So, I haven't been able to write one more blog post, and now it's too late. I'm heading out for the rest of Central Asia tomorrow (the 29th), and so you probably won't hear much from me here for a while. I can't promise anything, but hopefully I'll be able to pop on every now and then and give a quick update. I uploaded some pictures of our trip to Naryn on flickr the other day, so if you haven't seen those yet go check them out. So, see you when I see you!
-Austin
3/28/08
3/17/08
мы будем ходить босиком
Ok, I’m long overdue again for another posterino. Right now it’s March 16th, and I have only two weeks left in Bishkek before hitting the road and seeing the rest of Central Asia (part of the rest, anyways). I’m actually starting to get bummed out that I don’t have much more time in Bishkek. Now that the weather is getting nice and I feel comfortable with the city and the people and everything, it would be nice to have more time to stay. I feel like there are still a lot of things I haven’t done or parts of town I haven’t explored, and it doesn’t really look like I’ll be able to do that now. I always feel this way when I get close to leaving a place, so I know I’ll get over it. I’m definitely looking forward to traveling, though. Anyway, I’ll pick up where I left off last time. Last Wednesday (the 5th) I spent mostly scrounging for ideas for Women’s Day gifts. Well, first I had some lunch somewhere (I can’t remember where) used the internet café, and had a beer at Fatboy’s (usually I don’t like going there, but I had to use their bathroom so I figured I should order something), then I wondered around the in the vicinity of TsUM to find some good ideas. I checked in TsUM itself, but it didn’t have anything in the way of presents, and I also looked in another nearby shopping center for the first time called Dordoi Plaza (same name as the market I wrote about last time, except everything is simply brought from the market to these much classier and more convenient digs so they can charge a lot more for it), but they didn’t really have anything either. I found some good stuff along Chui Prospekt near TsUM where all the vendors lined up. I bought some nice cards for my host mom, my supervisor, and my Kyrgyz teacher, and a bunch of fun silly little Women’s Day cards for my female students. I sat outside a while, enjoying the warmish weather, and also bought a delicious peach ice cream come in the pedestrian underpass below the intersection of Sovietskaya and Chui. I took a marshrutka home, stopping at Narodny on the way to buy some chocolates for the same three Women I got cards for, and some small chocolates to give to my students along with their cards. Oh wait! Before I go on, I have to write about something that really creeped me out. On before heading out to do all this said shopping, I had been hanging around the apartment a bit, and at one point when I came out of my room to use the bathroom I saw someone lying perfectly still on the couch like they were dead, with their legs crossed, their hands held up in the air in some sort of yoga-like position, and what looked like a hideously burned and scared face. After a few seconds of shock and horror I realized that it was my host mom, but she was wearing some kind of robe that I had never seen her wear before, so I didn’t immediately recognized it as her. I looked closely at her face and figured out that she had on some sort of facial mask made of oatmeal or something, like it was some kind of skin treatment, but it was pretty much the exact same color as her skin, so it looked like it was actually part of her face. She still didn’t move the whole time I was trying to figure this out, so she must have been trying some sort of relaxation-skin therapy. I also remembered that I had seen a little book in the kitchen a few days before called “beauty in 20 minutes,” so it must have been something from that. For those few seconds, though, I was totally freaked out, and my heart kept racing for a few minutes afterwards. But anyways, that following Thursday I still had more Women’s Day shopping to do, so at the grocery store in the shopping center near the school I bought a bunch of medium-sized chocolate bars to hand out to the office staff, and left them hidden in my classroom to give out the next day.
Friday was actually the day before Women’s day, but it was the day people are expected to give gifts to their colleagues and other people they won’t see on the weekend, so this was the day I had to give everyone their presents. I got to the school early so I could buy some flowers at the flower shop down the street. I got a small bouquet each for my supervisor (Kenje) and my Kyrgyz teacher (Rayhan), and tried to sneak everything into the school without any other women seeing. My host mom had explained that it’s best to give all women the same-sized gift, but that if you give more you should do it in private so that others don’t see and get jealous. I wanted to do more for my supervisor and my teacher, so I had their stuff in my room until I could give it to them. I had Kyrgyz lessons first thing, so I gave the flowers, chocolates, and card to Rayhan then. Nick had found out that I was going all-out for Women’s Day, and so in order to not look bad he ran out and bought some flowers for Rayhan as well before class started. Later on I brought Kenje up to my classroom and gave her everything as well. She was really surprised and almost refused to take all of it at first, but then graciously accepted. I then handed out chocolate to all the office, library, cleaning, and cafeteria staff (which consists entirely of women), and they were all very surprised as well, because I don’t think they were expecting anything from the teachers. I even have some chocolate leftover to give to Jess, Katy, and Jane. The girls in my classes were all happy to get their cards and chocolate as well. I think I did pretty well over all for Women’s Day. That night I went with Jane, Jess, and Nick to that new Turkish place we like, and were disappointed to learn that the really good cheese dishes we all wanted were not ready, so we all settled for something else that also turned out to be good. We were going to meet up with Katy and Alison at Sweet 60’s but we were all kind of tired, so instead we went to Nick and Jess’s place and watched a couple episodes of that British show called Peep Show that Nick introduced me to. Before heading home I stopped at a flower shop (they stay open really late the night before Women’s Day), and bought a bouquet for my host mom. I took a taxi home and crept into the apartment trying not to make a lot of noise with the bouquet.
The next morning I presented my host mom with her Women’s Day presents (flowers, chocolate, and a card), and she seemed very touched that I had gotten so much for her. She said that she and Adik were going to the nearby market (Orto-Sai) for a few things, and wanted to know if I would come with them. I figured I should spend some time with her on Women’s day, so I tagged along. I had been told that it is possible to find records at this market, so on the way over I asked Zainap and Adik if they knew where to find them. They thought it was a strange question, but said that it was in fact possible to find them at the market, and that they would show me where to look. On the south side of the market there is a dirt road / parking lot area where some people line up on the weekend and try to sell their junk, including, sometimes, records. We quickly found a guy who had a couple piles of records alongside his other knick-knacks, and I anxiously dove in. Oh my god, I can’t explain how excited I was to find some of the things I found. I got a few records by Vladimir Vysotsky (a great Russian folk singer), some records by some Russian rock bands I’ve heard of but don’t really know anything about (Mashina Vremeny [“Time Machine’] and Piknik), a record by a Russian rockabilly band named “Mister Tvister,” two Soviet-issue Rolling Stones records (though sadly not a copy of the Soviet release of “Sticky Fingers” like I stupidly passed up in St. Petersburg), a Soviet-issue Credence record, and, inexplicably, a copy of my favorite Billy Bragg album released in the UK. But my best find by far was something of a Holy Grail for me: a copy of my favorite Kino album, “Noch” (“Night”)! I would have been ecstatic to find any Kino on vinyl, but this was the one I had been dreaming of finding even back in Russia. I had seen a picture of this record on the internet before, and it has a completely different cover than the CD version, so I had always thought how it would be awesome to find a copy like that, and here it was for about 70 cents! The sleeve was a little beat up, but the vinyl itself seemed to be in perfect condition (all the records were in great shape, actually). I was pretty overjoyed, and walked around the market for a while with a bit of a post-awesome-record-find high (the last time I had one of those was when I finally found my own copy of the Buzz of Delight record in Santa Cruz last spring break). My host mom showed me another part of the market where even more people line up on the weekend to sell junk, and said that on Sunday it would be even bigger. Adik went off for a while and we couldn’t find him, so Zainap called him on my cell-phone and as we waited around I got to try some of this stuff called Shoro (that’s actually the brand name). I had seen it in bottles in stores before, but now that the weather is nice they sell it on the street all over the city. It’s a drink that comes in a few different varieties, but the two main varieties are “Maksim” (with a red label) and Chalap (with a blue label). There was a vendor at the market, so I thought I’d try a small cup. Some of my students had said I should try the red kind, so I decided to give it a shot. It’s a non-alcoholic barley drink, and it basically tastes like drinking rye bread. I don’t mind rye bread, but drinking it is another story. I couldn’t finish my 0.2 liter cup, and gave the rest to my host mom. A few days later I would try the blue kind of Shoro, and it was much better than the red kind. It’s milk-based, and tastes like a runny, tart yogurt that’s a little bit salty and a little bit fizzy. It’s not something I could go crazy for, but it certainly isn’t bad.
