This past weekend, Evan, Mike, Nicola, Andy, Kole, and I went away to a village at Lake Issyk-Kul with our boss, her husband, and their daughter. We stayed with her husband's brother and his family, and it was a wonderful weekend.
We left around 21:00, after having a plov dinner cooked for us in the school canteen. It was the start of a food-filled weekend. We played Boticelli in the car the whole way, which has become our favorite car pasttime thanks to my introducing it! We got in around 1 am, and instead of just going straight to bed like we've done in our last 2 homestays, there was "tea" ready for us, but it was actually a giant feast- wonderful Kyrgyz bread, homemade apricot jam, cookies, salad, and tea. Power was out, but candlelight created a nice atmosphere. It was the first night I've slept without Mike in over 2 months, so it was cold and lonely.
Next morning we had a giant breakfast- a potato/meat/vegetable dish, and again bread, jam, cookies, and tea. Then we drove for 2.5 hours to a waterfall, near the Chinese border and quite close to where the Canadian gold mine is. Again, we passed the time with Botticelli. There are SO MANY famous people I don't know! Half of the questions involve "World Snooker Champions," which is a sport I had never even heard of! Apparently it's like pool/billiards I guess. It pays to have British friends- I learn so much from them!
We walked up into the mountains to see a waterfall, which was almost completely frozen. It was fun to take pictures and throw snowballs and poke halls in the surface with a stick. I'm basically a child when it comes to playing in the snow...
After the waterfall we went back down to the van, where Kendje's brother-in-law made us yak shashlyk. We had more bread, jam, onions, tea, and vodka shots. We walked around a little before lunch was ready- there was a statue to the first Russian cosmonaut, a non-frozen river, and lots of pine trees. After packing up the picnic, we drove back to the village. It was known as Karl Marx during Soviet times, and I think the current name is Kara-Koo, on the south shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, quite close to Bokonbaevo and Kadji-Sai, where I went on my last two excursions to Issyk-Kul.
On our way home, we stopped at a resort that is being built at Issyk-Kul, near Kadji-Sai. The northern shore of Issyk-Kul is very developed with hotels and resorts, but the southern part is mostly untouched. In the middle of sand and water, there were many concrete yurts and tall walls, painted to look like Kyrgyz shyrdaks (rugs). There was a big iron reindeer statue, and also a baby cradle, as well as a statue of the wife of Manas (Kyrgyzstan's epic poem hero. We walked inside, and closer to the lake was sort of an arena- marble steps leading down to a flat open area, surrounded by giant paintings of the first Kyrgyz ballerina, the first Kyrgyz composer, a snow leopard, a giant snake sculpture, and some other paintings. We walked all the way down to the water and I got to touch Lake Issyk-Kul for the first time, and practiced skipping rocks.
When we got back to Uran's house, we just about immediately had dinner! It was a Kyrgyz noodle and potato dish, and again bread, salads, jam, vodka, and tea. We ate enough food to feed a team of marathon runners, and all we'd done all day was walk a few minutes to a waterfall, and sit in a car for 5 hours. After dinner the village children sang to us- first the Kyrgyz national anthem, and then they each performed individually. Some of them had amazing voices, and I got great videos of their performances. Then it was everyone else's turn to sing. Kendje made up a drink concoction with tea, vodka, and a piece of bread, and it was the singing cup. It was passed around and whoever got it had to sing. As many of you know, I do NOT sing. In fact, there is little that makes me more uncomfortable than the thought of singing in public. So I had a mini-panic attack, even though we'd been warned by other teachers who had already visited the family a few months before that it would happen. Mike passed the cup to me and I asked if I could just drink it instead of having to sing. Kendje told me that I couldn't, because it would mean that her husband and his brother after me wouldn't get to sing, but that Mike could sing for me. So he did, which was wonderful and saved me from certain suicide. Luckily we only went around the table twice, and people didn't pass it to me the second time. We played cards, amused ourselves with Kendje's 3-year-old niece who loved playing with us, and I worked on a scarf I'm knitting for my friend Josh.
Next morning, we again had a giant breakfast with potato soup, and then drove just a few minutes to Issyk-Kul to go horseriding. I don't feel good on a horse, so Mike and I opted to just wander around instead of riding. We were followed (chaperoned) by two little village boys, who skipped rocks better than I did and wrestled each other. I collected shells and sea glass, we practiced skipping, and we wandered around for a few hours until the horseriders came back. Then we went back to the house for lunch- plov and all the fixings. It was like 3 days of Thanksgiving! I'm sure we all gained lots of weight, just eating and doing little else. After lunch we drove back to Bishkek, playing Boticelli again the whole way back.
It was a free weekend since the school paid for the trip, and it was really good again to get out of the city. Weather was pretty warm so it was comfortable to be outside for long periods of time, and I look forward to going to Issyk-Kul in the summer when it will be warmer to go swimming! Mike and I brought our bathing suits, but it was just too cold to think about trying it. If there had been a sauna, I'd have done it for sure.
Other new things in Bishkek: We had planned on ordering 2 turkeys from a local restaurant for Thanksgiving on Thursday, but somehow the restaurant forgot to make our order, so we went out for Turkish instead. It was good, and it was nice that we weren't competing with homemade American Thanksgiving food, since there's no way it could have compared.
Josh, Nicola, Mike and I applied for our Uzbek visas on Friday, and supposedly we can go pick them up from the tour operator on Friday. For Americans, it's $145 dollars plus a 10$ service charge to the tour agency. Mike and I are hoping we can get Kazakh transit visas, so we can go to Uzbekistan through Almaty, Shymkent, and Turkistan, but we'll have to wait until we get our Uzbek visas sorted out before we can go to the Kazakh embassy. That will have to be next week- it's hard to believe that time is flying! I've been in Kyrgyzstan for almost 3 months now, which is just insane to think about.
My friend Derek flies back to the States next weekend, and like I wrote before, won't come back next semester like he'd been originally planning. So next Tuesday we're going to have a going away party/early Christmas party, and we'll do a White Elephant grab bag to exchange gifts.
The weather has gotten colder again here, so winter is probably back to stay :( Once snow comes it will be alright to handle.
Happy December all! It's almost Itsenaisyyspaiva (Finnish Independence Day)/ St. Nicholas Tag, so I'll find some way to celebrate both.
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