28 December 2008
Happy Holidays!
23:45 25 December 2008
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it! I had a very interesting Christmas this year, unfortunately I wasn’t able to do the traditional Jewish celebration of Christmas- Chinese food and a movie, but I still had a really interesting and fun day that did involve eating at a café with a friend, watching a Yulka (more on that later), and watching a movie (granted it was by myself as I did dishes, but still a movie). My day started with my counterpart asking me to come take pictures of their Yulka. A Yulka is a Christmassy pageant-like celebration of the New Year (which in Kyrgyzstan is like Christmas since most here are Muslim) but has a version of Santa Claus, a tree, presents and other traditional Christmas things. But a Yulka is a choreographed presentation of games, dances, songs, and other performances for the sake of New Year. I was going to go to the one tomorrow at my school but as I said, I was needed today so I went.
The Yulka started off with two waltzes done my students from my school. These waltzes were choreographed by my counterpart and are a big reason that I have been working primarily alone for the past month in the classroom. They were enjoyable to watch and I was genuinely impressed by how good some of the dancers were. After the waltz followed a plethora of other performances that included adorable children doing the chicken dance, a khomuz (the Kyrgyz lute like instrument) performance, a sack race, and much more dancing. I was twice dragged into the fray as a dance partner and found out just how difficult waltzing really is. I was also amused by the array of costumes that people were wearing. In addition to the obvious Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus equivalents, there were creative versions of a mouse and a bull (the old and new Chinese year animals) and snow costumes. There were also people dressed in costumes completely unrelated to Christmas/New Year and it greatly reminded me of the film “Love Actually” and the pageant presented there. The comparison even goes down to the presence of Spiderman, as he was present at our Yulka along with Batman, little Red Riding Hood, the Easter Bunny, and a witch. Anyhow, pictures show what it was like better than words so here they are:
26 December 2008
Soviet Stuff
22:30 22 December 2008
Last weekend in Karakol was really quite fun, I already wrote about the good times we had at the holiday party, but in addition to that I did some other fun things. I got a new hat at the bazaar, a Russian type driving cap. These caps are really common here and my idea is that in addition to being a dressier hat that I can wear in the classroom if needed (it gets cold) is that it will help me blend in slightly. I actually thing that it looks pretty darn good on me, it’s pretty warm, and it only cost about four dollars! So I got excited about that purchase, and the other volunteer I was with did the same as me when I did so we looked spiffy together. The difference in opinion was so stark that I actually got asked directions in Karakol! I didn’t know the answer of course, but it was really excited getting mistaken for someone who knew where he was.
In addition to a new hat, I swung by an Antiques store that I have visited a few other times. Much like any antique store, it has old machines, pictures, and other things, but the real treat to me is the authentic Soviet paraphernalia that he sells there for what I find to be incredibly cheap. I have heard there is somewhat of a market for Western buyers in Russia to buy Soviet-style things adorned with the omnipresent sickle and hammer. While I have no interest in knock-offs, finding legitimate pins, postcards, models, and other trinkets from the Soviet era is really fascinating to me. I took pictures of all the items I bought there and present them to you here. The prize of my collection so far is a model of Sputnik that was made to commemorate the launch of the first ever manmade satellite. In addition to being cool and historic, it is also a really neat model, despite the fact that the satellite is missing one of its three trademark antenna, and the famous satellite is propped on the word “Мир” which means both “world” and “peace”, in this case I would assume “peace”. The postcards there are significantly less expensive than modern day postcards of Kyrgyzstan, and these three are interesting as one is just a picture of Lenin, one is celebrating May Day, and the last is celebrating Victory Day. All are pretty intensely communist. I also got some pins, I told the owner I was interesting in the DDR (East Germany) and he showed me a pin made for the 17th anniversary of the Republic in 1965. Similarly, when I expressed my interest in Sputnik, he showed me a circa 1971 pin from (former) Czechoslovakia that commemorated the launch. Because I had already spent a fair amount there (about three dollars), he also game me the pictured ruble (Russian/Soviet currency) for the 1979 Olympics that features the Soviet space station Mir, Sputnik and other space related themes. The last pin was a gift and features a flaming red star, the head of Lenin, and the phrase “Always prepared”. Sounds like Soviet Boy Scouts.
To me, all these cool finds are really interesting, and I plan to acquire a collection by the time I return. I also think they would make really cool gifts so if anyone has any special interest in some facet of Soviet history, let me know and I will see what I can do.
