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What have I been doing? I can’t even remember a lot of it now, and I don’t feel like writing a lot like I usually do, but I want to put something up so I’ll try and briefly go over some of the things I did in the last week and a half or so. Two weekends ago, after writing my last blog post, I hung around the house for a while and then went to hang out with some of the teachers over at their apartments. I got some vodka and soda at the big grocery store near their place and got kind of drunk as we played scrabble. The next Sunday I kind of walked around the neighborhood a little bit to find a good internet place and have some lunch I ate at a place that was sadly out of lagman, but did have some pretty good plemeni. I found an internet place really close to my apartment that’s pretty fast, but was a lot more expensive than most other places. The weather was nice for walking around that day, and actually it’s been really nice this week. It would appear that spring has sprung in Bishkek, after teasing us with a few days of good weather here and there, although this could just be another teaser. Tuesday was the day I had to pick up my Kazakh visa at the embassy, and I had hoped that my host mother would be able to pick it up since I had to be teaching at the specified pick-up time, but alas she called the embassy to see if this was OK and of course the answer was “no” (the Kazakh embassy here doesn’t make any aspect of getting a visa simple or easy). So, I had to reschedule my last two classes so that I could get over to the Kazakh embassy and pick up my passport with the visa inside. I had a pleasant taxi ride there with a friendly driver with whom I talked the whole way. At the embassy lots of people were waiting around to pick up their passports too. There were two other Americans there; a woman and what I assumed was her teenage daughter, and it seemed like an unlikely pair of Americans to be in Kyrgyzstan. It seemed more like they lived here and less like they were tourists, and I didn’t get to talk to them, but I was curious as to what they were doing in this part of the world. I got my visa really quick as soon as we all got through the door, and that was that. There were taxi drivers outside ready to take people to Almaty (the Kazakh capital, about 3 or 4 hours away). I walked home from the embassy (about 45 minutes to an hour by foot), stopping at a samsa stand that had the best chicken and cheese samsas I’ve had yet.
Wednesday I figured I should just get right on securing my final visa (except of course for the Turkmen visa, which I won’t actually get until I get to the border), so I made my way to the Tajik embassy. On the way there I stopped at a samsa stand, and once the girl at the counter learned that I was American and an English teacher, she basically asked if I would marry her. I told her I was too young to get married, but I don’t think she agreed. She wanted me to giver her my phone number but I politely refused and was on my way. Not that I wouldn’t mind going on a date or something with somebody here, but if they’re just looking for somebody to marry them then I’m not interested. So, I wandered towards the embassy, which is in an really awkward place in the middle of some residential neighborhood on the edge of town. I found it easily enough, and once inside the consul was very patient and helped me fill out the forms (just like it said he would in the Lonely Planet guide!) I paid the $50 (plus 50 som) fee, and he said to come back on Monday. It was certainly a pleasant experience, especially compared to the Kazakh embassy. After that I walked through some back streets and found my way to Gorkogo Street at Tash Rabat, so I used the internet and had some lunch there. I also tried called Strand from the IP telephone but he didn’t answer. I still had a lot of time before I had to teach my make up classes at 5:30, so I went downtown on the trolleybus to get some Kyrgyz language material from the bookstores near TsUM. I found a Kyrgyz-Russian-English mini dictionary, as well as a slightly bigger Kyrgyz-Russian/Russian-Kyrgyz dictionary, all for about 200 som. I sat on various benches for a while before catching another trolleybus back to the neighborhood around the school, where I sat on some more benches to kill time before my classes. Then I taught my classes and went home. Thursday was the day I gave all my final test for the month, and some students did really well while other did really bad. I can’t really remember what else I did that day.
