This is two days old at this point

I’ve just finished my third day in Bishkek, and the second of my internship. Here’s what’s been happening: Monday morning I got up around 9:00, had some bread and cheese for breakfast, watched a little TV, received and unexpected phone call from mom, and then Zainap (that’s the short version of Bubuzainap, my host mom’s name, and I think I’m just gonna use that from now on) walked me to the London School for my first day. It’s about a 25-minute walk between my apartment and the School mostly down a major street named Sovietskaya. The walk includes going through the courtyard of a children’s hospital and crossing two other major streets (Akhumbayeva and Mederova). One of the first things I’ve noticed about getting around in Bishkek is that crossing the street can be really treacherous; way more than it was in St. Petersburg, even. There’s no light to tell you when to go and no established crosswalk even. You just have to watch the cars and wait for the cross-traffic to stop, then cross quickly while keeping in mind the cars trying to turn, while also being sure to walk gingerly across the slippery ice underfoot on either side of the street. I still haven’t made it to the center yet, but apparently there are underground walkways between the streets like there were along Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, so hopefully it won’t be so bad there. Anyways, Zainap showed me to the School and then went off on her own, and I had my first meeting with the director, Kendje, with whom I have been in contact for a while. Before Kendje was ready, I waited in the school’s café where a young girl was watching that show Kablam on Russian Nickelodeon. She was really friendly and started talking to me as soon as I sat down. We had a short conversation in Russian about our mutual love for Nickelodeon (the old Nickelodeon for me, anyway). Kendje then showed me around the school, introduced me to the office staff, and then we went over some basic information about my duties, expectations, etc. I met with some other member of the staff as well, who each went over specific information with me. The entire office staff there is really friendly and helpful, and I think I’m going to enjoy working with them. I also met a few of the other English teachers, and they seemed to be very friendly as well. I had some free time before I had to do a class observation later, so I asked one of the English teachers if he could recommend a good internet club in the area, and he pointed me in the direction of a big shopping center down the street called Tashrabat that had a relatively cheap internet place inside. I hadn’t used the internet since I had left Corvallis a few days before, so I was pretty anxious to check my email and everything. The shopping center was really modern and slick-looking inside, and the internet place was pretty nice. There’s this thing I see signs for all over called IP-Telephone, which I guess is like a phone service that uses the internet so it’s a lot cheaper top call internationally than a regular phone. They seem to have them at every internet club, including this place, so I think I’ll have to try it out for calling home one of these days. I got caught up on all my internet stuff, and even tried to watch the last episode of Tim and Eric on YouTube, but I couldn’t get the sound to work, either through the computer’s speakers or headphones, and now I’m really anxious to see it because it looks really funny, as always. I had some samsas (meat pastries) in a café inside the shopping center, then headed back to the London School. I still had a bunch of time to kill, so I walked around some backstreets a little bit before heading back in. I had a meeting with one of the office workers named Natalya, which only took 15 minutes instead of the allotted hour, so I spent the rest of the time sipping a Coke and relaxing in the school’s café. After that I had my first class observation, and it just so happened to be in the class of the other teacher from Oregon. Her name is Katy, and instead of focusing on the fact that two Oregonians ended up in the same obscure country, she seemed kind of hung up on the fact that I go to U of O and she went to OSU, which seems pretty silly to me. She was nice enough, though. I sat in on her class and was supposed to take down some notes for my own benefit. Some of the kids in her class were a bit rowdy, but it seemed like a lot of fun to me. They were all pretty curious about me and asked a lot of questions. Most of them were teenagers with a few young adults. There was one 10-year-old kid from Turkey, and he reminded me of the 10-year-old girl named Kcyusha that I taught back in St. Petersburg. After Katy’s class I sat in on a lower-level class taught by one of their local teachers named Kaira. This class was much more disciplined and task-oriented than the other one, which I guess I might have expected from a local teacher as opposed to an American teacher. She didn’t even take the time to introduce me to the class or say what I was doing there, which made me feel a little awkward, as well it probably did the students. As soon as this class ended, all the power went out in the neighborhood around the London School, and it was already dark out so nobody could really see anything. Amidst