Anyways, we finally met back up with Adik and headed back to the apartment. Adik had bought a card to give to his girlfriend for Women’s Day (until this point I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend), and seemed really proud of it, like he had gotten her a really good gift. On the way out of the market we passed a guy who was selling some books, including a road atlas of the USSR that I was kind of interested in, though I didn’t have enough money left on me to pay for it. He asked for 100 som, which was reasonable, but I just didn’t have that much on me, so Zainap and I politely turned him down. He really aggressively tried to get us to buy it, and thumbed through the pages and explained to us that “all of the Soviet Union is here!”, as if that was our main concern and had turned him down because we didn’t think it covered the whole thing. Back at the apartment I admired my new records for a bit, then headed over to the school/apartments to help out in Operation Paint Jane’s Apartment. The weekend before Jane had bought some peach-colored paint to do a couple walls in her living room/kitchen, and so we had been planning a Women’s Day paint party. Nick and Jess had painted their apartment before, and were anxious to help Jane do hers. I wasn’t to enthusiastic about painting since I didn’t have any close to paint in and was worried about getting paint all over myself, but they needed me to reach the tops of the walls. I tried showing up a little late to let them get most of it done before I got there, but everyone had gotten a slow start and I got there before anybody else did. Eventually the others came and we taped of the corners, mixed the paint, and ate some cookies. There wasn’t really enough room for everyone to paint at the same time, so I kind of hung around until they needed the upper reaches of the walls painted. I wore some shorts and my most dispensable shirt, but I actually did a really god job of keeping the paint off of myself. It turned out really well, and we decided we didn’t have to bother with a second layer. Once we finished we all had a celebratory beer, and then headed across the street to Nooruz for some delicious lagman and shaslyk. We were worried that no matter where we would go for dinner it would be really packed because of the holiday, but since Nooruz isn’t really a classy place it was as empty as it usually is (meaning that about half the tables were open). We stopped by Ramstor afterwards to get some drinks, then headed back to the apartments to watch a movie. We got some vodka and Pomegranate (a good combo, I found), and Jonathan bought a bottle of kymys. Is made from fermented mare’s milk, and is basically the national drink of Kyrgyzstan/Central Asia. Usually it’s only available in the summer, but you can buy it bottled year round, and I was anxious to try it out. It smelled pretty awful, which then made me a bit reluctant to try, but I took a sip anyways and it turned out to be not as bad as I thought. It tasted kind of like that blue Shoro stuff I described, but a lot tarter and with a strong parmesan-ish, almost bleu cheese taste thrown in. That probably doesn’t sound too appetizing, and it isn’t really, but after all the hype I had heard about it it turned out to be not as bad as I expected. We watched my copy of Juno on Jess’s computer (I was relieved to learn that it worked on someone else’s computer), and then Jonathan and I shared a taxi home.
For Sunday, Nick and Jonathan both wanted to go to Orto-Sai, and I wanted to see if I could find some more records, so we all met up and went to the market again around noon. Nick was interested in getting some records, so I showed him where I had bought mine. The vendor seemed excited that I was back and that I had brought someone else, cause these were probably the first records he’d sold in a long time. Nick just bought copies of Soviet-issued Doors and Led Zeppelin albums. We wandered along the street where lots of people were selling their junk. I bought one more records called “For you, Women,” only for the fact that it was on clear yellow vinyl. I also bought a cookbook for Kyrgyz cuisine written in Russian, so hopefully I’ll be able to make some lagman back home! We also checked out this cool little book shop along the road too. Jonathan bought a big encyclopedia about only the Kyrgyz SSR, and I got a neat picture book of the Crimea (still waiting on that Fulbright…) One of the most interesting books we saw in there was a huge Russian-Udmurt / Udmurt-Russian dictionary (Udmurt is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in one of the republics of the Russian Federation). Nick and Jonathan bought some cool old Soviet pins, and I was tempted too but I remembered that I bought a bunch in Russian and I never wear them or anything, so I passed this time. We wandered for a ways, then headed back towards the main market for a “gamburger.” Before taking off, Nick wanted to find some stickers that we had seen on cars around town. There’s a sticker with the outline of a high-heeled shoe that, supposedly, female drivers can put in their back window to let other’s know that they are female and therefore poor drivers (this is Kyrgyzstan talking, not me), and in the event of an accident they can be found to be less at fault if they have the sticker in the window. We all think it’s pretty funny, so Nick wanted to buy some of these stickers, as well as a Kyrgyzstan country code sticker like all the cars have in Europe. We found them, and so Nick then headed home on a marshrutka. I, on the other hand, wanted to go to Jonathan’s apartment to check out his komus, a Kyrgyz stringed instrument. His apartment is really close to the market, so we walked over. His apartment is really nice, and he even has high speed wireless internet installed there, which I’m really jealous of. I tried out his komus, as well as this other Kazakh stringed instrument he has called a Dombra (I might have gotten that wrong). They were both really cool instruments, and I decided then and there that I really had to get a komus. Jonathan’s also got a big collection of music from Kyrgyzstan and a lot of other Turkic language-speaking countries (and from a lot of other places as well). He played me some stuff and burned me a DVD with a ton of the music on it. We hung out for a while listening to different Central Asian music, fiddling around on instruments, and drinking this tasty berry wine he had bought at the market. I walked back to my place going through some of the micro-regions (like defined neighborhoods), and got kind of lost and turned around for a second, but figured my way through eventually.
