Big City Life

22:20 10 November 2008

I got home exhausted last night. I was in Bishkek from Thursday to Sunday and over the four days managed to spend an exorbitant sum of money, though when I think about it objectively, I barely spent more than $60 total, and when considering that covered my lodging, food, entertainment, gifts, indulgences and 14 hours of transportation, it’s really not so bad- I doubt you can do as much in the US capital city on fifteen bucks a day.

More than anything else, this past weekend was a great opportunity to see and catch up with a lot of the volunteers that live on the other side of the country- a whole lot of volunteers had the week off for a school vacation so it worked out nicely that we got to see each other. In addition to just doing typical catch up- crazy stories from sites and many laughs, we also ate copious amounts of food unavailable elsewhere in the country. Chinese food was a big hit (we went to the same place twice) as well as a café that while expensive (by Kyrgyz standards at least- my total meal price<$8) has the best approximations of American food- I got chili cheese fries and a burrito with salsa- Yum.

I forgot to mention it before, but I almost wrote “Yikes Pt. 4” after my experience riding in. On the 6ish hour journey, my marshrutka got pulled over by the Militia (Kyrgyz police) and my driver was arrested for drunk driving. I was surprised at this for two reasons- 1) he seemed to have been driving reasonably well and couldn’t have been driving drunk and 2) our driver was not able to pay off the Militia to let him go. I decided not to make this a Yikes entry simply because I never really felt I was in danger and also because of the transit stories of my compatriots. Some of the volunteers coming from Naryn- the coldest oblast- had a dicey time getting through a mountain pass that was clogged with snow, backwards sliding traffic, and only managed to successfully get through by pushing their taxi and running up the pass on foot- crazy stuff.

While it was undoubtedly great to see the big city but I am definitely glad to be back in my village. I was incredibly overwhelmed by the big city after the peace of my village- I have lost all my big-city street cred though as evidenced by my performance as a farmer so far, it seems I have yet to pick up the country-boy skills to fit in here. I guess I am currently lost without a true population density identification for the time being. Regardless, I missed my host family here and the people at my site as well as the tranquility and beauty of my village, I realized how ugly an oblast Chuy is, or rather how beautiful an oblast as Issyk-Kul is, during my stay in Bishkek. I guess I can just sum it up by saying reunions and diversity of food are great, but I’m in Peace Corps for what I get and give at site.