Holidays!
09:35 21 December 2008
Last night was a really fun time. Many of the volunteers on the lake got together for a holiday party- while they celebrate the New Year here with Santa Claus, there isn’t really a Christmas like there is in America (kind of nice that we get to avoid the over-commercialization of the holiday) so we decided to make our own holiday cheer. We couldn’t have picked a better night, and after the secret Santa gift giving from which I got a really neat old map of the Soviet Union, it started snowing. The snow continued for much of the night and the walk back to the apartment I was staying at was incredibly fun, a bunch of guys chucking snowballs, tackling each other, and horsing around in the snow. It was a great relief to hang around Americans, eat delicious chili, and play in the gorgeous snow of Karakol.
Last night was a really fun time. Many of the volunteers on the lake got together for a holiday party- while they celebrate the New Year here with Santa Claus, there isn’t really a Christmas like there is in America (kind of nice that we get to avoid the over-commercialization of the holiday) so we decided to make our own holiday cheer. We couldn’t have picked a better night, and after the secret Santa gift giving from which I got a really neat old map of the Soviet Union, it started snowing. The snow continued for much of the night and the walk back to the apartment I was staying at was incredibly fun, a bunch of guys chucking snowballs, tackling each other, and horsing around in the snow. It was a great relief to hang around Americans, eat delicious chili, and play in the gorgeous snow of Karakol.
Kyrgyzification
19:30 14 December 2008
I got back from visiting an incredibly rural village volunteer yesterday. It was a really neat experience to see a completely Kyrgyz village, it was up more in the mountains and it had a lot of snow on the ground. In contrast to the people and appearance of the surroundings there, my Russian was next to useless because of the Kyrgyzification of the village, the house in which the volunteer lives was incredibly posh. Rather than feeling like a typical Kyrgyz village abode, the house was two storied and resembled an alpine cottage with the wooden construction. In addition to the appearance the fact that the house had running water, both hot and cold, a washing machine, a toilet, and a shower made it extremely luxurious to me. It was incredible, when I stepped out I realized that I had somewhat forgotten I was in Kyrgyzstan, the contrast was so stark.
My preparations with the Leadership club I have are going well, but unfortunately our Disco idea went belly-up after some poor planning and insurmountable obstacles like lack of a venue. Our new fund raising efforts will hopefully be more successful and we are going to try our best to have a good New Years/Christmas program for the children there. I have been cast to be “Ded Maroz”, the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus, and I am sure that I will give a memorable performance.
On an unrelated note, I was talking to my host mother about my execution of the chicken’s for Kourman Eid and she made a very funny comment comparing me to Raskolnikov of Crime and Punishment, a cruel but apt comparison. I am realy lucky I have such an intelligent, well read, and progressive host family. Some other volunteers are much more restricted and I am happy I am not.
12 December 2008
FAQs
22:30 9 December 2008
In response to some of my posts I have been asked a few questions (usually from my Mom) that I think that might be of interest if answered publicly. So here they go:
How does my money work?
As a volunteer, I theoretically work without pay. Essentially, I am given a stipend each month that should cover my living, eating, transportation, and entertainment expenses. The sum amount I receive each month is slightly over 7,000 Som (about $175 USD). Each Peace Corps volunteer has a similar amount (city volunteers get slightly more) and lives entirely off it each month. We all negotiate our rent with our host-families or landlords- in my case I pay 2,500 Som a month for my room and to share our food arrangement, what they buy I can use and what I buy they can use. Each month, on top of what I give my host family, I spend about 1,000-1,500 Som/month buying food, usually to cook either with friends (it is a prime pastime here) or interesting dishes for my host family. Beyond that, I use about 500 Som a month for transportation, 1,000 Som for various entertainment avenues- going out to lunch at a café or grabbing a beer when I am in the city. That leaves me with about 1,500 Som/month for incidental expenses like cell phone units, any purchases I have to make, and usually a little left over that I save up for the rare instances when I go to Bishkek (probably about 4 times a year)- life in Bishkek is very expensive and I can easily go through half a month’s pay there in two days without even doing anything terribly exorbitant. Needless to say, I get a fairly small amount of money each month, but it is pretty close or higher than what the people I am around get monthly, and amounts to about less than $6.00 USD a day. It’s sufficient, but for a pretty basic, or some would say authentic, life.
Where does my water come from?
