Мен Америкалыкмын

It sure is hard to keep up with this thing this time around. It isn’t like in St. Petersburg, where I had a fair amount of free time both to do stuff and to blog about it. My days are pretty busy here, and now it’s been over a week and a half since I last wrote and I finally have some time to do it again. Today (Saturday) is Men’s Day across the former Soviet Union. Actually it’s “Defenders of the Fatherland Day,” but since March 8th is Women’s Day everyone just refers to today as Men’s Day. For my faithful blog readers, you may remember that two years ago in Russia I spent Men’s Day at Pavlovsky Park outside of St. Petersburg, sledding with some friends (If you dig around my flickr page you can find some pictures somewhere). Unfortunately, Men’s Day falls on the weekend this year, so we don’t get a day of from work/school like last time. I’m celebrating by writing a blog post, then later going over to hang out with the other teachers. I’m not sure if this was in honor of Men’s Day, but after I woke up and used the bathroom this morning, Adilet had waiting for me a couple of blini with potatoes and a piece of cake! Usually around breakfast I have to get my own food, and the only thing there is usually is bread and butter. I definitely enjoyed being served a nice meal, even if the blini were cold. I suppose I should get writing about the last week and a half, though.
As I mentioned at the end last time, last Wednesday I went to the Uzbek Embassy to get my visa. Zainap went with me because apparently they ask people to bring a translator with them, though I’m sure I could have done it on my own. I had heard weird things about the Uzbek Embassy though, and I figured it would be a good idea to have a native speaker with me either way. We got there around 10:00 and waited outside the gate for a bit with other people applying for visas. They let us in, I filled out an application and gave them all my documents, and they said come back at 3:00 to pick up my passport with the visa inside. Zainap headed home, but I decided to hang around downtown until 3:00. I went to an internet club for a while, and then to that place called Fatboy’s for lunch. I was interested in trying their breakfast burrito, but was pretty disappointed. It was pretty bland, didn’t have any of the spices or flavors right, but what can I really expect from a restaurant in Kyrgyzstan? I appreciated the effort. I didn’t really like being in there to much, though, cause there seemed to be a particularly large number of ex-pats in there at the time, and I don’t really like hanging around ex-pat places too much. There was this big group of who I think were mostly Brits, some of whom I had seen before at TsUM. There were also a fair amount of “biznyesmyen,” as they say in Russian, out on their “biznyes lanch” no doubt. I finished up my burrito and beer pretty quick, then headed out to find an ATM cause I was running low on cash. There are a fair amount of them in Bishkek, but not always in the most convenient places, and not always around when you need them. I ended up walking a ways down Kievskaya street and using the same ATM I had used to give Jonathan the money to pay that taxi driver the Saturday before. I had some more time before 3:00, so I went over to TsUM to see about buying some new DVDs. A woman working at one of the DVD counters suckered me into looking at her stock, and I ended up buying three DVDs: Running with Scissors, Eastern Promises (the Woman assured me it was “Klassno” [like “classy,” but without the irony]), and Juno (sorry Lily). Unfortunately, only Running with Scissors works on my computer! My disc drive has gotten really fickle, and won’t even play some of the DVDs that I brought anymore. I’m holding on to the DVDs though, in hope that they will work on another DVD player, or on my new computer when I get that! After I got the DVDs I killed some more time by sitting on a bench and drinking a Fanta (which was really cold, amazingly!). I ran into Katy while sitting on the bench (I guess I should say Katy ran into me), and we chatted for a moment. I then headed back to the Embassy just in time to meet Zainap there. We were let in and I had to pay the $152 visa fee (yeah, seriously. Add to that the $50 or so I paid for the letter of invitation, and Uzbekistan becomes one expensive country to visit). Unfortunately, none of the USD bills I brought with me to pay met their standards of crispness, and they wouldn’t accept them. They told us to go to a bank and exchange them for better ones. We searched the area for a while and finally found a bank about 5 blocks away. They were able to exchange most of the bills, but the $100 bill I had brought had a really small stamp of a beer bottle on it (who would do that? Why?), and they can’t take marked bills for whatever reason. I had to exchange some of my Som to make up the difference, but we finally got the correct amount, returned to the Embassy, paid up, and now I’ve got my Uzbek visa! Aside from the whole money thing, it was a pretty easy and painless process. Sure I had to get a letter of invitation, but that was a cinch too. I headed home with Zainap in a marshrutka, and I watched Running with Scissors. It was alright, but not what I really expected. The next day was Thursday, and I don’t remember what I did cause it was just another miscellaneous workday.
