Sporadic Musings of a Central Asian PCV

Waiting... Uzbek style

2009-12-27T18:53:00.000+06:00

12:48 24 December 2009

I am currently sitting in Tashkent International Airport of Uzbekistan waiting for my connecting flight to Tokyo Japan in the International Transit Lounge. Yeah, I’m pretty excited about that. So far my trip has gone pretty well other than an unusually long and obnoxious marshrutka ride into Bishkek yesterday. But I stayed at a friends place in the city last night and we ate shashlik (grilled marinated meat on a stick like a shish kabob) and I got duck, which was delicious. I’ve just been so excited about my trip, and getting a badly needed respite from Kyrgyzstan, and of course most excitedly, getting to see Saori!!! I barely slept last night, we went to bed super early because I was tired from the marshrutka ride and I woke up thinking, “Alright! I slept a lot now I am ready to get up and go to Japan!” only to find out that it was actually 2345 and I had a good 6 hours of on again off again sleep to get through before I departed. The departure from Bishkek was good and smooth- it is only an hour long flight from Bishkek to Tashkent but I have a twelve hour layover here which is just passing by with the most cruel slowness… Oh well, as soon as I get on the plane to Japan, I am going to hopefully be able to sleep (Peace Corps Medical gave me Melofonin specifically for that purpose) and then I will be reunited with Saori when I wake up!!! Yay!!! I can’t wait. Seriously. I can’t wait.

oh nos!

2009-12-27T18:52:00.002+06:00

19:30 21 December 2009

Uh-oh… I just got sick! And so soon to me leaving!!! I woke up with a sore throat today and it has degenerated into a full hacking productive cough- ewww, I will spare you the rest of the details but I am upset because I am leaving so soon and I don’t want to be sick in transit or at Saori’s place in Tokyo… Yikes. Luckily Peace Corps Medical got me started on some azithromycin, which, if it is bacterial, should ensure that I’m on the mend by the time I get there and, perhaps even more importantly, make it so I definitely won’t be contagious. But I say to my illness- Hey, buddy, bad timing!

In other news today I worked at the rayon-level English Olympiads for which I designed the tests for and I will just say that it was an… interesting experience more on that later I suppose. It was fun working with Holo though, a fellow volunteer that works not too far from me in Jet-Oguz and who I don’t get to see often, and it is always rewarding to see the tests that you designed and wrote used for relatively high-level purposes…

Heat-tenticilious

2009-12-27T18:52:00.001+06:00

11:20 16 December 2009

I’m home on my lunch break and I have been mulling over in my head an idea for my blog for some time about the cold here and the snow and the ice. My mom recently asked me if there was any black-ice here. But let’s start with some basics- while I don’t live in a terribly northern area, I live at a high altitude (over 6,000 feet) and it is pretty darn cold here- winter lows can be in the low single digits to teens below zero sometimes where I live and even colder (-40 and worse) in places like Naryn. Overall though, it’s a pretty cold country. And with November being unusually cool (as you remember we got a decent amount of snow and the temperature didn’t peak it’s head about freezing for over a week) a lot of people are afraid of the winter this year.

Now some of you that read this blog are in pretty cold places your self- Ithaca comes to mind, and no doubt are there much colder places during winter in the US than even the coldest locale of Kyrgyzstan. However, there are two main differences that I think bear consideration when assessing the impact of winter. The first is snow removal and the second is heat.

I saw the first snow plow in Kyrgyzstan I had ever seen a few days ago. I was stunned. I didn’t know they existed here. Why? Because the roads are pretty much covered with snow from November to March with only the main road (do to it’s traffic) ever really seeing periods of true clarity during the winter. This is because Kyrgyzstan is a very poor country- it can hardly afford to feed and clothe itself so I understand why snow-removal is not a top priority of the country’s government. So what happens when the collected snow isn’t removed and instead is just trampled by cars, horses, sheep, people, etc. Well, it turns to ice. And this is where the problems start. Kids love this, Kyrgyz children have a remarkable sense of balance and it is truly common sight to see kids take a daring running start and slide a good 20 feet. Impressive. Unfortunately, being the klutz I am, I can not nearly as successfully cope with such slippery areas. More often than not, I just fall (which is when I get to experience one of that aspects of Kyrgyz reaction that does actually upset me a little bit- instead of helping me up or asking if I am okay or even ignoring me, if someone falls, the almost universal immediate response is “Should have been more careful” Thanks… That would have been more useful BEFORE I fell…) Regardless, I fall a fair amount here and have learned a few tricks (walking on the toes of your feet, walking super slow, titling your head forward) to reduce the likelihood of my falling while increasing the ridiculousness of how I look.

But I have strayed from my original topic- snow removal is treacherous for pedestrians and also causes a huge amount of automotive accidents each year… I personally have seen vehicles slip off the road, hit each other, and winter taxis and marshrutkas are always at least a bit of a gamble. But in my opinion, winter this year here isn’t made so hard by ice on the roads- it is made by a much more pertinent problem of not having heat.

I live in an apartment that was built during the Soviet Union to house workers at a factory that made construction supplies. During the Soviet Union- this was a really great place- it had a toilet, refrigerator, running hot and cold water, really the works for a village in which the vast majority of people have outdoor toilets and have to fetch their water from a public well or spigot. But nowadays, while they are still good (I still have a working fridge and toilet and the water is on for at least a few hours each day when it isn’t off for three weeks at a time) the central heating system that was providing heat and hot water 20 years ago no longer works. This means that my apartment, other than the Peace Corps issued electric heater, has no heat. This is bad- most mornings I wake up and my kitchen is about 40 degrees (Fahrenheit). Brr… But I have been coping with this problem by using a combination of my Peace Corps heater and what I have dubbed my “Heat Tent 2.0” (to distinguish it from the useful but less successful Heat Tent 1.0). This is a really fabulous invention. It combines the heat of a heater with the heat-trapping ability of a tent to make a livable area in my apartment. I sleep in it and do most of my work in it, I just cook and eat outside of it. Essentially all I did was place some old sheets and drapes over a line I strung over my bed, but boy does it work! It gets right nice and toasty in there! So if you’ve called or chatted with me recently, you probably know how much I like my heat tent, but it really has improved my quality of life in this country and in my apartment.

Anyhow, I am tired of talking about heat and cold and ice and snow for know, but it is usually one of my favorite topics to talk about so feel free to ask questions and I will do my best to reply…

Heat Tent 2.0 4eva!

Dien Blogadariena - Thanks Giving!

2009-12-27T18:47:00.000+06:00

21:40 30 November 2009

Mmm… Thanksgiving dinner was DELICIOUS!!! We all gathered at fellow volunteer Lynnie’s house and had a pot-luck style dinner complete with stuffing, cranberries, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, veggies, and in place of turkey, four delicious rotisserie chickens. We all went the first round and then chilled out for a while and then had a much more disgusting and more awesome second round that primarily consisted of seven volunteers standing around in mostly silence munching on chicken and scooping up the rest of the fixings… Yum… I have no manners.

After the dinner itself we were planning on going home but in our path was a new club- CCCP (USSR) and with its thumping beats, Soviet decorum, enticing location, and spotlight, it drew us in where we decided to work off that Thanksgiving meal by dancing it all away. I have been to a few clubs in Kyrgyzstan (and honestly, I don’t really know if it is really part of being a volunteer) but this was far and away the best I have been too. Most clubs in Kyrgyzstan are dimly lit renovated sports halls with bad music from somebody’s mp3 player and maybe a disco-ball. But at CCCP, the music was great (still crapping Russian pop for the most part- but I have to admit that it is growing on me) and it was actually spun really well, in comparison to the awkward pauses and silences that plague some of the nightclubs here. The lighting was good, there was a fog machine, and the whole place was made to play off of the old Soviet Union- all the workers wore the Pinoneer’s uniform (the Soviet’s mandatory participation version of the Boy/Girl Scouts). So pretty much, it was a great time dancing and getting rid of the lethargy that was followed by the gluttony of earlier and made what was a good night a great one.

Russian Wedding Pictures

2009-12-27T11:38:00.002+06:00

Wow, free and fast internet is awesome. That's why I'm putting up so many pictures...

Russian Wedding!

2009-12-27T11:35:00.000+06:00

21:35 16 November 2009

Yesterday I returned again from Chuy oblast for the second time in the month- that’s about 13 hours of sitting on a marshrutka, usually crammed next to a huge older woman that is taking up half your seat, which was really not designed for anyone over the height of 4’10” anyhow- yeah, not so comfortable, but pretty darn cheap (it’s about seven dollars to get a similar distance as Washington to New York, even on a Chinatown bus you can’t do that good)

I digress, the reason that I went to Bishkek for the second time this month is because I was invited to my training host-sister’s wedding. I mentioned in an earlier entry how I had come to visit my PST host family and found out the dual news of my host-grandmother/mother dying but then the happier news of Alyona, my host sister’s upcoming marriage. So despite not having enough funds, I wanted to be there for the family during this happy time and I made the long and expensive trek to Chuy Oblast once again.

While I had been to many Kyrgyz weddings, as you may have remember- I wrote about them, I had never attended an ethnically Russian couple’s wedding. They are different in a whole lot of ways. First of all, the wedding is not just a ceremony and a party- it is an entire process that takes pretty much all day. After staying up late the night before getting ready, we woke up early to go prepare the house that the initial reception of the groom was going to come to. At this house they prepared decorations, food, and a type of event that they call “concourses”. Concourses are very common here and are used for everything from parties to celebrations to English-language demonstrations. They are part games, part presentations, part music… basically they are a variety show on a particular theme- in the case of the wedding they were all love themes. I suppose to describe the actual events of the concourse on this day. As the groom and his party drove up to the house, he exited the car and the bride’s party (including me) stopped him at the entrance way- his first task was to demonstrate his strength by chopping some wood. So, tuxedo-clad, and in mid-teens cold, he did as instructed and proceeded to the gate of the house. The gate was locked and the groom was presented with a three liter jar of tomato juice and his party asked to down it to find the key. Well after the groom and a couple other fellows from his party took turns sipping at the cold liquid, a babushka (grandmother) said something to the tune of “Oh screw this!” and rolled up her sleeve and retrieved the key. As you can see, the concourse was primarily to be a test of Igor’s (the husband) love and dedication to Alyona despite each obstacle placed in his way.

In addition to the test of love, there was another component to the whole action- money, money, money!!! After these first two steps each further one had a financial component. As Igor and his party entered through the gate he was confronted with a poster paper which all the girls (including Alyona) had kissed after applying lipstick- he was required to find her lips and each time he guessed wrong had to pay a fine. Further, he was required to spell her name out in money (something he tried to do initially by taking 5 one som coins and saying “Ah” “Leh” “Yu” “Heh” “Ah”- this was judged unsatisfactory by the bride’s party and they did a more satisfactory job with 10 and 20 som bills…). At this point, there were about 100 people in the courtyard of the house all shouting and yelling and trying to get inside with the bride’s party demanding more money and the grooms complaining about the cold (something we had little sympathy for as we had been outside waiting for them for a good 90 minutes before they came) and trying (with large degrees of success) to get everyone to take shots of vodka. But eventually (after having to spontaneously compose poetry about Alyona and show off his dance skills and shouting his love for her) Igor got inside and this is where the real bidding arose. There sat Alyona (looking absolutely beautiful in her white wedding dress) next to her brother Maksim and it was the groom’s party’s responsibility to “buy” that seat from Maksim so that they could proceed with the wedding. A fierce round of negotiating began with them offering Maksim increasingly large sums of money and asking him to name a price, to which he replied quite wittily, “you keep throwing down money and I’ll tell you when…” after numerous pauses in the negotiation, he continued with “Well, if you don’t want to shell out for her, it doesn’t matter to me, I am sure someone else would be willing to pay for such a beautiful bride.” But eventually a price was settled on- 2,000 soms (about $50) and Igor was able to sit next to his bride as everyone breathed a sigh of relief and took celebratory shots.

Naturally, after shots comes driving- (Haha, joke- the drivers were pretty sober) and we went to the Gost-Register, which unfortunately is not where the ghosts much register, but where civil contracts are made. Because of the USSR, religious weddings are relatively uncommon (though growing) and most couples have the actually ceremony of marriage in a government building. So it was done, in a pretty typical ceremony they exchanged rings, said vows, and popped some champagne. Then it was time to really party!

Well, not yet actually, first we had to do a Bishkek tradition of “walking” despite the flimsy-thinness of the dress, tradition dictates that new couples walk around the scenic areas of Bishkek to take pictures and show of their new love. So we did and as I was the official unofficial photographer, I was on hand to document everything that went on. We figured it was enough when both Igor and Alyona were literally shivering from the cold and unable to hold still for pictures any longer, but we really did get some nice pictures that will make a good keepsake for the couple.

So now, finally, it’s time to party (and eat perhaps more importantly- I was starving!). We arrived to the café where the reception was held at about 1600 and immediately start pouring Papa Kolya’s home-made wine, vodka shots, and home made pear juice, and stuffing our faces with a delicious variety of snacks, salads, breads, and sweets. This is the part of the weddings that I had been to that were Kyrgyz so I expected it to be very similar- and in some respects it was- there was dancing and toasts and all those nice things, but there were a lot of differences. First of all- Russian people are crazy. And I mean this in a totally positive and happy way- they are totally unselfconscious about themselves when it comes to dancing and having fun, and that translates into everything from a fat guy in a cape and no shirt playing a inflatable guitar with an Uncle Sam hat on to me and my host brother and the groom and a bunch of others doing a can-can to American 50’s music. The music was also surprisingly good- while there was a lot of the typical Russian crap pop, there was also a lot of funky old songs and even some, as I mentioned, American oldies, that really pleased me. It was fun, a lot of fun, and there was a lot of dancing (and less toasting, which suited me just fine).

After about eight hours of eating, dancing, drinking, and repeating that cycle, it was time to pack up and go home. I helped my family gather all the left-overs and then traveled home with them in a marshrutka to return and lay down for blessed, blessed sleep. The next morning I left early back to site but left with them the nearly 800 pictures I took- that will be a nice keepsake for them. And for me- well, it was a truly great experience and one that I will certainly never forget in my life.

Snowy village pictures

2009-11-11T13:11:00.003+06:00

Images of a Jehova's Witness that lives in my village and always tries to convert me (in a very friendly manner though), the statue of Lenin in front of my school that looks like he is wearing a life-preserver, a shepherd with sheep grazing them through the snow, and the hazards of doing laundry during winter-time...

Snow, snow, go away, even though you're here to stay...

2009-11-11T13:10:00.000+06:00

22:00 10 November 2009

I feel like one can judge the spirit of someone by their reaction to snow. If it is one of giddiness and excitement, they are young and full of hope; if it is gloomy and disappointed, they are old and cynical. Well, I think I have finally crossed that line. Even last year (a year which by everyone’s account was incredibly mild and had little snow) I still got excited whenever it snowed, which even though it was mild, was still a lot more than at home. This winter, by everyone’s account, will not be so forgiving, and so far it has proven to be so.

The first snow of the season (on the lower lands around the lake, it has been in the hills and mountains for a while) was yesterday but was just a dusting that quickly melted. However, as I arose this morning, I found myself mortified looking out the window at about ten inches of snow already on the ground and not far from white-out conditions as the snow fell horizontally. Yikes. It was cold, but not too bad, by the time I got up it was already almost 30 degrees outside, but the wind and stinging snow made my walk to school absolutely miserable. The direction of my walk brought the wind into my into my face exactly; it was so strong and the snow so stinging that I couldn’t even raise my face up and had to continuously look down at the five feet in front of me. Luckily the same wind had intensity (lesser) but not direction for my walk home and so in addition to keeping the snow off my face and myself pretty warm as I walked back, the wind also helped propel me along the slippery way.

Unsurprisingly, outside the yard of a house, snow removal is non-existent and pedestrians are left to wander the roads single file searching for car tracks to trudge along. Often, in the semi-frozen conditions of today’s snow, you are left to step into what is certainly a icy muddy puddle or a fresh snow bank with a mystery at the bottom. The potholes, open manholes, ragged pavement, and uncovered gutters become even more dangerous with the introduction of a concealing layer of fresh powder.