Living near Bishkek in my training host family spoiled me with an outdoor faucet within the compound. Here at site the water situation is much more precarious. During the summer months a large irrigation canal runs to the fields with snowmelt from the mountains, this is next to our house and is a short trip to fill up buckets to bring back into the house. However, as I was shocked to find out one day, our river disappeared (it didn’t occur to me that the source was shut-offable and I was truly surprised as I came to the bank and starred at a dry river bed. Following this shut-off, we had to cart water from a public klinka, a permanently running outdoor water faucet fed by underground pipes, that was located way down our street over 100 m. That was the worst our water has been, they are currently working on restoring our water system, and they fixed a klinka closer to our house (the picture I posted a few weeks ago of the pools of ice around the faucet) and are alleging that we may be getting water in our house soon. I am somewhat skeptical of the latter ever coming true, the public works people came over a month ago and the progress has been extremely slow, but if it does every come to fruition it will indeed be amazing.
Why did I want to do Peace Corps?
This is a question that I have been asked numerous times from various people and the truth is not very clear. Perhaps my parents know better, but I know that it has been something I wanted to do for a very long time, at the very latest since early high school, and that it stems from a dual desire to serve my country and help people. Coming from a strong tradition of military service from both sides of my family, I think service to my country was instilled in me as a virtue from an early age. However, while at sometimes I flirted with the notion of joining the Navy like my parents did, I definitely think I would make a much worse sailor than I do a volunteer. Also, for those who doubt the real benefit to the United States from my service here, I have to state, with no detriment at all to the members of our armed services, that getting to know people that might otherwise have extremely negative attitudes towards the US and helping them form an image of what America beyond what they watch on Russian MTV might make America more secure in the long run. Beyond the sense of duty to my country, my desire to serve stems from an at least semi-legitimate desire to help institute changes that can better the lives of others. If you ask me in person, I may recount having first heard about the Peace Corps when reading about JFK and being inspired, but that story is at best an exaggeration and at worst a figment of my imagination that I have invented to fill a whole in my explanation. The baseline is that I wanted to work in development, I wanted to work abroad and live like the people I lived with, and I wanted to serve my country- the natural satisfier of all those goals was Peace Corps.
If any of you have questions that you would like to see answered in a public forum, please feel free to email me or post them as a comment here. I'll do my best to answer them within a month or so.
In response to some of my posts I have been asked a few questions (usually from my Mom) that I think that might be of interest if answered publicly. So here they go:
How does my money work?
As a volunteer, I theoretically work without pay. Essentially, I am given a stipend each month that should cover my living, eating, transportation, and entertainment expenses. The sum amount I receive each month is slightly over 7,000 Som (about $175 USD). Each Peace Corps volunteer has a similar amount (city volunteers get slightly more) and lives entirely off it each month. We all negotiate our rent with our host-families or landlords- in my case I pay 2,500 Som a month for my room and to share our food arrangement, what they buy I can use and what I buy they can use. Each month, on top of what I give my host family, I spend about 1,000-1,500 Som/month buying food, usually to cook either with friends (it is a prime pastime here) or interesting dishes for my host family. Beyond that, I use about 500 Som a month for transportation, 1,000 Som for various entertainment avenues- going out to lunch at a café or grabbing a beer when I am in the city. That leaves me with about 1,500 Som/month for incidental expenses like cell phone units, any purchases I have to make, and usually a little left over that I save up for the rare instances when I go to Bishkek (probably about 4 times a year)- life in Bishkek is very expensive and I can easily go through half a month’s pay there in two days without even doing anything terribly exorbitant. Needless to say, I get a fairly small amount of money each month, but it is pretty close or higher than what the people I am around get monthly, and amounts to about less than $6.00 USD a day. It’s sufficient, but for a pretty basic, or some would say authentic, life.
Where does my water come from?
Living near Bishkek in my training host family spoiled me with an outdoor faucet within the compound. Here at site the water situation is much more precarious. During the summer months a large irrigation canal runs to the fields with snowmelt from the mountains, this is next to our house and is a short trip to fill up buckets to bring back into the house. However, as I was shocked to find out one day, our river disappeared (it didn’t occur to me that the source was shut-offable and I was truly surprised as I came to the bank and starred at a dry river bed. Following this shut-off, we had to cart water from a public klinka, a permanently running outdoor water faucet fed by underground pipes, that was located way down our street over 100 m. That was the worst our water has been, they are currently working on restoring our water system, and they fixed a klinka closer to our house (the picture I posted a few weeks ago of the pools of ice around the faucet) and are alleging that we may be getting water in our house soon. I am somewhat skeptical of the latter ever coming true, the public works people came over a month ago and the progress has been extremely slow, but if it does every come to fruition it will indeed be amazing.
