard of Flo Rida or 50 Cent. 

"Well, actually, what I miss is having friends, which is what you would be if you realized that I don't have a visa-stamping machine in my apartment and that I'm not interested in you hooking me up with someone who doesn't know who Marcus Mumford is."   Oi vey everybody.  Vo ob-SHEY.