Friday we were all itching to go out, and I suggested the Georgian restaurant that we had heard about and I had seen the week before. We got a big group together (Me, Jane, Nick, Jess, Katy, Alison, Jonathan, and Ben [the new guy, who finally decided to come out with us]) and went by taxi. The food was delicious, as was the Georgian wine we ordered. Ben and I split a Khachapuri (Georgian cheesy bread) with an egg cracked on top of it, and I had sausage with potatoes and onions. The sausage had pomegranate pieces baked right inside, which was good but kind of annoying since I don’t like to eat the seeds. I tried bites of others’ food too and it was all delicious. They place quite expensive though, and I think I ended up paying about 700 som (about $20) for my whole meal, but it was worth it. After dinner we went to Sweet 60’s again, which was a lot less hoping this time. Nobody (except us) was really dancing, and even though the band was playing again, the place seemed kind of dead. There was a group of Peace Corps volunteers there, most of them apparently up from Jalal-Abad for the weekend, and apparently Jonathan knew one of them and got to talk with them for a while. We left relatively early, so I got a decent night’s sleep as I recall.
Saturday there had been talk of going to Osh Bazaar, and I was getting antsy to go all morning so I eventually walked over to the other teachers’ apartments (with some samsa stops on the way), and we organized a bazaar party. Nick, Jess, Jane and I caught a marshrutka (one of the bigger kind, like a small bus) out to the Bazaar, and on the way we all got to talk to some people on the way. The others were crammed near the front and got to try a little Kyrgyz out on the driver, while I chatted a bit in Russian with the guy sitting next to me. An older woman overheard us, and wanted to inform me that her children lived in Chicago, and I chatted with her a little too. At the market we shopped for gifts and souvenirs for our friends and family, and I bought quite a few things, though I still need to be more (No I’m not saying what I bought, it will just have to be a surprise). I’ve decided that I want to buy a Komus while I’m here. It’s a Kyrgyz stringed instrument that has a cool eastern sound to it, and it looks like a lot of fun to play. I actually got to try one out at the market. I should be able to get a decent one for around $30, but I’d just have to figure out how to get it home. Also at the market, Nick and Jess bought some mushrooms and noodles, and Jane got some stuff that she needed too, and we caught a taxi back to the apartments. We had an early dinner at Nooruz across the street, and Jane went off to bed while I hung out with Nick and Jess a while longer. We watched a funny show in their apartment called Peepshow (British comedy), and Nick and I went down the street to a video rental place they had found, and rented I Heart Huckabee’s. I was getting kind of tired and decided to head home before they started the movie. I waited in vain for the last marshrutka of the evening, and just as I was about to start walking home, I ran into two of the London School teachers, Kevin and Carl, along with their friend and former London School teacher Tom, who I hadn’t met before. There were headed out for a beer after dinner and invited me to join them, so I agreed. We went to this new Turkish restaurant that had just opened up down the street from the school. The place was really nice and swanky inside, with plush chairs too. We had a beer and talked for a while. Carl and Tom are both British, and seem to have complimentary senses of humor, and just went off on crazy tangents and bizarre trains of thought, playing off on each other while Kevin and I would only manage to get a few words in edgewise. I realized that this is what it must be like to be around Strand and me when we’re together, though Carl and Tom are way raunchier more vulgar than we ever are when we make jokes. After this place the guys were going to some nearby dive bar called Antons, but I was feeling tired so I took a taxi home and called it a night.
