After my last post about how great Samarkand was, Mike and I headed back to our hotel to hang out until our train left at 1:43 am. Mike and I started an epic card game tournament. We've played about 50 games up to now and he's still ahead. But not for long. Anyways, a taxi came to pick us up at 00:30, and we caught the train to Bukhara. Katy and Josh had a cushy 4-person sleeper car, but we opted for cheap and got 4th class seats, "obshy vagon" in Russian. Tickets were 5500 sum instead of about 20,000 for a sleeper cabin, but it became clear why when we got there. It was a mostly open train car, with 9 benches in each section. We got on midway during the train journey (the train had started in Tashkent) so it was mostly full- there were people sitting and lying EVERYWHERE. It smelled horribly of B.O. and socks, and there were no lights on so we were wandering around in the dark, trying to find a place to squeeze in. We finally found a spot on the end of a bench. It was a semi-padded bench, but there was no backrest or anything, and we just had to stuff our bags and shoes on the floor in front of us. There was barely any place for anything, and I tried to find a place for the loaf of bread we'd bought from a babushka at the train station. I tried to put it behind me and under my legs, but it wasn't comfortable. The guy sitting across from me took it from me and just put it onto the table, which was already covered in loaves of bread.
Mike fell asleep quickly, and I was just looking around, amused by the fact that it was the middle of the night and we were in a crowded train, surrounded by Uzbeks going home for New Year's to be with their families. The boys across from me kept saying words quietly in English, so I knew that it would only be a matter of time before they tried talking to me. Finally one of the guys said, "Excuse me, are you from England?" and then a semi-awkward conversation started, where I had to answer the usual questions... my name, my age, if I'm married (and then I have to explain in detail WHY Mike and I aren't married and why we don't have children...), if I have any brothers or sisters, and what I think about Uzbekistan. His English was mediocre, but he wasn't afraid to try.
Pretty soon another man walked by and heard us speaking English, so he stopped to talk too. His English was really good because he worked for an international bank in Tashkent. The boy across from me asked him to translate something that he didn't know how to say in English, and he asked me why I'd tried to put the bread under my legs. Apparently this was a big faux pas because bread is very very important to Uzbek people, and I disprespected it by putting it under my legs. I got a lecture from the good English speaker about why this was bad to do, and how I shouldn't do it again. He actually said, "These men here think it's just INCREDIBLE that you would do something like that to bread." I remembered having read in Lonely Planet that you never should put bread on the ground or throw it away in public, but I didn't really think about it as I was trying to find a place to keep the bread. I apologized and the guys weren't angry as much as surprised that I didn't have the same respect for bread as they did. Sorry Central Asia, I didn't mean to be a stupid ignorant American tourist...
The man on our bunk eventually got off the train, so for a few hours Mike and I had a bench to ourselves and we were sort of able to sleep. When we got to Bukhara we met up again with our friends. The same English speaking man from the train asked where we were going to stay, and when I told him the hotel that the man in Samarkand had recommended to us, he found a taxi driver that knew exactly where the hotel was, and he bargained a cheap price for our taxi ride into town.
We got to the hotel and Mike and I immediately went to sleep since we'd only gotten a couple of hours on the train. The room had single beds, but a space heater that made the room absolutely toasty. We ventured out of the room around 13:00 to find lunch. We went to a horrificly tacky touristy restaurant near our hotel, which had good laghman made with egg and tomato sauce, but was decorated like a place where you'd have a cheap wedding reception. There were bright blue satin seat covers, pastel decorations on the walls, and big balloons. Our hotel was in the Old Town, and it was super touristy. There weren't that many tourists per se because it's off-season, but every other building was a hotel or a money exchange office, and there were souvenier kiosks set up everywhere. Since Bukhara is basically desert, it was really cold and windy. Mike and I walked around and saw that best sites, but couldn't handle the cold for very long and went back to the hotel by 16:00. We had satellite tv, so we spent hours just lying around watching Italian, Arabic, and German channels.