By the time the snow had finally finished this afternoon it lay thick on the ground, up to about a foot and a half in places… That’s a lot of snow for me, more than I have seen in a long time, and I think not much less than the entire quantity we got last year. And while my twenty minute trek to school left me hating life and cursing the cold, once the wind died down and I walked home, I appreciated a little bit that indeed, it was really beautiful outside. So while I can’t say that I am looking forward to this winter, I just have to keep a good attitude and look at the positive sides of this cold and snow- beautiful landscapes and good skiing. Saori, a true hater of the cold though, probably is glad that she’s not here for this one… :o)

(Interesting Post Script: I just looked back through all my entries and apparently last year, the first real snow was on November 11th, just about the same time as this year, and according to that journal entry I was not as excited as I remembered… I guess perhaps even a year ago I was already too jaded to enjoy it.)

Why, that is just capital!

2009-11-11T13:08:00.003+06:00

21:35 08 November 2009

I just got back from three days in Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, and have a lot to report from the trip. First of all, I went during the time of our quarter-end break which was a week long but passed much more quickly. I went for two main reasons, to visit a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a while and to hopefully buy tickets for a vacation this winter. Luckily, I was successful on both accounts. You’ve already read the sad story that was the dark cloud over my trip, but other than that I had a wonderful time.

Thursday night I spent with my youngest host sister Aijan who is studying in Bishkek. I hung out with her, her cousin, and one of her roommates in great Kyrgyz-style, eventually sleeping the four roommates and me all on the floor of a one bedroom apartment. I felt very integrated and treated like family. It was great, and I met for the first time my cousin’s older brother (I have met my cousin many times, she and Aijan both speak competent English but we usually speak a weird mix of Russian, English, and random Kyrgyz that they have taught me when we are together). But the brother used to be a member of an elite Kyrgyz military group and meeting him and seeing the pictures from his service (there was a lot of joint training with US military personnel) was really interesting for me.

Coming to my original host family, other than the sad news I already reported, I found out that my twenty one year old host sister Alyuna is getting married! She has been dating a guy since I have been in training and so amid their sadness there is the joy of Alyuna’s upcoming marriage. I am hoping to go once again this Friday to go to the wedding. Should be exciting and fun and a good event for the family to come together for a joyous occasion. I have been to and chronicled Kyrgyz weddings so I will be excited to see a Russian one, I am sure there will be many differences!

Ah, but perhaps the biggest news from my trip to Bishkek was that I bought tickets for a winter trip to Japan! As you can imagine, I have been missing Saori quite a bit since she left, and I will be overjoyed to be reunited with her in December for a few weeks. I have to admit, that I think that the culture shock will overwhelm me- Tokyo is even more developed than US cities and hearing her stories of the technology there make my head spin (their toilet is button operated and has all sorts of special features like a heated seat and music or something- my toilet flushes with a bucket of water…)

While I went primarily to visit Host Country Nationals that I have been close with, I also was excited my last night there to visit with some volunteers that are from Chuy oblast. I stayed with one of them (the one with whom I played Frisbee when I first got to my training village, if you remember that far back) and it was great to catch up with all of my friends from the capitol region. Also, I one a bunch at poker! Well, actually only about $3.50, but that’s a lot here! All in all though, it was a great trip to Chuy oblast and I am very happy that I was able to go.

R.I.P.

2009-11-11T13:08:00.001+06:00

20:00 08 November 2009

I was originally going to include this post as part of the one that follows it, but felt that it really should stand alone.

It had been too long since I last visited my original host family. You probably don’t remember, but I lived with my host mom Mama Luba (actually grandmother, but functioned as my host mom as she was the one that cooked for me, got me up, yelled at me when I didn’t do something right, and basically was the biggest person that aided me with my integration into Kyrgyzstan), her husband Papa Kolya, their daughter Irina, and their grandchildren Alyuna and Maksim (20 and 17 years old). The expense and travel restrictions of Bishkek mean that I rarely go to the capital city of the country (from which my old host family lives about 25 minutes away) and the last time I had seen them was before I went to Russia. It had been too long and I figured my upcoming Fall break was a good opportunity to see friends and family in capital.

As soon as I got to the house I knew something was wrong. Irina greeted me at the gate with a friendly but subdued greeting and when I entered I could tell immediately that something was off about the atmosphere. Mama Luba was absent. Papa Kolya was happy to see me, but was visibly disturbed. The atmosphere at the table was quiet, something that in three months of living there I don’t think I ever observed- dinner was usually a cacophony of argument which at first seemed to be hostile and unfriendly but later turned out to be nothing more than silly arguments about the exact location of a café in town, how much eggs were selling for at the bazaar, or whether they should eat raspberry or strawberry jam. It wasn’t until we after finished eating though that my fears were realized. After I saw Papa Kolya petting the dog and asking “Do you miss Luba? I bet you do… It’s boring without her, isn’t it?” I decided to ask “I am scared to ask, but where is she?” to which, he replied, saying what I hoped not to hear, that she died. Apparently she had been in a hospital for a bit, come home, and then died at home a few days before I got there.

The pain visible in the family wasn’t the dull remembrance of a loved one that I remembered from the Koran recitation at my new village host family, but the acute pain that comes with recent loss. Still people in the village were just finding out and a few came to give their condolences and talk about Mama Luba while I was there. She is someone that probably will not be remembered by many people outside of my training village, but I know that she made a big difference in my life and the life of the other volunteers that were hosted by them. She was a strong woman, forceful in her opinion and rarely convinced that she was wrong. She was also an incredibly… I can’t find the English word for it, but she was shustraya- funny, clever, joking, and a little mischievous. She loved to play pranks on the other Pre-Service Training families and would call them up to tell jokes. She taught me how to do laundry by hand and she criticized me for making the bed wrong and yelled at me for helping shovel another families coal. She mended my pants and told me I needed to iron my clothes more than I did. She praised me for my willingness to help out around the house and my language. She was funny, and strong, and perhaps one of the “realest” people I have ever met.

Mama Luba
1946-2009
Goodbye, I will miss you.

Halloween Fun

2009-11-11T13:04:00.002+06:00

16:45 02 November 2009

This last weekend I celebrated Halloween with fellow volunteers in nearby Karakol city. While there were less than ten of us, we managed to have a good time together and were dressed in an assortment of odd costumes that certainly gave the Kyrgyz who saw us on our walk home reason to pause and stare… Haha. As I discussed earlier, I dressed up as Goose from Top Gun and wore the shortest pair of shorts I hope ever to wear in my life. All in all it was a good time though, and a great way to blow of some steam that builds up in the village.

"Success Challenged Activity"

2009-11-11T12:57:00.001+06:00

19:35 28 October 2009

Well, Monday I had what I suppose could be called a “mixed success” program with my leadership club. We had what on paper seemed like it could be a good idea, but the implementation for it fell through a lot and it didn’t end up at all how I and Kelechek (the name of the group) hoped it would. However, having a debrief about it at the meeting today was a good opportunity to analyze our mistakes, see what went wrong, and figure out how to correct them in the future. So while it was a bit disappointing for me Monday, I have faith that the mistakes and correcting them will prove to be a positive experience for the future.

Before Saori left, she proposed the idea of holding some type of career festival for the kids of our villages. Career festivals and even the stereotypical parents telling about their jobs day in elementary school are an integral part of many countries’ job and work cultures. Thinking about future professions and seeing the pluses and minuses of each profession is an important process to us but that here seems to get little to no attention. Before attending university or selecting a trade, students have scant opportunities to decide which profession they want to pursue and even less information on how they could go about it. Saori’s idea was to hold a type of training/informational seminar for village kids in the upper classes at schools and have people of different professions come to speak to them about their professions, how they became them, and the benefits and drawbacks about them.

After she left, Kelechek and I began to try and organize the event, first surveying schools to find which kind of professions they would be interested in hearing from, and then organizing the date and logistics of the event. While the first part went well, so well in fact that I probably relinquished too much control to the kids, the latter part was plagued with difficulties and resulted in a somewhat lackluster seminar. I spoke with Saori about how proud I was of the kids and found that my role in the group was diminishing from that of leader to that of facilitator, something excellent for the long-term sustainability of the group and would make the transition easier when I leave next year. I fear that I may have made that move too quickly though, and a discussion post-event with the Director of the Dotz (the organization and place where we meet) where she expressed her disappointment went something like “Yes, they are doing well and are motivated and organized, but they are still kids and sometimes you need to step in and make sure they are taking the proper steps.”

The event Monday was significantly smaller than we hoped. We invited 45 students and about 20 showed up (and more than half of those late). But more importantly, out of the ten people that we invited to speak about their professions, only three showed up and we found two last minute to talk in lieu of the others. Other problems abounded with time limits and the speakers needing to leave early, the questions our kids prepared with sloppy and off-topic, and their was no clear flow of the program as a whole. We had designed this day as an experiment, with the hope of doing school-wide assemblies on the same topic in the future throughout the village. And while it did not go as planned, speaking with the participants after the seminar, it did seem like they still gained some interesting information and knowledge.

I won’t bore you with the details of how we plan to improve it in the future here, but I believe that future events based around the same principles could yield a lot of success and a very under-examined portion of Kyrgyz children’s lives.

Kyrgyzstache

2009-10-23T11:25:00.001+06:00

11:15 23 October 2009

I’m looking to get some feedback on a new look I’ve been rocking recently. I had a goatee for quite some time ad was decided that it was time for a new look a few weeks ago. So I was just going to shave it all off, and started to, but decided just for fun to leave a mustache for the day, with no intent of showing anyone. I forgot about it however and went to the bazaar later that day with my gloriously sheathed upper lip. I got a few strange looks, and was wondering why that was. Of course… it was because I was wearing a mustache. I decided at the very least that I would keep it until Halloween (I make a mean Goose from Top Gun with a pair of aviators and volleyball shorts) and I planned on shocking and disgusting my fellow Peace Corps volunteers. Admittedly, somewhat to my disappointment, I didn’t receive this disgust… While a volunteer or two gave me the reaction I was hoping for, the majority didn’t notice it and some even said that it suits me! So I am now appealing to you, my readership audience to give me the truth, is it ridiculous? Does it actually look good? Should I shave it the morning of Nov. 1? I heard a rumor that mustaches are coming back in style in the States but I’m skeptical of this at best. Anyhow, I would very much appreciate your input! Thanks in advance.

End of Summer Fun

2009-10-20T17:17:00.003+06:00

Pictures of how I celebrated my birthday, on the beach of Issyk Kul with the last remnants of summer still lingering in the air- something I wish we still had now. It's getting cold!

Pictures from my Horse trek

2009-10-20T16:41:00.003+06:00

Pictures from my August horse trek that I took with Saori. We went to the high pastures (jailos) and even to a glacier! Loads of fun.

Pictures from my Horse trek

2009-10-20T13:22:00.003+06:00

Good times!

2009-10-20T13:22:00.001+06:00

Svadbar time! (again)

2009-10-19T19:05:00.002+06:00

14:30 18 October 2009

This weekend was a lot of fun! I found out that my extended host family (two sisters, brother in law, nieces, and a few cousins) would be in town for a wedding and I was more than pleased to meet with them, I definitely miss having that family element in my life sometimes and it was wonderful to see some of the people I am closest too for a while. Also, the way that I am treated within the family is very much as a sibling… I mentioned last week at the wedding how I felt very much part of the community, well the last two days I have felt very much part of the family. In particular, my host sister Aijan and her cousin Aidai, both of which speak English pretty well are a real riot and fun to hang out with, they are both two years younger than me, but they are really funny girls and I love to hang out with them.

While I just came to visit the family the day of the wedding, being family it was insisted that I also attend the wedding so after I went home and put on a suit, I headed over to the wedding (at the same café that I was at a week ago). The funniest part of the wedding was that the program was EXACTLY the same as a week ago. The menu, the salads, the music, the decorations, and even the games were the same ones that I had seen last week. This was funny because the MC played a joke on the couple where he gave them each a half of a cabbage and told them something was hidden in the folds of it. Fifteen minutes later and without luck, the groom and bride were informed that they just ripped up a cabbage for nothing, as the whole game was a practical joke. Being able to call this despite my host sister’s objections “No! He says that there is a prize inside the cabbage!” was funny. Overall it was just eerie having the same wedding with different people.

All things considered though, this wedding was even more fun than the one last week because of the company I kept. Rather than a few students around whom I felt an obligation to keep my professional demeanor, I was able to kick back and relax knowing I was in the careful and considerate hands of my extended family. While I didn’t drink to excess, it seems like most of the rest of my family did and a good time was had by all.

It was a great time and this morning I went back to play with my nieces and say goodbye to everyone before they headed back to Bishkek. Not terribly surprisingly all of the family woke up with horrible headaches (apparently after I went home they went back and continued drinking). It was funny to sit around and recount the night before, a scene that didn’t seem out of place to me, just it was funnier to be doing it with 40-60 year old Kyrgyz adults rather than my college buddies.

Oh, in other news, I got my internet working! I’m updating from home! Woo! Also, I have google talk, an instant message program based on gmail, and I will be on a fair amount since it is cheap for me (I pay by the megabyte and it used very few MBs). So chat with me sometime!

Cell Phones and English Clubs

2009-10-19T19:05:00.001+06:00

23:30 15 October 2009

Well, I have some good news and some bad news. I bought a new cell phone this last weekend that should theoretically allow me to access the internet from home. This has had a negative impact on my budget for the rest of the month though… Looks like my diet will consist mainly of potatoes, bread, and tomatoes for the rest of the month but it will all be worth it if I can start accessing internet from my house!

So the good news is that probably by the time you are reading this I have obtained internet at home but the bad news is it isn’t today. I bought the phone last weekend but they did not have any USB cables left to sell so I have been waiting anxiously to be able to go back to Karakol to get one. Today was the day as I was in Karakol to cover an English club for a friend that is in the States at the moment and was able to pick up the cable! Hoorah! But it’s not working :o(. Anyhow, something is messed up with my computer so I think I will have to wipe my hard drive and see if I can get it working then.

About the English club though… I have taught a whole lot of English clubs since my service started here, probably somewhere of an average of three a week (so well over a hundred I believe) but this one today I believe was the most successful and most fun one I have ever given. Overall the schools in Karakol are better (urban flight is not the problem here that it is in the States) and the club was given only to very interested students. This meant they were already pretty advanced and SUPER motivated. I used a lesson plan I had written before but it was so much more fun when the kids where as into learning it as I was! It really gave me hope and showed me how much fun teaching English can be at its best. I’m currently applying to the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship program which would, if I am successful, provide me with an opportunity to teach in Russia for a year. Having classes like the one today make me excited at that prospect!

Svadbar time!

2009-10-19T19:04:00.000+06:00

11:30 10 October 2009

Yesterday I had a really great experience. I was invited to and attended a wedding of the brother of one of my students. While I didn’t know him personally, it was still a lot of fun to attend a wedding, and I was the only non-Kyrgyz person out of nearly 200 (there weren’t any Russians even!). The food was great, we danced the night away, and I felt more integrated than I ever had in this country, I was really treated not as an outsider but as a member of the family. What a great experience!

As with pretty much everything in Kyrgyzstan, it started well after it was supposed to; my invitation said to come at 17:00 to the café and I stood outside for a good 90 minutes before the wedding celebration actually started. While Kyrgyzstan is nominally Muslim and certainly there is a minority of religious Muslims here, wedding traditions seem to stem more from Western/Russian influences as the bride and groom come dressed in the western traditional tux and white bridal gown. There are definitely some marked differences between Western weddings and Kyrgyz ones however.

I think the world throughout weddings are known to be times of excellent and plentiful food- certainly Kyrgyzstan is no exception to this rule and the spread started with about six or seven salads, bread, borsok (Kyrgyz national fried dough), and the obligatory alcohol. This was followed eventually by a “first” dish of a Kazahk soup with beef and noodles and then the main dish of a beef stew with a beet salad, mashed potatoes, and rice. But no Kyrgyz gathering is complete without besh barmak, the national dish which consists of pretty much just meat and noodles and is eaten with hands. While everyone eats a little of this, everyone is already stuffed at this point so people take it more lightly and the more important aspect is that everyone takes home a huge chunk of boiled meat to eat over the next couple days (this is such an established tradition that the waiters and waitresses actually supply each of the guests with plastic bags to stuff full of meat, salad, bread, etc.)