the confusion of the blackout I met Jane, who started teaching at the London School a couple weeks ago and whose blog I had found a while back. Zainap was there to pick me up and walk me back to the apartment, and she assured me that this type of blackout was completely normal in Bishkek. I hope it doesn’t happen again at some really inopportune time, though I’m not really sure when that would be. We walked in the darkness until we got out of the blackout zone, which luckily did not include our apartment. When we got home Adilet was gone, but he had cooked some sort of pasta and potato dish for us and left it waiting on the stove. After dinner I relaxed in my room for a while. As per her suggestion, Zainap helped me move my mattress off of the bed frame and onto the floor, since I decided that the bed frame was too small and creaky. I think that I’ll end up going to bed pretty early most nights while I’m here, because walking to and from the school in the snow and ice and everything really seems to take it out of me. This morning when I woke up both Zainap and Adilet were gone, so I had the apartment to myself. I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the apartment and check out the balcony for the first time. Zainap got home before I headed out and we chatted a little bit. One of these days I will write more about my host family, because there are a lot of interesting things to say about them, but for now I’m just going to write about what I did today. I walked to the school alone this time with no problems. Kendje went over some of the work she wanted me to do today, which was mostly sending some emails to a few different organizations through whom the London School is hoping to send some of their students to the US. I had another break and walked back to Tashrabat to use the internet place again. I used a different computer this time but I still couldn’t get the sound to work, so still no Tim and Eric! I’ll find a way to make it work somehow, someday. I had lunch at a little fast food place called Domino (not like the pizza chain), where I had a Russian cheeseburger and fries. The quality was pretty low by western standards, but it was tasty enough so I was reasonably satisfied. I had a meeting with Uchkul from the office staff and helped her formulate some questions to ask another organization in the US, then sat in on another class. This one was with a teacher named Kevin, who I had met the day before and who seems like a pretty cool guy. His teaching style was really laid back and casual, which I liked. After his class I worked on writing up and sending out the emails that Kendje had wanted me to do. The internet connection at the school is limited and very slow, so it took a while to take care of it all. I was then done for the day, and I figured it was probably time to get a new SIM card for my old phone from Russia. I asked some of the office staff where they would recommend buying one, and the suggested a company called Megacom, which has a sales center in the big shopping center across from the London School called the Vefa Center (I guess it has two names because people also call it Ramstor). On my way there I ran into a few of the students in Katy’s class that I had met the day before. They asked me where I was going, and when I told them I was going to go buy a new SIM card they offered to come with me and help me out. I probably would have been able to do it on my own, albeit awkwardly with my limited Russian and reluctance to talk to salespeople, but I figured it might be a good idea to have these guys help me out so I didn’t get screwed over or end up with the wrong plan or something. They really did make it easy. We walked right in, they talked really briefly with the woman behind the counter and told her what I wanted, then they helped me pick out a number from the list of available numbers. I paid the $4 or so for the SIM card, and in about 3 minutes we were done. We took the new card and the phone outside and tried to get ‘er going, but one of the students checked the balance and it showed that there was no money on my account, after he assured me that there would automatically be some once I got my new card. We took it back inside to the store and found out that we had left before they could activate the card on the phone. I might have made the same mistake if I had gone alone, and I wouldn’t have known to go back and get it fixed, so I’m really glad that these guys were there to help me. So, now I have a phone, which will definitely make things more simple once I start getting around the city more and meeting new people. I headed back home after that, and after a quick stop at the grocery store for some snacks, I got back just after dark. I’ve been lounging around my room feeling pretty tired sore, which seems weird but I guess I’ve forgotten how much trudging through the cold can take a lot out of you. It has been quite cold, by the way. Not as cold as it was when I first got to St. Petersburg, but pretty darn cold nonetheless. I guess that’s all for now. To be honest I felt like this post is pretty boring and not that great overall. It probably has something to do with being tired, but I’ll try to be livelier and write only about the interesting things in later posts. Until then, take it sleazy!

-Austin