Why did I want to do Peace Corps?
This is a question that I have been asked numerous times from various people and the truth is not very clear. Perhaps my parents know better, but I know that it has been something I wanted to do for a very long time, at the very latest since early high school, and that it stems from a dual desire to serve my country and help people. Coming from a strong tradition of military service from both sides of my family, I think service to my country was instilled in me as a virtue from an early age. However, while at sometimes I flirted with the notion of joining the Navy like my parents did, I definitely think I would make a much worse sailor than I do a volunteer. Also, for those who doubt the real benefit to the United States from my service here, I have to state, with no detriment at all to the members of our armed services, that getting to know people that might otherwise have extremely negative attitudes towards the US and helping them form an image of what America beyond what they watch on Russian MTV might make America more secure in the long run. Beyond the sense of duty to my country, my desire to serve stems from an at least semi-legitimate desire to help institute changes that can better the lives of others. If you ask me in person, I may recount having first heard about the Peace Corps when reading about JFK and being inspired, but that story is at best an exaggeration and at worst a figment of my imagination that I have invented to fill a whole in my explanation. The baseline is that I wanted to work in development, I wanted to work abroad and live like the people I lived with, and I wanted to serve my country- the natural satisfier of all those goals was Peace Corps.
If any of you have questions that you would like to see answered in a public forum, please feel free to email me or post them as a comment here. I'll do my best to answer them within a month or so.
Red handed
21:00 8 December 2008
Graphic Warning: If bloody scenes or descriptions of animal death bother you, do not read the first paragraph of this post.
I witnessed a double-homicide with an axe yesterday. Well, not so much witnessed as perpetrated, and not so much a double axe murdering as a chicken-killing. As the sole man in the house, I was requested to do the honors to two chickens that were slated to be eaten for Kourman Eid, a Muslim holiday. During the holiday people are supposed to host many guests and go guesting and we had elaborate preparations for the day. The killing was the first I had ever committed and it probably scarred me for life. Apparently I did a fine job, my axe blows fell strongly and swiftly and severed the heads in one blow, but I was shocked just how grisly the whole event was. Immediately after the beheading, the neck started streaming blood in nearly Quentin Tarantino-like proportions! The spurts of blood stained the concrete for up to ten feet away! I’d also heard about the actions of fowl whence beheaded and had heard about their lengthy death spells. While I didn’t watch a headless chicken run around (my host mother was kind enough to hold the condemned bird for its sentence and then hang it upside down most of the blood drained into a bucket), watching a bird’s body try and fly away from a grip without a head is certainly a sight and one that will haunt my memory for some time. I had blood on my hands, both figuratively and literally, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to truly wash myself of it.
The rest of the holiday and the preparations were really nice. Saori, my JICA friend, doesn’t live with a host family so we invited her over to assist our preparations and to be part of our family for the holiday. We all cleaned, cooked, and prepared the celebratory table together and it was a great, if exhausting, experience. We prepared the obligatory plov, Kyrgyz baklava (not as good as Turkish/Greek baklava but still delicious, a vinegrat salat, home made chips (yummy!), borsok (Kyrgyz national fried bread), a spicy cabbage salat, and other sweet desert dishes with honey. In addition to these, my host mother asked us to prepare some of our own dishes so I made some pumpkin fritters which were okay, but they were far outshined by the Sushi that Saori made (or at her insistence Sush-type food since it wasn’t Sushi in a purest sense). Regardless it was delicious, and it was amazing to have semi-authentic Japanese food, definitely not something I expected to be sampling in Kyrgyzstan.
In addition to hosting three waves of guests on our own, Saori and I made time to visit one of the students from our leadership club. He had invited us, and while he was a multi-mile walk, it was nice seeing him outside of the club and in his own element. Overall, it was my favorite holiday so far in Kyrgyzstan. I got to play host and make other people eat and drink, this time it was me being the one to say “Kooshai! Kooshai!” While I did play that role emphatically, when it came to pouring vodka shots, I was significantly more receptive to some guests’ wishes for “just a little” than my host mother. After I was finished pouring, she went around again and filled everyone’s up to the brim. Oh sweet revenge…
Graphic Warning: If bloody scenes or descriptions of animal death bother you, do not read the first paragraph of this post.