One thing I found interesting about the wedding was the way the cake was served. I don’t know what the tradition comes from, but instead of everyone getting cake, the different tables try and outbid each other to get one of two hunks of cake. Once the auction is over, the money (which at the wedding reached 2,000 som- about $50 and more than a teacher’s salary for a month) is given to the new couple in exchange for the cake- every one else goes hungry… (Not that that is possible given the rest of the food)

Given that I was with several of my students, I was careful to limit my alcohol consumption (I’ve become pretty good at resisting the huge amount of societal pressure when I want to) but that didn’t prevent me from having a lot of fun doing things other than eating. Given the mostly secular nature of most Kyrgyz, the biggest official moment was when the couple both signed the state marriage contract, something very different and much more official and divorced from the love aspect of the marriage, no kiss, no “I do’s”. But regardless, following this there was a lot of dancing, and different silly games played by everyone in attendance. One thing I have noticed about Kyrgyz gatherings and parties is that they usually have to have a program which usually includes unusual activities and games and prizes. While I haven’t been to so many weddings in the States, parts of this one seemed more like a Bar Mitzvah than a wedding but maybe I’m just ignorant.

Throughout the entire night, each of the tables should make a toast to the new bride and groom, with a few representatives from each table getting up and speaking. Despite knowing the bride or groom, but being the only foreigner there, I was asked to give a toast, something which was nerve-racking but also rewarding after I gave it and felt that I did a good job. But, as I said, it was one of the most positive experiences in this country and really made me realize that I was integrated into this communicating more than I realized I was. That’s always a good feeling.

The (not so) triumphant return!

2009-10-19T18:58:00.000+06:00

20:35 08 October 2009

The (not so) triumphant return!

So, my friends, I apologize for the long absence from this electronic forum. Actually, that isn’t true. I’ve spent the several months I haven’t been writing here spending time with Saori. Sorry guys, but I was a bit too busy falling in love to keep up with my blog. Unfortunately, Saori is gone. Certainly not from my heart, but from this glorious and increasingly cold country. Her two years finished up a few weeks ago and she is currently back in Japan. Of course, on the net, this is a negative thing for me, I miss her terribly and can’t wait until we are together again. But it does have some positive side effects, one of which being that the time I am not spending with her can be used for other pursuits- like updating my blog for the first time in three months.

I promise you now that I will do a better job of keeping up with this open electronic diary in the future, but I figured a bit of a recap of summer was in order to start things off.

Summer was fun. A lot of fun. And not only fun, it was actually a pretty productive time for me too. While I didn’t have classes, the leadership club that Saori started and that I currently run was still meeting and we had some things going on even then. The most impressive, I believe was a 300 kilometer walkathon between the cities of Balykchy and Karakol. The walkathon was staged over ten days and was staged to raise awareness of the plight of the handicapped in this country (no ADA laws exist here and ramps, good pavement, and wheelchair friendly areas are hard to find even in the capital city). The kids didn’t participate in the marathon, but we partnered with the Kyzyl Suu orphanage to have the kids prepare the welcoming event for the participants. We prepared a huge mural for the welcoming party to write their dreams about the future on (The theme of the marathon was Куда мы идём? “Where are we going?”) and so the wishes for the future were written on slips of paper resembling animal tracks and then pasted on our mural of the world. In addition to this, the kids helped organize the crowd at the finish and half walked the final 5 kilometers (we brought some disabled children along with us that were excited to participate and see how many people lead rich and fulfilling lives despite their disabilities). So that was a really positive experience for me and I believe the children got a lot of benefits from participating in it.

On the fun side of my summer, apart from my trip to Russia, I spent a lot of time at the South Shore beaches, hosted some friends from Switzerland for a week, and went on a horse trek with Saori. The horse trek was a really great time, we went up very high into the mountains behind our village and even got to a glacier and got to hike around on it for a while. It was cool to think that while we were in a completely different landscape (despite the nearly 6,000 ft. altitude, my village is relatively flat) even though we were only about 25 kilometers from where I sleep! I’ll try and put up some pictures of that in the future.

Well, I think that is enough for now, I will have to get used to writing these things again… But know that this is just the first of more frequent updates.

Pictures from Moscow...

2009-07-19T16:22:00.002+06:00

Good friends and good cat

2009-05-28T21:32:00.003+06:00

Why the place I live is beautiful- a hike

2009-05-28T21:27:00.001+06:00

Celebrating Victory Day

2009-05-28T21:19:00.003+06:00

How the Kyrgyz celebrate the 9th of May (Victory Day in the Patriotic War-WWII)

My village's animal bazaar

2009-05-28T21:13:00.002+06:00

It's nearly May... Why is it snowing?

2009-05-28T21:11:00.001+06:00

Cool Experiences...

2009-04-23T10:33:00.003+06:00

12:45 19 April 2009

I have had nothing but awesome people come visit me off of couch surfing! This past weekend I had this really interesting and intelligent Mexican national come visit, he is so cool! He has worked with National Geographic, written a prize winning book, and even worked with Gabriel Garcia Marquez! We took a great walk around my village on a beautiful day and I showed them all the sites of it. I found a cool new place in my village too, there used to be a PMK, a construction materials collective factory and the remnants of it exist today, including an absolutely huge sickle and hammer symbol. Anyhow, the pictures tell the stories better then the words. All of these are courtesy and copyright of Temoris Grecko.

Spring Left?

2009-04-23T10:10:00.000+06:00

1530 16 April 2009

I wrote earlier that Spring had returned. Perhaps my mistake was having written that on April Fool’s Day. While this is still true to a certain extent, I was reminded this morning that I still live in quite a cold country. After a few weeks of nice and mild weather, trees beginning to blossom, and the color green being reintroduced to my life, I awoke this morning to a few inches of snow blanketing the landscape. It’s already mostly melted, creating muddy conditions everywhere, but it was still quite a shock to arise in mid April to snow everywhere! Unfortunately, I was also told that the late cold snap after the trees began blossoming might mean that the apricot harvest this year will be severely less than usually hoped for in the summer.

Дурок anyone?

2009-04-23T10:05:00.002+06:00

17:30 06 April 2009

I just had a great experience! Some couch-surfing Israeli tourists came to visit and stayed at my apartment for two days! And they couldn’t have come at a better time, it was during Passover and I got to share a very pleasant Shabbat, except for one experience, and it was the first time I really prayed since I was in country. We even made matzoh brie and ate kosher food! It was so exciting. I was surprised and impressed how observant they are staying in spite of the difficulties that come with travelling. They brought a huge bagful of Israeli kosher meat, matzot, and other goodies that they were more than happy to share with me.

In the process of their staying here I learned a lot of cool stuff , my favorite being the Russian card game “Дурок” or “Fool” that is a lot of fun to play. In addition to playing a lot of card games, we also ate even more good food, learned a tiny bit of Hebrew to augment my miniscule knowledge of the language.

In other news, I’ve been slowly but surely making my apartment “my” apartment by putting up stuff, cleaning, and getting all the necessary home items that make it all nice and lived in. I went to a flea market in Karakol and got loads of old Soviet high quality cookware (all the new stuff is poor quality and Chinese made, the good stuff is the old stuff, and it’s also cheaper!). One thing I think is interesting about all the Soviet era products is that the prices were so stable then that they were actually stamped upon the metal products! So I know that my frying pan cost one ruble, my forks were each 15 kolpeks (ruble cents) and my pot was one ruble, 50 kolpeks. All of these are incredibly low prices, and it really makes me understand why, in an economic time of high inflation, high unemployment, and other problems, why so many people here pine for the Soviet Union.

Spring Returns!

2009-04-22T14:25:00.002+06:00

14:00 27 March 2009

Yesterday I did the new apartment dance! I moved into an apartment in my village and I am so pleased! I moved mainly because while I, overall, got along quite well with my family, I missed the freedom of being able to cook for myself on a daily basis, go and leave as I please, and have guests over whenever I wanted. My old host family was really nice and even helped me move by getting all my stuff into a horse cart and taking it over, I was going to hire a taxi but they were really willing to help out and I really appreciated it.

My new place seems like it will be a great location for all of this. It’s located in a really nice, calm, area of town on the first floor of two in a complex that used to house the workers of a Soviet era factory. The apartment has a lot of cool Soviet-y things about, little quirks like a radio that only has one channel on it (during Soviet times, it was used to receive the radio channel, there was no possibility to receive other frequencies) and a commemorative plaque from the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Other than these, it’s a pretty typical apartment with two bedrooms and a nice kitchen with a refrigerator! I even have running water and a toilet, though I still have to buy a seat for it. The nicest part of it though is the gorgeous balcony I have out back, overlooking a rose garden that is going to be just beautiful once they bloom, the mountains to the south, and a little glimpse of the lake to the north.

To celebrate my new domicile, I had the JICA volunteers and Emil, an awesome HCN friend of ours, over for a dinner. I got to inaugurate my stove, dishes, table, and chairs in the place that I assume will probably be a hot spot for hanging out in my village, the JICAs both live with host families so it will be easier to cook at my place without getting in anyone’s way. Amid all the good feelings though, I do have to admit that I will miss certain aspects of living with a host family. The cultural integration I had on a daily basis and practice with Russian won’t exist as much, though I am lucky that I have a talkative neighbor to chat with and practice. I also really liked that family in general and hope that I can retain a certain attachment with them in the future.

Just bridekidding

2009-04-22T14:25:00.001+06:00

1400 23 March 2009

After two weeks away from site, first at the Peace Corps Program and Design Management seminar and then the Diversity Week in Naryn, I am finally back in site just in time to enjoy a week off of school! It will have been three weeks since I last taught when we get back into the classroom, I hope I didn’t forget everything I knew! I celebrated Nooruz, a pre-Islamic Turkic spring holiday that is one of the biggest festivals in Kyrgyzstan, in Naryn with some other volunteers and an American tourist that I met there. The celebration consists of concerts throughout the county, eating traditional Kyrgyz food, and in some places the national horse games. While I have viewed riders preparing for the horse games, there were none in Naryn city (there are a few national horse games, the most interesting and famous being Ulak tartysh in Kyrgyz, known as buzkhashi elsewhere, an ancient, intense and violent game dating back to the Golden Horde where mounted riders try to pick up a beheaded goat carcass and deposit it into one of two goals using whatever means possible. It is often referred to as the most dangerous sport in the world as fatalities are not uncommon (and even expected) at the brutal international championships in Tajikistan- Usually the Tajik or Kyrgyz win, but the Afghans are renown for their bravery and frowned upon practice of playing with AK-47s). I was disappointed to not be able to see the horse games on Nooruz but have heard that they are played throughout the spring and summer and so I hope to catch a match at some point during the summer, I promise to upload pictures of the carnage then.

I was surprised and for a bit confused and worried this week however when I found out that my host-sister had been bride kidnapped. I knew that she had been dating one of her former classmates for quite a long time. Her boyfriend being Uyghur, a Muslim Western-Chinese ethnic/cultural/linguistic group, (bride kidnapping is pretty strictly a Kyrgyz/Kazakh) I was worried that some random Kyrgyz guy had kidnapped her non-consensually. I was relieved to find out that this was not the case and that it was indeed her boyfriend who had kidnapped her at the urging of his Kyrgyz friends. While she was unaware that it was going to happen, talking with her about it later made me believe that she was content with the occurrence and she seemed relatively happy in her new life. Bride kidnapping is a complex and controversial issue even here and not something I want to get started talking about in a public forum like this. However, it is often exercised in a cultural manner like with my host sister where the intent to marry was already in place, this I find still a bit off-setting due to my cultural upbringing but have many less intellectual qualms about.

Diversity vsio!

2009-04-22T14:11:00.002+06:00

18:45 20 March 2009

The conclusion of Diversity Week was today and, having viewed and participated in the whole thing, I think it was quite successful. I was hesitant the first two days, all of the sessions were conducted in English (the primary participants were students from the English language program at the University) and given the rapid rate of speech of some of the volunteers and some of the slang they used I wasn’t sure the extent to which they were able to follow and understand the proceedings. Speaking with some of the students after the sessions one of the days, however, made me realize with some bit of surprise, that their English was actually quite excellent, and with the exception of some of the slang, they understood pretty much everything.

The sessions I helped lead were ones on university culture, U.S. government, and religion in the States. The latter two were especially dear to me as I spoke about my experience working on the Hill and my experience as a religious minority in the States and then how it effects my identity here. Overall, I think that they enjoyed my sessions, they asked a lot of interesting questions about them, they seemed pretty interested in Muslims in America, it was interesting to them that the Muslims in a non-Muslim dominant country like the States are, overall, much more observant than the Muslims in majority Muslim Kyrgyzstan. I was also impressed with their knowledge of the American governmental system, and it was really fun playing the part of High School civics teacher explaining checks and balances, the branches of government, and what a bicameral legislature is.

In addition to being a positive experience in general, another volunteer and I are trying to start a Diversity Committee within Peace Corps itself. While it would probably also work with individual volunteers and how they can deal with their personal diversities in country (something that can be difficult for some volunteers of different backgrounds to do) we have a goal to hold seminars and trainings through out the country to educate the Kyrgyz public about American culture and how we deal with diversity.

Photos from another Planet... I mean Naryn.

2009-03-31T12:59:00.002+06:00

Nooruz celebrations, a bridge over the river Naryn, views from the intense mountain pass into the most mountainous oblast, and the Martian Naryn landscape.

Real World - NARYN

2009-03-20T12:44:00.000+06:00

11:30 16 March 2009

As I mentioned earlier, I was coming to Naryn City for Diversity week. I’m here now, but first let me back track a bit. I spent the last weekend after PDM in Bishkek with my girlfriend. It was really wonderful to go out and enjoy real dates, good food, and the big city together. We did everything from eating Sushi and Lebanese food to seeing “Marley and Me” in Russian to going to cool bars to taking strolls in the park. It was so weird, having come from our village, to be presented with so many opportunities of things to do, and it was nice but definitely overwhelming. While Bishkek is no New York or Paris, it does have its share of Western-looking establishments and it is so bizarre to be go to a mall that could be in any American town or to restaurants that have actual ambience and semi-legitimate foreign food.

Nevertheless, it was really wonderful to have an opportunity to enjoy the big city with my squeeze, going out on dates is such a novel concept for me considering we have been together for over three months and we have only been on a few real dates. So I’m happy we had this opportunity to grow closer. She makes me feel wonderful :)

But onto Diversity week, I got here Sunday to Naryn from Bishkek which was an intense drive. The landscape in Naryn Oblast is completely different from my village and oblast and almost in some ways resembles a moonscape. The road to get there was really intense, we came through a mountain pass that was semi-paved and got really high; Naryn oblast is the highest oblast in the country with no land under 1,500 m. The city that I am staying in is the largest city in the least populated and poorest oblast and basically consists of one long road that everything is located on. As I said before, the landscape is very bizarre, the city is flanked on both sides with mountains unlike any I have seen, they are jagged peaks of loose dirt and rock. A morning hike yesterday brought me close to the summit of the smaller mountains and it was some pretty stunning views. Another interesting aspect is how “Kyrgyz” this city is. Unlike my village the Russian presence here is close to nil and I never hear it spoken, some of the kids here don’t even speak it very well. It’s a bit difficult to get around, but all the older folks speak Russian, and I know basic Kyrgyz (numbers, how to ask for stuff, etc.) well enough that I can get by.

The conference itself was interesting on the first day. I am involved with three sessions during my week here: Campus Life, Religious Interactions in America, and US Government and Comparison with Kyrgyz Government. The first sessions today on immigrant life were interesting, several volunteers who are first or second generation immigrants spoke and hearing their stories that I had no idea about was really cool. I also think that the Kyrgyz students here really appreciated learning about the different types of people that live in America and how they got there. I am looking forward to giving the sessions I am involved in and seeing their response.

I got the PDM Blues!

2009-03-20T12:43:00.000+06:00

09:00 14 March 2009

PDM finished up two nights ago and we had a blast. At the last night of it, my friend Daniel, who was a classical guitar major in college, organized a concert for anyone who wanted to participate. While I didn’t bring my axe, three other volunteers did and I think we put on quite a show. The concert started off with Daniel playing several classical pieces, one of which he composed for a friend of his birthday! They were really superb and I was really impressed with the self composed piece. He ended his set with a fun rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” which I really enjoyed. After Daniel, my friend Cameron did a solo rendition of a Bob Seger piece and then Daniel rejoined to play Weezer’s “Say it Ain’t So” which was a real hit with the audience.