I know Josh wants me to talk more about what I do at school and with my students, but I feel like that would require it’s own post cause I can only really talk about it in general terms, i.e. not a day to day basis like I do with the rest of my posts. I can’t really remember what I do or what happens in each class on a given day, but I could talk about the trends and general goings-on. I can’t really think of a way to fit that in here, so I think I’ll have to leave that for another time. I’ll tell you about it someday, Josh. So, essentially, that next Monday and Tuesday are just miscellaneous work days in my mind now, and I can’t really recall anything specific that I did. Wednesday, however, was my day off and I remember it quite distinctly. I had two goals for Wednesday: 1 – buy a Komus, and 2 – wander around some new parts of town. I started off by walking south along the canal near by apartment, passed the area where the Pakistanis play cricket and stuff. It was a nice day for a walk, and I was walking right towards the mountains so I had a nice view. I walked until the street alongside the canal ended, and then around some apartment buildings to a park my students had told me about called “South Gate.” In this park there’s a big monument dedicated to something or other, and some nice wooded areas around it. I saw one of the crazy Central Asian squirrels with the pointy ears and the red fur. I was kind of under whelmed with the park and decided to head towards Osh Bazaar to get a komus. Fortunately, I learned, this part of the city is where many of the marshrutkas begin their routes, so I caught one that only had two other people in it and rode all the way to the center (of course by then it had gotten packed). There was a young guy who got on the same time as me, and I saw him staring at my boots for a long time. He eventually asked was size they were, and I had to tell him I didn’t know (it’s true, I don’t know what a size 15 is in their shoe measuring system). I got off the marshrutka a few blocks from the bazaar, and walked over. I went to the souvenir booth where I had bought some gifts before, because I knew the people where friendly and that they had a good komus selection. The friendly girl from before wasn’t working, but I reasonably friendly guy was. He didn’t actually play the komus, but he was able to explain their relative qualities. After debating which one I should buy for a while, I settled for one that was middle-of-the-road in quality and price. It’s made from nut wood, which is okay, but apparently apricot wood is the best (I couldn’t afford one of those). I also bought an oz komus, which is essentially a Jew’s harp, and so I got 100 som off of a bag for the komus. All together it was about $40, so not too bad. I wandered around the market some more, and had some shashlyk and beer at one of the shashlyk places in the market. When I ordered the shashlyk from the grill-master guy out front he kept speaking way too fast and I couldn’t understand what kind of meat he was saying he had. When I asked him to speak slower, he just mimed that he had chicken and beef. I wasn’t actually sure if he meant beef or mutton, so I tried to confirm, “mutton?”, and he just shook his head and went “moooo,” and then I understood, though I wish he wouldn’t have given up trying to speak to me in Russian.
The Shashlyk and the beer were good, and I then headed out of the market to do some wandering. I walked down Chui for a bit, then stopped into a Shmel internet club for a bit, and kept going. I finally made it over to the Philharmonic building and got some pictures of the cool statue out front. I then made a loop back around to Molodye Gvardii Street (Young Gaurds), and headed south. This street is one of the ones that has a nice park-like pedestrian walkway down the middle of it separating the two directions of traffic, so I strolled along stopping periodically to rest on a bench. A paint crew was going around and repainting many of the benches in rainbow colors, and I almost sat on a freshly painted bench when some friendly people nearby stopped me and explained that it was still drying. I was reminded of that old Mentos commercial where the guy sits on the wet bench just before a big interview or something, and gets paint all over his suit, but then has a Mentos-inspired stroke of genius and rolls his whole body on the bench, creating perfect pinstripes. It hadn’t struck me until just then how ridiculous that commercial was. I crossed under the train tracks and headed towards a part of town known as “Rabochy Gorodok’ (Workers’ Village). It stands out on the map as this big circle where all the streets meet in the middle, and I had been curious to check it out. I accidentally ended up going down the wrong street and only walking along the edge of the “village” for a little ways and not going through it, but I think I got the gist of it form what I saw. Most of the streets are actually small alleys, it turns out. I have to mention that during my entire walk I was carrying my newly-purchased komus in it’s case, and I ended up getting so much attention from it the whole day. I would see people pointing to it and showing their friends, and on several occasions people would come up to me and ask me if I played it. I think to them it seemed incomprehensible that a non-Kyrgyz person would play the komus, especially a foreigner (I think my short sleeves were a dead giveaway) While walking near Rabochy Gorodok, I passed a couple of kids who were fighting in a driveway, and as soon as they saw me coming they stopped and stared at my komus. I heard them talking to each other about it, wondering if it was actually a komus inside the bag, and they must have decided that it couldn’t be because they called out to me and asked, “Is that a guitar? Or a balalaika? “ (Note to the reader: I’m not quite sure how big a balalaika is, but a komus is certainly way smaller than any guitar). I just smiled at them and said, “nyet.” I little further down the street a guy who seemed to be about my age or a little older enthusiastically came up to me when he saw my komus and started asking if I played. He said that he played the komus and wanted to know if he could try mine. I was really reluctant to let a stranger play it, but he seemed really friendly and honest so I figured why not. He took it out of the bag, readjusted the bridge and tried to tune it a bit before playing around a little bit. He said that the wood wasn’t very good and when I told him how much it cost he said I had over paid. I’m happy with the quality and price, though. He asked me in English, “how is my pronunciation?” (it was pretty good, actually), and when I asked him if he spoke English he said (in Russian), “I play the komus better.” I talked to him a little bit and he did turn out to be really friendly, and just earnestly enthusiastic to meet a foreigner who was interested in the komus. He told me his name, but I forgot it.
I continued along my journey, walking down Yuri Gagarin Street. I ended up at the Humanities University on Prospekt Mira, and then crossed the street and down some small side streets towards Tynystanova. As I got close to my apartment, I found some cool little courtyards and hidden areas, the kind of places you never see unless you make the effort to get off the main streets and explore a little deeper. That’s what I like about cities in the former Soviet Union, there are always these little secret places tucked away between buildings or down small streets that you could pass by every day and never know they’re there unless you take the time to seek them out. I found a small fruit market along the canal only a few blocks from my apartment. I finally made it home, exhausted after my long walk (it really was a big walk, basically across town). I played around with my komus for must of the night, and now even though I don’t really know the proper technique I really do have fun just messing around with it and coming up with my own stuff.
Thursday was another average work day, except for the fact that I had a nice walk home with one of my students named Adilet (yes, he as the same name as my host brother). Usually he walks with two of my other students from the school to a the place where he catches his marshrutka home near my apartment, but on Thursday those two other students were absent, and so he asked if I would walk with him because he said it “wasn’t safe” to walk alone, which I don’t think is true, but I was happy to walk with him if it made him feel better. I had once walked that way with him and one of the other students, so he knew that I needed to go that direction anyways. We had a nice walk, and he’s a really great guy, so I had a good time. Friday was Jonathan’s birthday, and originally he had planned for us to all have dinner and then go to this rock club called Promzona (I went there my first or second weekend here, actually), but it turned out Alison’s sisters were coming to visit the next day and everyone was going to go to Promzona the next night instead, so we delayed Jonathan’s birthday celebration to coincide with that trip instead. We did, however, still go out to dinner. We went to this place called Aria, which was supposedly a Persian place but didn’t actually have any Persian food. They did have some pretty good pizza, though. There menu was in Russian and English, and had plenty of funny English translations, though the best was the Meat ala-Caucasus, which included “beef?” among other things. Jonathan’s friend and fellow Fulbrighter named Laura met us there too, and she seemed pretty cool. She’s from West Virginia and looks a lot like my sister’s friend Lacy, I thought. Jonathan said that she is basically fluent in Russian, and everybody always mistakes her for a Russian, and after meeting her it seems to be true. She’s actually slightly younger than me and I don’t think she’s been learning Russian any longer than I have, yet she’s light years beyond my abilities. We enjoyed our meals, and Jonathan had brought along a nice cake that we all enjoyed as well. This place also had hookahs, and so we ordered one with apple tobacco. It tasted more like black licorice to me, but nobody else seemed to agree. After dinner we all headed home, and I split a taxi with Jonathan and Laura.
