Саламатсызбы

Busy busy busy! I find I don’t really have a lot of time to sit down and write blog posts. I teach for about 6 hours everyday, plus 2 to 3 hours for lesson planning, so it’s basically the same as a full-time job. Well, I do get Wednesdays off, so there is some relief in the middle of the week, That’s why I have time to write now, cause it’s Tuesday night and I don’t have to plan for lessons tomorrow.
Last week was alright. I started teaching a new class and by now I think they’re comfortable enough with me and like me to some extent. One of them said that it was a “pity” that I was leaving at the end of March, so that was nice to hear. I like them to, so it’s definitely working out. Some of my classes are better than others, for sure. One of them can sometimes be difficult to teach, because a few of the students I feel should be at a lower level and so getting through exercises can take a long time, especially when some of the better students are absent and can’t help the others out. Also, this class can get pretty rowdy and hard to subdue. They also seem to laugh with each other about me a lot, especially when I try translating a word into Russian for them and I say it or spell it wrong or something. But, for the most part, teaching is going pretty well and I definitely enjoy it over all.
Outside of teaching, I’ve been hanging out with some of the other teachers and some other people as well. Last Thursday night we went out to a Turkish restaurant after school. It was Most of the teachers went, along with another girl who used to teach at the London School and is back in Bishkek. That guy Jake (who took us to the Chinese restaurant) was there too, as well as this other American girl named Alison who hangs around with the teachers, and a local Russian friend of everyone’s named Nataliya. It was a good time, though I think we were being really loud and annoying to everybody else in the restaurant. I was hoping they would have hookahs at this place, but alas they did not. This place was just down the street from the school, so we walked there and back in a light snow. The snowflakes were just like snowflakes in a cartoon, as in they look like real snow flakes when you look at them up close on your sleeve. You could actually make out the intricate details and patterns, as if somebody cut them out of pieces of paper and stuck them on the window. It was pretty cool to see. I hung out in Jane’s apartment with some of the other teachers before heading home by taxi.
The next day was Wednesday, so I of course had the day off. I took the Trolleybus downtown and had lunch at a place called Café Astana that I had read about in the Lonely Planet Central Asia guidebook. It was ok. I had lagman (which I basically get every time I eat at a restaurant now), and chicken curry, which wasn’t really curry at all but rather a chicken in a creamy sauce. After lunch I went to a Shmel’ internet club on Kievskaya to upload pictures to flickr and check the Super Tuesday results (I wish Obama had done a little better). After almost two hours there I decided it was time to leave, and I ran into Kevin sitting at another computer on my way out. After I had gotten a half block down the street he called me to see what I was doing and if I’d want like to grab a drink or something. I was just going to wander around, so I said sure. We went to that place called Fatboy’s, where we each had a beer, and I had some blini with sour cream (though it was probably to runny to really be called sour cream). Kevin and I chatted for a while and drank our beers at a leisurely pace. Kevin’s a cool guy, though I don’t see him much outside of the school, so I’m glad I ran into him that day. After we finished, Kevin headed back towards the school and I decided to take a long walk home through a new part of town. From Sovietskaya Street I went west on Toktagula for a while, then wormed my way over the Prospekt Mira (Avenue of the World), then due south. It was a pretty long walk, but I passed some cool stuff. There are at least 3 or 4 universities on Prospekt Mira with interesting architecture. The sun was “an angry little pinhead” in the sky (to quote Kurt Vonnegut), and I could stare right at it as it hung low in the sky shining through the fog and smog. I kept trudging away, never really aware of how far I’d gone. I was going to go as far as Akhunbayeva Street, where I would turn East towards my apartment. Streets are really poorly and unreliably labeled in Bishkek (this is true for most former Soviet cities, I think), so I tried to find street names as I passed them but wasn’t always successful. I ended up walking right past Akhunbayeva thinking I still had a ways to go, because I couldn’t find a street name as I passed it. I realized after I had gone a few hundred yards past it that I was headed towards the edge of town, so I pulled out the map and figured out where I was, then headed back. I was getting pretty tired by this time, and really just wanted to get home and relax. I hadn’t walked down this part of Akhunbayeva before, and it took longer to walk than I imagined. I stopped by Narodny on the way back to the apartment, then got home and settled in for the evening. I don’t think that long walk in the cold was the best thing for me, cause I think it was the next day that I started feeling a little sick.