Following Cameron’s set, my friend James played three self-composed pieces that were really heartfelt; his production is amazing, he had written them all in country and said he has about seven more! I closed the concert with, at first, a solo piece that I had written the music to years ago but couldn’t find good lyrics to (the lyrics still weren’t good, but I wanted to perform it so I did). I then brought out Daniel so I could play the Beatles’ “Ringo’s Theme/This Boy” which was fun and our solos came out really well. For the end of the concert, I had written the “PDM Blues” in the same spirit that I wrote the “PST Blues” that I mentioned several months ago. It featured some great solo work by Daniel and we also brought up our friend Katie for some harmonica support. It was a big hit with the crowd and I really enjoyed playing it. I’m going to try and get the videos of my performances to my parents, so if you are ever curious about seeing the aforementioned performances, try and hit them up.

Avalanches in J-Bad

2009-03-20T12:39:00.000+06:00

1815 10 March 2009

While our PDM has been very useful for me so far, some unfortunate circumstances have caused about 25% of our group to not be able to make it. The Southern Kyrgyzstan volunteers have the option of flying to Bishkek or taking the 10-12 hour long taxi ride. As a group they decided to save money and take the taxi. This would have been all well and good, except an avalanche in one of the numerous mountain passes that exist between Osh/Jalalabad and Bishkek completely cut off traffic as well as killing a few Kyrgyz people. Luckily, the only negative consequence for volunteers and counterparts is their absence at the conference (after the avalanche all the airline ticket got bought up very quickly) but it’s scary to think that that could happen to volunteers in transit too.

One of the more “bad ass” stories from this actually comes from one of the counterparts. This Kyrgyz woman, once her taxi came to the edge of the avalanche and was being directed to turn around, decided to leave with all her baggage and make the several hundred meter traverse across the mountain pass on top of the avalanche snow to the other side where she picked up a taxi. This made sure she was the only CP or volunteer from the south that had taken road transport that made it and also severely showed up her volunteer as he has yet to show up. I’m just thankful that none from our group of volunteers and CPs were hurt though.

8th of March- International Women's Day!

2009-03-20T12:38:00.000+06:00

21:30 8 March 2009

First of all, I just want to say a big “Happy Women’s Day” to all the fine ladies of the world and my readership today. I know that it is not really celebrated in most countries (despite the fact that according to the Soviets it was an international day celebrated across the world- something that confuses the populace when I tell them it is not celebrated in the States) but it is a big day here. I neglected to mention Men’s Day, it fell during my camp so I wasn’t able to participate in the celebrations, but I received a towel from my school as a present because of my anatomy… Anyhow, for Women’s Day, the traditional celebration includes, of course, men putting on a concert for women and feeding them at a big toy (Kyrgyz party). For my part of this, I got together with my counterpart and sang a few songs on the guitar with her. I found out she actually can play guitar quite well and she performed a song that sounded like a Soviet version of Joni Mitchell. It was very entertaining.

That school celebration was two days ago, and the day before I had an additional celebration where the boys from the leadership club I help run got together and laid a table and put on a concert and games for the women (girls) from the club, Saori, and the Director of the Dotz. I actually enjoyed this even more, because the boys literally did everything for the party, from organizing to set up to clean up afterwards and I was really proud of all the effort they put forth. It was inspiring to see that these boys could really take leadership positions in organizing the festivities.

But for the actual holiday, I am actually at my old host family’s house. While I have a good relationship with my host family at site, coming back makes me really miss some aspects of living with my old host family. First and foremost is that, being Russian, and me being a Russian speaker, I understand far more of what is going on that I do at site with the Kyrgyz/Russian mix I hear. It is also entertaining just to watch this family, when I first got to site I was confused and thought that the family was constantly arguing and hated each other. The more I learned Russian however, the more apparent it became that they were not mad at each other, simply incredibly argumentative. “PUT THE JAM ON YOUR BREAD! IT’S DELICIOUS!!!”, “I DON’T WANT JAM ON MY BREAD!!! I HAD JAM FOR BREAKFAST!”, “BUT IT”S VERY DELICIOUS! PUT SOME ON WITH BUTTER!”, “NO!!!” a typical conversation might go.

I digress, spending Women’s Day with my old host family was wonderful as we ate good food, I gave them some gifts, and we talked about life. I’ve also realized how incredibly liberal they are compared to most here. They just got a house dog! It is so cute, and I don’t know if you understand how incredibly rare having a “Domashnaya Sabaka” is here. It was really exciting to play with a dog that was friendly, bathed, and didn’t want to tear off my face. So yay for Women’s Day!

Bishkek Bound

2009-03-20T12:37:00.000+06:00

19:45 5 March 2009

The reason for the aforementioned laundering of all of my clothes was because I am headed to Bishkek soon for our second In-Service seminar. This conference, entitled Project Design and Management or PDM, is centered around us learning how to design projects with our counterparts, how to secure funding for them, and how to run them once we are implementing them. My counterpart at school has a variety of ideas of what she would like to do with potential grant money and hopefully this seminar will give us guidance on whether the projects w have in mind are valuable, sustainable, and viable.

Directly after this trip, I will be taking my first “new oblast” trip to Naryn City to participate at the Diversity Week that a PCV is holding there. I’ve been working with a fellow PCV and Peace Corps staff to try and start a Diversity Committee within PC Kyrgyzstan. I think there is a large need for that here, and ideally we would do something in every oblast aimed at educating the Kyrgyz population about inter-group relations and how they work in the States. There are a lot of misconceptions about race, religion, and sexual orientation in this country and hopefully by showing how things worked in the United States we could encourage tolerance and acceptance within the country.

So while IST (In-Service Training) seems like it was only a week ago (it was actually 2.5 months ago), it will be really great to see everyone again, this is the last opportunity we have to all get together until our COS (Close of Service) Conference.

Dirty Clothes No More (for now...)

2009-03-20T12:36:00.000+06:00

22:50 3 March 2009

13 socks, 10 shirts, 7 pairs of pants, 4 pairs of boxers, 3 sweaters, 1 towel, 4 hours, 3 blisters, and 1 sore back later I am done with my laundry. Out of all the chores that are more difficult here than I was used to, laundry by far ranks as the most annoying, physically difficult, and most loathed. Usually I wash a few of my clothes at a time, one pair of pants, a shirt and a few boxers and socks for the clothes of the next week but every now and then I have to do one big set of pretty much all my laundry. This sucks. While I am lucky that my family has a laundry “machine” (quotations because the machine is really more of a laundry spin-a-rounder than something that actually cleans clothes), I still have to get all the water, heat all the water, operate the washing machine (shockingly difficult to get it to work) wring out the “clean” clothes with the dirty soapy water that will be used for all of my laundry, rinse all the “clean” clothes in the basin of slightly less dirty water, wring them out again, and hang them out to dry. The really loathsome part is the bifurcated wringing process that leaves my hands red and sore for days afterwards and makes me wish I had the calluses of some of the older ajays (respectful term for older women in Kyrgyz) I have seen washing.

Nevertheless, it is certainly good to have my clothes as clean as they will get for the time being, and seeing the good half inch of dirt at the bottom of the washing machine when I poured out the water was simultaneously disgusting for how dirty my clothes must have been and satisfying for how much less dirt they contain now. But seriously, if anyone has heard of a drop off laundry service in my village, let me know. Come to think of it, it would be a great business proposition for some of my neighbors…

New culinary experiences.

2009-02-28T18:30:00.002+06:00

21:00 26 February 2009

I tried sheep brain today. I think that concludes my culinary exploration of boiled mutton. I seriously believe that I have tried on some occasion every single edible part of the fat-tailed sheep. Stomach, intestines, and pure fat cut in slices were some of the first experiences for me that were new. The prized delicacy of sheep face skin, cheek meat, tongue and ear were quick to follow. The true prizes of sheep eyes, hooves and gum meat then secured my place in the adventurous realm. But today was the real treat for me- I had never eaten the brain of another animal that I know of, and the concept of it still bothers me somewhat. The taste wasn’t bad at all really, much like the rest of mutton, but the texture wasn’t terribly pleasant- boiled grey matter has the consistency of very fine but slightly gritty soft jell-o. Sorry if that grossed any of you out…

Tables turned

2009-02-28T18:30:00.001+06:00

17:45 25 February 2009

Much like most Americans, I have taken part in or at least witnessed my fair share of International Aid fundraising, clothing drives, used material collections, or other internationally focused aid efforts. Books for Africa, Helping Honduras, and the likes of these organizations aim to get much needed materials to aid in the development of areas of the world that otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them for themselves. I’ve helped box books, donated used clothing, and bought a music CD in support of these various efforts, but one thing always remained for me in the past was that I had always been on the giving end of these projects and never had witnessed the benefit of them. Today I had the opportunity to see a truckload of used clothing donated from the Swedish Red Crescent and delivered to my school to be distributed to the community.

I don’t know if I can convey in words the strangeness of seeing this for me. The people that were receiving this clothing are people that I lead a somewhat similar life to now. They are by no means wealthy, but the quality of life here could be much, much worse, and I live at that level now. It made me truly realize things that I had forgotten because I had become so used to living here. People don’t go hungry or naked here, but clothing is frequently old and worn, and most of the items sold at the bazaar are of low quality to make it more affordable. This high quality but slightly out of style Swedish clothing (probably just coming into style in America) was being given away to families and individuals that lead a similar life to what I live. True, most here don’t have a computer, go skiing, or receive semi-regular shipments of impossible to find food here (though shockingly everyone here has a nicer cell phone than me- unfortunately what they spend on the cell phone that save by never buying units and instead my-aking me, an annoying practice of ringing someone and hanging up so they call you back- cellphones here are primarily unit based vs. contract) but my living allowance, living situation, work, and location all put me in a similar socio-economic sphere as the same people that are receiving this free European donated clothing. I’ve always had the fortune to live in a comfortable setting and have never truly wanted for anything. While I still don’t consider myself poor (my $60 a month living allowance here goes a pretty long way), my living conditions, spending habits, and pattern of life all resemble that of poverty in America. Interestingly enough, out of the innumerable stresses and things that I find frustrating here, my economic situation and inability to purchase certain things I might otherwise want ranks very low. I’ve always believed that money couldn’t buy happiness – now I believe it further – lack of wealth doesn’t necessarily mean lack of satisfaction with life.

Yay...

2009-02-28T18:29:00.002+06:00

10:30 21 February 2009

Wow! No kidding, that week passed quickly. As I said earlier, the camp was extremely physically exhausting, the crew of six volunteers and our local counterpart acting as session leaders, team leaders, organizers, children herders and disciplinarians all week. As they say about having fun, time certainly flew, but I am glad it is over now so I can relax a bit and recuperate from having to do so much.

In addition for the camp being fun for us trainers, I think the children really enjoyed it too. They were super enthusiastic and partcipitative which was really encouraging to see. Even in the more information dense serious sessions like HIV/AIDS, Volunteerism, and leadership skills, they were still very attentive and active. I was also very to happy to hear that some of the students liked Frisbee so much that they want me to start a team in my village! This is something I will be happy to oblige them with.

Campin'

2009-02-28T18:29:00.001+06:00

20:30 16 February 2009

With the first day of the camp over, things seem like they are going well. We had a couple of last minute issues with people showing up after they had told us they wouldn’t be able to make it and their spots had been replaced in the roster but it all worked out in the end. All in all, we have forty students from five villages and between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. I was also really impressed with the enthusiasm with which the kids participated. I know if I had been at a camp and they had asked me to do some of the things we asked them to do I would not have been half as willing to embarrass myself and participate.

While I am certainly exhausted from having to deal with forty kids as the highest authority – no passing the buck here, it was a really nice break from a week of teaching. The day of camp was much more physically tiring than teaching, but the monotony of teaching the same lesson plans and dealing with the same frustrations every day in the classroom can be more mentally tiring. Anyhow, I think this week will most likely pass by in a flash, the first eight hour day certainly did, and I hope it will be a benefit for these children as well.

<3

2009-02-28T18:28:00.000+06:00

11:25 14 February 2009

Well, I suppose in the spirit of this most Hallmark of holidays, I should announce something that many of you may already know or suppose. For the past two months and change I have been dating Saori, one of the two JICA volunteers that live in my village. Sorry I didn’t announce it earlier, but I felt a variety of discretionary steps should be taken before I made the news of my relationship public with the readership of this blog. She is a simply wonderful girl and I couldn’t be happier to be in a relationship with her. While it came unexpectedly to me, as I said, I am really happy and spending time with her (which due to her fortuitous proximity) is one of the things I most look forward to in my life here. I’ll spare you all the details, I hardly would find this an appropriate forum for the discussion of my love life any way, but rest assured that I am in good spirits most of the time here, and Saori is a large part of that.

Interestingly enough, while Valentine’s Day isn’t widespread in celebration here (it is gaining in popularity though) it falls on the same day upon which the Kyrgyz (and I would assume most of the former Soviet Union) remembers the veterans specifically of the (Soviet) War in Afghanistan. It was interesting to see students marching with wooden mock Kalashnikovs made in shop class in honor of the veterans of the war. It was certainly a type of demonstration that I think would be odd to see in the United States or the West in general, such demonstrations of military among children, some not older than fourteen, seems very out of sync. Regardless it was an interesting dichotomy to see some try and celebrate a day ostensibly about love while many others honored those who had participated in a war.

Camp a comin'

2009-02-28T18:27:00.000+06:00

19:45 13 February 2009

With only three days until the Winter Camp I am helping run starts, surprisingly enough I am feeling well and prepared. Today I went with Lorenzo, the main monetary force behind the camp and its ostensible director, to the Karakol bazaar in order to buy all the supplies necessary to outfit a week-long health, arts and sports camp. The sessions we have planned out include a great variety of different classes, from Mexican folk dancing, First Aid, Dodgeball, Rhythm and “Stomp” to Yoga, Leadership skills, AIDS education, and Proper Stretching. The sessions are being led by an assortment of Peace Corps and JICA volunteers, employees of the Red Crescent Association, and the leadership club I help out with even designed a session especially about health issues which I am excited to watch as I have been too preoccupied with administrative and logistical problems to focus on content issues (ironic, no?).

The biggest problem for me, as the camp is being held in my village, is coordinating the homestay situations for the out of village participants. It is difficult enough to coordinate a camp for forty people, but when thirty of them don’t even live in your village and will need to eat, sleep, and live somewhere during the camp, it becomes a logistical challenge. Luckily, so far it seems as if everything is going quite smoothly and I am looking forward to the camp. The past month has been good but has become routine in teaching, I am hoping the camp in the middle of the longest school session will help prevent my work here from becoming monotonous.

Wheee!

2009-02-08T12:12:00.002+06:00

10:30 8 February 2009

I woke up today and my entire body hurts. I feel as if I was in a car accident yesterday. While I wasn’t in a car accident yesterday, I am sure that I was subjected to similar G-forces that people in car accidents go through. Namely, skiing yesterday has caused my body to revolt today- I used muscles I didn’t know I had and the rest hurt from the numerous high velocity falls I took. Even given this, it was awesome and I fully enjoyed myself and look forward to the next time I can try it. While I had cross country skied before, this was a completely different muscular experience and the feel is nothing alike. Nevertheless I picked it up fairly quickly, despite the lack of any truly easy slopes there and by the end of the day I was slaloming down the less steep parts of the hill with ease- there was one section that was the upper have of the mountain that I had mastered and consistently did with some grace and without falling. I was quite proud of myself and really enjoyed the feeling of speed combined with control that I had gained. To get down all the way was a bit different story. The rest of mountain was quite steep, probably about a 45 degree slant, and while I could use the same turning skills down the mountain, I ended up deciding that it would be quicker and more fun to just remove my skis and take the buttocks-express to the end of the slope.