For dinner we went out with Katy and Josh to a cafe nearby, and we had AMAZING friend meat and French fries. It doesn't sound like much, but it was the best meat I've had since being in Central Asia, and the French fries weren't cold like they usually are. We went back to bed and fell asleep unreasonably early.
The next day we went to buy night train tickets for our trip back to Tashkent that night. We found a ticket office in the city so we didn't have to travel 12 km to get to the train station itself. Then we had plov for lunch with Katy and Josh, specially cooked just for us since it wasn't usually on the menu. After lunch Mike and I set off to do some more siteseeing, and saw the Ark, which was mostly ruins and an archeological site totally not worth the 4$ admission fee, and a mosque with 4 minarets, which was pretty cool. We found a little cafe, drank tea, and continued our card tournament. Mike won some more. Blah.
We got our bags from the hotel and went to the train station, where, for the 12 hour train trip back to Tashkent, we "splurged" and got a 4-person sleeper car with Katy and Josh. I slept really well all night, and we arrived early early yesterday morning to Tashkent.
It's time for us to catch our train to Kazakhstan, so I'm off! More later... we'll likely be spending New Year's 00:00 in a night train from Turkestan to Almaty, so there won't be much going on with me then. Happy New Year's to all and have a great start to 2009!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
There are not enough superlatives in any language to describe Samarkand.
Amazing. Marvelous. Beautiful. Magnificent. Mahtava. Ihana. Klassno. Krasivyi. Wunderschoen. Abdan Jakshy. Etc... but they still don't even scrape the surface of how amazing everything is here in Samarkand.
To backtrack... our second day in Tashkent was great. The weather was better and the roads weren't as wet. We looked into getting train tickets, but we couldn't until we had our passports, so we had to wait until evening. We ran into a really nice guy in line who gave us his business card and told us to call him if we had any problems at all in Uzbekistan. The people here are unbelievably friendly. We took a streetcar to the old part of town, and wandered around the bazaar. It was bigger and much better organized than bazaars in Kyrgystan- the different sections are labelled, so you know where to find what you want, rather than having to wander around aimlessly, hoping to happen upon an aisle that has what you want. There was a domed room full of spices, and all the sellers were really friendly and interested in foreigners. People tend to stare at us because it is definitely not tourist season, but they are mostly friendly stares. Children talk to us, and many people say "Hello!" when we walk by. After the market, we walked north of the Old Town to Khast Imom, a mosque. As we walked down the winding streets of the Old Town, there was an open door into a courtyard, which just happened to be a cafe. It wasn't labelled at all, and we never would have found it if the door wouldn't have been open at that moment. We ate great shashlyk and then went to the mosque, which was really beautiful, even though it was sort of overcast.
We then needed to catch a cab to get to the Kazakh Embassy by 17:00 to get our visas. A cab stopped without even being flagged down, but quoted us too high a price. It's great in UZ that all cars are cabs, even if they aren't licensed cabs. So as soon as the first car drove away, the next car pulled up and asked us where we wanted to go. All wanted too much money, so we walked out to the main street and haggled one regular person (not a cab) down to a price we wanted. He drove us to the wrong place at first, only one block from where we wanted to be, but instead of just letting us get out and walk a few minutes, he turned around and brought us right to the door of the Embassy. We had to wait a while for the doors to open, but we picked up our transit visas and paid our $20, no problems. Our transit visas are actually for 1 month, rather than 5 days like I'd been told. Too bad we have to get back to work on January 5th!! We walked back to the train station to buy our tickets. We first had to register in the immigation office, and then we bought tickets to Samarkand, and Evan to Nukus, in the Western part of UZ and close-ish to the Aral Sea. We bought some bread from a babushka in the station, and then got on the train. Mike and I had a 4 person sleeper room, which we had to ourselves for most of the time, except maybe 20 minutes when a nice guy from Karakalpakstan, the western region of UZ, came in and talked to us in Russian. It's incredible how friendly the people are in UZ!