Friday after work I went out to dinner with some of the other teachers. We decided to check out this Chinese place down the street from the school called “Pekingskaya Utka II” (Peking Duck II). We don’t know where the first one is. It had pretty decent food, and in pretty good portions too. They were blasting music in the main room, so we were offered a private room that was really cold, but they turned on a little heater for us. There was a fish tank in there to, but we later found out that it’s where they keep the small fish that they feed to the larger fish in another fish tank in the main room. We had fun eating a chatting for a while, but none of us wanted to make a long night out of it, so we finished and everyone went home relatively early. I found a taxi home and ended up chatting with the driver a bit. We discovered that we both used to live in the same neighborhood in St. Petersburg! He said he lived on Shchevchenko Street between Malaya and Srednyaya streets, which is basically where Vickie and I walked everyday to catch the bus to school. Small world! His car got stuck in a rut in the snow in front of my apartment, so I helped him push it out. He was charging me 80 Som, but I only had a 100 and he didn’t have change, so we drove to the nearest store so he could exchange it for smaller bills to give me the change, then drove me back to the apartment. What a nice guy! I went to bed sort of early cause I had to get up sort of early the next morning to go to…
…Issyk-Kul! What’s that? It’s a big lake in eastern Kyrgyzstan (check a map, dummy). In fact it’s the second largest Mountain lake in the world after Lake Titicaca. It’s basically the only place where Kyrgyz go for vacation, so it’s kind of a big deal. Most people only go there in the summer, when it’s warm and the water isn’t quite so unbelievably cold, so we were definitely going out of season, but it was awesome nonetheless. So, on Saturday morning I got up kind of early, stopped buy Narodny to pick up some drinks and snacks for the ride, then waited to catch a trolleybus to the school where we were all meeting. It was then that I started feeling kind of queasy and sick, but I was determined to go to Issyk-Kul so I tried to ignore it. The trolleybus wasn’t coming and I thought I might just feel worse if I took a marshrutka, so I broke down and got a cab to take me there. I was a little early, so I hung out with Katy and her friend Alison a bit in Katy’s apartment. We headed out a little after 10:00. Our party included: Kendje, her husband Bayan (the driver), their 4-year-old daughter Aishoola, Me, Jane, Katy, and another American girl named Kelly who’s in Kyrgyzstan on an NSEP grant and living with Kendje’s family. We were being taken on this trip because the school feels obligated to show their teachers the country, and we are the newer teachers who hadn’t been to Issyk-Kul yet. We headed east, passed Kant, Ivanovka, and Tokmok (the same towns we went through on the way to Burana Tower), and kept going further. Past Tokmok the mountains in the distance on either side of the road get closer and closer as the Chuy Valley comes to an end, and the views are really awesome. We were really close to the Kazakh border again. We headed up into the mountains, and stopped for lunch at a nice spot along the Chuy River. We were each given a little packaged lunch that included some bread, cheese, chicken, eggs, and potatoes. It was simple, but pretty tasty, and despite the cold we enjoyed sitting outside in the sunshine near the river. I wore my new kalpak while we ate, and it kept my head surprisingly warm. Bayan offered us some vodka shots to go with our lunch, which I certainly obliged him. I had two, but the others teachers could only handle one each. I chased my shots with potato, which seemed fitting.