Before I had really gotten the feel of how to stop- while I never really was able to get a good “pizza” or “wedge” my turning abilities eventually allowed me to stop much more precisely- I had a number of spectacular falls. They mainly resulted from me, in an attempt to turn, angling myself fully downhill and then chickening and not being able to work up the courage to change my course. This, of course, resulted in a tremendous amount of speed building up and me not knowing a good way to slow myself down. The most impressive of my falls (usually once I built up speed I would just sit down and stop myself) resulted when at the beginning of the hill I angled myself downhill and then couldn’t stop, I got all the way to the midway point where the serious slope started and knew I had to stop lest I actually die. I tried turning in a desperate attempt at an ice-skating hockey stop but the tips of my skis stopped and I kept going forward. I think I may have done a flip or two, it was so fast I don’t quite remember what happened until I stopped, and then I was tangled up and on my back. After that I took a break but was up again soon enough and then found, through the help of my much more experienced friends, how to gain better control.

At the end of the day, while we were waiting for our taxi, we had a cool experience. They use old ex-Soviet helicopters for heli-skiing here and as I was looking at one with friends, another came and landed right near us. It was so cool feeling the immense power of the winds of a big helicopter landing, the snow stinging and holding your hat in the blizzard like environment. Definitely a neat experience that capped off a great day.

Vet school next?

2009-02-08T12:10:00.004+06:00

10:45 6 February 2009

My further education in animal husbandry continued today as I was asked early in the morning if I could help outside for a few minutes. I didn’t know what I was in for, and later regretted wearing my work clothes. Turns out that our sheep apparently have some disease right now and so we hired a vet to come over and give them all antibiotics. Being the man of the house, it was my responsibility to catch the sheep individually (all twenty five of them) and then hold them down while the vet gave the injections. It was actually pretty fun to chase around sheep and then restrain them and made me feel like a real farm boy- I was a bit nervous as the vet ran around as well with his syringe and helped me, I really didn't want to be the victim of Sheep born illnesses. Fortunately,the only negative result was my pants and shoes getting dirty, but who knows when I will get laundry next…

Today I am heading into Karakol again after classes to go skiing with some friends. It should be a really fun activity even though it is my first time trying downhill skiing and I am terrified of it- too many celebrities have died doing it I suppose. Anyhow, I am going to do my best to be cautious and stay safe during it and at the very least I hope we get some cool pictures up on the mountains.

Silly, silly sheep

2009-02-08T12:10:00.001+06:00

22:30 5 February 2009

Even once again, I am amazed at the incredible stupidity of most domesticated animals. I should have gotten used to them by now, but they keep inventing new ways to prove how stupid they are. Today I helped my host mother out for several hours as we got a sizable snowfall and we needed to shovel the entire yard, inside court, and driveway in front of our house. In addition to this, we had the daily tasks of feeding and watering the animals- at this point we have about twenty five sheep including probably ten lambs, two cows, three geese, maybe twenty chickens, our dog (unfortunately all of her puppies died ), and our gorgeous cat that I named Sasha- more on this later. Regardless, in our house work I was watering the cows and sheep- they drink a lot and we have to get all the water from a calonka-, a public free flowing faucet, on our street with buckets. The process was two bucketed as I left one to fill while I brought the other to dump in the large watering pan in the sheep’s enclosure. The stupidity started well before this however, somehow our dog got loose (no danger with this one, she is a real sweetheart) and was running around terrorizing the sheep, geese, and chickens and enjoying her temporary freedom. Regardless, while the geese handled the pressure reasonably well and skirted out of her way relatively gracefully, and the chickens did surprisingly effective flight maneuvers to avoid her jaws, the sheep, as usual, took the crown for most hilarious/stupid behavior. In addition to once again running full tilt into a chain link fence and then crumbling, which I could at least understand somewhat, they also ran full tilt into the wooden fences and then got their heads wedged between slats- something only the dumbest of the dumb could do (though I can’t really talk about that one- ask my mom about me in Disneyland for a laugh sometimes). I digress, the final stunt I viewed was when I was bringing the water into the enclosure. Acting as though they were literally dying of thirst, the normally skittish animals tried to mount me to get the water so I had to carry it high. As soon as I started pouring, the animals rushed to get their heads in the trough and usually completely obscured the path of the water into the pan in the process. This resulted in the sheep getting a heedful of water, reacting to that shock, and then wondering why there was no water in the pan (usually only about 50% of the water found its goal, the rest was diverted to the ground or onto my pants by sheep heads). Regardless the expression of dual confusion/upset on the sheep’s behalf was priceless as they looked up after sticking their head into a flowing stream of water and wondered why they were now wet. Priceless.

Ice-standing

2009-02-08T12:09:00.001+06:00

18:30 2 February 2009

As typical of weekends in the city, I had a lot of fun and actually got a lot of work done. My Winter Camp is fast approaching and I had a very important meeting with my co-director finalizing aspects of the schedule and discussing our upcoming plans. We are holding an Arts- focused camp which incorporates of course Health themes as well as Sports, and Life Skills topics. It should be both a lot of fun for us and the children and also will hopefully have a positive impact on their lives.

In addition to our hours long meeting, we also went ice-skating, but the unseasonably warm weather meant the ice was in terrible and our skates would unexpectedly fall through the ice and onto the grassy field below- yuck. Anyhow, it was still a fun time and was enjoyable to horse around on the ice.

Gratefully Guesting?

2009-02-08T12:08:00.000+06:00

18:45 31 January 2009

Yesterday, as I came into Karakol to use internet and have an important meeting about my upcoming Winter Camp, I had the most bizarre taxi ride of my life. It is not an unusual or unsafe practice here to hitch rides- many Kyrgyz are happy to have the extra passenger and a little extra income on their commutes to an forth. Also, at certain times, marshrutkas and taxis become unavailable so it leaves one with little choice in transportation. On this particular transit, I got a ride in a very nice Honda minivan and the family there was very interesting- the son spoke excellent English and I was really enjoying my ride (it’s usually about a 30-45 minute ride into the city from my village). About halfway there, the mother of the family in the car asks if I minded if they stopped for five to drop something off at a relatives’ house. As I was not in a hurry and enjoyed their company, I assented and said it would not be a problem.

Of course, in a spit of remarkable naivety, I forgot the Kyrgyz guesting traditions. Therefore, as a 15 minute acquaintance, I was ordered to come in, drink tea, eat salads, and was offered vodka that I had to decline. Then tea turned into dinner and so I had to wait for them to prepare a dish with meat and potatoes. All the while the son who spoke English kept apologizing for the delay but I assured him that I didn’t mind- hey at least I got a free dinner. Finally, we got back on our way again, and I realized that the five minute stop had turned into a completely unexpected two and a half hour guesting. I got into the city later than I hoped, but with no real harm and a good story to my credit.

A Solemn Occasion

2009-02-08T12:06:00.001+06:00

22:15 28 January 2009

I forgot to mention the reason for the aforementioned slaughter that I took part in. The man who would have been my host father died two years ago today. Once again, I got to experience first hand the Muslim side of Kyrgyzstan. My entire immediate host family returned home for the day, and a large number of friends, extended family, and other people who knew him came for an elaborate guesting. This meant that I assisted my family for several hours the night before and today I got up early to help them lay the table and prepare.

The ceremony began with an imam who came and recited the longest Koran passage I have ever heard. My middle host niece, two year old Al-Suu, plopped into my lap and sat like an angle for the twenty minute recitation. The clear nasal tenor of the imam pierced the still silence of the room and created an incredibly beautiful and haunting ambience for the most solemn part of the day. As the imam continued on at length, the entire room quiet with reverence, I saw some of the most poignant displays of emotions in Kyrgyz people that I have experienced in country. My host sisters and mothers’ eyes were red and heavy with tears as they sat listening to the passage and many of the other ejes (older women) were openly crying. The men sat stoically, but it was obvious that emotion over took even some of them, and it was a solemnly beautiful experience.

Following the recitation, the typical Kyrgyz practices of eating, drinking, and beshbarmaking began. While I was unable to attend a large portion of it due to work and a new English Club I started for adults, I was really glad that I was able to attend the religious side of the day and witness the beautiful ceremony.

Silence of the lamb

2009-02-08T12:05:00.004+06:00

11:35 28 January 2009

Warning: This entry contains graphic descriptions of slaughter in the first paragraph, read at your own risk- the rest of the entry should be fine for all.

For the first time in country, and indeed in my life, I witnessed the slaughter of a sheep. While it was certainly a somewhat traumatic experience, especially since earlier in the day I had chopped the head off my third chicken (I thought it might get easier the second time around but I was wrong- the immense feelings of guilt, queasiness, and horror at my own action remain and I was left trembling for a good ten minutes afterwards- the habits of a decade long vegetarian die hard I suppose) it was also in some ways an oddly beautiful sight. There are relatively few reminders that I live in a Muslim country on a daily basis, I can’t hear the mosque from my house, alcohol consumption is common and widespread (a legacy of the Russians), and Kyrgyzstan is a quite secular country; however, when it comes to slaughter, it is seeped in the Islamic tradition which is actually somewhat similar to the way kosher slaughter takes place. It began with my family and the neighbors who would slaughter standing around praying, the Muslim way asks God for the meat, the role of the slaughter is merely to cut the sheep (linguistically interesting you don’t kill an animal, you cut or chop it- God is the one who allows the blood to spill and the animal to die). After some Koran recitation, it ends in the Omin- Muslim Amen which includes an elongated sweeping gesture over the face, and the sheep’s feet were bound together. The throat of the sheep was then slit and immediately copious amounts of blood spilled like red velvet from the neck and the two men continued to cut until the head was nearly completely severed. While the sheep continued to bleed, it struggled despite the head’s near unattached status in a way that reminded me of the death throes of the chickens I have killed. Because there were two grown men restraining it and the sheep’s legs were bound, it wasn’t as active as the chicken had been, but it still was pretty jarring. Perhaps the most scarring moments were the sheep’s last three or four breaths which consisted of horribly ragged sounds and a bloody spray coming from the newly detached windpipe. After about two minutes, but what felt like four hours, the sheep stopped struggling and resigned itself to death as its neck wound was cleaned with warm water and our neighbors backed off to finish the spiritual side of the slaughter.

What followed this was the most beautiful part of the process. Our neighbor backed off and began to recite lengthily from the Koran, his hands warm and moist from the previous actions held cupped reverently in front of him and steaming from the heat of his and the sheep’s body. Seeing my family and neighbors circled around the fresh slaughter, thanking Allah for providing them for sustenance in the midst of cows lowing, chickens clucking, lambs bleating, and geese… honking? was a haunting but beautiful sight. Nevertheless, as I said before it was pretty jarring and the sounds, smells, and sights are ones that I will never forget.

Star Light, Stars are Bright!

2009-02-08T12:05:00.001+06:00

22:00 23 January 2009

Never before have I been able to see with such clarity the reason our forefathers looked up at the night sky and saw grand apparitions of battles, animals, and the gods. Nights in this country, ostensibly due to the altitude, the crisp winter air, and the near total lack of light pollution, offer me unprecedented views of the stars. The familiar constellations like Orion took on new dimensions (did you know he had a bow?) and formations I knew about only from the Horoscopes were recognizable even without a guide. Indeed, if it was difficult for me to find constellations, it was because of so many stars that it was easy to make my own. The past several nights in particular have been incredibly clear and I have gone outside to stargaze, despite the chilly temperature. Really, it is amazing to see the incredibly clarity of the thousands of stars visible to the naked eye

In more humorous news, the inherent stupidity of barnyard animals continues to amaze me. In addition to ever-foolish sheep, I watched with amazement several geese repeatedly try to eat a shadow. The shadow of a chain link fence was cast onto one of the walls of our compound and the gaggle (I don’t think I’ve ever actually used that word before) that we own approach the wall and then futilely try and eat it. Unfortunately, given that our walls are made of mud, this was a destructive in addition to humorous practice. There are now several divots on the wall where our intelligent geese tried to eat the absence of light. Great.

Terrific TEFL Times

2009-02-08T12:04:00.001+06:00

22:30 20 January 2009

After the last day of the IST conference, which ended in a somewhat disappointingly low-key get together- I think we were all exhausted from an entire week of late nights followed by way to early mornings (breakfast at 7:15), I find it a good opportunity to reflect on some of the changes in my work environment already. If these aren’t just temporary changes, which I desperately am hoping they are not, then I think my service over the next 20 months will be more successful than my original expectations over the first four months of service.

In the first few days following this conference, I have found my relationship with my counterpart incredibly improved. The goal of the TEFL Program in Kyrgyzstan is to introduce a sustainable component by having its volunteers team teach in the classroom, work with the other English educators in the classroom, and introduce skills transfer. We are taught to teach in the communicative method, a method that stresses the learning of the ability to express oneself and understand others in the language above grammatical accuracy, writing, and reading. In general, communicative method can be said to emphasize fluency over perfection and is vastly different from the Soviet-era translation focused method in use in most schools here. While many of the English teachers in Kyrgyzstan have a better understanding of English grammar rules than I do, I often can speak better in Russian than they can English. Hopefully, with my presence in the school and the skills-transfer this brings in working with my counterpart and the other teachers in the school, this will begin to change. In the wake of the conference I am incredibly hopeful of this potentiality. As I began earlier, my relationship with my counterpart has improved to such a degree that we are now lesson planning together several times a week, our lessons are truly being team-taught, and I think the students are learning more successfully. Hooray!

Conferencin'

2009-02-08T12:03:00.000+06:00

21:00 16 January 2009

It is the last day of our In-Service Training Conference today. It has gone by in a huge blur and has, in my mind, really been a success overall. While, as large conferences tend to have them, it did contain dull moments, the vast majority of the information I was provided with I found useful I think that overall it will make me a better volunteer. At the beginning of the conference was a three day session where we worked in conjunction with our counterparts. In addition to merely giving us an opportunity to better our relationships with our counterparts, it also allowed us to really focus in on the goals of team-teaching (namely making the TEFL English teaching program more sustainable). Since it is a new program, it is difficult for some counterparts to work with their Volunteers in the classroom. I hope and have faith that the workshops of this conference will better my and most volunteers’ work in the classroom.

In addition to being a good experience from a professional standpoint, it was also an incredible opportunity for the K-16 Volunteers who live all over the country, some days from others, to get back together again and socialize as a group with other Americans. Through this experience, I got reunited with many of my close friends, had a great time, and realized to what extent I could become uncomfortable when surrounded exclusively by Americans. I have always considered myself as somewhat of an introvert, but my service has actually revealed to a large extent how deeply I value human contact. However, despite this value, my introvert tendencies towards the end of the week seemed to exert greater influence on me as the some of the stereotypes of Americans began to become too strong.

Nevertheless I consider the past week a big success, both on a volunteer, psychological, and work level. It was a great opportunity to learn more language, more culture, more about ourselves, how to work with counterparts, and the experiences of other volunteers.

Changes VI (Months)

2009-01-11T12:56:00.001+06:00

23:30 10 January 2009

I left for Bishkek today for the IST conference that will start tomorrow. I came a day early because I wanted to visit my old host family who live not far from Bishkek. It is really weird and neat to be back in my old room, the space that I called home for nearly three months. It’s significantly cooler than when I last was here but good heating and a relatively mild winter so far has made it very comfortable now. As I said, it is odd being in a home that was only a home for a short while but from which I have such strong feelings and memories. It was only three and a half months ago that I lived here, but I feel that the me that left this room left was a lot different than the me that returned today. The me that returned was noticeably different to my host family too- they worried over the fact that I have lost so much weight and were concerned that my new host family was not feeding me- something that is certainly not true. They were also pleasantly surprised with the progress of my Russian- that was really nice for me to hear since I didn’t think I had really improved that much since the end of PST, but I suppose constantly using it means that it improves even when I don’t realize it.