And now about Samarkand...
Mike and I arrived on the night train at about 1:45 am 2 days ago, after a 5 hour ride from Tashkent. We left Evan on the train. We were approached but a cute/creepy old lady at the train station who offered us a homestay for 12000 som for the night, which was super cheap, but we decided against it because in Uzbekistan, you need to register with immigration for every night you spend, and hotels do it for you, but this woman couldn't. So we turned her down and caught a cab to a hotel listed in Lonely Planet, Hotel Registan. The write-up was pretty negative, but it seemed like a pretty standard Soviet hotel. It wasn't as bad as Lonely Planet made it sound, that's for sure. The next morning we walked into town to find a new hotel. We chose Antica, which was Lonely Planet's pick for the best hotel. And it was amazing. It's located in an old part of town, with cobblestone alleys and courtyards. I imagine that in summer, when all the fruit trees are in bloom, that it's absolutely amazing. We got a cute room with a view of one of the many blue-tiled mausoleums, breakfast included, a double bed, and a really modern private bathroom with a great shower. It was $40 for the 2 of us, but totally worth it. We had tea at the hotel and then set off to wander around Samarkand.
You can't look anywhere without seeing at least one blue cupola/dome from one of the many mosques or minarets. We went first to the Registan, which is probably what Samarkand is most known-for. It's a group of three Medressas, built between the 15th and 17th centuries. Entrace was 6500 sum ($5), so we decided to just check it out from the outside, and save going in for the next day. We then wandered down to some other mosques and the bazaar. We saw Bibi-Khanym Mosque, which it's said was built by one of Timur's wives as a surprise for him, but the architect fell in love with her and refused to finish building the mosque unless she gave him a kiss. The kiss left a mark on her face, and Timur saw it when it got home and had the architect executed. From that point forward, he decreed that women must where headscarves to avoid tempting men. Who knows if it's true, but it's a good story anyways. Again we didn't go inside, because it doesn't seem like there was really much to see other than a courtyard. We then went to Shah-i-Zinda, which is said to be one of the most moving sites in all of Central Asia, and a place that Muslim pilgrims visit because the cousin and good friend of the Prophet Mohammed is buried there. It's just a bunch of mauseleums, but there is great tile-work and a huge cemetery to walk through. We ran into our friends Katy and Josh from Bishkek! We knew they were spending vacation in UZ also, but had no idea what their plans were. Even crazier was that they were staying at the same hotel as us, in the next room! They had also been approache by the creepy/cute old lady in the middle of the night at the train station, and they actually stayed with her! They said she lived in a really scary part of town near the train station, and that when they said that they weren't married to each other, she started talking super religious and even got out a Bible and read them the Ten Commandments! So I'm very glad that Mike and I didn't stay there.
After we parted ways with them, Mike and I wandered around the cemetery for ages, reading gravestones and looking at the pictures of the deceased that are lasered onto many of the stones. Some plots were really intricate, with roofs and lots of decoration. There was even one man who had a life-sized statue of him on his grave! We grabbed schwarmas for dinner and went back to the hotel. There's a big New Year's tree set up in a square near the hotel, and many people just were hanging out there, talking to their friends and setting off little fireworks. The people here just are so much friendlier and not nearly as aggressive or intimidating as Kyrgyz people.