We continued on after lunch, but stopped soon after to check out a cool roadside monument. Kendje explained to us that in 1916 the White army started demanding that Kyrgyz men serve in the army, and so they invaded the valleys around here to round up troops. Many fled to China, many were killed, and it’s become a big thing in Kyrgyz history. This monument commemorated the events of 1916. It was perched above a deep gorge and surrounded by big rolling hills. We all took a bunch of pictures, then kept going again. We stopped soon after again at a little spring coming out of the mountain that the locals apparently consider holy, so lots of people stop here to wash their face or hands, or to just fill their water bottles. The water was nice, cold, and good to drink. Not as nice, cold, and good to drink as, say, the spring water at that park in Shasta City, California, but good nonetheless. There were tons of prayer rags tied all over the branches of the surrounding trees, and there was a sad looking dog hanging around begging for scraps. I wish we had given it something. We continued onwards through the mountains to Issyk-Kul, and I knew we were getting close when the mountains gave way to a wide valley. We passed a tollbooth for the Issyk-Kul bioregion, and passed briefly through the lakeside town of Balykchy before heading south to the south side of Issyk-Kul. At this point we could see wisps of blue lake water in the near distance. We drove for a little while along the south shore until we came to a big WWII monument. It wasn’t a statue, but instead like a big billboard made of wood with lots of negative space that you can see through to behind the monument. It had a big picture of the Rodina Mat’ statue in Volgograd, and the names of a bunch of war heroes on it. The real reason we stopped at this spot was to see something that’s happened for the first time in history: party of the lake is frozen over. Issyk-Kul literally means “hot lake” in Kyrgyz, and it’s called this because, due to a combination of salinity and thermal heating, the lake is known to stay ice-free year round. However, with this being one of the coldest winters in years, a small corner of the lake had actually frozen over. Hooray for climate change! Bayan explained to me that, with global warming setting in, many think that the warm season at Issyk-Kul will be a few months longer after only a few years. I don’t know about that, but maybe several decades down the line. We walked around on the ice that had formed in the marshy area along the shore, but we figured it wasn’t a good idea to venture out onto the frozen lake, even though we saw some kids skating on it in the distance. There were some cows wandering around, and we walked with them back to our van and kept driving east. We made a quick pit stop where there were some piles of dirt for people to pee behind, and then drove to a cool little monument to some local hero that had Arabic writing on it. There was also small cemetery nearby, which we got to explore a bit. We had passed a lot of these cemeteries, and they all looked so awesome, so I was glad that we got to see this one up close. These Kyrgyz cemeteries seem to have an interesting mix of Islamic and traditional Kyrgyz characteristics. Many of the graves are marked by yurt frames, many of them with a crescent moon on top. There are lots of large grave stones in interesting shapes, many of them with a picture or painting of the deceased on it. Check out my flickr pictures to see what I’m talking about. There was also a small gift shop nearby that sold a lot of stuff made out of felt. We checked it out, and then got to go inside a small yurt that they had set up. It was pretty nice inside, though to small for a family to live in. The real yurts are over twice as big, but this one seemed like a nice one to have that you could maybe set up in your back yard and live in during the summer. We inquired about prices, and they said that the small one cost $1,000, which actually seemed pretty reasonable. I think Jane was almost contemplating getting one, but how would you get something like that home? After the gift shop we backtracked a little ways down the road to a small village called Karakoo, not to be confused with Karakol, a larger city at the eastern edge of lake Issyk-Kul. This is where Bayan was born and raised, and where we would be staying with his brother’s family.