But the me that is different is different in a lot more ways than just mass and language ability. When I last left this room, I was still a trainee. I know that sounds kind of silly, and I don’t think as a trainee I was any less valuable than I am now, but there is a lot one learns and grows from experience. PST was a good time to get to acclimate to some aspects of culture, learn the language and the technical aspects of our service, but it’s not really PC Kyrgyzstan yet. PST is designed to be a stepping stone, like a glorified college orientation, that bridges the gap from the lives we knew to the lives we will live for two years, and it works very well in the capacity. But it is amazing how much I feel that I have grown as volunteer, a teacher, and perhaps more than anything, a person since I last left this village. These are differences which can only come from experiencing things first hand and throwing yourself into the middle of things wholeheartedly. These are differences that come from being nearly brought to tears in the middle of class because of frustration and getting so upset you yell at a child in a way at which you are later ashamed, differences that come from eating that mystery meat, doing so with your hands, finding out later it was sheep eyeball, cow intestine, or just horse, and doing it again next time you are offered, differences that come from seeing club members of yours moved to tears by service of their own in an orphanage, differences that come from being harassed every single day of your life because of where you are from, and differences that come from watching students that actually want to learn English, fail, and fail, and fail, and fail, until they finally succeed at understanding simple past tense or correct preposition usage. I think am a much different man than I was six or even three months ago, and it is something I didn’t even realize until I returned to something familiar, but oddly distant. A whole host of emotions, senses, and feelings rushed back to me when I returned here, but I realized for the first time that they are, in large, the experiences of a different person, or at least the experiences of a much different me.

Winter Camping?

2009-01-11T12:55:00.001+06:00

23:40 07 January 2009

I just had an extremely productive meeting in regards to the winter camp that I will help run with a fellow volunteer named Lorenzo. PEPFAR, a special Presidential fund designed to help fight HIV/AIDS internationally, provided Peace Corps with a decent chunk of change with the idea that volunteers are in uniquely good positions to education HCNs about HIV/AIDS. This was decided to be done through a series of winter life-skills camps throughout the country. Volunteers were given to the opportunity to attend a session to learn about the logistical aspects of holding a camp and Lorenzo attended. The camp will be in my village and we decided together to hold an Arts camp which obviously encompassed HIV/AIDS education and life skills such as team-building and team-work activities. Part of the project plan and the grant that Lorenzo wrote involves a community contribution of at least 10% of the cost of the camp. This contribution can come in a variety of form and is not usually a monetary donation- the use of a space without rent charged can be monetarily quantified as a community contribution and families hosting out of village children can also be counted as community contribution as well.

We approached the Director of the Dotz, the Children’s Education Center, in my village with the hope that she would provide her space free of charge and we could pay for the utilities, electricity or coal, that we used as well as any supplies we needed when we were there. Amazingly, the Director not only agreed to the usage of the space but insisted that any costs incurred with the space would be provided without charge. This is an amazing contribution on her part personally and really gave me a lot of faith on the possibility of change in this country. There are really people here that want to better there country and occasionally for volunteers it is hard to see with the near continuous setbacks we face, but the victories are really incredible. In addition to finding a space for camp during these meetings, we also secured a café that, for the equivalent of $250 will provide lunch, bread, and tea to each of our children for five days! That comes out to a staggeringly good $1.25 per meal, which is pretty good even by Kyrgyz standards!

Needless to say, this has been a productive day. I feel comfortable that it is okay for me to rest now for a bit. Oh, and today is my six month anniversary in country! Wow, it is amazing, so far the time has passed really quickly, it’s hard to believe that I have been here already half of a year (another year and three quarters to go)

Dietsky Dom don keldon

2009-01-11T12:54:00.000+06:00

05 January 2009

We finally had our program at the orphanage for the New Year. While it was significantly less well planned and executed that I had hoped it would be, I still think we made a good program which entertained the children there. Our fundraising totaled to slightly over the equivalent of ten dollars, mostly from friends of mine that I had solicited, but it was enough to buy candy, cookies, juice, and a cake for the kids in lieu of individual presents. The program was really cute and included some really funny skits and games by the students of our leadership club, me playing and singing on guitar (and teaching them some songs), and a mini-dance party. Even if it wasn’t the best executed or planned event in the world, I still think it was beneficial and hopefully we can analyze the results of it and see where we can do better next time.

We haven’t had classes for over a week now, and IST, our In-Service Training is coming up in less than a week. I am super excited to see everyone from all over the country come together for a week of fun, reunion, good food, good times, and perhaps even some training (who needs that though?). Hopefully during the conference we will learn some technical skills like grant-writing and have some additional language and cultural training that will further help us in our sites.

New Year's Day

2009-01-11T12:51:00.002+06:00

15:45 01 January 2009

Happy New Year once again to everyone, even though I am sure this is reaching you significantly after the New Year festivities have past. Our New Year festivities were really fun. I talked somewhat about the preparations in the last entry, but we had an incredibly delicious variety of food. I ate goose for the first time and found it incredibly delicious, my host mom marinated it in a garlic sauce and it was so good. It was funny because as the sole man present, I was expected to carve the goose even though I think I was by far the most inept at it and it ended with a frustrating lesson in anatomy with my ripping the wings off by brute force. In addition to the delicious (though poorly carved) goose, we have a variety of salads, smoked cheese, cookies, good candy, and most exciting to me, lots of fresh fruit that was brought from Bishkek (my fruit right now is limited to some apples, imported Chinese oranges, and dried apricots). I also made chili but while I thought all the food was delicious, my host family seemed to try the chili, say it was tasty, and then not eat any more at all. Oh well, I think it might have been to much seasoning or spices for them. It just meant there is more for me in the subsequent post-New Year leftovers. That is one thing I really liked about New Year festivities, it is traditionally celebrated just with family. This means the stress of inviting and serving guests doesn’t exist like it did for Kourman Eid; it also means that there is a lot more left over food for us. Yum.

In addition to spending New Year’s Eve with my family, I also went to a friend’s house the next day. One of the two JICA Volunteers in my village was hosting some fellow JICA volunteers from Bishkek so the four JICA volunteers, another PCV from a different village, and me got together to cook this traditional Japanese New Year’s food, a type of tasty somewhat gummy rice cake. It was neat because the two volunteers from Bishkek were Russian speakers so the best language between me as an American and them as a Japanese was Russian which was really interesting. They were super friendly and I am hoping to meet up with them in Bishkek next time I go there.

I hope it's not a baaaaaad New Year

2009-01-11T12:50:00.000+06:00

13:45 31 December 2008

Two out of three of my host sisters and two out of three of my host nieces have returned for the New Year’s celebrations at home. It’s nice hanging out around my youngest host sister as her English is quite good and she is just overall a funny girl that reminds me a lot of my sister back home. In the preparations for the New Year, we have slaughtered two geese and a sheep- which reminds me, our sheep have returned- more on this later. Unlike Christmas in the states, the tradition here is to put up the Yulka (Christmas tree) very shortly before for the New Year. Oddly enough, after nearly twenty-two years living in the primarily Christian countries, the first experience I had putting up a Christmas tree was in a Muslim country. It was still a fun experience with little kids running around and I broke out the chocolate chips I had sent to make chocolate chip cookies- they came out well and my family loved them despite the absence of brown sugar in this country. I’m looking forward to a fun and festive night with my family.

About my sheep. Sheep are hilarious. They are the dumbest animals I have ever had the opportunity to interact with. We have about twenty of them (since they came three new lambs have been born) and watching them and working to feed, water, and tend them has left me both amused and somewhat disgusted by them. I think earlier I considered sheep somewhat cute animals, but after being around them and their disgusting habits this is changing- though I have to admit the lambs are still really cute. The sheep are also creepy- whenever I come around they all stare at me with a combination of mortal terror and hope that I will give them food. Sheep are a bit nimble, they sometimes jump the fence of their enclosure and will be found munching illicit hay (goats are even more impressive, while we don’t have them, it’s not uncommon to see them scale things improbably- they seem slightly more intelligent too). Whenever they have escaped, I try and chase them to jump back into their pen, which has resulted in the following hilarious occurrences: they try and run through a chain link fence, when this proves fruitless, they become confused, back up, and try again; a mother ewe kicked her recently born off-spring into the air in an attempt to flee me- the lamb was dazed but unharmed and got the special service of being picked up and placed back into the pen; sheep trying to jump over the fence but jumping to early and face planting into the trough in front of their pen; sheep jumping correctly, but not quite high enough, and having their legs catch on the top of the fence so that they land on their face in the pen. All of these incidents have convinced me of the supreme idiocy of these animals but also the value of watching them for humor.

Anyhow, after rambling on about sheep, I really just want to wish everyone a Happy New Year, I really appreciate how many of you that seem to read these and as always I love getting your questions and feedback. Best of luck to all of you in 2009.

My beautiful village

2008-12-28T16:34:00.002+06:00

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-28T16:27:00.004+06:00

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:

Soviet Stuff

2008-12-26T16:24:00.002+06:00

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!

2008-12-26T16:23:00.000+06:00

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.

Kyrgyzification

2008-12-26T16:13:00.000+06:00

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.

FAQs

2008-12-12T19:51:00.001+06:00

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.

Red handed

2008-12-12T19:39:00.000+06:00

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…

Yay!

2008-12-12T19:34:00.000+06:00

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.

Oblast Winners!

2008-12-12T19:22:00.004+06:00

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

2008-12-12T19:17:00.000+06:00

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.

Puppy Pictures! (and a cow)

2008-11-28T11:33:00.001+06:00

Yes, that is me roasting a sheep's head on a stick

2008-11-28T11:29:00.002+06:00

Earlier entry has a verbal description- here are the pictures of the sheep butchering and roasting that I participated in. My sister Aijan and a neighbor assisted. Sorry if these offend anyone.

2008-11-28T11:28:00.002+06:00

16:30 27 November 2008

Yesterday I had banya for the first time in a week. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing. I hadn’t felt clean in about 5 days and it was so good- my hair was so greasy that even with its incredible curliness, I could comb it and it would stay parted and in place. Scary. But now, for the next day or so I get to feel clean and my head won’t itch with dandruff! It’s good to celebrate the small things in life.

Speaking of which- Banya is undoubtedly one of the things I am thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day. My host mother is preparing delicious lagman for me and one of my JICA friends today (the other couldn’t come) and we are making pumpkin bread- a suitable alternative to pumpkin I feel. I am currently coming up with a list of A-Z what I am thankful of both as a volunteer in Kyrgyzstan and, as a volunteer what I will be thankful for upon my return, and I will share it with you as soon as its completed. Due to incredible stupidity on my part, I accidentally left my laptop charger at a friends apartment in Karakol, and it will have been two weeks since I return so I have been rationing my battery over the time span. Luckily tomorrow I get a nice full charge and hopefully won’t forget it again.

Lulaby on Broadway

2008-11-28T11:27:00.001+06:00

14:45 23 November 2008

I got dragged to a leadership club that my friend Saori holds in our village at the Dotz (Dietskovo Tsentr- Children’s center that caters to under-18 extracurricular activities of a wide array) to help lead a session with her but instead got roped into a much larger project. When we got to the club, five of the members (of the six there) were engrossed in conversation, upon inquiring Saori and I were informed that there will be an oblast-wide (An oblast is administrative region like a state- there are 7 in the country) Children’s Issues conference in Karakol shortly and that they had been tasked with coming up with a creative way to introduce our Rayon (county) to the conference in under five minutes. They had a variety of songs, raps, and recitations that they wanted to perform and amazingly solicited the “expertise” of Saori and me to offer feedback on what they had so far.

I was amazed at the faith that they put in the suggestions that Saori and I put forth, considering that I had just met them less than an hour ago. I guess that something that comes with being a foreigner, and more importantly, a volunteer, is an assumption of outside expertise and knowledge that can be useful to them. Fortunately, in this case, they were at least somewhat right. I drew on my previous musical theatre experience and helped them do some basic choreography to compliment their stage presence and introduced an idea that they liked so much they decided to close their presentation with it- an acrostic poem to Жети-Өгуз, the name of the Rayon, there are eight total people making the presentation to I recommended they each have one of the letters under their coats an reveal them all at the same time.

It was a small thing to do, but it was really nice to see the incredible respect I was afforded and actually see my ideas come into effect (I met with them again yesterday). It can be frustrating being a teacher, often times I feel like my student make little to no tangible progress and it was nice to have some I could see the difference I had made. Needless to say, it was an immensely satisfying activity and I hope to be able to see the actual presentation.

Blog po-Jonathansky

2008-11-28T11:26:00.001+06:00

21:15 20 November 2008

There is an interesting facet of the Russian language that allows any noun to become a adjective. This has lent itself to the naming of many dishes. Many dishes are named “(Main Ingredient) Po-(adjective of choice)”. Thusly, “Miaso po-Franzoosky”, “Spaghetti po-Italionsky”, and “Makaron po-Flotsky” are all popular dishes- literally translating to “Meat by French”, “Spaghetti by Italian”, and “Pasta by Navy-y”. More accurately translated these would be “French style meat”, “Italian style spaghetti” and “Navy style pasta”.

I digress, the reason that I brought up this interesting linguistic attribute is because I have started using this form to describe various dishes I have prepared without good translatable names. Some of the better ones- “Bliny po-Ivritsky”- Jewish style pancakes (latkes), “Kapusta po-Venersky”- a nameless cabbage dish my sister Venera prepared, and “Macaron po-Voluntorsky”- a pasta and creamy pumpkin sauce I made with the two JICA volunteers in my village.

Anyhow, it is fun to name dishes in this manner (at least to me) and cooking with my JICA friends is always really fun. It’s amazing when I am with them and any Host Country National- our conversation is held quadrilingually between Kyrgyz (the JICAs and HCNs know Kyrgyz), Russian (I and the HCNs know Russian), English (Saori and I know English and Chika studied it somewhat), and Japanese (both JICAs of course know Japanese). The hodgepodge that results, with HCNs talking to them in Russian and to me in Kyrgyz and getting confused as to who know what, is highly comical. Regardless friendship prevails and usually one way or another the point gets across.

Besh barmak... Yum?!?!

2008-11-28T11:25:00.000+06:00

18:30 18 November 2008

After butchering our own sheep yesterday, we departed to go guesting at my host-mother’s brother’s house. It was at this event that I realized the extent I have gotten used to Kyrgyzstan and my taste preferences have really changed. At the guesting, we were treated to a full round of besh barmak. In principle, besh barmak is a simple noodle, bullion, and meat dish eaten with one’s hands- the name comes from “five fingers” in Kyrgyz because of the manner in which it is eaten, but in reality the process of it is much more ceremonial and complicated. It begins with a ceremonial hand washing with everyone seated on tishooks- large pillow mattresses- on the floor and then the passing around of giant hunks of meat and fat. Each person is expected to eat a bit of the fat and meat and take the rest home with them for later consumption. There are also the best parts of sheep, namely the eyes, brains, gums, and cheek meat, which are diced up from the roasted head, placed in a cup with bullion and passed around. Then the preparation for the central dish commences, out of the large chunks of meat everyone has been provided with, knives are passed and everyone begins chipping the meat into very small pieces which are placed in the central bowl. Finally, noodles and bullion are added to the chipped mutton and, voila, you have besh barmak. It is eaten, as stated with ones hands from the communal bowl and is followed by another hand washing (a child comes around with a pitcher of warm water and a basin) because by this point your hands and face are covered in a film of sheep fat.

While the first time I ate besh barmak, I found the whole process pretty disturbing and the unseasoned, simply boiled, taste of mutton and sheep fat hard to stomach. Like I said, my preferences here have changed quite remarkably and I not only tolerated but actually legitimately enjoyed the most recent round of besh barmak. The central dish was pretty tasty to me and even the cheek meat and gums (no eyeball this time) were relatively tolerable. I think that in addition of just my time here, my appreciation for the process of butchering and preparing a sheep that I witnessed earlier in the day helped my palette acclimate better to the Kyrgyz national dishes.

Sheep head on a stick, anyone?

2008-11-28T11:24:00.000+06:00

16:00 17 November 2008

I can now say, with complete sincerity, that I have roasted a sheep head impaled on a stick over a fire. Somehow I doubt the majority of my readership can say the same and while it was undoubtedly an interesting experience, don’t consider yourselves too unlucky. I returned home today after spending a night in Karakol to attend an alleged AIDS education session at a club there. While I thought it was a good idea, getting young people to come to a club at night and then educating them about AIDS and other sexual health issues seemed like it would attract more people than a daytime seminar held at the local Red Crescent. However, despite the planners (some of my friends here) and their good intentions, it seemed like a normal night at a club with the difference being free condoms handed out- I have to admit that I was a little disappointed.