Saturday morning I had to get up bright and early, because the school had planned a trip to Ala-Archa Canyon for me and a few other teachers. Only those of us who hadn’t been to the canyon yet were allowed to go on the trip, which meant Jane, Kevin, Ben, and Me. We didn’t have Bayan drive us this time, but instead one of the other drivers the school often uses, who took us the 40 minutes to the canyon, dropped us off, and later came back at our decided-upon pick-up time, 4:00. Along the way we drove through some small villages, and at one point were confronted with two charging horses coming straight towards us followed by their owner chasing after them. We got there at 11:45, and just headed up into the canyon. There have got to be hundreds if not thousands of canyons just like this all over Kyrgyzstan, but this one is special because it’s so close to Bishkek and is designated as a nature preserve. It’s a really nice place, with big jagged mountains and cliffs on either side. We didn’t really know what there was to see or do, so we just kept walking. We soon came across a small river, and sat next to it for a bit before continuing forward. We passed a small footbridge with a metal frame that had big gaps in it. We were able to cross it, but it didn’t go anywhere on the other side, so we just went back over it and kept moving forward. We eventually came upon a big gravel washout with the same river snaking though it, and followed the river a ways. There were some other people nearby, most just throwing rocks into the river. It was kind if windy and chilly, and there were still patches of snow and ice on the ground, but I was comfortable enough in my grey hoodie. We stopped for a picnic by the river, which included eggs and pretzels from Jane, and some cheese, salami, and chips that I had brought. We then continued forward over a hill, and down the other side where the canyon kept going into the distance. We saw another little footbridge over the river below us, this time made of wood and without a handrail. We went down to check it out and crossed to the other side, Once there, we stood at the base of one side of the canyon, and from that angle, looking up, we decided that it didn’t look too hard to climb, and that it might be fun to try and climb it to see what was on the other side of the ridge on the top. I wasn’t really into the idea, but the other’s were kind of gung-ho about it, so I had to follow. After about five minutes of climbing through brush along the ever-steepening slope, we took a breather and decided that it probably wasn’t a good idea to keep going, since going back down was obviously going to be a real challenge. Kevin and Ben were still into the idea of going forward, but we decided it was best not to split up, so we all headed back down. Back on the trail, we looked up at where we had climbed and where we would have climbed to had we kept going, and saw that there was a big spot of loose rocks and some pretty dangerous-looking inclines further up, and we knew that we had made the right decision. We were going to keep going along the river, but then decided that it would be a good idea to head back now so we could hit up the little lodge by the parking lot that supposedly had beer and shashlyk. On the way back we saw some pretty blue ice that we were afraid to walk on until we discovered it was just packed snow. We got back to the lodge relatively quickly and sat down at a table inside. We were disappointed to learn that the lodge had no sashlyk, no beer, and literally nothing to serve us except some bottles of soda (they only had one bottle of Coke left, so we got one Coke and one Sprite). I ate some of our remaining picnic food, drank some soda, and just relaxed for a while before the driver returned to pick us up, It was a nice and relaxing way to finish our trip to Ala-Archa. On the way back to town we drove passed the president’s mansion and the US Embassy, which are pretty close to each other. I had the driver drop me off near my apartment, and I went home and had a rest before going out again later that night.
Saturday night was our big Promzona night, so around 9:00 I headed out to meet up with everyone at the school/apartments. I bought a bottle of Coke and a small bottle of vodka at one of the convenient store shacks near my apartment to bring to the apartments and “pre-funk,” as we say back in Eugene. They gave the two bottles to me in this flimsy little bag, and as I was walking to the corner to catch a marshrutka the bottle of vodka fell through the bag and broke open on the sidewalk. Only the top of the neck broke off and there was some vodka left that hadn’t spilled out, but I figured it wasn’t a good idea to drink out of a broken glass so I threw the rest of it away and bought another bottle and another booth. It was only 30 som (less than $1), so I wasn’t to bummed. I got over to the apartments to find that everyone was still kind of behind in getting ready, so I started watching a little Simpsons on Jess’s computer until more people showed up (upon Nick’s insistence that I keep myself entertained while I cooked his dinner). Eventually more people showed up, and I got to meet Alison’s visiting family. After sitting around for a while making Armenian jokes we set out for Promzona in two taxis. It was really windy, and there were actually tumbleweeds blowing around on some of the rural-ish roads we had to drive along to get to Promzona. The place was pretty hopping, but not packed, and we managed to score a big table for all of us. They were playing a Shania Twain concert on all their TVs for a while until the live band started. This band was weird. They had a really wild female signer who seemed to have the whole rock band singer look and stage presence down, which was cool I guess, but the weird part was that, instead of a bass player, they had another girl who would switch between playing the tambourine, the ocarina, and the oz komus (that Jew’s harp thing I mentioned). It was an interesting sound, and they seemed to be playing all original material, but the songs were pretty uninteresting and I think everyone got bored with them pretty quick. It was hard to dance to, also. We sat around at our table for the most part, drinking beer and taking lots of crazy pictures of each other. Once the band stopped they started playing dance music, so we had a good time dancing around. I was getting pretty tired by the end, and around 1:30 or so we all headed out to find that it was raining pretty heavily outside. We quickly got in some taxis and got out of there. Jonathan and I found it would be cheaper to split a taxi with the other teachers back to the school. Then get another taxi to our respective apartments. I was pretty beat from a long day of hiking and dancing, so I went straight to sleep when got home.