Friday night was a night to remember. Let’s see if I can recount it all. Friday was Jake and Ingvild’s (that Norwegian girl I think I’ve mentioned before) last night in Bishkek, so I figured we should do something nice for them before they left. On my long walk home on Wednesday I had passed a Persion restaurant called Parsi, and I thought it looked like a good place to have dinner with everyone. I suggested it to some people and everyone seemed into, so we got it all organized and met there after classes on Friday night. We had a pretty big group: Me, Nick, Jess, Katy, Jake, Ingvild, Nataliya, Alison, and this other guy named Jonathan. Jonathan is a Fulbright scholar in Kyrgyzstan to learn Kyrgyz, which he studies at the London School, and I had seen him around but had never met him. We all had a good time hanging out, talking, and drinking beer (how Persian of us). The food was pretty good, and they even had hookahs (well, that’s the main reason I wanted to go there), so we had one of those too. It was the first time many of the people there had ever tried a hookah. At one point the electricity went out, and we had to talk and drink by candlelight. There was a small dance floor, though most of us didn’t dance. I talked to Ingvild a while about traveling in different places (she’s been a lot of places), and about Russia in general. All in all it was a really great time. As we were leaving, though, Jess took a spill down the front steps. They were dangerous, though, and it’s no wonder somebody got hurt. They had a long carpet running down the front stairs and out the front walk, with long metal bars on each step loosely holding the carpet in place, though they were all sliding around it looked like. I think Jess caught her heal on the carpet, fell down the steps and landed sideways on her ankle. I think it’s doing better now, but it looked pretty painful for a couple days. She obviously went home after that, along with Nick and Katy, but the rest of us decided to go to some place called the Cowboy club, which was just down the street. The place was in fact western themed, and they even had a bunch of flags on the walls from US states (no Oregon, though). I noticed that everyone there appeared to be Kyrgyz, with virtually no Russians. We got a table in the quite back room, had a beer, then hit the dance floor for one song before some of the others decided that the music sucked and that we should go to this place called Golden Bull instead. It was a few blocks away, down a shady ally and in the shadow of the White House (center of Kyrgyz government). There’s no cover charge for foreigners, so I couldn’t really complain. I had already about 5 beers by then and I didn’t want to spend any more money, so I didn’t order any drinks. This place was pretty weird. It was full of crazy lights that flash in your eyes and do crazy shows all over the walls. It actually made it hard to see anything, and really just hurt my eyes more than anything else. Their logo is a complete rip-off of the Chicago Bulls’ logo, which I found very amusing. The dancing was interrupted every now and then for a floor show, which included belly dancing, a traditional Kyrgyz dance with outfits and everything, and male and female striptease acts. There were these two kind-of-sleazy but friendly businessmen type from Pakistan sitting next to us, and at one point one of them gave me the rest of their bottle of champagne, which was about 2/3 full. When the dance floor got moving again they got up to dance and pulled some of us along with them. I love the way people dance around here, cause it’s basically the same way I dance. Nobody knows how to dance well, they just kind of move around and have fun, and since everybody dances that way there’s no reason to be self-conscious about it. This is the way it should always be, I think. So, we all danced around with these Pakistani guys, and after a while I started to suspect that one of them was trying to come on to me, cause he kept trying to take me by the hand to dance with him. It freaked me out a little bit, I’ll be honest. I tried to move away from him and dance near some other people, but he kept trying to move towards me. The rest of the night I tried to avoid making eye contact with him. We sat at the table a little while longer while everybody finished their drinks, then around 3:00 we decided to leave. By this point it was Jake, Ingvild, Natalya, Jonathan, and Me. We stood at the entrance to the alley for a while while everyone said goodbye (Jake and Ingvild were leaving in the morning), when a taxi driver came barreling around the corner and almost hit some of us. It wasn’t a big deal, in fact it’s pretty normal for drivers to narrowly avoid hitting pedestrians, and I don’t think we were really in any danger, but as he came around the corner Natalya yelled something and Jonathan kicked the door behind the driver’s. Now, it wasn’t really a hard kick or anything, and I know it didn’t do any damage to the car, but the driver immediately stopped, jumped out of the car and came after Jonathan. He punched him in the shoulder and tried to grab him by the throat. I helped pull the two apart and keep them separated as best I could, but the guy started yelling and demanding money for the damage Jonathan had caused. He pointed to a scuff on the driver’s door and said Jonathan had caused it (we all knew it was BS, but there was no way of telling him that). Natalya and Jonathan shouted with him for a while in Russian (I could understand most everything they and the driver were saying but I wasn’t confident enough in my own Russian skills to jump in, plus I didn’t want to involve myself any more than I had to). I hovered nearby ready to break