This morning, we got up at 9 and had breakfast at the hotel with Katy and Josh. We wandered around the mausoleum housing the tomb of Timur and checked out the Timur statue, and then we set off to the train station to buy tickets for the night train to Bukhara. Since it's close to New Years, the trains are likely to be full. We got a bit confused and I thought the ticket man told us we had to come back at 1 am to buy tickets for the 1:45 am train, but it turned out he meant 1 pm. We didn't figure this out until we'd gotten into a marshrutka to head back to the center of town, but we got off and walked back to the train station. It was amazing weather today- sunny, complete blue skies, and warm enough that I had my coat off for most of the time. We bought cheap cheap seats and then caught a marshrutka back to the Registan (we'd decided that it would be worth it to pay the 6500 sum entrance fee). As we were taking panorama pictures, a policeman approached us and offered to let us into a locked part of Ulugbek's medressa to walk to the top of one of the minarets. Lonely Planet said that this would happen, and Katy and Josh said they were approached too, and they did it for 10,000 sum (talked the cop down from 20,000) and that it was amazing, and totally worth it. We weren't going to pay that much, so we declined and walked to another part. I left Mike alone for a few minutes to check out a different room, and when I saw him again, he was surrounded by 6 Uzbek children. It turns out they were an English primary school class with their English teacher, hanging out at the Registan hoping to find some tourists to practice English with. Mike and I sat down with them for about an hour, just asking and answering simple questions. They were all about 15, and had only elementary English skills. But their teacher was young and had great English, and was fun to talk to.
Then we learned all about Uzbek textiles from a nice seller, who tried to get us to buy some fabric from him, which of course we didn't do. As we went out to the center of the 3 medressas, yet another cop approached us, offering us entrance to the minaret for 2000 sum apiece. Still not wanting to spend more money, since we're going to run out anyways and we have to get money western unioned to us, we declined again. The first cop came to us again and said that I could go up for free since I was so beautiful. We left the medressa, but the cops kept whistling after us, trying to get us to go up the minaret. The cop was hilarious- he asked if we were married, and then said that if we went up the minaret, maybe we'd get married. He asked how many girlfriends Mike had, and when he said 1, the cop said that after going up the minaret maybe he could get more. He asked if we had any children, and then said if we went up the minaret, I'd probably be pregnant. It was great to joke around with policemen. We went back in and bargained to get up the minaret- I'd get in free, Mike would pay 2000 sum ($1.50), and I would have to kiss each of the policemen on the cheek. That was too good a bargain to pass up, so we went back in and up the minaret. We climbed lots of scary stair to the top, and the view was beautiful. Mike and I still aren't married, we have no children, and he still (unfortunately?) only has one girlfriend, but it was great. The cop walked part of the way with us, making sure we were careful stepping on the crumbling, unrenovated steps. He gave us his phone number, and said that when we come back in June we should call him up. I did kiss him on the cheek as promised, and got a picture of me doing it. It's not everyday I get to kiss a policeman, especially in a "Police State" country with supposedly scary policemen. The other policeman came up and got his kiss too, and then gave me his address and asked me to send him the picture. He also said that when we come back in summer, we should ask for him at the Registan and that we can stay in his house instead of a hotel. The Registan had closed by this point, but a friend of the cops took us into his souvenier and gave us information about getting a cheap hotel in Bukhara. He wrote down the address, told us how to get there, and even called ahead to make sure that we could get a double room with hot water, breakfast, and a tv for $20 for the 2 of us, rather than $40! I wanted to buy a postcard from him, but he gave it to me for free! It was amazing. One of the cops stood with us while we took night pictures of the medressas, and told us more information about the history of the medressas.
Samarkand is just AMAZING! I wish we could just stay forever, joke with salesmen and policemen, visit mosque after mosque, and eat glorious plov. I'm glad Mike and I will be coming back through Uzbekistan at the start of our land journey to Turkey next summer.
We set off to Bukhara tonight, and it will be beautiful there as well! Happy Boxing Day to all.