And now this finally brings us to today, Sunday. Earlier this week I had convinced Kevin that he should buy a komus for himself, and se he decided to head to Osh Bazaar to find one. I needed to do some more gift shopping too, so I went with him to do that and to help him pick out a komus. We first had lunch at the same place we had lunch before going to Dordoi Bazaar a couple weeks earlier. I had a special type of lagman with egg, and a delicious shashlyk cooked in a tandoori oven, and Kevin had his usual plov. They tried to charge me double for the shashlyk, but I caught their “mistake” and made them fix it. After lunch we waited for a while for a marhsrutka to the bazaar that wasn’t packed with people, but didn’t seem to be having any luck, so we broke down and got a taxi. We went to the crafts area and I took Kevin to my favorite booth with the komuses. The friendly girl was there again this time, and we tried playing a bunch of different komuses before Kevin settled on getting one just like the kind I had bought. The “best” ones seemed to have some problems with the tuning pegs. I also bought some gifts for people here, and we then headed to a few other booths to do some more gift shopping. I ended up burning through all the money I had brought with me pretty quick, but I got almost everything I had wanted to get. When we were done with souvenirs we headed to one of the shashlyk restaurants in the bazaar for a drink and a snack. We split a bottle of Coke and each had a couple small shashlyk skewers before wandering around some more. We at some 5 som ice cream, took some pictures of the market, and saw a pile of cow heads in front of a butcher shop. WE were getting tired of the market, so we got a taxi to take each of us home. I had to borrow some money from Kevin to get home cause I had spent all of mine on gifts. So, ever since then I’ve been hanging around the old apartment, playing some komus, planning some lessons, etc. The movie “Super Bad” was on TV dubbed into Russian earlier, but I was too busy writing this to watch it. This next week is only 4-days long, since Friday is the Muslim holiday “Nooruz.” This means we have to work on Wednesday, but it also means that we have a three-day weekend. Some of the other teachers and I (plus a couple others) are planning a trip to a town called Naryn for our long weekend. Naryn is in the middle of Kyrgyzstan, way up in the mountains surrounded by awesome scenery apparently. We’re hoping to rent out an apartment for all of us, like we had done on my trips to Sochi and Yalta two years ago (almost exactly) Also, we’re going to try to go to this cool place called Tash Rabat, which is an old caravan stop built into the side of a mountain really close to the Chinese border. Hopefully I’ll have time to write about that before heading off for my big Central Asian trip at the end of March. So, until then, keep on rockin’ in the free world.
-Austin
Friday was actually the day before Women’s day, but it was the day people are expected to give gifts to their colleagues and other people they won’t see on the weekend, so this was the day I had to give everyone their presents. I got to the school early so I could buy some flowers at the flower shop down the street. I got a small bouquet each for my supervisor (Kenje) and my Kyrgyz teacher (Rayhan), and tried to sneak everything into the school without any other women seeing. My host mom had explained that it’s best to give all women the same-sized gift, but that if you give more you should do it in private so that others don’t see and get jealous. I wanted to do more for my supervisor and my teacher, so I had their stuff in my room until I could give it to them. I had Kyrgyz lessons first thing, so I gave the flowers, chocolates, and card to Rayhan then. Nick had found out that I was going all-out for Women’s Day, and so in order to not look bad he ran out and bought some flowers for Rayhan as well before class started. Later on I brought Kenje up to my classroom and gave her everything as well. She was really surprised and almost refused to take all of it at first, but then graciously accepted. I then handed out chocolate to all the office, library, cleaning, and cafeteria staff (which consists entirely of women), and they were all very surprised as well, because I don’t think they were expecting anything from the teachers. I even have some chocolate leftover to give to Jess, Katy, and Jane. The girls in my classes were all happy to get their cards and chocolate as well. I think I did pretty well over all for Women’s Day. That night I went with Jane, Jess, and Nick to that new Turkish place we like, and were disappointed to learn that the really good cheese dishes we all wanted were not ready, so we all settled for something else that also turned out to be good. We were going to meet up with Katy and Alison at Sweet 60’s but we were all kind of tired, so instead we went to Nick and Jess’s place and watched a couple episodes of that British show called Peep Show that Nick introduced me to. Before heading home I stopped at a flower shop (they stay open really late the night before Women’s Day), and bought a bouquet for my host mom. I took a taxi home and crept into the apartment trying not to make a lot of noise with the bouquet.
The next morning I presented my host mom with her Women’s Day presents (flowers, chocolate, and a card), and she seemed very touched that I had gotten so much for her. She said that she and Adik were going to the nearby market (Orto-Sai) for a few things, and wanted to know if I would come with them. I figured I should spend some time with her on Women’s day, so I tagged along. I had been told that it is possible to find records at this market, so on the way over I asked Zainap and Adik if they knew where to find them. They thought it was a strange question, but said that it was in fact possible to find them at the market, and that they would show me where to look. On the south side of the market there is a dirt road / parking lot area where some people line up on the weekend and try to sell their junk, including, sometimes, records. We quickly found a guy who had a couple piles of records alongside his other knick-knacks, and I anxiously dove in. Oh my god, I can’t explain how excited I was to find some of the things I found. I got a few records by Vladimir Vysotsky (a great Russian folk singer), some records by some Russian rock bands I’ve heard of but don’t really know anything about (Mashina Vremeny [“Time Machine’] and Piknik), a record by a Russian rockabilly band named “Mister Tvister,” two Soviet-issue Rolling Stones records (though sadly not a copy of the Soviet release of “Sticky Fingers” like I stupidly passed up in St. Petersburg), a Soviet-issue Credence record, and, inexplicably, a copy of my favorite Billy Bragg album released in the UK. But my best find by far was something of a Holy Grail for me: a copy of my favorite Kino album, “Noch” (“Night”)! I would have been ecstatic to find any Kino on vinyl, but this was the one I had been dreaming of finding even back in Russia. I had seen a picture of this record on the internet before, and it has a completely different cover than the CD version, so I had always thought how it would be awesome to find a copy like that, and here it was for about 70 cents! The sleeve was a little beat up, but the vinyl itself seemed to be in perfect condition (all the records were in great shape, actually). I was pretty overjoyed, and walked around the market for a while with a bit of a post-awesome-record-find high (the last time I had one of those was when I finally found my own copy of the Buzz of Delight record in Santa Cruz last spring break). My host mom showed me another part of the market where even more people line up on the weekend to sell junk, and said that on Sunday it would be even bigger. Adik went off for a while and we couldn’t find him, so Zainap called him on my cell-phone and as we waited around I got to try some of this stuff called Shoro (that’s actually the brand name). I had seen it in bottles in stores before, but now that the weather is nice they sell it on the street all over the city. It’s a drink that comes in a few different varieties, but the two main varieties are “Maksim” (with a red label) and Chalap (with a blue label). There was a vendor at the market, so I thought I’d try a small cup. Some of my students had said I should try the red kind, so I decided to give it a shot. It’s a non-alcoholic barley drink, and it basically tastes like drinking rye bread. I don’t mind rye bread, but drinking it is another story. I couldn’t finish my 0.2 liter cup, and gave the rest to my host mom. A few days later I would try the blue kind of Shoro, and it was much better than the red kind. It’s milk-based, and tastes like a runny, tart yogurt that’s a little bit salty and a little bit fizzy. It’s not something I could go crazy for, but it certainly isn’t bad.