things up if they turned violent again, but Jake and Ingvild stayed far back. Luckily it didn’t really get violent after that, though even Natalya ended up getting pushed around some, and even got her cell phone knocked out of her hand. At one point Jonathan tried buffing the scuff with his scarf, and it looked for a second that the guy was going to be appeased, so we quickly got in another cab that was waiting nearby, but the guy came back and tried to pull Jonathan out of the cab. I pulled him back in and tried to push the driver away. He kept shouting at me saying, “Who are you? Who are you?”, but I don’t think he wanted to try and mess with me. He kept saying he wanted to talk to Jonathan privately, but he wouldn’t’ go off with him alone. He finally got Jonathan out of the cab and by this time a small group of cab drivers had converged on the seen and started backing the guy up. They all agreed that 500 som (about $14) was the normal price to repair the scuff, and I think Jonathan should have just paid upfront without even making an argument out of it, and he probably could have gotten off with just 200 or 300 som, but now it was a whole big mess. So, this crowd of about 5 or 6 cab drivers was swarming around Jonathan and Natalya as they all argued with each other, and at one point Jake and Ingvild (who were still keeping their distance) pointed out to me that one of them had a tire iron behind his back. Once they realized we all saw the tire iron I think they realized it wasn’t a good idea to have it out, and so one of them put it away. I conferred with Jake and Ingvild again, and we decided that we should just advize Jonathan to pay the 500 som so we could get the hell out of there, so I went back up to the crowd and told him he should just cut his loses and pay the guy, but apparently while I had been talking to Jake and Ingvild he had managed to get his wallet stolen. He had apparently taken his wallet out to get the 500 som, but as he took it out one of the drivers snatched it from his hand and passed it off to another, who then made off down the ally with it. Meanwhile, the original guy was still demanding his 500 som, which of course Jonathan couldn’t pay because he didn’t have his wallet. The driver either didn’t see the others steal the wallet, or was playing along with their swindle. Jonathan and Natalya went after him down the alley, but the guy they thought had the wallet played dumb and pretended like he didn’t know what they were talking about. In the end Jonathan didn’t manage to get his wallet back, which apparently had included a credit card and over $200 in cash. But, the driver was still demanding 500 som, which none of us had on us either. Jonathan decided to call the US embassy, and eventually ended up speaking to their special investigator over the phone. We hung around for a long time while both he and the driver explained the story over the phone, but it soon became apparent that the only way we were ever going to get out of there was if the driver got his 500 som, so I volunteered to find an ATM and lend Jonathan the money to pay him. After a while we all decided it was the best thing to do, so we walked a block down the street with the driver to the nearest ATM, where I got the money and gave it to Jonathan to pay the guy. He actually shook Jonathan’s hand afterwards, and then walked back to the club where his cab was. That other cab that had been waiting for us before had followed us to the ATM and was ready to give us a ride home, which we were definitely ready to accept. We finally said goodbye to Jake and Ingvild, then Jonathan and I shared a taxi home. I covered his ride too, since obviously he couldn’t pay for that either. I ended up getting home at 4:30. At least I’ve got an interesting story to tell now, and it didn’t cost me my wallet.
On Saturday I wanted to have a relaxing, easygoing day. I didn’t sleep in as long as I wanted to (only until about 10:00), and after I got up I headed to the area near the school to call home and use the internet. I talked to mom for a while on the IP Telephone at the internet club, got on the internet for a while, then went across the street to the big Vefa Center mall to check out movie times. There’s a classic Russian movie called the Irony of Fate that I really like, and they just came out with the sequel. It was still playing at the movie theater in the Vefa Center, and I thought it would be fun to see it finally. The next showing was in an hour, so I bought my ticket and headed to the food court for lunch. I ran into a student from the London School named Kamchubek, who is very friendly and always likes to chat with me when he sees me (he isn’t my student, though). He’s in his 30’s, and he’s just become the manager of a new fast food franchise called Bee Burger, which he told me is a Scandinavian chain that is opening their first Asian franchise here in Bishkek, just down the street from the London School. When I ran into Kamchubek he was sitting in the food court and talking with another man who seemed excited to meet me, and spoke decent English. They said I should sit with them after I got my food. I ordered a Chicken sandwich with fries and a Fanta from a place called Prince Burger, and sat down with Kamchubek and his friend. Soon after I sat down, a third man came and gave me a very annoyed look, like he was thinking, “who the hell is this guy?” I realized that his coat was sitting on the other chair, and that he must have been up to use the bathroom or something, and had just returned. He looked very serious and was well dressed, so I figured these guys had something to do with Bee Burger or some related business matter. They two other men began speaking to