To backtrack... our second day in Tashkent was great. The weather was better and the roads weren't as wet. We looked into getting train tickets, but we couldn't until we had our passports, so we had to wait until evening. We ran into a really nice guy in line who gave us his business card and told us to call him if we had any problems at all in Uzbekistan. The people here are unbelievably friendly. We took a streetcar to the old part of town, and wandered around the bazaar. It was bigger and much better organized than bazaars in Kyrgystan- the different sections are labelled, so you know where to find what you want, rather than having to wander around aimlessly, hoping to happen upon an aisle that has what you want. There was a domed room full of spices, and all the sellers were really friendly and interested in foreigners. People tend to stare at us because it is definitely not tourist season, but they are mostly friendly stares. Children talk to us, and many people say "Hello!" when we walk by. After the market, we walked north of the Old Town to Khast Imom, a mosque. As we walked down the winding streets of the Old Town, there was an open door into a courtyard, which just happened to be a cafe. It wasn't labelled at all, and we never would have found it if the door wouldn't have been open at that moment. We ate great shashlyk and then went to the mosque, which was really beautiful, even though it was sort of overcast.
We then needed to catch a cab to get to the Kazakh Embassy by 17:00 to get our visas. A cab stopped without even being flagged down, but quoted us too high a price. It's great in UZ that all cars are cabs, even if they aren't licensed cabs. So as soon as the first car drove away, the next car pulled up and asked us where we wanted to go. All wanted too much money, so we walked out to the main street and haggled one regular person (not a cab) down to a price we wanted. He drove us to the wrong place at first, only one block from where we wanted to be, but instead of just letting us get out and walk a few minutes, he turned around and brought us right to the door of the Embassy. We had to wait a while for the doors to open, but we picked up our transit visas and paid our $20, no problems. Our transit visas are actually for 1 month, rather than 5 days like I'd been told. Too bad we have to get back to work on January 5th!! We walked back to the train station to buy our tickets. We first had to register in the immigation office, and then we bought tickets to Samarkand, and Evan to Nukus, in the Western part of UZ and close-ish to the Aral Sea. We bought some bread from a babushka in the station, and then got on the train. Mike and I had a 4 person sleeper room, which we had to ourselves for most of the time, except maybe 20 minutes when a nice guy from Karakalpakstan, the western region of UZ, came in and talked to us in Russian. It's incredible how friendly the people are in UZ!
And now about Samarkand...
Mike and I arrived on the night train at about 1:45 am 2 days ago, after a 5 hour ride from Tashkent. We left Evan on the train. We were approached but a cute/creepy old lady at the train station who offered us a homestay for 12000 som for the night, which was super cheap, but we decided against it because in Uzbekistan, you need to register with immigration for every night you spend, and hotels do it for you, but this woman couldn't. So we turned her down and caught a cab to a hotel listed in Lonely Planet, Hotel Registan. The write-up was pretty negative, but it seemed like a pretty standard Soviet hotel. It wasn't as bad as Lonely Planet made it sound, that's for sure. The next morning we walked into town to find a new hotel. We chose Antica, which was Lonely Planet's pick for the best hotel. And it was amazing. It's located in an old part of town, with cobblestone alleys and courtyards. I imagine that in summer, when all the fruit trees are in bloom, that it's absolutely amazing. We got a cute room with a view of one of the many blue-tiled mausoleums, breakfast included, a double bed, and a really modern private bathroom with a great shower. It was $40 for the 2 of us, but totally worth it. We had tea at the hotel and then set off to wander around Samarkand.