I witnessed a double-homicide with an axe yesterday. Well, not so much witnessed as perpetrated, and not so much a double axe murdering as a chicken-killing. As the sole man in the house, I was requested to do the honors to two chickens that were slated to be eaten for Kourman Eid, a Muslim holiday. During the holiday people are supposed to host many guests and go guesting and we had elaborate preparations for the day. The killing was the first I had ever committed and it probably scarred me for life. Apparently I did a fine job, my axe blows fell strongly and swiftly and severed the heads in one blow, but I was shocked just how grisly the whole event was. Immediately after the beheading, the neck started streaming blood in nearly Quentin Tarantino-like proportions! The spurts of blood stained the concrete for up to ten feet away! I’d also heard about the actions of fowl whence beheaded and had heard about their lengthy death spells. While I didn’t watch a headless chicken run around (my host mother was kind enough to hold the condemned bird for its sentence and then hang it upside down most of the blood drained into a bucket), watching a bird’s body try and fly away from a grip without a head is certainly a sight and one that will haunt my memory for some time. I had blood on my hands, both figuratively and literally, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to truly wash myself of it.
The rest of the holiday and the preparations were really nice. Saori, my JICA friend, doesn’t live with a host family so we invited her over to assist our preparations and to be part of our family for the holiday. We all cleaned, cooked, and prepared the celebratory table together and it was a great, if exhausting, experience. We prepared the obligatory plov, Kyrgyz baklava (not as good as Turkish/Greek baklava but still delicious, a vinegrat salat, home made chips (yummy!), borsok (Kyrgyz national fried bread), a spicy cabbage salat, and other sweet desert dishes with honey. In addition to these, my host mother asked us to prepare some of our own dishes so I made some pumpkin fritters which were okay, but they were far outshined by the Sushi that Saori made (or at her insistence Sush-type food since it wasn’t Sushi in a purest sense). Regardless it was delicious, and it was amazing to have semi-authentic Japanese food, definitely not something I expected to be sampling in Kyrgyzstan.
In addition to hosting three waves of guests on our own, Saori and I made time to visit one of the students from our leadership club. He had invited us, and while he was a multi-mile walk, it was nice seeing him outside of the club and in his own element. Overall, it was my favorite holiday so far in Kyrgyzstan. I got to play host and make other people eat and drink, this time it was me being the one to say “Kooshai! Kooshai!” While I did play that role emphatically, when it came to pouring vodka shots, I was significantly more receptive to some guests’ wishes for “just a little” than my host mother. After I was finished pouring, she went around again and filled everyone’s up to the brim. Oh sweet revenge…
Yay!
22:00 5 December 2008
Today I had one of the most touching and amazing experiences of my life in Kyrgyzstan so far. Apparently today was “International Day of Volunteerism” or something along those lines and we were encouraged to do an event in honor of the day. JICA headquarters also had been asking its volunteers to do something along the lines, so I decided with Saori to work with our leadership club (the one that I worked with choreography and their presentation on the Rayon with) and scheduled an event. The basic idea was to encourage our leadership club’s participants to engage in volunteer activities and we decided to lead by example. We scheduled an event at the village “Dietsky-Dom”, orphanage, to get to know the kids there and entertain them with the hopes that we can establish a further relationship between the orphanage and our club. The event was a great success as we participated in various activities with the children there like a clapping game, origami, singing, and a personal identification game. At the end of the session, we had the participants fill out questionnaires that will hopefully allow us to identify the needs of the residents there. In addition to seeing the impact of our presence on the kids there (which I believe was overwhelmingly positive- there was one child that was crutches bound due to some skeletal problem, but he was one of the most enthusiastic, friendly, and obviously pleased children there with us), the reaction of our club members was wonderful. They are high-school aged and it was incredible to see them get in a volunteer spirit, to the extent that one of the members was moved to tears as we left for the day.
After the event at the orphanage, unexpected to Saori and me, the children from the club held a Конкурс, a staged event with songs, recitations, dancing, and games, in our honor as volunteers. It was really sweet to hear what they said to us and the games we played were silly and fun. They also presented us with some small gifts and cards which were really cute and I have rarely felt so appreciated in my life. After the past few weeks, which have been a bit frustrating with my primary school assignment- more on that later perhaps- it was really good to feel so valued and tangibly appreciated. That club is a really choice group of students from here and I am really excited to be working with them in the future.