each other in a language other than Kyrgyz or Russian, and Kamchubek explained to me that they were from Turkey, and that the well-dressed man was his boss from Bee Burger, and the other was a friend of his. Kamchubek explained that these guys talk business for hours on end everyday, and the he mostly sits and listens. I felt very awkward sitting at this table eating my lunch while these two slick Turkish business men talked business and Kamchubek listened in attentively. I finished my food and excused myself from the table. I had some more time to kill, so I checked out the mall’s bookstore. They didn’t have much, but I was tempted to buy a street Atlas of Bishkek that labels every building, but I decided I’d come back for it another time. I also looked for some books to help me with Kyrgyz, like a Russian-Kyrgyz dictionary or something, but they didn’t have anything about the Kyrgyz language, surprisingly. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that on Friday I had my first Kyrgyz lesson. It was really interesting, and I think I’m going to enjoy learning more. I’ll talk more about that some other time, though. Before the movie started I went down to the big grocery store called Ramstor on the first floor of the mall to buy some movie snacks. It was my first time in there, and it seemed on par with a western grocery store as far as stock and services go. They had a full-service deli and bakery, even. I got some candy and a whisky-and-cola-in-a-can, then headed back to the third floor for the movie. Remember, theaters in most countries outside the US make you chose your seat when you buy your ticket, so I chose one that looked like it had a lot of leg room and wasn’t too close to other people. It did have a lot of leg room, but I didn’t realize that my spot was right next to the door, so people were coming and going right next to me during the movie. Also, some people bought the seats right next to mine after I had already bought mine, so I didn’t get all the room I had wanted. It wasn’t a big deal, though. The movie was alright, though certainly can’t hold a flame to the original. The director of this one is the same guy who directed the Night Watch and Day Watch movies, so there was this strange action movie feel to many scenes of the movie, which detracted more than added. The star of Night Watch and Day Watch was even in this movie. He was the main character, in fact. I feel like they tried too hard to highlight the differences between life in the Soviet Union when the first one was made, and life in contemporary Russia. There were a lot of flashy cell phones and cars, and quite a bit of product placement as well, which just seemed wrong to me. Some of the songs from the first movie were there as a motif in the background, but then they would add heavy guitar parts and it kind of ruined it for me. The plot wasn’t too bad, though. It’s essentially about the children of the main characters from the first film, but brings the original characters into the mix. I think I understood about 70% of the dialogue, and about 90% of the plot (though I think there is one very important twist that I didn’t catch). I’d say if you’re a fan of the original movie it’s probably worth seeing, but don’t expect to be blown away. After the movie I noticed Kamchubek and the Turks where still talking away in the food court, but I headed outside. I didn’t quite feel like going home yet, so I gave Nick a call to see what they were doing. He and Jess were hanging out at their apartment and invited me to come over. We hung out there for a while, played a little Checkers and Scrabble, listened to music, and ate chips. Nick is into a lot of cool music, so I enjoyed looking through his ipod. I told them the story of the mess with the cab driver from the night before. Jess’s ankle was all swollen up from her fall the night before as well. At some point some more people showed up, including Katy, Alison, Natalya, and Jonathan. They told their versions of the story too. I had to get home cause my host mom had cooked me dinner, so around 9:00 I went back and settled in for the night. I had borrowed some DVDs from Nick and Jess, including some Simpsons that I haven’t seen in years, but my computer wouldn’t play the discs no matter what I tried. They were Nick’s DVDs so they region 2 (Europe), but I thought I should be able to play them in the program VLC, but it wouldn’t work. My disk drive has been real fickle since I got to Bishkek, and it won’t even play some of my DVDs some of the time. I guess that’s one more reason to get a new Laptop when I get home. On Sunday I felt really sick the whole day. The few days before I had felt a little bit of a cold, but it was really bad Sunday. My nose wouldn’t stop running, and I couldn’t stop sneezing. Regardless, I spent most of the day writing tests and preparing lessons for Monday. So, these last two days have been alright at school. On Monday I gave tests over the last units in all my classes, and people did pretty well for the most part. Today Natasha, one of the main office employees, observed one of my classes and she had a lot of good things to say about my teaching, so that felt pretty good. Tonight I’ve just spent most of my time writing this monstrous post. Tomorrow I’m going with Zainap to the Uzbek Embassy so she can help me get my visa (apparently you’re supposed to have a translator help you), which should be interesting. Oh, on Saturday the school is going to take Jane, Katy and me out to Lake Issyk-Kul, where I think we will stay the night in a yurt! I’m really excited to go out there, because it’s supposed to be pretty awesome. Look for that in what will probably be my next post. See you then!


-Austin