Real World - NARYN

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.