You can't look anywhere without seeing at least one blue cupola/dome from one of the many mosques or minarets. We went first to the Registan, which is probably what Samarkand is most known-for. It's a group of three Medressas, built between the 15th and 17th centuries. Entrace was 6500 sum ($5), so we decided to just check it out from the outside, and save going in for the next day. We then wandered down to some other mosques and the bazaar. We saw Bibi-Khanym Mosque, which it's said was built by one of Timur's wives as a surprise for him, but the architect fell in love with her and refused to finish building the mosque unless she gave him a kiss. The kiss left a mark on her face, and Timur saw it when it got home and had the architect executed. From that point forward, he decreed that women must where headscarves to avoid tempting men. Who knows if it's true, but it's a good story anyways. Again we didn't go inside, because it doesn't seem like there was really much to see other than a courtyard. We then went to Shah-i-Zinda, which is said to be one of the most moving sites in all of Central Asia, and a place that Muslim pilgrims visit because the cousin and good friend of the Prophet Mohammed is buried there. It's just a bunch of mauseleums, but there is great tile-work and a huge cemetery to walk through. We ran into our friends Katy and Josh from Bishkek! We knew they were spending vacation in UZ also, but had no idea what their plans were. Even crazier was that they were staying at the same hotel as us, in the next room! They had also been approache by the creepy/cute old lady in the middle of the night at the train station, and they actually stayed with her! They said she lived in a really scary part of town near the train station, and that when they said that they weren't married to each other, she started talking super religious and even got out a Bible and read them the Ten Commandments! So I'm very glad that Mike and I didn't stay there.
After we parted ways with them, Mike and I wandered around the cemetery for ages, reading gravestones and looking at the pictures of the deceased that are lasered onto many of the stones. Some plots were really intricate, with roofs and lots of decoration. There was even one man who had a life-sized statue of him on his grave! We grabbed schwarmas for dinner and went back to the hotel. There's a big New Year's tree set up in a square near the hotel, and many people just were hanging out there, talking to their friends and setting off little fireworks. The people here just are so much friendlier and not nearly as aggressive or intimidating as Kyrgyz people.
This morning, we got up at 9 and had breakfast at the hotel with Katy and Josh. We wandered around the mausoleum housing the tomb of Timur and checked out the Timur statue, and then we set off to the train station to buy tickets for the night train to Bukhara. Since it's close to New Years, the trains are likely to be full. We got a bit confused and I thought the ticket man told us we had to come back at 1 am to buy tickets for the 1:45 am train, but it turned out he meant 1 pm. We didn't figure this out until we'd gotten into a marshrutka to head back to the center of town, but we got off and walked back to the train station. It was amazing weather today- sunny, complete blue skies, and warm enough that I had my coat off for most of the time. We bought cheap cheap seats and then caught a marshrutka back to the Registan (we'd decided that it would be worth it to pay the 6500 sum entrance fee). As we were taking panorama pictures, a policeman approached us and offered to let us into a locked part of Ulugbek's medressa to walk to the top of one of the minarets. Lonely Planet said that this would happen, and Katy and Josh said they were approached too, and they did it for 10,000 sum (talked the cop down from 20,000) and that it was amazing, and totally worth it. We weren't going to pay that much, so we declined and walked to another part. I left Mike alone for a few minutes to check out a different room, and when I saw him again, he was surrounded by 6 Uzbek children. It turns out they were an English primary school class with their English teacher, hanging out at the Registan hoping to find some tourists to practice English with. Mike and I sat down with them for about an hour, just asking and answering simple questions. They were all about 15, and had only elementary English skills. But their teacher was young and had great English, and was fun to talk to.