Anyways, we finally met back up with Adik and headed back to the apartment. Adik had bought a card to give to his girlfriend for Women’s Day (until this point I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend), and seemed really proud of it, like he had gotten her a really good gift. On the way out of the market we passed a guy who was selling some books, including a road atlas of the USSR that I was kind of interested in, though I didn’t have enough money left on me to pay for it. He asked for 100 som, which was reasonable, but I just didn’t have that much on me, so Zainap and I politely turned him down. He really aggressively tried to get us to buy it, and thumbed through the pages and explained to us that “all of the Soviet Union is here!”, as if that was our main concern and had turned him down because we didn’t think it covered the whole thing. Back at the apartment I admired my new records for a bit, then headed over to the school/apartments to help out in Operation Paint Jane’s Apartment. The weekend before Jane had bought some peach-colored paint to do a couple walls in her living room/kitchen, and so we had been planning a Women’s Day paint party. Nick and Jess had painted their apartment before, and were anxious to help Jane do hers. I wasn’t to enthusiastic about painting since I didn’t have any close to paint in and was worried about getting paint all over myself, but they needed me to reach the tops of the walls. I tried showing up a little late to let them get most of it done before I got there, but everyone had gotten a slow start and I got there before anybody else did. Eventually the others came and we taped of the corners, mixed the paint, and ate some cookies. There wasn’t really enough room for everyone to paint at the same time, so I kind of hung around until they needed the upper reaches of the walls painted. I wore some shorts and my most dispensable shirt, but I actually did a really god job of keeping the paint off of myself. It turned out really well, and we decided we didn’t have to bother with a second layer. Once we finished we all had a celebratory beer, and then headed across the street to Nooruz for some delicious lagman and shaslyk. We were worried that no matter where we would go for dinner it would be really packed because of the holiday, but since Nooruz isn’t really a classy place it was as empty as it usually is (meaning that about half the tables were open). We stopped by Ramstor afterwards to get some drinks, then headed back to the apartments to watch a movie. We got some vodka and Pomegranate (a good combo, I found), and Jonathan bought a bottle of kymys. Is made from fermented mare’s milk, and is basically the national drink of Kyrgyzstan/Central Asia. Usually it’s only available in the summer, but you can buy it bottled year round, and I was anxious to try it out. It smelled pretty awful, which then made me a bit reluctant to try, but I took a sip anyways and it turned out to be not as bad as I thought. It tasted kind of like that blue Shoro stuff I described, but a lot tarter and with a strong parmesan-ish, almost bleu cheese taste thrown in. That probably doesn’t sound too appetizing, and it isn’t really, but after all the hype I had heard about it it turned out to be not as bad as I expected. We watched my copy of Juno on Jess’s computer (I was relieved to learn that it worked on someone else’s computer), and then Jonathan and I shared a taxi home.
For Sunday, Nick and Jonathan both wanted to go to Orto-Sai, and I wanted to see if I could find some more records, so we all met up and went to the market again around noon. Nick was interested in getting some records, so I showed him where I had bought mine. The vendor seemed excited that I was back and that I had brought someone else, cause these were probably the first records he’d sold in a long time. Nick just bought copies of Soviet-issued Doors and Led Zeppelin albums. We wandered along the street where lots of people were selling their junk. I bought one more records called “For you, Women,” only for the fact that it was on clear yellow vinyl. I also bought a cookbook for Kyrgyz cuisine written in Russian, so hopefully I’ll be able to make some lagman back home! We also checked out this cool little book shop along the road too. Jonathan bought a big encyclopedia about only the Kyrgyz SSR, and I got a neat picture book of the Crimea (still waiting on that Fulbright…) One of the most interesting books we saw in there was a huge Russian-Udmurt / Udmurt-Russian dictionary (Udmurt is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in one of the republics of the Russian Federation). Nick and Jonathan bought some cool old Soviet pins, and I was tempted too but I remembered that I bought a bunch in Russian and I never wear them or anything, so I passed this time. We wandered for a ways, then headed back towards the main market for a “gamburger.” Before taking off, Nick wanted to find some stickers that we had seen on cars around town. There’s a sticker with the outline of a high-heeled shoe that, supposedly, female drivers can put in their back window to let other’s know that they are female and therefore poor drivers (this is Kyrgyzstan talking, not me), and in the event of an accident they can be found to be less at fault if they have the sticker in the window. We all think it’s pretty funny, so Nick wanted to buy some of these stickers, as well as a Kyrgyzstan country code sticker like all the cars have in Europe. We found them, and so Nick then headed home on a marshrutka. I, on the other hand, wanted to go to Jonathan’s apartment to check out his komus, a Kyrgyz stringed instrument. His apartment is really close to the market, so we walked over. His apartment is really nice, and he even has high speed wireless internet installed there, which I’m really jealous of. I tried out his komus, as well as this other Kazakh stringed instrument he has called a Dombra (I might have gotten that wrong). They were both really cool instruments, and I decided then and there that I really had to get a komus. Jonathan’s also got a big collection of music from Kyrgyzstan and a lot of other Turkic language-speaking countries (and from a lot of other places as well). He played me some stuff and burned me a DVD with a ton of the music on it. We hung out for a while listening to different Central Asian music, fiddling around on instruments, and drinking this tasty berry wine he had bought at the market. I walked back to my place going through some of the micro-regions (like defined neighborhoods), and got kind of lost and turned around for a second, but figured my way through eventually.
I know Josh wants me to talk more about what I do at school and with my students, but I feel like that would require it’s own post cause I can only really talk about it in general terms, i.e. not a day to day basis like I do with the rest of my posts. I can’t really remember what I do or what happens in each class on a given day, but I could talk about the trends and general goings-on. I can’t really think of a way to fit that in here, so I think I’ll have to leave that for another time. I’ll tell you about it someday, Josh. So, essentially, that next Monday and Tuesday are just miscellaneous work days in my mind now, and I can’t really recall anything specific that I did. Wednesday, however, was my day off and I remember it quite distinctly. I had two goals for Wednesday: 1 – buy a Komus, and 2 – wander around some new parts of town. I started off by walking south along the canal near by apartment, passed the area where the Pakistanis play cricket and stuff. It was a nice day for a walk, and I was walking right towards the mountains so I had a nice view. I walked until the street alongside the canal ended, and then around some apartment buildings to a park my students had told me about called “South Gate.” In this park there’s a big monument dedicated to something or other, and some nice wooded areas around it. I saw one of the crazy Central Asian squirrels with the pointy ears and the red fur. I was kind of under whelmed with the park and decided to head towards Osh Bazaar to get a komus. Fortunately, I learned, this part of the city is where many of the marshrutkas begin their routes, so I caught one that only had two other people in it and rode all the way to the center (of course by then it had gotten packed). There was a young guy who got on the same time as me, and I saw him staring at my boots for a long time. He eventually asked was size they were, and I had to tell him I didn’t know (it’s true, I don’t know what a size 15 is in their shoe measuring system). I got off the marshrutka a few blocks from the bazaar, and walked over. I went to the souvenir booth where I had bought some gifts before, because I knew the people where friendly and that they had a good komus selection. The friendly girl from before wasn’t working, but I reasonably friendly guy was. He didn’t actually play the komus, but he was able to explain their relative qualities. After debating which one I should buy for a while, I settled for one that was middle-of-the-road in quality and price. It’s made from nut wood, which is okay, but apparently apricot wood is the best (I couldn’t afford one of those). I also bought an oz komus, which is essentially a Jew’s harp, and so I got 100 som off of a bag for the komus. All together it was about $40, so not too bad. I wandered around the market some more, and had some shashlyk and beer at one of the shashlyk places in the market. When I ordered the shashlyk from the grill-master guy out front he kept speaking way too fast and I couldn’t understand what kind of meat he was saying he had. When I asked him to speak slower, he just mimed that he had chicken and beef. I wasn’t actually sure if he meant beef or mutton, so I tried to confirm, “mutton?”, and he just shook his head and went “moooo,” and then I understood, though I wish he wouldn’t have given up trying to speak to me in Russian.
