Let's forget about the bad feeling created in the last post. Here are some happy things I've done over the past weeks.
We found the cheapest and best restaurant yet just a few blocks from our house. It is the only place that serves the Kyrgyz national dish Beshbarmak (five fingers). Traditionally it should be eaten with your hands, hence the name. It's basically noodles with horse sausage and gravy. So that is another animal to add to my list of new kinds of meat I've had here in Kyrgyzstan. Dog was by far the best, the horse sausage was made with the actual intestine from the horse, and it was really fatty. But it was good to try, and good to say I've had the real Kyrgyz national dish.
Mike, Evan, Katy, Josh and I went to Osh Bazaar on Wednesday and I got all my Xmas shopping done. Nothing exciting, but I'll be sending out a few small packages from here in the next weeks.
I also bought a clay pig-shaped whistle/mouth instrument. I can't play it at all, but I needed a handmade Kyrgyz pig to add to my collection. Josh bought yarn so I've started making him a scarf, and Mike got some orange yarn so I can make him mittens. I found a great knitting pattern online for pig mittens, and I'm almost finished making one for myself. I bought new sized needles so I was testing the gage for the first time, and also making a new kind of thumb hole than what I used to use for mittens, but miraculously the thumb turned out perfectly and its exactly the right size for me- now I just have to get the second one to look like the first!
I'm going to go back to Osh Bazaar in the next few weeks and hopefully buy a sewing machine. I have to find out first how much they cost, but I'd be willing to spend $50 to get one. They are all the antique-looking, hand crank machines, but it would be good to be able to sew again.
A new teacher has arrived, so Nicola and I are no longer the newest ones. He's from Appleton, WI and he seems really great. It's good to have another Midwesterner here, it's great to be able to talk Minnesota-Wisconsin rivalry with! It's just great that he knows so many of the same things that I do.
Mike shaved his beard off, and it's taking a while to get used to. Now that I actually recognize him, I've taken quite a liking to it. He's going to grow it again though now that it's winter.
Last weekend we went to see Swan Lake at the ballet. I had never seen it before and didn't really understand what was going on, and I was actually quite bored with the dancing, but it was good to do something cultural. The orchestra was also really good. Next weekend the opera Carmen is playing so we'll likely go see that. Theater/ballet tickets here seem to be less than 200 som, so it's much much much cheaper than it would be in the US. After the ballet we went to a rabbit-themed restaurant. It was in a basement and the walls were painted to look like a rabbit burrow/warren. There were even fake carrots hanging from the shelves. To complete the theme, they also served many rabbit dishes. I had fried rabbit with mashed potatoes, which was quite good. They also seem to be quite a popular cocktail bar. We tried to go last night to celebrate Nicola's birthday, but the entire place was reserved so we'll have to go back some other time. Instead, we went to Stary Edgar's (Old Edgar's) which was like an authentic English pub. There was good live music playing and great cocktails, so we'll probably go there a lot in the future.
Tonight we're going to see the newest James Bond movie, in Russian. I've read the synopsis online so I know what to expect, and there's not so much storyline to have to follow with James Bond anyway. Just seeing Daniel Craig will be entertainment enough.
Next week will be an easy teaching week since it's test week again- I just have to write 4 tests before Wednesday. It's so hard to believe that I've been teaching for almost 2 months! My schedule next month is great- no morning classes and I have two classes of Intermediate 2 and two of Upper-Intermediate 4, so I'll only have to plan two lessons instead of four.
Josh, Katy, and I really have to sit down soon and plan our winter break trip to Uzbekistan. If Mike, Evan, and Ben can't get days off from work, they'll probably come with us instead of going to Iran, but everything is still up in the air. So no solid plans for Dec 19-Jan 6 yet.
I finally got a video from the Horse Festival posted to facebook- check it out!
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