Regardless, I arrived home the next day in time to witness the butchering of one of our sheep. We are having a guest come in a few days so it was being slaughtered in preparation for her arrival. It was the third animal but first sheep I have watched being butchered in this country and I still find it quite a fascinating lesson in anatomy- regardless of the fact of its goriness. The traditional Kyrgyz method of cooking a sheep revolves around the highest national dish- besh barmak which I believe I have written about before but it is a multi-step process to prepare the entire sheep- and they really does prepare the entire sheep, hardly anything goes to waste. The majority of the sheep meat is boiled to make bullion but the hooves and head are preserved to be roasted- this is where I came in.

My youngest host sister- a 19 year old who usually is in Bishkek attending university but speaks pretty good English- was visiting for the weekend and the task of building a fire and roasting these choice parts was given to us. The fire part was easy, and then I sharpened a large stick upon which to impale the head. That was quite the interesting process, it took quite a few violent jabs at the severed head to get it properly mounted on the stick The hooves were stuck onto the prongs of a large pitchfork and then the roasting began.

Despite having given the sheep head a haircut post-mortem, there was still a fair amount of fur on it, this promptly burned and left the stench of burning hair/flesh firmly entrenched in my clothes. Wonderful. It was still fun to hang out with Aijan and speak English around the house, a rare luxury for me and I think I gained a deeper appreciation for Kyrgyz culture by participating in the process.

Later in the afternoon, I again got to help Aijan with the unenviable task of cleaning the digestive organs of the sheep. Not surprisingly, and I pardon my vulgarity, it smelled like shit and has left my hands stinking for what my sister has assured me will be no more than three days. I definitely don’t regret it though, on the whole it was an interesting to participate in the process and while it is not a skill I believe I will ever utilize in the states, I can now say that I know how to prepare at leas the choicest parts of the Kyrgyz fat-tailed sheep.

5th formers

2008-11-15T17:23:00.003+06:00

5th Form is one of my favorites to teach, the kids are still young enough to get really into stuff just because its a game- this makes them some of the more enthusiastic learners. These pictures are from two lessons I held- the first on body parts and the second on articles of clothing. Can you find the mistakes that they made? They're pretty funny!

Pictures of my community

2008-11-15T17:19:00.003+06:00

Here we have a field near my house, my street, one of the public water faucets, ice forming around it, and the outside of my school- how many people paid by the American government work in buildings with statues of Lenin?

They are poets and they don't even realize it

2008-11-15T17:08:00.001+06:00

20:45 13 November 2008

The other day I had yet another fun English club that I think you might find the results of amusing. It was for my advanced (relatively group) and I wanted to try out some poetry on them. Because of their generally basic knowledge, I confined the lesson to four line long poems and concentrated on basic end-rhyming by introducing couplets and ABAB form. After a brief introduction, I quickly turned it over to the students and had them write their own poems in styles of their choice. Here are some of the better/funnier results:

I have a mouse
The mouse is in the house
He is big
He is loving a pig

I have a cat
it is under the hat
I have a dog
His name is Bob

This is a book
he is my mate
And I like to cook
and also to ate

This is my mother
She is fine
I have a father
He is like a wine

My two favorites were the last two, I explained to the author of the third one that the last line wasn’t quite grammatically correct, but that often poets ignore the rules of grammar in order to better the effects of their works and so that it was a perfectly legitimate and really quite funny poem. The last one, which the killer last line, was written by this girl and I was so impressed with it I decided to introduce the concept of similes to the group. They were intrigued with this so I also introduced them to the idea of alliteration. It felt a bit odd, even in the advanced group I know that a lot of these students don’t even know how to hold a basic conversation in English, but I figured if they found it interesting, it might inspire them to learn English better. I couldn’t help but feel slightly a hypocrite though- one of my biggest criticisms of the system in place is that their vocabulary memorization assignments are filled with words that are long, outdated, and unnecessary in most usages of the language- some choice examples “Economy Class”, “splash”, “Test Pilot”, and my personal favorite “dicker”, which I didn’t know but apparently is a barge-worker. Regardless, even if I felt weird introducing words for literary devices, the students seemed to enjoy identifying their use in Poe’s “Annabel Lee” so I was happy at the results of the club.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for sometime and forgot to when I returned from Bishkek, but driving here is a really interesting occurrence. I mentioned recently my experience on the marsthrutka to Bishkek and the corresponding drunk-driving arrest of the driver. However, this really isn’t that our of the ordinary- drunk driving is a huge problem here- just last week a volunteer that lives near me told me that his counterpart’s brother died after he drunkenly ran off a bridge into a freezing river. Similarly, the former director of my school was killed by another drunk driver, its really a big shame.

Further than just the problem of drunk driving is the even more endemic problem of “bad driving”. The combination of the main highways being no wider than most residential neighborhood American streets (not to mention their terrible condition) and high rates of travel lead to some scary circumstances. While I haven’t seen anything quite like the YouTube footage I have seen of the 15 lanes of traffic going every which way, I have seen a car passing a car passing another car, all coming within inches of hitting the car coming in the opposite direction. Also, apparently both in Bishkek, and everywhere, stoplights are much more of a general suggestion than a really firm command. People usually at least one way as they approach a light, and if it is clear or they think that they can beat the oncoming traffic, its fair game. On the rare occasions where one might be actually required to stop at a traffic light, it seems customary to line up at the intersection alongside rather than behind the other cars crowded at the light. This provides an interesting situation when the light does change, part street-race to the front, part game of chicken with the oncoming traffic, and part “who can honk the loudest” contest.

I have heard unsubstantiated rumors that Kyrgyzstan has a high rate of automobile accidents. The two I have witnessed first-hand have lent circumstantial evidence to the correctness of this assertion for me. You might think that I would be scared every time I get in an automobile, but I try and pick my taxis as best I can (seatbelts are a really nice luxury I am willing to pay extra for). I am a bit scared, but then again, what are you gonna do?

It's cold!!!

2008-11-15T17:07:00.001+06:00

10:45 11 November 2008

We are having our first real snow today. I don’t know if it truly is the last of my childhood enthusiasm for snow leaving or merely a reflection on the reality of the circumstances (cold and windy) because I was not and remain not terribly excited about it. While we have had numerous other snowfalls, they were generally fleeting and only barely covered the ground and were melted away in a day or two. Today we have one that while not a huge amount of accumulation, did really stick and the temperature indicated it’s not going anywhere fast. I’ll still definitely admit that it is really pretty (I hope to put up some pictures) but it really is quite cold. Oh well, I suppose I must just suck it up and soldier on and be thankful my house has coal heating.

Big City Life

2008-11-15T17:06:00.002+06:00

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.

Presidential

2008-11-15T17:06:00.001+06:00

12:15 7 November 2008
The day of the election was so fun! There was a program at the American corner in Karakol about the American political process- American corners are embassy sponsored English language and American cultural resource centers with free internet, English libraries, and neat programs. An employee from the embassy came and solicited help from nearby PCVs on explaining the American political process and answering questions. The program was definitely a hit, we had a mock election and the Kyrgyz people there seemed genuinely interested in the whole thing. The biggest benefit for me though was that we could use the computers to monitor election results throughout the whole end of the day! After the polls in California and the west coast closed and CNN called the election for Obama, there was quite the sigh of relief/cry of joy from the group of volunteers gathered there (not that there aren’t volunteers that lean right as well). Anyhow, it was great to be able to celebrate with friends there.

Now I am in Bishkek, I came for program travel but came early to see a doctor today- they wanted to check out my thumb and I’ve been having a little pain in my knee. Apparently they think that when I tripped and sprained my ankle I also tore my meniscus slightly. Luckily it was minor- they gave me ibuprofen cream and a knee brace- it should be better in 2 weeks but its good that I got at it looked at lest I have hurt it further. Anyhow, I’m in the big city (well- comparatively speaking) and I am going to enjoy myself.

Life on Mars (Bar)

2008-11-15T17:04:00.000+06:00

4 November 2008

I can’t believe I haven’t written for so long! Granted, not too much has happened as I have been on break from school and have been at home for the most of it. The biggest news in my life is that our dog had puppies! They are really cute and we have been augmenting her diet to allow them to feed. I promise I’ll post pictures of them soon. How adorable!

I also returned from Cholpon-Ata a few days ago where a volunteer hosted a Halloween Party. It was fun to dress up (I went as a Mar’s Bar) and to hang out with other Americans for an American holiday. I returned to Karakol and spent an extra night there where I cooked Mac n’ Cheese and Tuna fish with another friend, something I can’t really do at my village. Regardless, it was pretty exciting for me.

So yes, there isn’t any terribly interesting stories for me (I did laundry yesterday and it froze though which I guess was funny). But I am going to Bishkek later this week for some program travel and that should be fun and interesting. Anyhow, today mostly I sat around and waited excitedly for news of the election. None yet.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

2008-11-01T18:47:00.000+06:00

21:40 28 October 2008

Testing continues to be a hugely frustrating and annoying responsibility of mine. Students here don’t seem to understand the concept of individual work (they say they understand that they aren’t allowed to work together when I get worked up and ask them in an irate tone of voice, after they reply in the affirmative they then calmly proceed to continue to work together). Anyhow, I’ve decided that I can’t stop students working with their desk mates (the desks are one per two people- a set up that facilitates cheating and working together) but have remained instant that the room remains relatively quiet during a test (another unheard of concept) and confiscate any cheating materials. Today that included a piece of paper complete with the generally correct answers that was attempted to be circulated through the room. Luckily I caught this before it made much headway and noticed the progress on the guilty students test. I’ve also taken to thinking up passive-aggressive comments to make on students’ papers. The test I gave today involved a 5x5 chart I drew on the board with various categories that students were to fill in with the information provided on different characters from a story. I told the students that the exactness of their replica was unimportant, it was only the answers I cared about- students here seem to be obsessed with neatness over honesty or correctness on their tests. Regardless it took students awhile to copy down the chart with the hints I provided, and after a few minutes I inquired if everyone was ready. This one student, who had been talking rather than copying down the chart, was the only one unfinished, but I decided that it would be unfair to start without everyone prepared. Therefore, I waited for five excruciating minutes while this student made a perfect 5x5 chart with his pen, pencil, ruler, protractor, and oddly enough, compass. Later on, he was the same student attempting to fill in his otherwise blank test with the answers provided by a different student. My imaginary comment for this student: “While the rest of class and I enjoyed waiting for you and it is evident that you show impressive attention to detail when it comes to drawing straight lines, this same attention seems lacking in your answers. Perhaps a reversal of your time allotment to study these respective skills would yield more acceptable results for both of us.” I don’t think that I will write anything of the sort on his test- though the likelihood he would find someone to translate it or understand the subtlety is doubtful.

Oy, anyhow, the reason I wanted to right this entry in the first place was to talk about how awesome my English Club was this afternoon. I got an idea for a lesson plan from a friend- have students design “Spirit Animals” from a combination of two or more animals and have them talk about why they did. This was a great idea and I ran with it having my club members first have a race with two teams to see who could think up more animals and then explained the concept of the “Spirit Animal”, I also threw out the idea of coming up with a name from the sum of the parts’ names. What followed was an amazing “zoo” of our Spirit Animals, each student drew their animal on the board (hilarious) and named and talked about them- we had a fibra (fish-zebra), a chibit (chicken-rabbit combined for its smell), a germuse (tiger-mouse for the contrast), and my personal favorite, a pigeleper (pig+elephant+tiger). The club finished by discussing animals fighting and who would win and why (a lion would win because it is bigger, braver, and stronger). Most of the stress I had from my test was relieved by the enthusiasm and fun I had with this club. Yay.

The Iceman Cameth

2008-11-01T18:43:00.000+06:00

17:30 27 October 2008

Yesterday I was reminded that despite my deepest wishes and the fact that Winter doesn’t officially start until December 22nd, Winter is here in Kyrgyzstan. It had been getting cold the last few weeks (dipping into the freezing digits in the nights) but yesterday took the cake. Upon a blistering wind Winter arrived with a small snowfall and the mercury plummeting into the mid-20s. I guess trick-or-treating may be out of the question and I think it safe to say Winter hath reared its ugly and cold head.

The coming of cold weather prompted us to winterize our house somewhat. The main work to be done in this department was to take raw sheep’s wool and, using a knife, stuff it into the cracks around the windows to prevent drafts. The fact of the matter is that the house is going to be cold though. The kitchen/eating area isn’t too bad when we have the coal/wood burning stove running but the rest of the rooms in the house are pretty chilly- mine has already dipped into the 40’s at night and a friend of mine here said they once woke up the next morning and found their purified water frozen solid. Yikes. Regardless, I’m not so worried about sleeping since I have an excellent sleeping bag but I am going to have to get used to cold feet. Oh well, I wasn’t planning on marrying anytime soon anyhow.

Teachers Day Party and Pictures of the Animal Bazaar

2008-10-25T12:50:00.003+06:00

Yikes! Pt. 3

2008-10-25T12:49:00.003+06:00

22:00 24 October 2008

I now have more evidence that I am not a farmer. My family received two huge logs for our firewood for the winter and a friend who owns a big saw came over to assist us in making them smaller for our stove. Our friend was doing the big work, cutting up the 2 foot diameter logs into sections with the saw and I was cutting the discs into smaller pieces with an ax and a hammer and wedge. I was really surprised actually how easy this wood split- a huge disc could be twined with a mighty blow from the ax. These halves were subsequently broken into smaller and smaller pieces with the axe until they were about half the width of my forearm-each disc had about 50-60 pieces in it. I actually really like chopping firewood; I find it kind of cathartic and relaxing to make big things into little things.

I digress, in the process of chopping one of the smaller pieces, my hand holding it upright slipped and the (admittedly relatively light) blow of the axe reined all its force across my thumb. I initially was confused why the log didn’t break and then realized that I had instead cleaved my thumb. As I said, the blow was relatively light, but even a light blow from an axe can do relatively serious damage to our digits. I believe I was relatively lucky- while I split my thumbnail cleanly in two with a pretty serious and deep cut- I didn’t damage my nerves so I think that the long-term damage will be relatively minimal. Immediately after realizing the damage I did (I was in shock so it didn’t really hurt) I thought it was worse and convinced myself momentarily that my thumb was held on by a mere flap of skin- luckily this was not the case. Then I immediately washed the cut and called the Emergency Peace Corps Medical Officer line. They gave excellent advice of what I needed to do and had me photograph the wound- later it was emailed to them from the city and they assessed that I didn’t need to make a trip to the PC medical staff and that I could care for it myself. If you are really curious the grizzly extent of my injury- email me and I will show you the pictures- the better part of valor has prevented me from posting here.

Testing My Patience...

2008-10-25T12:49:00.001+06:00

22:30 22 October 2008

Today I conceived, wrote, and administered my first test as an English teacher. On the whole it was a frustrating and taxing experience. I gave the test to my fifth formers- it was the first instance of actually graded work and overall, I was really disappointed in the way the whole process went. I expected a lot of the problems I encountered, but it didn’t make it any easier for me to deal with and I have to admit that I think as a proctor of this test, at least from an American standpoint, I was a failure.

I actually enjoyed designing the test in the first place- it was certainly difficult to make- I had to think like a 5th grader and come up with creative ways to test their knowledge- but I enjoyed the actual authoring process of the exam. The test was designed to discover the students’ knowledge of possessive pronouns, location prepositions, and some new vocabulary about clothing we had learned recently (which was in an awesome lesson that involved me bringing in a lot of clothing and having races with the students). For the clothing, I drew a picture of a boy and a girl on the board with colored chalk and obvious articles of clothing, gave them a word bank, and then asked them to complete the sentences “He wears…” and “She wears…”. For the possessive pronouns, I took a more traditional fill in the blank approach with “I have a dog. It is ___ dog”. Lastly, I drew a basic map on the board with four buildings and a road in a row and asked them questions like “The ______ is next to the school.” and “The road is between the _____ and the _____”. Overall, I am still convinced that, had the majority of the students put more effort into studying what I was perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that the students did this for several reasons.

We were informed during our technical training sessions of the plethora of problems that we would find with our classes and in particular our testing. These were completely evident during this test. There are a completely different set of acceptable practices and norms during testing. The concept of a quiet testing environment seems foreign here and my counterpart seemed to find it perfectly okay when students opened their books for reference (in retrospect I mind this a lot less than some of the other practices I saw) or talked to each other- admittedly in hushed tones. However, while watching the students cheating verbally asking each other questions without outright copying I kept quiet and reminded myself of the effect of collectivist culture. Here individual achievement is not terribly encouraged and it’s more important to help each other achieve mediocrity than it is to personally achieve excellence. I generalize, of course, but the impact of the culture in the classroom is exceedingly evident always whether a testing or classroom situation. The only time it broke my limit was when I noticed a girl frantically copying down another students’ answers as the time limit appeared without any attempt to conceal her actions. In response to this I snatched up her notebook.