The Shashlyk and the beer were good, and I then headed out of the market to do some wandering. I walked down Chui for a bit, then stopped into a Shmel internet club for a bit, and kept going. I finally made it over to the Philharmonic building and got some pictures of the cool statue out front. I then made a loop back around to Molodye Gvardii Street (Young Gaurds), and headed south. This street is one of the ones that has a nice park-like pedestrian walkway down the middle of it separating the two directions of traffic, so I strolled along stopping periodically to rest on a bench. A paint crew was going around and repainting many of the benches in rainbow colors, and I almost sat on a freshly painted bench when some friendly people nearby stopped me and explained that it was still drying. I was reminded of that old Mentos commercial where the guy sits on the wet bench just before a big interview or something, and gets paint all over his suit, but then has a Mentos-inspired stroke of genius and rolls his whole body on the bench, creating perfect pinstripes. It hadn’t struck me until just then how ridiculous that commercial was. I crossed under the train tracks and headed towards a part of town known as “Rabochy Gorodok’ (Workers’ Village). It stands out on the map as this big circle where all the streets meet in the middle, and I had been curious to check it out. I accidentally ended up going down the wrong street and only walking along the edge of the “village” for a little ways and not going through it, but I think I got the gist of it form what I saw. Most of the streets are actually small alleys, it turns out. I have to mention that during my entire walk I was carrying my newly-purchased komus in it’s case, and I ended up getting so much attention from it the whole day. I would see people pointing to it and showing their friends, and on several occasions people would come up to me and ask me if I played it. I think to them it seemed incomprehensible that a non-Kyrgyz person would play the komus, especially a foreigner (I think my short sleeves were a dead giveaway) While walking near Rabochy Gorodok, I passed a couple of kids who were fighting in a driveway, and as soon as they saw me coming they stopped and stared at my komus. I heard them talking to each other about it, wondering if it was actually a komus inside the bag, and they must have decided that it couldn’t be because they called out to me and asked, “Is that a guitar? Or a balalaika? “ (Note to the reader: I’m not quite sure how big a balalaika is, but a komus is certainly way smaller than any guitar). I just smiled at them and said, “nyet.” I little further down the street a guy who seemed to be about my age or a little older enthusiastically came up to me when he saw my komus and started asking if I played. He said that he played the komus and wanted to know if he could try mine. I was really reluctant to let a stranger play it, but he seemed really friendly and honest so I figured why not. He took it out of the bag, readjusted the bridge and tried to tune it a bit before playing around a little bit. He said that the wood wasn’t very good and when I told him how much it cost he said I had over paid. I’m happy with the quality and price, though. He asked me in English, “how is my pronunciation?” (it was pretty good, actually), and when I asked him if he spoke English he said (in Russian), “I play the komus better.” I talked to him a little bit and he did turn out to be really friendly, and just earnestly enthusiastic to meet a foreigner who was interested in the komus. He told me his name, but I forgot it.
I continued along my journey, walking down Yuri Gagarin Street. I ended up at the Humanities University on Prospekt Mira, and then crossed the street and down some small side streets towards Tynystanova. As I got close to my apartment, I found some cool little courtyards and hidden areas, the kind of places you never see unless you make the effort to get off the main streets and explore a little deeper. That’s what I like about cities in the former Soviet Union, there are always these little secret places tucked away between buildings or down small streets that you could pass by every day and never know they’re there unless you take the time to seek them out. I found a small fruit market along the canal only a few blocks from my apartment. I finally made it home, exhausted after my long walk (it really was a big walk, basically across town). I played around with my komus for must of the night, and now even though I don’t really know the proper technique I really do have fun just messing around with it and coming up with my own stuff.
Thursday was another average work day, except for the fact that I had a nice walk home with one of my students named Adilet (yes, he as the same name as my host brother). Usually he walks with two of my other students from the school to a the place where he catches his marshrutka home near my apartment, but on Thursday those two other students were absent, and so he asked if I would walk with him because he said it “wasn’t safe” to walk alone, which I don’t think is true, but I was happy to walk with him if it made him feel better. I had once walked that way with him and one of the other students, so he knew that I needed to go that direction anyways. We had a nice walk, and he’s a really great guy, so I had a good time. Friday was Jonathan’s birthday, and originally he had planned for us to all have dinner and then go to this rock club called Promzona (I went there my first or second weekend here, actually), but it turned out Alison’s sisters were coming to visit the next day and everyone was going to go to Promzona the next night instead, so we delayed Jonathan’s birthday celebration to coincide with that trip instead. We did, however, still go out to dinner. We went to this place called Aria, which was supposedly a Persian place but didn’t actually have any Persian food. They did have some pretty good pizza, though. There menu was in Russian and English, and had plenty of funny English translations, though the best was the Meat ala-Caucasus, which included “beef?” among other things. Jonathan’s friend and fellow Fulbrighter named Laura met us there too, and she seemed pretty cool. She’s from West Virginia and looks a lot like my sister’s friend Lacy, I thought. Jonathan said that she is basically fluent in Russian, and everybody always mistakes her for a Russian, and after meeting her it seems to be true. She’s actually slightly younger than me and I don’t think she’s been learning Russian any longer than I have, yet she’s light years beyond my abilities. We enjoyed our meals, and Jonathan had brought along a nice cake that we all enjoyed as well. This place also had hookahs, and so we ordered one with apple tobacco. It tasted more like black licorice to me, but nobody else seemed to agree. After dinner we all headed home, and I split a taxi with Jonathan and Laura.
