Most of these pictures have been sitting in a folder called “for November blog post” but I guess that was ambitious. So, these are from the past several months.
My friend Trish came to visit me from London in October. It’s always so much fun to see this place through someone else’s eyes. And just hang out with someone and have it feel normal. And get a suitcase full of presents. :) She visited my school and my students asked her lots of random questions which was fun. The highlights: “How many friends do you have? How many people do you know in Kyrgyzstan? Is your hair really black or do you dye it? Do you want to have a career or a family?” Here we are with my 6th grade students.
Pics from a little hike behind a nearby town; unfortunately the weather turned on us and we had to scurry down the mountain before the storm came.
We walked through a little outdoor art market in Bishkek (the capital) and saw some folksy Kyrgyz artwork and many, many renditions of horses. Then we saw the freakiest squirrel in a park. We had to chase it around for a while to get this picture – worth it! I don’t know if all Kyrgyz squirrels look like this because this is the first one I ever remember seeing.
Parliamentary elections were held in October so Peace Corps consolidated us to a safe location in the mountains, just in case. Thankfully there were no major incidents so we returned to our sites after a few days of a camp-like atmosphere. It was nice to see other volunteers because I rarely see the people who live outside my region. Having a couple showers unexpectedly in the middle of the week was the best part!
Halloween is not celebrated in Kyrgyz villages, but it is in ones that have PC volunteers. These kids in my English club really impressed me. You don’t celebrate Halloween, but you have a witch’s hat? Can’t explain that one.
Thanks, Mom and Dad, for Jenga. After I explained the rules, my students decided to work together “to build the tallest tower possible.” I said no, this is not right, one kid is supposed to lose and then everyone will torment him, it’ll be great. But in the end, the collective mentality prevailed and I was the only one who made the kid cry (just kidding!).
November: birthday cake and pizza with my host family. My host mom started giving me a birthday toast just as the self-timer went off.
Birthday dinner at my house with other PCVs.
My host sister Begai with this kitten that kept coming around for a couple days. All of a sudden it never came back. Something traumatic must have happened to it.
I went to this “awards ceremony” for teachers in my region and got a certificate of thanks for acquiring my school’s new English textbooks, which was nice. They went all out with the balloons and flowers, as well as the invitations to performers. People sang and danced for hours. You can just imagine how much I loved watching ALL of it. This kid was my favorite.
There are 3-4 performances every year at our village club where the students compete in dance, song, speaking, and sketch comedy. It’s a lot of fun for them but bad microphones + bad sound system + bad acoustics + my language comprehension = it’s hard for me to understand a lot. I usually watch for about 2 hours and then sneak away. This is from the “fall holiday” concert. The next one will be for the “women’s day” holiday on March 8.
With friends in the mountains in Naryn. My friend’s village is many hours and four car trips from where I live. It’s hard to calculate the exact travel time – basically after waiting for each shared taxi to fill up for each leg of the journey it took 6-7 hours to go 200 km. We hiked up a hill called Chech-Dobo and enjoyed the view of a nearby town. We weren’t posing, we just sit like this all the time.
We went to the Sunday livestock bazaar which was about as frightening as it sounds. You couldn’t turn around without running into a miserable sheep tied to a stake or a cow’s ass in your face. I guess if you ignored the crowds, smells, shit, dirt, sounds, smoke, drunk people and animals, it had a certain charm.
Some enterprising person sells the essentials in the middle of all the action: cigarettes and vodka.
On our way to Thanksgiving dinner in a town about three hours away, a few volunteers and I shared a taxi. The driver stopped at a gas station to fill up on the way but unfortunately he didn’t pay attention to his gauge and we ran out of gas when we were 10 minutes away from our destination. He stood at the side of the road for 30 minutes, holding out a plastic bottle & a rubber hose and waving one finger in the air. In case you didn’t know, this is the international symbol for “Can you pull over so I can siphon one liter of gas from your tank?” As you might imagine, there weren’t many takers. We eventually got rope-towed into town.
I was pretty homesick on Thanksgiving this year but it was nice to be surrounded by Americans. We had a delicious meal, potluck style, turkeys included. These are the volunteers who live in my region, plus a few and minus a few.
I found a free Russian language typing tutor program online so some of my students are painstaking learning to type Russian in our school computer lab. It’s so great that our school has computers – I just feel helpless when I can’t help them fix anything because the entire interface is in Russian, and I’m no computer expert to begin with.
This little frozen stream in my village has become the most popular winter hangout for the little tykes.
A cute New Year’s card from my youngest host sister. I think it looks like me, except for the body shape and the amount of hair on the chin.
A festive billboard on the main drag in my village. It says “Happy New Year” in Russian and Kyrgyz. Santa Claus is associated with New Year’s here, not Christmas. As are Christmas trees (called ‘yulka’ in Russian).
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I insist that chasing down crazy squirrels and beating little kids at Jenga are both on my agenda. And I'm going to bring my black Columbia jacket so we can have matching outfits in all our pics. Mom will love it. Miss you much, Narek.
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