More things that happened

Whoa, it’s been a whole week since I last wrote anything. I thought it was less than that for some reason. I’ve basically been doing a bunch of teaching the last week. I finished off January with the classes this guy Harun had before he had to go home to Turkey, which included the one morning class, then a 5-hour break, and another three classes in the afternoon/evening. I really like the classes for the most part. With only a few exceptions, the students are all really great and I have a fun time teaching them. Even though there are some really great kids in the morning class, I’m relieved that starting tomorrow (Monday) I won’t be teaching that one anymore. It will be so nice being able to sleep later and not having to spend a lot of time hanging around the school in between my classes. For February my classes will all be lumped together in the afternoon/evening, from 2:30 to 8:20, and although it might be rough going almost 6 hours straight, I prefer it this way. I’m keeping my three afternoon classes, which I’m happy about, plus I’ll be getting a new fourth class of all new students to the school. I’m excited to meet them tomorrow. So, for the most part, everyday the past week consisted of; getting up at about 7:30, catching a tramvai (a bus, basically) to school, teaching from 9:00 to 10:30, spending two to three hours working on lesson plans and other responsibilities, then grabbing lunch and maybe going to an internet café, getting back to the school around 3:30 or 4:00, teaching from 4:30 to 8:20, catching a marshrutka back home, eating dinner, then hanging around the apartment for a couple of hours before going to bed. I guess it’s nice having a routine.
I can’t really remember most of the things I did on specific days, but some things stand out. On Wednesday I finished preparing lessons early, so I headed downtown to get some blini and buy a map of Bishkek. I’ve been jonesin’ for some good blini like they sell in booths in St. Petersburg, but I’ve only found two street vendors who sell it here. The first I mentioned last time and it was severely disappointing. I’d seen another one near the corner of Sovietskaya and Kievskaya, and I wanted to try it out. It was much better than the other place, but still not up to my erudite blini standards. They didn’t make the blini fresh like they do back in SP, but instead have a big ready-made pile that they heat up on the hot plate when you make an order. It satisfied my blini craving for the time being at least. I set off down Kievskaya to hit up that map store I had tried to go to last weekend when they were closed. At that point it was about 12:30 and I knew they were on their break between 12:00 and 1:00, so I wondered around a bit to kill time. I got there a few minutes before the guy came back. This shop had a lot of cool topographical and hiking maps of the country all over the walls, as well as Bishkek city maps and political maps of Kyrgyzstan. I asked for a map of Bishkek and the guy showed me one in English, but I asked him for a Russian map because that seems more authentic. I almost bought the Kyrgyz political map too, but it was kind of expensive and only came rolled up and I was afraid I would smoosh it in my coat pocket, so I just got the Bishkek map. I think I might go back later for the other one, though. The map is pretty cool, though I was surprised at how little it actually showed. I guess Bishkek is smaller than I figured, cause I thought there would be a lot more sprawling suburbs on the map. I walked back down Kievskaya and sat on some bleachers in Ala-Too Square for a bit. The sun was shining all week and snow was starting to melt off in a lot of places. It was nice to see people out and about and enjoying the sun. I ended up catching a slick new mini-bus (bigger than a marshrutka, and actually shaped like a miniature bus) back to the school that most people seemed reluctant to ride one, but it was much more comfortable than a regular marshrutka and cost the same amount.
Let’s see, on Thursday for I decided to try out this restaurant across the street from the school called Nooruz (which means Islamic new year), which seemed lit a little whole-in-the-wall place but it ended up being really expensive. I don’t know if maybe they have a special menu with higher prices that they gave to people who are obviously foreigners to sucker them out of their money, but I ended up paying about $11 for a meal that shouldn’t have been anymore than $5 or $6 around here. It was pretty good, though. I had a bowl of lagman (Central Asian noodle soup), and two shashlyks (shish kebobs on big metal spikes). This was the first time I had had lagman since back in St. Petersburg, and I had forgotten how delicious it is. I’m not much of a soup guy, but this stuff is really good, maybe even my favorite soup. You have to eat most of it with a fork because it’s piled with these thick noodles, vegetables and meat. The broth I think is tomato-based and is really flavorful. I think this lagman may have been extra good too. The shashlyk were pretty good too, though there was a lot of bone on some of the meat chunks. Each one was also topped with a chunk of pure grilled fat (I think it was mutton, but I’m not sure), which I refused to eat. The lagman was definitely worth whatever it cost, but I think the shashlyk was overpriced. When I paid the waitress asked me what I was doing in Bishkek, and I explained that I taught at the school across the street. She seemed really interested and started asking me questions about it. Did they have a computer? How much did it cost? I told her she could go ask the administration, and she said “what about going around the administration, how much would it cost for you to teach me English?” I was a bit confused by her proposal, and just said, “I don’t know.” She kept asking, “is it possible,” and “could you teach me,” and I just awkwardly kept saying, “maybe, I’m not sure.” My contract says I’m not supposed to do any sort of work outside of the school, and I don’t really want to do any private tutoring or anything like that. It was an awkward moment with the waitress, and I’m not sure if I want to go back because of it (and because of the prices), but that lagman might bring me back at some point. Also on Thursday I had to give tests to all my classes, which I just got out of the teacher’s books. It made planning for the lessons a lot easier. Most students didn’t do as well as I would have hoped on the tests. Only two students between all four of my classes got A’s, and a handful even got F’s (though I bumped them up to D’s after making a loose curve). The tests covered stuff they were taught before I even got there, so I know it wasn’t all my fault that some of them did poorly. I ended up doing a lot of reviewing on Friday, and I felt bad giving tests back to the students who did poorly. They’ve got to learn somehow, though.