Today I had one of the most touching and amazing experiences of my life in Kyrgyzstan so far. Apparently today was “International Day of Volunteerism” or something along those lines and we were encouraged to do an event in honor of the day. JICA headquarters also had been asking its volunteers to do something along the lines, so I decided with Saori to work with our leadership club (the one that I worked with choreography and their presentation on the Rayon with) and scheduled an event. The basic idea was to encourage our leadership club’s participants to engage in volunteer activities and we decided to lead by example. We scheduled an event at the village “Dietsky-Dom”, orphanage, to get to know the kids there and entertain them with the hopes that we can establish a further relationship between the orphanage and our club. The event was a great success as we participated in various activities with the children there like a clapping game, origami, singing, and a personal identification game. At the end of the session, we had the participants fill out questionnaires that will hopefully allow us to identify the needs of the residents there. In addition to seeing the impact of our presence on the kids there (which I believe was overwhelmingly positive- there was one child that was crutches bound due to some skeletal problem, but he was one of the most enthusiastic, friendly, and obviously pleased children there with us), the reaction of our club members was wonderful. They are high-school aged and it was incredible to see them get in a volunteer spirit, to the extent that one of the members was moved to tears as we left for the day.
After the event at the orphanage, unexpected to Saori and me, the children from the club held a Конкурс, a staged event with songs, recitations, dancing, and games, in our honor as volunteers. It was really sweet to hear what they said to us and the games we played were silly and fun. They also presented us with some small gifts and cards which were really cute and I have rarely felt so appreciated in my life. After the past few weeks, which have been a bit frustrating with my primary school assignment- more on that later perhaps- it was really good to feel so valued and tangibly appreciated. That club is a really choice group of students from here and I am really excited to be working with them in the future.
Oblast Winners!
15:30 2 December 2008
My kids did wonderfully at the conference. I didn’t realize it was a competition, but it turns out that of all the oblast participants, they won first place for their presentation! I am so proud of those kids and really pleased that I can work with them. Soon will be a little-known holiday- International Volunteer Day, and we are going to have a program at an orphanage, I am really excited about the potential sustainability of the work we are doing with these club members. Ideally, the skills we are teaching them, primarily by placing them in situations where they need to use them, will go well beyond the two years I spend here.
Photos are of my group doing their skit, a rap they wrote, and singing one of their songs
"Green bean" Casserol
18:15 1 December 2008
I got home from a wonderful Thanksgiving in Karakol yesterday. I spent the weekend
there to celebrate the holiday with other volunteers, eat Kyrgyz versions of traditional holiday dishes, and just enjoy the company of Americans. It was definitely a success and the food was delicious- I think that after the meal was the first time I was truly stuffed in Kyrgyzstan. I brought cranberry sauce sent from home and made stuffing and note-quite green bean casserole. I say not quite because I was unable to find any green beans in Karakol, I assumed that I would be able to find canned ones, but unfortunately they don’t have them here and the bazaar only had pickled ones. It worked out okay though, I ended up making the same recipe but replaced the green beans with carrots and potatoes and it turned out pretty well.
Anyhow, it was definitely really good to see people but I’ve become so accustomed to village life that every weekend I spend in the city leaves me wanting to get back to the village. Things there are going well and tomorrow my leadership club students will have their presentation at the Childrens Issues Conference and I am excited to attend it.
I got home from a wonderful Thanksgiving in Karakol yesterday. I spent the weekend
there to celebrate the holiday with other volunteers, eat Kyrgyz versions of traditional holiday dishes, and just enjoy the company of Americans. It was definitely a success and the food was delicious- I think that after the meal was the first time I was truly stuffed in Kyrgyzstan. I brought cranberry sauce sent from home and made stuffing and note-quite green bean casserole. I say not quite because I was unable to find any green beans in Karakol, I assumed that I would be able to find canned ones, but unfortunately they don’t have them here and the bazaar only had pickled ones. It worked out okay though, I ended up making the same recipe but replaced the green beans with carrots and potatoes and it turned out pretty well.
Anyhow, it was definitely really good to see people but I’ve become so accustomed to village life that every weekend I spend in the city leaves me wanting to get back to the village. Things there are going well and tomorrow my leadership club students will have their presentation at the Childrens Issues Conference and I am excited to attend it.
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