A bigger frustration for me was the actions of my counterpart during the test. I asked her to explain the exercises to the students which she did by translating the entire test (because we would pay for it out of pocket- the test is written on the black board and copied into each student’s copy book and then taken). I minded this because the majority of the test was vocabulary and reading comprehension- obviously this becomes much easier when everything is translated. Similarly throughout the test any time a student asked a question, she would give him/her the answer. This was extremely frustrating to me as I felt my test was being undermined. I think she may have looked at it differently- the performance of students reflects the performance of teachers and if our students perform poorly then it makes us look bad. Regardless, I would rather look like a bad teacher and know what we need to do differently to be a better one than live on in blissful ignorance while students fail to learn. I wanted to talk to my counterpart but face is such a large part of the culture here that I did not want to embarrass her in front of children. Probably I will talk to her later and I hope things change but this was obviously a frustrating first testing experience for me. Let’s hope things improve.

Welcome Weekend Update

2008-10-25T12:47:00.000+06:00

17:45 22 October 2008

This past weekend was a lot of fun. We had an Issyk-Kul Oblast welcome weekend where we got to meet the rest of the volunteers on the lake we hadn’t, have some administrative meetings, talk about our sites and our preparation of winter, and just see our fellow countrymen. We had a potluck dinner and it was wonderful to have some home-cooked meals that were pretty good approximations of food you could get in the States. The lasagna (with Tivol- a cottage cheese like yogurtish substance- instead of ricotta) was particularly good, and the cheesy bread, salad with lettuce, and humus also were wonderful reminders of the culinary diversity I am currently missing out on.

Regardless, it was a fun weekend but I will have to live frugally the next two weeks as a result of it- I blew nearly $25 over the three days! I guess that doesn’t sound like that much but when you consider my monthly living allowance, it is a significant portion. Living in a village, we are expected to incur less expenses so we get less- after paying my rent each month I get less than the equivalent of four dollars a day- most of which goes towards food. Granted, while this by no means allows me to live extravagantly (our pay is determined by some complex formula giving us enough to live like locals), I have a coal-heated house, eat a square three a day, and have enough left over for a little travel and R&R. This is a lot more many of natives here get- so I don’t consider myself terribly unfortunate. It does take a lot of explaining when people ask about salaries in America though, and I have to explain why $5,000/year, which would allow one to live like a king here, would be unlivable in America.

Anyhow, tonight I am making deviled eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches for my host mother so I best get to the kitchen.

Some Pictures- My 10A Class and a view on my walk to school

2008-10-18T13:39:00.002+06:00

Yikes! Pt. 2

2008-10-18T13:39:00.001+06:00

12:21 18 October 2008

Two days ago I had a somewhat scary experience. It didn’t involve me except as a witness, but nevertheless it was disconcerting. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we are supposed to be very neutral observers towards the cultural and private lives of the Host Country Nationals- we are here for very specific purposes of education and they don’t include intrusion onto their cultural or interpersonal norms. In many ways this is difficult especially with the practice of Bride Kidnapping (which is often done against the bride’s will constituting what is internationally recognized as a human rights violation). Staying impartial and externally non-judgmental when you hear about these types of occurrences is very difficult for me.

So the other day I heard quite a commotion on the street. Initially I thought it was some kind of celebration and went onto the street to investigate. Unfortunately it was nothing of the sort and instead was a very obvious case of domestic violence. As I walked out onto the street I saw them going behind the door of the compound as the children and grandmother hurried out onto the street. Following this I heard a large argument followed by audible hitting. I retreated back inside knowing that I could not and should not do anything about it but it was still a jarring event. Obviously domestic violence occurs around the world, it just saddens me that it is a fairly acceptable form of “keeping ones wife in line”.

This also relates to my service and the prevalence of corporal punishment here. As a teacher, I often have difficulty keeping my students well behaved. We were told that visits with their parents is often an effective method of getting them to behave better. The problem is that sometimes after a visit with the parents the children will come the next day to school with bruises, obviously there is a balance we have to find between discipline in the classroom and personal health and safety of our students. I don’t want to be responsible for the harm that comes to any of my students.

Ce-le-brate Teacher's Day Uh huh!

2008-10-18T13:38:00.000+06:00

22:00 16 October 2008

This past Monday we had our Teacher’s Day Holiday party. While the actual date of the holiday had been a week and a half earlier, we were on break at the time so it got rescheduled to Monday. I am happy to report that I was significantly more successful in limiting my consumption of alcohol this time, I got by with only a few sips of homemade wine- though at times I had to literally cover my cup to prevent the addition of vodka. Regardless, the food was really good with an array of cold salads and then the typical plov. I’ve realized since abandoning my vegetarianism that I do enjoy the tastes of some kinds of meat, however, the more I eat it the more I realize that mutton is not one of them. Unfortunately, it is the preferred meat here and when it is in something everything else tastes like it. Oh well, while I doubt I will ever like it, I have become good at choking it down when I have to.

The following day I headed to Cholpon-Ata, a four hour plus travel, to get a flu shot. I had never gotten one before, but I figured since Peace Corps was providing it and I may be at a higher risk to just go ahead and get it. It was also a nice opportunity to see a bunch of other volunteers on the lake as well- it was a mini reunion and it was great to hang out with people that I had missed. Unfortunately, as all good things do, it came to an end and I had to head back (after I spent one night there). Anyhow, I feel that my prose is probably really boring right now- I’m tired. I’m going to Karakol tomorrow after classes for a Peace Corps Issyk-Kul welcome weekend. It should be a lot of fun and hopefully I will have some interesting stories from it.

Ba Ram You

2008-10-18T13:37:00.000+06:00

22:30 13 October 2008

Other than the desire to use the internet and visit friends, the main reason I went into Karakol this past weekend was to attend the Animal Bazaar there. At the bazaar all types of the usual Kyrgyz livestock are bought and traded- horses, fat tailed sheep, cows, fowl, and even a few pigs can be found at the enormous Mal Bazaar in Karakol. But lest I ruin the interesting description, let me move backwards a bit.

Friday I cooked for the second time at site. Unfortunately, my host mother was in Bishkek for a wedding, but I invited some of a local friend, a JICA volunteer, and another PCV to dine with me. My host sister and two of her friends also came over which made the more the merrier. I prepared potato latkes and waldorf salad- an odd combination I admit but everything seemed to come out well and they seemed to enjoy the food. The salad in particular was good, as much for its variation from Kyrgyz salad as its own merits.

I following day I went into Karakol early afternoon after saying goodbye to my host sister Veneera as she returned to Kumptor, the enormous gold mine that accounts for 15% of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP. She works there as a cook fifteen days on and then fifteen days off- I am going to miss having her around since she is about my age and was fun to hang out with and talk to- I even taught her the basics of Frisbee which she seemed to enjoy. Regardless, after saying goodbye I headed into the city with my friend JICA friend Saori who also wanted to do some things unavailable in our village. After using the internet, I got together with some PC friends and we had a dry wine and pasta night. It was really exciting to have legitimate dry wine. While there is no shortage of wine in this country, most all of it is so sweet it makes Manischewitz taste like Hawkeye’s martinis (sorry for the M*A*S*H* reference, I couldn’t think of a cornier joke to make). Unavailable elsewhere, there is one store in Karakol that carries two or three not cough-syrupy wines (along with a wonderful assortment of other Western or Western style foodstuffs that many volunteers like to look at, pick up, and consider buying before they realize how incredibly expensive they are). We picked up a few bottles to split between us, and in the meanwhile played a really fun version of charades while we waited for the electricity to come back on so we could cook- and yes, charades is more challenging by candlelight.

The next morning we all woke early for the much anticipated animal bazaar. While it was radically different from what I expected, it surely didn’t disappoint. I suppose I was expecting stalls with people perusing the various animals and each vendor hawking the quality of their wares. Rather, as I suppose is the Kyrgyz way, there was far much less organization, the only seeming organization was that the types of animals were more or less separated from each other, there was horse, sheep, cow, etc. areas. The way it worked though, despite the massive crowd that was well over a thousand, was that anyone could calmly work his way through the mess of animals, people, and the inevitable mess, find an animal one was interested in, and then begin negotiation with the owner. Consider the sheer volume of both humans and animals, I was amazed at the relative quiet of the whole ordeal- it was amazingly calm and peaceful. This to me was the most interesting part of the bazaar- the heated debates over prices were subdued to a quiet mutter and even the animals, despite their typical boisterousness, where incredibly quiet. Maybe it was a somber realization on their part that they were likely dinner soon, but whatever the reason, the chaos was much more visual than aural.

Later that day I returned and helped my mother tend our animals, I am significantly better with the minor tasks now and get laughed at a great deal less. Things seem well.

Cute pictures of my family (Oldest Host sister and her children)

2008-10-11T13:56:00.001+06:00

The new me

2008-10-11T13:55:00.002+06:00

Maybe I am a farmer...

2008-10-11T13:54:00.000+06:00

22:00 09 October 2008

I’m happy to report that the funk I was in a few days ago- though it was for very legitimate reasons I believe- has eased somewhat. My G-I problems, while not passed are better, and I’ve came to terms with my friend leaving. On an unrelated note, I am also growing a beard. I got very tired of having to shave with cold water when it was cold so I decided a beard was the best course of action, we’ll see how it works out (already I’ve been asked why I hadn’t shaved, but when I explained what I was doing they amicably understood).

Today I had my first Russian tutoring session. My tutor was recommended to me by my counterpart and speaks no English, but I think that will be okay. I told her that I wanted to first focus on speaking and maybe later move onto reading and writing. Seemed to go alright so far.

I also had a much better experience in the fields today than when I became lost with two obstinate cows. We were let out of school early and don’t have classes for the next two days because apparently some of the kids hadn’t finished with the potato harvest- a little frustrating for me, but alright. When I heard my sister was going to help a friend dig potatoes, I figured why not spend the break doing what it was intended for? So I went to the fields with her and spent several hours digging and sorting potatoes. I found myself much more taken to this task than the other farm and home tasks I have tried so far. While it is undoubtedly knee and back breaking work, I found it much more natural and even fun to goof around with people my age (my sister and her friend are both 24) while doing something productive. So yay for not being a total failure on the farm!

The Turkmen Times

2008-10-11T13:53:00.001+06:00

10:30 08 October 2008

The only English news source, either print or otherwise, I have here outside of the semi-irregular Internet I enjoy (not including month week old Newsweeks which, it seems, we will loose soon) is a Turkmenistan based news channel. My family has satellite T.V. as a surprising amount of people here do (there are only two TV stations broadcast from within Kyrgyzstan that I know of) and there are two channels from Turkmenistan which broadcast the same thing, one in Turkmen/Russian and the other in English. I initially turned to it because I was seeking news about the earthquake in Kyrgyzstan and none of the Russian channels I normally watch had anything on it at the time. Ever since that first time, I have continued to watch it, not for its news content which is almost nothing, but because of a somewhat sick fascination with it.

There seem to be only two people that work for the English version of this Turkmen channel- a man and a woman who both speak passable but far from perfect English in an odd monotone Turkmen accent (the guy is a lot better at English and easier to understand). The news content, as I mentioned earlier, is negligible and is basically a reporting on what the Turkmen President- I use the term because it is his title, not because he is in any way a democratically elected leader. In my quest for more information on the Kyrgyz earthquake, the only coverage this channel gave to it was that the President of Turkmenistan had sent a letter of condolence to President Bakiev of Kyrgyzstan- no mention of where, when, how, or any other details of the earthquake. This was all presented (in the 7 seconds it took to express that) with a pixilated map of Kyrgyzstan.

I guess I can’t expect more news from a country which has breaks with elaborate graphically designed proclamations that state “The XXIst Century is the Golden Age of Turkmenistan” in lieu of advertisements- also the official name of the station is the "Independent Impartial Turkmen News Network". However, the news coverage still continues to fascinate me; the main stories today were about the Latvian President visiting (legitimate), an international Book Sellers conference titled “The Golden Age of Turkmenistan in Publishing” attended by twenty some countries (semi-legitimate), grouses are pretty and Turkmenistan has a lot of a unique type them (not news but fluff like some in America), a report on making land arable that previously wasn’t and the reclamation of some number of hectares (confusing, and not really news), the number of tonnes of wheat that had been harvested that year as compared with last year- unsurprisingly the government is reporting a big increase (straight up propaganda, and not even interesting propaganda), and to top it all off, the fact that Turkmenistan has a lot of gas and oil reserves (which isn’t news, just well known facts). All in all, the news sounds much more like an economic advertisement for business investors than an actual attempt at informing the Turkmen public about anything- this theory has been reinforced with subsequent viewings and the realization that many of the less newsy stories are run pretty much every time.

Turkmenistan is a country where the previous president named the days of the week after himself (the current one seems slightly less egomaniacal) and the capital city has more fountains and unused gorgeous buildings than maybe any other in the world- no access to internet/wikipedia when I write these makes my fact checking ability negligible so I’d appreciate it if someone could let me know more about this country and whether or not this is true. This country seems fascinating from their news.

Downer

2008-10-11T13:52:00.000+06:00

18:45 07 October 2008

It is now my official three month anniversary in country (yes I am aware at the inherent irony in calling anything not annual an anniversary) and I can look back and overall, I am immensely happy here. My host families have been really good to me, I enjoy learning the language here, a lot of the culture I really like (though of course there are aspects which are hard for me to adapt to) and I feel like I am making a positive contribution at my work- teaching seems to really suit me. Overall, my service up to this point both as a Trainee and now as a Volunteer has been extremely difficult but also completely worth all the hardships and struggles I have encountered.

Having said that, the past two days have been kind of rough for me. I am sure that many of you have heard about the earthquake in Kyrgyzstan that killed scores of people. Thank goodness that as far as I know all of the Volunteers are alright (and I am sure I would have heard if anything was otherwise). While everyone that I know physically is fine, I’ve talked to volunteers that were nearby (the nearest volunteers were still a good 50 km or so from the epicenter) and it seems that all of their host-families had family or knew people that were killed. As I am in the North of the country, I didn’t even hear about it until much later and didn’t feel anything, but there is a somber cast over the whole country.

While obviously in the grand scheme of things it is of much smaller importance, I was more affected by finding out that a friend of mine decided to ET (Early Termination- the term used for going home early because you want to leave). This was a complete surprise to me- nobody knew she was considering it, and while she was living on the other side of the country, I frequently communicated with her and she was one of the people I bonded with most during training. Needless to say, I feel, her loss will be deeply felt by me and the K-16 community as a whole.

To top off my somewhat negative mood, gastro-intestinal issues have come back resoundingly and this time I don’t have the luxury of a seat. The plus side is that my already quads are going to be Lance Armstrong-like when I am through with this most recent bout. The colder weather (nights dip into the mid-thirties) plus the fact that the two shipments of Gatorade I was supposed to have received got intercepted and stolen in shipment makes my bowel issues even more fun. (Sorry for the sarcasm- in addition for this being a place for me to spread interesting stories and keep abroad of my life, it is also a place for me to vent when I can’t talk to an English speaker. On the plus side it’s been a really long time since I last talked about my BMs, it might have been a record for me)

I apologize for the rather negative energy contained in this entry (but in a twist of the hilarious- I am channeling it into a barbershop quartet arrangement of a Kyrgyz song), but I do think that it is important for anyone considering Peace Corps to realize it is not all fun and games and there are a lot of issues to deal with along with the physical ones you expect. I don’t want it to seem that in any way I regret coming here, I don’t and I still am really committed to my service and think that it was the best possible decision that I could have made. As the old Peace Corps motto stated, being a volunteer is “The toughest job you’ll ever love” for a whole host of reasons (I’m not a huge fan of the new motto, “How far are you willing to go?” because I think it sounds a little like a game of “Nervous” or “Truth or Dare”). I do love this job, without a doubt in my mind, but it has also been the most physically, mentally, and emotionally straining time of my life.