On Friday, after all my classes, I went out to dinner with a few of the other teachers and this other guy named Jake. Jake’s been studying Russian at the London School for a few weeks, and he wanted to take some of us to this Chinese restaurant he’s been going to a bunch while he’s here. This guy’s crazy. He’s only 24 and he’s probably been to 40 or so countries. He lived in China for a couple years I think and is basically fluent in Chinese, plus he’s got Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, and now Russian down pretty well too. He’s been going to this restaurant for a while and getting to know the owners and staff, and now he wanted to bring some more people with him. We left directly from the school and met up at the restaurant with Jane’s Norwegian friend that I had met at Fatboy’s. She and Jake are actually going to Afghanistan and Iran together pretty soon. So, we got there and the place was full, but Jake pulled a few strings and got us a table. He ordered us a bunch of food in Chinese, as well as a few rounds of beers. The food was really good, and I think Jake knew just what to order. He usually gets a discount there, and I think they applied it to us too, cause for five or six plates of food plus a total of about 15 beers the bill came to about 1350 com, or about $38 (split six ways). The best part of the night, though was all the dancing. There weren’t really any young people there besides us, but the place was hoping. They’d play a few songs, turn on the fancy lights, and everyone would dance around for a bit, then they’d take a break for 15 minutes or so and do it all over again. There was a table of middle-aged women near us, and they kept pulling us up to dance with them. There were a few creepy guys that kept inviting to the girls to dance as well, but it was all in good fun. There was also a toddler walking and dancing around the place, often dragging a cat around with him. I didn’t have my camera with me but a lot of the others got some good pictures. I had a great time dancing around and chatting with everybody, and I hope I get the chance to go back there sometime before I leave (hopefully before Jake leaves too, which is actually pretty soon). When we left it was about 1:00 AM, so we took a cab. I had the driver wait for me while I grabbed my bag from one of the teacher’s apartments, then he drove me home. He said it would be 100 com, but once we started driving he said he was bumping it up to 120, so I protested a little. We started chatting and he was interested to hear about where I was from. He told me the few words he knew in English (“Hello,” “How are you doing,” “1,2,3,4,5,” etc.) He asked me about Jean Claude Van Dame and some other movie stars. He asked, “do you know all the actors?” and I said, “a lot of them, but not all of them.” I realized later that he might have meant whether or not I know them personally, and it would be really funny now if he thought I did. When I got out, I asked him again how much the ride cost, and he said just 100. He was a nice guy. I got home, took a shower, and went to bed because I had to get up pretty early again the next day…
The next day (Saturday) was a lot of fun, because I got to get out of Bishkek for the first time. The director of the school arranged to take Jane and me out to this place called the Burana tower, since all the other teachers have already been there and they feel obliged to show there teachers around the country a little. We met at the school around 10:00 and were picked up by Kendje’s husband, who is basically the driver for the school (he had picked me up from the airport). Kendje came along too, as well as their 5- or 6-year old daughter, the guy who guards the gate at the school, and some other young woman I hadn’t seen before. I’m not sure how those last two are related to the group. We drove about an hour east of the city, passing through the towns of Kant, Ivanovka, and Tokmok, to name a few. It was nice seeing some of these small towns and villages along the way. Burana tower is a recreation of a watchtower that had existed in an ancient city on the same site however many hundreds of years ago. It’s really close to the base of the Tien Shan Mountains to the south (a branch of the Himalayans), which are the same mountains you can see from Bishkek. The spot is really close to Kazakhstan as well, and we could see the mountains whose crest forms the border with Kyrgyzstan. It was another bright sunny day, and the mountains and everything were just so beautiful. We had a lunch of bread, cheese, salami, hard-boiled eggs, and tea at the van before heading for the tower. We were the only ones there while we were eating, but right as we entered the gate that leads to the tower, a van pulled up and let off about 15 people to see the tower, so we decided to walk around the site for a while and let them climb the tower first. There was a small museum that had artifacts from the ancient city. There was also a bunch of traditional Kyrgyz stone