Bayan’s brother, Uran, lives in a small house with a tiny farm/orchard in the back. He lives with his wife Symbat, three kids, and his 85-year-old mother. We were welcomed into there home and sat in front of a bid table filled with pastries, “salads” (the Russian versions), and lots of tea. Their living room had several beautiful shyrdaks, which are the traditional Kyrgyz felt rugs that are so cool. As per Kyrgyz tradition, the kept insisting we eat more and more, and never seemed to believe us when we said we were full. The main dish was something potatoy an meaty, and of course delicious. We pretty much sat around the table from the moment we got there until bedtime around 10:00. Another man named Aibek and his wife and two children came over to visit too, but I wasn’t sure if he was another brother or just a friend from the village. Everybody was very friendly, and Aibek kept wanting to chat with me in Kyrgyz, so I had to have Kendje translate everything. He wanted to shake my hand when he heard that I support Barrack Obama, which I think goes to show that he has a really good image abroad. Every ones in a while Aibek would poor everybody some vodka shots, which I kept drinking but the other Americans started to refuse them after a while. They were so spaced out that I didn’t really feel them at all. The highlight of the evening was the “concert” that all the children put on for us. It included singing, dancing, and comedy sketches, and all the Americans took tons of photos and videos the whole time. It’s was pretty spectacular, They all dressed up in nice costumes and took turns singing or dancing to Kyrgyz and Russian pop songs, even Uran’s two-year-old daughter Saikal. It was so precious. We all posed for pictures with the children, then wit the adults, and I wore my kalpak again for most of the night. After the concert, we participated in what is apparently a traditional activity, whereby a bunch of food and spices are mixed together with water in a small bowl, and it’s passed around to everyone at the table, and each person must either sing a song, or drink the concoction. Of course, nobody ever drinks it, so we all took turns singing songs for each other. The Kyrgyz would all join in with each other on all their songs, so us Americans tried to think of songs that we could all sing when any of is got the cup. We ended up singing, among other songs: “This Land is Your Land,” “The Star Spangled Banner,” “Henry VIII”, and “Yesterday.” I sang what I could remember of “Danny Boy,” and Kelly helped me out a little bit with “Thunder Road.” It was a really fantastic time. Around 10:00 we all got ready for bed, which included a run to the outhouse in the back yard (squat toilet only). Originally all the Americans were going to sleep in one room, but I think they realized there wasn’t enough room for all of us there and put me in the living room, which is good because I was worried about keeping the others up with my snoring (Apparently they heard it anyways, though). They made up a little bed for me by piling a bunch of think blankets on top of each other, and it was quite comfortable.
The next morning we got up around 9:00, and I explored the back yard a little bit while Uran let the lambs out to feed on hay. They had a really friendly dog named Rex (I guess dog names transcend cultures) who loved to be pet and scratched. It was a cold morning, but it felt so nice being out in the country and breathing the fresh air. We had plov for breakfast (what a great idea), and then headed out for another day of sightseeing. We first drove south a little ways down a dusty dirt rode into the hills. There is a legend about a hero who carried his horse over a mountain pass and had also lifted a huge rock, which is still resting along the side of this rode. Local men like to prove their manhood by lifting a series of heavy rocks onto this one big rock, to see how many they could do. Of course, we had to stop so that I could prove my manhood by lifting some of these rocks. I got the smallest three no problem, but everyone insisted I stop before getting to the really big ones so that I wouldn’t throw out my back or anything. I’m sure I could have handled it. We went a little further to a small hill that served as a monument to 40 Martyrs who had been killed during the Russian invasion in 1916, and there were beautiful views of the surrounding hills and mountains. A little further and we came to the ruins of an old Kolkhoz (Soviet collective farm) in a little valley that now was used as grazing ground for a heard of cows. We were about to climb this big hill when a couple of shepherds came riding up. One of them approached us and Bayan started to talk to him. He recommended that we not climb this hill because it could be slippery, and that we try another smaller hill a little further down. We walked up this small hill and on the other side was a sweeping view of a large valley on the other side, with huge snowcapped mountains on the other side. It was pretty stunning. There was also a small river snaking through the valley down below us. Kendje said that his was the valley where she grew up, and we could actually see her village in the distance. The mountains of Kyrgyzstan really are amazing, and unlike mountains I have ever seen before. I really wish I could spend a lot more time here just exploring the mountains. We walked back down the hill, and us teachers checked out the ruins of the Kolkhoz. When we got back to the van Bayan was chatting with the Shepherd again, and he discovered that the man had known his father well, and that Bayan’s mother had been his teacher in school! We confirmed this later with his mother, who said she remembered him. We all posed for a photo with the Shepherd, and then were on our way again.
