Ak Jol (Safe Travels)

I finished my Peace Corps service on May 20, after lots of goodbyes, packing and paperwork. It was fun to give away my stuff to other volunteers, local friends, students and my host family -- I probably only brought home about 15% of my belongings. At no other time in my life will I hear someone say, “You’re giving me a laundry hamper?! A half jar of peanut butter?! An Economist that’s only three months old?! This is awesome!”

Saying goodbye to my host family was emotional, as was saying hello to my real family when I arrived back in the States. Being home is great, for lots of reasons you can imagine (showers!) and for many reasons that I can’t even express. I hope to be able to keep in touch with my host family (have to remember my Kyrgyz), my local counterparts, and some of my students. So far, only one of my students has an email address but I’m betting that will change.

Here are some pictures from my last month or so:

I went camping with some other volunteers about four hours away from my site, up in the mountains. It was a beautiful spot – I will miss scenes like this.










My host mom’s second grade class playing Red Rover. There’s a chant in Kyrgyz that is translated like “blah blah blah[?] from you, to us, who will come?”



We had two trash pick-up days in order to clean up Issyk-Kul Lake behind our school.
Obviously a good thing, but I just hope it means the kids will think twice before throwing litter. Who knows.









Me with some of the teachers



Bubbles! This is my bro Kairat and his little cousins. I gave them some bubbles to play with and they were shrieking with joy. Pretty cute, especially little Islam’s face.





My end-of-year party for my best high school students: Gulmira, Kiyal, Dinara, Ulanbubu, Altinai, Akulai, Kanikei, Aidana, Yryskul, Ahinora. We made pizza together at my house and played games. Everyone got to take home prizes, such as my clothes, scarves, games, toys, stationery, random travel souvenirs, and things from AMERiCA (wow)! I will really miss these girls.





My goodbye party with extended host relatives. We’re standing in the little apple/apricot orchard behind our house. When I left the apricots were tiny and green, about the size of nickels.




My host family (minus my two host sisters in college)




On my last taxi ride through this mountain pass we had to stop for 40 minutes for road work and falling rocks.






My last purchase in country was this beautiful book of photographs of Kyrgyzstan (from the photographer himself). http://andrewchenphotography.wordpress.com/




Arriving home to Atlanta, two weeks ago. My sister, brother and mom collected me from the airport.





Thanks to everyone who supported me, donated to my grant, kept in touch and read my blog while I was away. I guess this blog will be dormant for the summer, but in August I'll be moving to Beijing to join my boyfriend, Josh, there. So hopefully I can keep it going for this next adventure.