Saturday morning I had to get up bright and early, because the school had planned a trip to Ala-Archa Canyon for me and a few other teachers. Only those of us who hadn’t been to the canyon yet were allowed to go on the trip, which meant Jane, Kevin, Ben, and Me. We didn’t have Bayan drive us this time, but instead one of the other drivers the school often uses, who took us the 40 minutes to the canyon, dropped us off, and later came back at our decided-upon pick-up time, 4:00. Along the way we drove through some small villages, and at one point were confronted with two charging horses coming straight towards us followed by their owner chasing after them. We got there at 11:45, and just headed up into the canyon. There have got to be hundreds if not thousands of canyons just like this all over Kyrgyzstan, but this one is special because it’s so close to Bishkek and is designated as a nature preserve. It’s a really nice place, with big jagged mountains and cliffs on either side. We didn’t really know what there was to see or do, so we just kept walking. We soon came across a small river, and sat next to it for a bit before continuing forward. We passed a small footbridge with a metal frame that had big gaps in it. We were able to cross it, but it didn’t go anywhere on the other side, so we just went back over it and kept moving forward. We eventually came upon a big gravel washout with the same river snaking though it, and followed the river a ways. There were some other people nearby, most just throwing rocks into the river. It was kind if windy and chilly, and there were still patches of snow and ice on the ground, but I was comfortable enough in my grey hoodie. We stopped for a picnic by the river, which included eggs and pretzels from Jane, and some cheese, salami, and chips that I had brought. We then continued forward over a hill, and down the other side where the canyon kept going into the distance. We saw another little footbridge over the river below us, this time made of wood and without a handrail. We went down to check it out and crossed to the other side, Once there, we stood at the base of one side of the canyon, and from that angle, looking up, we decided that it didn’t look too hard to climb, and that it might be fun to try and climb it to see what was on the other side of the ridge on the top. I wasn’t really into the idea, but the other’s were kind of gung-ho about it, so I had to follow. After about five minutes of climbing through brush along the ever-steepening slope, we took a breather and decided that it probably wasn’t a good idea to keep going, since going back down was obviously going to be a real challenge. Kevin and Ben were still into the idea of going forward, but we decided it was best not to split up, so we all headed back down. Back on the trail, we looked up at where we had climbed and where we would have climbed to had we kept going, and saw that there was a big spot of loose rocks and some pretty dangerous-looking inclines further up, and we knew that we had made the right decision. We were going to keep going along the river, but then decided that it would be a good idea to head back now so we could hit up the little lodge by the parking lot that supposedly had beer and shashlyk. On the way back we saw some pretty blue ice that we were afraid to walk on until we discovered it was just packed snow. We got back to the lodge relatively quickly and sat down at a table inside. We were disappointed to learn that the lodge had no sashlyk, no beer, and literally nothing to serve us except some bottles of soda (they only had one bottle of Coke left, so we got one Coke and one Sprite). I ate some of our remaining picnic food, drank some soda, and just relaxed for a while before the driver returned to pick us up, It was a nice and relaxing way to finish our trip to Ala-Archa. On the way back to town we drove passed the president’s mansion and the US Embassy, which are pretty close to each other. I had the driver drop me off near my apartment, and I went home and had a rest before going out again later that night.
Saturday night was our big Promzona night, so around 9:00 I headed out to meet up with everyone at the school/apartments. I bought a bottle of Coke and a small bottle of vodka at one of the convenient store shacks near my apartment to bring to the apartments and “pre-funk,” as we say back in Eugene. They gave the two bottles to me in this flimsy little bag, and as I was walking to the corner to catch a marshrutka the bottle of vodka fell through the bag and broke open on the sidewalk. Only the top of the neck broke off and there was some vodka left that hadn’t spilled out, but I figured it wasn’t a good idea to drink out of a broken glass so I threw the rest of it away and bought another bottle and another booth. It was only 30 som (less than $1), so I wasn’t to bummed. I got over to the apartments to find that everyone was still kind of behind in getting ready, so I started watching a little Simpsons on Jess’s computer until more people showed up (upon Nick’s insistence that I keep myself entertained while I cooked his dinner). Eventually more people showed up, and I got to meet Alison’s visiting family. After sitting around for a while making Armenian jokes we set out for Promzona in two taxis. It was really windy, and there were actually tumbleweeds blowing around on some of the rural-ish roads we had to drive along to get to Promzona. The place was pretty hopping, but not packed, and we managed to score a big table for all of us. They were playing a Shania Twain concert on all their TVs for a while until the live band started. This band was weird. They had a really wild female signer who seemed to have the whole rock band singer look and stage presence down, which was cool I guess, but the weird part was that, instead of a bass player, they had another girl who would switch between playing the tambourine, the ocarina, and the oz komus (that Jew’s harp thing I mentioned). It was an interesting sound, and they seemed to be playing all original material, but the songs were pretty uninteresting and I think everyone got bored with them pretty quick. It was hard to dance to, also. We sat around at our table for the most part, drinking beer and taking lots of crazy pictures of each other. Once the band stopped they started playing dance music, so we had a good time dancing around. I was getting pretty tired by the end, and around 1:30 or so we all headed out to find that it was raining pretty heavily outside. We quickly got in some taxis and got out of there. Jonathan and I found it would be cheaper to split a taxi with the other teachers back to the school. Then get another taxi to our respective apartments. I was pretty beat from a long day of hiking and dancing, so I went straight to sleep when got home.
And now this finally brings us to today, Sunday. Earlier this week I had convinced Kevin that he should buy a komus for himself, and se he decided to head to Osh Bazaar to find one. I needed to do some more gift shopping too, so I went with him to do that and to help him pick out a komus. We first had lunch at the same place we had lunch before going to Dordoi Bazaar a couple weeks earlier. I had a special type of lagman with egg, and a delicious shashlyk cooked in a tandoori oven, and Kevin had his usual plov. They tried to charge me double for the shashlyk, but I caught their “mistake” and made them fix it. After lunch we waited for a while for a marhsrutka to the bazaar that wasn’t packed with people, but didn’t seem to be having any luck, so we broke down and got a taxi. We went to the crafts area and I took Kevin to my favorite booth with the komuses. The friendly girl was there again this time, and we tried playing a bunch of different komuses before Kevin settled on getting one just like the kind I had bought. The “best” ones seemed to have some problems with the tuning pegs. I also bought some gifts for people here, and we then headed to a few other booths to do some more gift shopping. I ended up burning through all the money I had brought with me pretty quick, but I got almost everything I had wanted to get. When we were done with souvenirs we headed to one of the shashlyk restaurants in the bazaar for a drink and a snack. We split a bottle of Coke and each had a couple small shashlyk skewers before wandering around some more. We at some 5 som ice cream, took some pictures of the market, and saw a pile of cow heads in front of a butcher shop. WE were getting tired of the market, so we got a taxi to take each of us home. I had to borrow some money from Kevin to get home cause I had spent all of mine on gifts. So, ever since then I’ve been hanging around the old apartment, playing some komus, planning some lessons, etc. The movie “Super Bad” was on TV dubbed into Russian earlier, but I was too busy writing this to watch it. This next week is only 4-days long, since Friday is the Muslim holiday “Nooruz.” This means we have to work on Wednesday, but it also means that we have a three-day weekend. Some of the other teachers and I (plus a couple others) are planning a trip to a town called Naryn for our long weekend. Naryn is in the middle of Kyrgyzstan, way up in the mountains surrounded by awesome scenery apparently. We’re hoping to rent out an apartment for all of us, like we had done on my trips to Sochi and Yalta two years ago (almost exactly) Also, we’re going to try to go to this cool place called Tash Rabat, which is an old caravan stop built into the side of a mountain really close to the Chinese border. Hopefully I’ll have time to write about that before heading off for my big Central Asian trip at the end of March. So, until then, keep on rockin’ in the free world.
-Austin
3/5/08
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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!
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!
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