It was finally time to get up close and personal with lake Issyk-Kul, so we drove along a rugged road through some low hills up to a tiny village right on the lake. Here, we met with a friend of Bayan’s who lived in a small house with his wife and baby. We went inside for bread and tea, and watched a bit of a TV program that featured people performing traditional Kyrgyz songs on their instrument called a Kumys, standing in front of shyrdaks and wearing traditional Kyrgyz clothes. Back outside, we were each offered the chance to ride around a little bit on a horse, but only Jane took them up on the offer. The horse wasn’t big enough for me, or else I would have given it a go. The weather was really great, sunny and not too cold, so we milled about the yard and checked out the views of the lake while Jane rode around. Once she was finished we all took the short walk down to the lakeshore, where we found a nice little beach and really got to see the lake for the first time. I was the only one brave enough to test the waters (literally), so I took my shoes off and walked around a bit in the water. It was cold. Really cold. Much colder than the Pacific at the Oregon coast. It was so cold it hurt my feet. I’m still glad I got to go in it a little, though. One of the travel milestones I like to keep track of is the bodies of water that I have had at least some part of my body in. I’m happy to have added Lake Issyk-Kul to that list, and hopefully I’ll be adding the Caspian Sea to that list come April in Turkmenistan. I found a cool shell, and Jane found a sheep jaw that we each took half of as a souvenir. We headed back to the van and then back to Uran’s house for lunch. It was a delicious concoction of wide flat noodles, potatoes, and meat (Kyrgyz food in a nutshell). After lunch we said goodbye to our wonderful hosts and headed back west towards Bishkek. We didn’t stop much along the way this time, only once at that spring again so we could fill up our water bottles. I enjoyed just looking out the window at the beautiful views and listening to my ipod, though. Back in Bishkek I got Bayan to drop me off near my apartment, and I spent the evening relaxing and preparing for lessons the next day. What a great weekend it was!
So, this last week was spent mostly teaching, of course, but there were some things that stood out. The weather had been really nice since the weekend. In fact, when I got back form Issyk-Kul most of the snow in Bishkek had melted, and by Wednesday it was virtually all gone. I thought Spring had come early, but then late Wednesday night it started to rain, which continued through Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon it started to get cold again and the rain turned to snow. It then kept snowing for several hours, blanketing the city in 2 to 3 inches of snow just after it ha all melted of the day before. Winter isn’t going away just yet! So, on Tuesday night we teachers decided to go out for dinner, and we ended up just going to that place Nooruz right across the street with the really good lagman. For some it was their first introduction to lagman, and I think they were all pretty impressed. I also had some Manty while the others had Sashlyk, but there was plenty of sharing going on. It was a delicious Kyrgyz meal, and somehow seemed a lot less expensive this time. There was a creepy drunk Russian guy at a table near us who kept staring at us and even started mocking Jessica’s gestures as she talked. We all just tried to ignore him. At one point he spontaneously slammed his fist on the table really hard, and everyone in the room felt a little uneasy. He left before we did, so we were able to finish out meal in peace. Talking about lagman has got me jonesin’ for a bowl. Maybe I’ll have to get one later today. On Wednesday the weather was amazing. It’s hard to say exactly, but I would have guessed it was at least 40 degrees F, which may not sound all the warm but after the weather we’ve been having here, it was a godsend. It was sunny and beautiful, so I decided to go for a walk around the city. Wearing only my zip-up hoodie, I set of first to catch a trolleybus downtown to use the internet, but ended up catching a small bus instead. I sat next to a guy who started speaking English with me. His name was Feruz, and he’s from Uzbekistan but goes to school at the American University of Central Asia here in Bishkek (apparently the best University in town). He was really friendly and spoke English really well. I actually got his phone number, so I’ll have to give him a call and hang out one of these days. I used to internet for a while, then had a Shaurma and a blini for lunch. I had to get my photo taken for a Kazakh visa, so I found a photo place by the blini stand and got 6 3x4 cm pictures for 80 Som. The picture doesn’t look great, but I just needed a photo the right size for the visa application. This photo place was also a print shop, and I saw them printing posters for some event called “The Manliest Party of the Year” at some night club for Men’s Day (today). With my photos taken care of, I then set off for my walk. I wanted to see a part of town I hadn’t been to before, so I headed east on Kievsakaya, up to Chuy, and then continued east for a few blocks. I then went north along some miscellaneous street that went through some really poor neighborhoods, and up to Jibek Jolu. I headed back west and then snaked my way through some streets, passed the circus, and then to Victory Square (with the eternal flame), where I sat for a while just enjoying the weather. I was getting thirsty, so I walked over to the area around TsUM where I got a bottle of Coke