For Sunday, Kevin and I had already agreed to check out the biggest market in the city, Dordoi. After changing some money at Vefa Center, I met up with Kevin, and we had a pre-market lunch at a nice restaurant down the street that I hadn’t been to before. Afterwards we caught a marshrutka to Dordoi, and fortunately got to sit down most of the way. Dordoi bazaar is way out in the north of town, and costs about double the normal price of a marshrutka ride to get there. I had heard a lot about Dordoi; that you can find anything there, that it’s the largest market in Central Asia, etc. All in all though, I was pretty disappointed in Dordoi. Yeah it was really big, but it’s mainly just clothes, shoes, and hosehold products. It’s really just the same kind of stuff I can get at the store, and I guess it’s cheaper here, but I’m not really in the market for all that stuff. I was hoping more for a flea market, where I could buy weird old Soviet junk and stuff like that, but this just wasn’t the place for that I guess. There were a few scattered DVD sellers, but the selection and quality was far inferior to what you find at most markets in Russia, so it left me more disappointed than anything. I did buy some DVDs, mostly of Kyrgyz and Russian music, but because my computer’s getting old and doesn’t like to play discs so much anymore, none of the DVDs I bought work on my computer. I’m holding on to them for once I get a new computer, though. Kevin was looking for a cheap DVD player to last him the rest of his two months here, and we found one for 1,000 som under the brand name “Samsungls” (though it said “Samsingls” on the DVD player itself), but Kevin just couldn’t bring himself to buy something that was obviously THAT cheap, so he left DVD playerless. The market is interesting for the way it is set up. It’s a huge maze of stacked cargo crates (like what you see being unloaded at the docks or shipped by train) that have all been modified into little storefronts for each vendor. Some areas of the market weren’t even in operation, so there were whole rows that were empty and kind of creepy. We wandered for a few hours, and then tried to catch a Marshrutka back home. We were in an area in which, for some reason, marshrutkas wouldn’t stop to pick us up in, so we had to walk across the market through the mud just to find a marshrutka that would then back track to where we had just been. After a long ride back we were both hungry again, so we went to a place just down the street from the school called Hollywood café, where Kevin had been many times but I had not been yet. It was really dark inside, and the walls were covered with movie posters and pictures of actors and actresses. I had some “Hungarian meat” with “spaghetti under cheese.” After our early dinner I headed home, where I had a little bit more for dinner with the host family.
Yesterday was Monday, and also the beginning of a new month of classes, which meant some reshuffling of schedules, the addition of some new students, and the loss of some old students. I lost a few students who I will miss having, but I seem to have also gained some good students, so hopefully this month will be pretty good as far as my classes go. Monday morning I went back to the Tajik embassy to pick up my passport, this time taking a different route through the residential neighborhood to get there. I was in and out in about a minute, and now I am the proud possessor of a Tajik visa. I walked again to Tash Rabat to use the internet a bit before going to the London School where I had to meet with my supervisor Kendje to help her edit some information she was sending to an exchange organization in the US.
Today (Tuesday), I was a few minutes late for my morning Kyrgyz lesson because I messed up the light in my bedroom. I accidentally knocked in with my hand as I was putting on my shirt, and tried to inspect it to see if I had ruined it somehow. I then discovered that the light was hanging by a hook coming out of the ceiling, so I detached it form the hook to see of there was any damage, only to find that thelight was nearly impossible to reattach to the hook from my vantage point standing on the ground. After many failed attempts to reattach it, and after my arms started getting really tired from holding it up, I called for my host mom to come help me (thank god she was home). She brought in the stepladder and was able to reattach it from that angle. Somehow in the process of getting the light unattached, I had undone the connection, and so the light didn’t work. Zainap said she would have Adilet fix it when he got home (thankfully it had been fixed when I got home this evening). Kyrgyz was fun, and I think some of it is finally starting to click a little bit. I did some lesson planning after that, used the internet for a while, and taught my classes this afternoon/evening. On Monday we had been talking about going out to dinner tonight, but Nick was sick and Jess didn’t really want to go out, so it ended up being Me, Jane, Katy’s new Kyrgyz boyfriend, Tim (it’s short for something [Timirlan, maybe?]). On my suggestion we went to the Turkish place that I had been to with Kevin, Carl, and Tom. I had been given a limitless 10% discount card to that place and I figured we might as well use it. The food turned out to be pretty good. Mine was actually a bit bland (a Turkish, football shapped “pizza” with egg on top), though I tried Jane’s meal and it was quite delicious (chicken with cheese and peppers in a curry-ish sauce). I’d definitely like to go back and try more things on their menu. Tim doesn’t really speak any English, so we talked with him in Russian. I actually had quite a long conversation with him, and he seems like a really nice guy. I think he’s friends with the band that plays at Sweet 60’s, and had actually sung a few songs with them the other night when we were there. We had a nice time at the restaurant, and I got to catch the last marshrutka home, which was a relief (even if they did charge 10 some instead of 5). I’m glad I was able to keep this to a more manageable length than usual. Tomorrow is my day off, so I have to go to the bank to send some money to Turkmenistan by Western Union (a down payment on my tour), check the internet for the big primary results (go Obama!), do some shopping for Woman’s Day presents (it’s on Saturday), and hopefully do a little exploring. Wish me luck!