35th anniversary dinner and original wedding photo

We spent our 35th wedding anniversary in a relaxed way….lazy morning, and then walking around independence square, with it monuments and large park area, where so many people congregate, just watching and soaking up the scene. We invited two of our granddaughters, Shakhlo and Malika to join us for our dinner and went to a nice restaurant to top off the evening. These two 17 year olds, who I call the giggle mates, are so full of life and joy that it is just so much fun to be around them….Our university students, as noted above, are under a lot of stress, and while that is true to a degree with the lyceum students, they still have time to simply enjoy being alive. Like me, they find so many things to laugh at….everything is funny, including themselves….we enjoy them so much….the girls ordered our food for us and we laughed our way through dinner on a variety of topics…they had flowers for Carol and gifts for each of us as anniversary presents….we’ve spent more time with them on this trip than any others, due both to logistical and logical reasons…Shah’s brother has been our designated driver chauffeuring us around all the time, and they just make the time because it is as important to them as it is to us. We have had dinner at Shah’s home, visited her mother’s school, their lyceum, went to bazaars together and topped it all off with our anniversary dinner. We are Granny and Grandpa, and they really do feel like our granddaughters. Since we were back in Tashkent a day earlier than expected, we arranged a hurried dinner with Guli, our friend whose family lives in Germany upon our return…so many of my facebook friends are university students and this is exam time for them…very serious stuff for Uzbek students….there is a log jam of people looking to enter universities and unlike American kids who can fart around for four years of high school and then attend Junior college, or work for years until they decide to get their act together, Uzbek kids are under constant pressure for good marks beginning at age 13 when they enter lyceum or college, as their high schools are called. The pressure to succeed is enormous because this is their only path to success…there are no entry level jobs for promising young people who then have the opportunity to work their way up through the system….My son-in-law Rich graduated from University with a music degree and took a job with Autodesk working in the warehouse, worked his way up and is now a project manager pulling down a six figure salary. These sorts of opportunities just don’t exist here…so many of my friends wanted to see us, but it was simply impossible they because spend enormous amounts of time preparing for these critical exams. First things first. I have friends who have spent two years of time and large amounts of the family largesse paying for extra lessons to pass exams to enter university…families put so many things on hold to help their children achieve success….I have enormous respect for these people who know that their education is truly their only key to success….even in marriage, without university training, future prospects are limited for girls because the males’ families will view the potential match in large part based upon the girls education. There continues to be a wide gulf between Uzbek society. The few haves, and the many have nots….The middle class is growing particularly in the cities, but the villages and distant towns continue to show the disparity of society. As in the Soviet Union, the break-up of the bloc meant a vacuum was created and the opportunists and “in-crowd” of the system were more than happy to fill the breach…there was little change for the vast majority of the society which continued as if there was no change…and in fact, there was no difference for them.…the provinces are traditional and storied in their historical ways of conduct, whereas Tashkent, a three million plus population center of business and government, is upscale and modern in almost every sense. Females have many more opportunities for success in the work force than in the provinces and much more freedom to exercise their individuality. Guli, who as mentioned above, is alone in Tashkent and has become a thoroughly modern Millie. She grew up in Urgench off in the hinterlands, and grandma who still lives there wants her to return to her roots and get married, naturally in the traditional way of families making the match….It would be disaster for her to do so, negating all that she has become and made of herself. Arranged marriages are still common practice. Most of my young female friends here who are married met their husbands through the process called “Sovche.” The two sets of parents get together and propose that their children meet and see if a match can be made. Sometimes it is dictated by the parents, but that, as I understand is getting less common. Usually, parents want good matches, but let the young couple decide if it is a good match or not. One such friend had several parents of young men approach her parents but she rejected them all…finally, one was interesting and they met a few times and decided that it would, indeed, be a good match and were married some months later. Another 21 year old friend’s father worked with her future husband’s father, and they decided to make the possible match. The future in-laws came calling with their son to meet the daughter. While the parents sat and talked and drank tea, the young couple took the traditional walk together as they met for the first time. The usual practice is for the couple to be gone about 15 minutes, but these two were gone an hour….upon their return, the parents were furious with them, but as she said, it was love at first sight, and they didn’t want to part. They subsequently talked by phone, texted each other, met occasionally and were married a year later. They now have a 5 year old son and are very happy together. Even when the couple meet in University or other such fertile watering holes where young people congregate, the parents will still meet and decide. I asked one friend who is gaga over a guy and hopes to marry him what she will do if the parents do not agree…she said then she could not marry him. Such are the bonds of family tradition and loyalty in this Central Asian nation. Whether the marriage is arranged by sovchi or by the couple falling in love, the life of the bride is pretty much the same for all classes of society. Following the marriage, the wife will go to live in the home of her husband. Once ensconced in the home, she really is second banana….she basically becomes the family servant, cooking, cleaning, shopping, and as a new bride told me, don’t forget washing clothes for the family…all under the watchful and, usually, very critical eye of the mother-in-law.. When I think of all the mother-in-law jokes at home, this situation would simply be intolerable in the U.S. But here, it seems to be a given and is accepted practice…when asked at the school we visited about the differences in how young people view life in America, I talked about how young people live together in their own apartment/home but in Uzbekistan as I understood the process, the new wives would live in the new husbands homes, and they all nodded in agreement without any sense of injustice, fear, or uncertainty. It’s just how things work here. Some of the time it works out well, however, and I don’t want to simply paint a black picture for the new brides..one girl told us it was a blessing, because her mother-in-law would get up with the baby in the middle of the night allowing her to get a little extra sleep before heading to university classes the next morning. But, as you might suspect, there are many tales citing the servant position of the new daughter-in-law. We’ve heard many tales where the son is the be all-end all in their mother’s eyes, and even though the match was agreed to, there is a jealousy that the mother has been replaced, and hence, the new wife never measures up..it is a theme in many Uzbek movies as well. Still, the society is being pulled in two directions…parents and grandparents who try to keep things as they have been and where they feel most comfortable, young people are connected to the world and ideas of love and marriage and the differences between how the things are done, particularly in the west, are making a marked change in how these young people view their own society…I wonder how much stress that puts on the entire fabric of society, and it will be interesting to watch. One drastic change that I believe will make a huge impact is the push to English in this society…the new law mandates that English is to be the second language beginning in 1st grade replacing Russian…One school we visited has a new rule where all teachers must be English speakers, and a young girl where we had dinner last night with a family said that she wants to be an English teachers are going to be paid more than other teachers…. They’re even showing cartoons now with English subtitles. these changes will pull the society even more into the western concept of how things like love and marriage are dealt with in the society, in my opinion…There is a clamor amongst young people for information about the west. Tourists from France, Germany, and the rest of Europe are flocking to Uzbekistan…It is no further from Paris to Tashkent as it is from NYC to San Francisco…a six hour flight and a three hour time change. Uzbekistan continues to fascinate me…my young friends are as modern and erudite as anywhere and their bright, happy, optimistic, and enthusiastic nature is a joy to see.