statues and rocks with petroglyphs painted on them. I foolishly walked into an area where the snow had melted and exposed to muddy ground underneath, and slipped and fell in the mud. Kendje’s daughter started laughing uncontrollably, and laughed about it every time she looked at me for the rest of the day. I got my pants and shirt all muddy, and got some mud on my camera too. Luckily Jane had a roll of toilet paper in her backpack and I was able to clean myself and the camera up a bit. We also climbed a mound that is apparently full of artifacts, but there’s no funding to excavate it. I very nearly slipped again on the way back down, but caught myself. The tower cleared up and we all climbed to the top. The bottom part has a typical metal spiral staircase attached to it, but the upper part requires climbing up a steep, dark staircase that wraps around the center of the tower. We all climbed up very slowly and carefully. It kind of takes a while with so many people trying to climb it at once. Once at the top we had a spectacular view of the surrounding area. I could see why they would put a tower there; you can see for miles in every direction, and the mountains are so close and intense. We took some pictures, caught our breaths, and climbed back down. We checked out the museum again, and I bought a gift for Cielle (I’m not saying what it is yet). We then headed back to Bishkek, going to same way back. Passing through Tokmok, we saw what looked exactly like a typical American, and when we passed it I saw that on the side was written something about a connection with Tokmok and Rockford, so I assumed that Rockford (probably Illinois, but I don’t know any other Rockfords) and Tokmok are sister cities and that Rockford donated an ambulance. I found it pretty interesting. The rest of the day I spent at home. I almost went to hang out with the other teachers who were having a pizza and movie night, but I was really tired and ended up going to bed around 10:00. I did watch I’m Not There, which I was pretty disappointed with. I don’t know why, but movies about or starring Bob Dylan just seem to be stupidly pretentious and nonsensical (the other being Masked and Anonymous). I did like Cate Blanchette’s performance though. I think they should have just made a traditional biopic about Bob Dylan starring her.
Today (Sunday) I got about around 11:00 and my host mom really wanted to go to Osh Bazaar to buy me a kalpak (Kyrgyz hat) as soon as I got up. We caught a marshrutka over there, and we started checking around for vendors that sold a kalpak that would fit my massive head. She obviously did all the talking (in Kyrgyz, no less), but after talking to 5 or 6 different vendors and trying on a bunch of hates we couldn’t find one that fit me. One woman said she would get one that fit my head size (62 apparently) and have it for us next week. Hopefully it will work out, cause I’d really like to have one of those hats. There were all sorts of cool Kyrgyz crafts there, and I think I’ll go back later to do my gift shopping. I followed Zainap around a while as she shopped for a shawl and bought some butter, then she headed home while I decided to stay back and look around a bit more. Jake was actually supposed to call me later in the day about going to the same bazaar, and I thought I might hang around until he called and then meet up with him there. I walked all over and saw all kinds of things for sale. Clothes, DVDs, produce, groceries, junk, souvenirs, electronics, you name it. The place was pretty huge, but apparently not as big as another bazaar in town called Dordoi Market. I needed to buy more minutes for my phone, so I went to a booth where I though I could just buy a card and enter the number like my phone in SP, but it was this whole different system where you tell the person your number, pay them for minutes, and they enter it in form their phone. I didn’t really understand how it worked at first, but the woman was very helpful and friendly. She asked if I was British, and excited to learn that I was American. She and another customer asked me questions about where I was from. They said they had only ever heard of Oregon. I left the booth and after a few minutes my minutes had been added. I was a little hungry so I had some sashlyk and a beer at a little café in the middle of the Bazaar. I walked around a little more but was getting tired and didn’t think I could wait for Jake to get there, so I found a marshrutka home. Jake called just as I got on the marshrutka, but he wasn’t that I had already gone. I lucked out and got a seat on the marshrutka, which was really good since it got really packed. The rest of today I’ve spent lounging around and preparing for tomorrow’s classes. I chatted with Zainap earlier while she took a break form studying for her driver’s test. It’s late now (2:00 AM), but at least I don’t have to get up super early like lat week. I’ll try to do shorter, more-frequent posts this next week and beyond. Happy February!


-Austin