and sat on a bench for a while and people-watched. After a while I headed back down another street east of Sovietskaya and started walking south. I like getting off of the main drags and seeing how different a city can be just one block away. I walked all the way to the train tracks and then was forced back o to Sovietskaya to go under them. Once on the other side, I slipped through an apartment-complex courtyard (dvor, if you speak Russian) and back onto that side street. I walked all the way to Gorkogo, only a block from the London School. I went to the internet café across from Vefa Center because I also had to print a copy of my Kyrgyz letter of Invitation for my Kazakh visa (don’t ask me why). There, I saw Kevin, and the recently-arrived teacher named Ben. Ben got here on Monday, but he isn’t going to start teaching until April after Nick, Jess and I leave. He came a month or so early to take Russian lessons, because he doesn’t know any Russian at all. He spent a lot of time teaching English in Japan and Ecuador apparently, but he’s totally new to this part of the world. For now he’s living with a host family in the fifth micro-region in SE Bishkek, and he’s been making the hour-long walk to and from the school everyday I think cause the marshrutkas still freak him out a bit (hey, they still freak me out). We were both heading in that direction, so we decided to walk together as far as Akhunbayeva, where we both went different directions. First, we stopped by the bookstore in Vefa Center, because I wanted to buy the Bishkek street atlas and Russian-Uzbek phrase book I’ve had my eye on. We chatted during our walk, and Ben seems like a really cool guy. I spent the rest of Wednesday working on stuff for classes, wishing I had time to write this blog post instead.
Thursday was a frustrating day. See, I need to apply for my Kazakh visa, which I originally wanted to do on Wednesday, but I had Zainap call them to figure out the protocol for getting a visa and they said they aren’t open on Wednesdays, so I had to head out there Thursday morning instead. Zainap was going to go with me but I woke up a little too late and she didn’t have time anymore, so I had to go it alone. Remember, this was the day with the bad weather, so that morning it was all drizzly and slushy on the roads. Now, the Kazakh embassy is in the most awkward spot in the middle of nowhere in the SW part of Bishkek, which isn’t too far from my apartment, but still kind of a hassle to get to. I caught a trolleybus down Akhunbayeva to Prospekt Mira, where I walked the quarter mile or so to the Embassy along a pretty desolate road. Once there I got inline behind 10 or 15 other people applying for visas. I met one guy from Boston who had been teaching in Kazakhstan, but whose visa expired so he had to leave the country to get a new one before he could return. I finally got in the door, where I had to sign in a registry, and then have the unfriendly guy behind the window look over my documents to make sure everything was in order. It was alright, so he gave me an application form that I filled out and glued my picture to, after correcting a few problems with my application, he said OK, now go to this bank downtown and pay the application fee, then come back and give us all these documents. I had heard that you had to pay at this bank, but Zainap asked them on the phone if you had to do it before or after you apply for the visa, and they said after. But apparently, they can’t actually get started on the visa until you’ve paid and can show a receipt of payment. So, basically, I could have gone to the bank first and paid and saved myself the extra trip to the Embassy. All they gave me at the Embassy was a little slip that says how much I have to pay at the bank, which I already knew. It wasn’t an official document or anything, and the bank didn’t even ask to see anything except my passport. By the time I finished at the Embassy it was about 11:00, and he said I should go to the bank and come back, but they close at 12:00 and the bank is half way across town. So, I gave up on trying to get the visa taken care of that day, and headed to the bank to pay the fee so I could return again the next day. I was so pissed at the Embassy for their stupid rules and bureaucracy. I walked back to the corner of Akhunbayeva and Prospekt Mira, where I caught a marshrutka downtown to go to the bank. I was very irritable after being at the Embassy, and so I hated being in the marshrutka. I was able to get a seat, but the woman sitting next to me was kind of turned around to talk to the person behind her, and thus was taking up some of my seat too and didn’t bother to do anything about it, so I was only halfway sitting. I got off an tracked down the bank, where an unfriendly teller handled my transaction and gave me the ever-important receipt. I walked the few blocks back to the area around the London school, where I called home and used the internet at the nearby internet club, and the went to Vefa Center for lunch. I was feeling like treating myself to a little slice of western-style comfort, so I went to one of the fast food places in the food court. I ordered a double cheeseburger, which was tasty but not quite authentic. The ketchup they serve with their fires there is really sweet and pretty gross, too. I’d really like to find some god old Heinz ketchup somewhere in Bishkek. By this point the drizzle had turned to driving snow, so I sought shelter at the London School. It kept raining pretty much the entire time I was teaching, and by the end of the day it was quiet thick. I went home and graded tests, again unable to write a blog post.
Friday morning I got up early to return to the Kazakh embassy. The city was covered with snow, and transportation was way slowed down because of the slick driving conditions. Every single marshrutka was backed to the point of barely being able to close the door, and when the trolleybus finally came I saw that it too was nearly brimming with people, so I decided to avoid the whole hassle and take a taxi directly to the embassy, which means I had to pay about $1.70 to get there instead of about 8 cents (totally worth it, though). The embassy is supposed to open at 9:00, so I got there just after 9:00, and waited for about 40 minutes before it actually did open. At least I was first in line and got in and out quickly once it did open. All my papers were in order, and so now my visa is being processed. The guy said I could pick it up on Tuesday at 6:30, which of course is right in the middle of when I’m teaching. Zainap is going to call on Monday to see if she can pick it up for me, which I really hope she can. After the embassy I walked back to Akhunbayeva-Mira and decided just to take another taxi to the school so I wouldn’t miss my 10:25 Kyrgyz class. Kyrgyz is really fun, and after 5 hours of lessons I feel like I know a lot more than after my first 5 hours of Russian. After that class I had promised to help the school out by conducting a phone interview with some guy from Uzbekistan who is applying for an internship program in the US. Uchkul, one of the office workers, took me down the street to an IP Telephone place so we could call, but after many unsuccessful tries we weren’t able to get a hold of him, so we postponed the interview until later. I was feeling much better on Friday than I was on Thursday, so classes went pretty well and. The weather at least was sunny, so that helped a lot. In one class the students really didn’t want to do real work, so we just played games for most of class, which I think this group really needed. All us teachers knew we wanted to go out Friday night, so after classes we all met up and decided to go to this place called Sweet 60’s. Some of the other teachers go there quite frequently, but this was my first time there. This place is 60’s themed, obviously, so they had lots of posters and pictures on the walls of 60’s icons. They even had some Soviet-era copies of British and American classic rock records from Russia on the wall, and it made me think of how I should have bought that Russian version of “Sticky Fingers” by the Rolling Stones at Yunona Fair back in St. Petersburg (still one of my biggest regrets). The house band at this place is good friends with Katy, so we were treated pretty nice. They play covers of Western and Russian rock songs, including several Russian rock songs that I know and like. They played my favorite song by the group DDT. The best part, of course, was all the Kino covers they did! I had Katy ask them to play some, and they obliged by playing about 5 or 6, including some of my favorites (“Kogda Tvoya Devushka Bolna,” “Videli Noch,” and “Zvezda po Imeni Solntse,” to name a few). We had a great time dancing around like idiots, and the atmosphere at this place was really relaxed and friendly. I had some decent BBQ chicken, and most everybody else had pizza. We all had some (tiny) White Russians, and I had about 4 beers. I think everybody had a really fun time. Our friends Natalya and Jonathan (yeah, taxi-kicking Jonathan) were there to, so we had a decent-sized group. We stayed until about 1:00, and after arguing over some extra beers being added to our bill, we paid up and then split up for taxi rides home. I shared one with Jonathan, and finally got to bed around 2:00. Today I’ve spent what is now a few hours writing this up, and now that I’ve finally reached the end I think Zainap wants me to help her practice some English, then I’ll probably head over to meet up with the other teachers. I’ll try not to go this long with out updating the blog to avoid posts like this that are in excess of 6,000 words. Sorry about that. Happy [now belated] Men’s Day everybody!