Then we learned all about Uzbek textiles from a nice seller, who tried to get us to buy some fabric from him, which of course we didn't do. As we went out to the center of the 3 medressas, yet another cop approached us, offering us entrance to the minaret for 2000 sum apiece. Still not wanting to spend more money, since we're going to run out anyways and we have to get money western unioned to us, we declined again. The first cop came to us again and said that I could go up for free since I was so beautiful. We left the medressa, but the cops kept whistling after us, trying to get us to go up the minaret. The cop was hilarious- he asked if we were married, and then said that if we went up the minaret, maybe we'd get married. He asked how many girlfriends Mike had, and when he said 1, the cop said that after going up the minaret maybe he could get more. He asked if we had any children, and then said if we went up the minaret, I'd probably be pregnant. It was great to joke around with policemen. We went back in and bargained to get up the minaret- I'd get in free, Mike would pay 2000 sum ($1.50), and I would have to kiss each of the policemen on the cheek. That was too good a bargain to pass up, so we went back in and up the minaret. We climbed lots of scary stair to the top, and the view was beautiful. Mike and I still aren't married, we have no children, and he still (unfortunately?) only has one girlfriend, but it was great. The cop walked part of the way with us, making sure we were careful stepping on the crumbling, unrenovated steps. He gave us his phone number, and said that when we come back in June we should call him up. I did kiss him on the cheek as promised, and got a picture of me doing it. It's not everyday I get to kiss a policeman, especially in a "Police State" country with supposedly scary policemen. The other policeman came up and got his kiss too, and then gave me his address and asked me to send him the picture. He also said that when we come back in summer, we should ask for him at the Registan and that we can stay in his house instead of a hotel. The Registan had closed by this point, but a friend of the cops took us into his souvenier and gave us information about getting a cheap hotel in Bukhara. He wrote down the address, told us how to get there, and even called ahead to make sure that we could get a double room with hot water, breakfast, and a tv for $20 for the 2 of us, rather than $40! I wanted to buy a postcard from him, but he gave it to me for free! It was amazing. One of the cops stood with us while we took night pictures of the medressas, and told us more information about the history of the medressas.
Samarkand is just AMAZING! I wish we could just stay forever, joke with salesmen and policemen, visit mosque after mosque, and eat glorious plov. I'm glad Mike and I will be coming back through Uzbekistan at the start of our land journey to Turkey next summer.
We set off to Bukhara tonight, and it will be beautiful there as well! Happy Boxing Day to all.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Tashkent
We made it to Tashkent without any more dead bodies. The staff at the Osh Guesthouse arranged a taxi to take us all the way to Tashkent, so we didn't have anything to organize ourselves. The border crossing took about an hour, and we didn't have to pay any bribes. We stopped for lunch at an Uzbek restaurant, and ate some wonderful plov. I chipped off a big hunk of one of my molars, but I didn't expose a nerve, so thankfully I hopefully won't have to pay a Kyrgyz dentist a visit. Uzbek currency is ridiculous- 1$ is about 1500 sum, and the largest bill is a 1000 sum note. So we changed 50$, got 74,000 sum, all in 1000 sum bills. We are all carrying around giant wads of cash. It's comical.
We stopped at a car repair shop, and sat around for more than 30 minutes while our driver had something under the hood checked out- we think he was getting his lights changed (?). We just sat around in the car slowly freezing.
There was another mountain pass we had to get through, and it was blizzarding horribly for most of the pass. We had to drive slowly, and at one point the road in the other direction actually closed down. There were a few bulldozers plowing the road in the other direction, and quite a few dump trucks full of dirt, with men in the back shoveling onto the road. There were many cars that had 2 or 3 people perched on the hood or trunk of the car, covered in snow because of the blizzard. We weren't sure if they were just hitchhikers, or if they were picked up from cars that got stuck in the snow. There were also some lonely-looking donkeys wandering down the road, covered in snow. Mike made up a song about them. It was cute. We had a Daewoo just like most of the rest of the drivers in Uzbekistan, but miraculously we made it up and down the mountain without getting stuck.
We got to Tashkent around 20:00 and went to a hotel at the train station that Lonely Planet recommended. Rooms were 10,000 sum (about 8 dollars), and I was in a woman's dorm and Mike and Evan in a man's dorm. It turns out that we both had the rooms to ourselves, but we couldn't just stay in one room in case others came in during the night. Since it's close to the train station, locals seem to appear if they have hours to kill between trains. There were no other tourists there at all. There was a great housekeeper who spoke English and helped us out. We had dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant.
This morning we set out pretty early because we wanted to go to the Kazakh Embassy to apply for our transit visas. We did, and the process was painless and quick- we just needed to get copies of our passports. We have to go back tomorrow evening to pick them up. We got 5-day transit visas, so Mike and I will have time to stop in Turkistan and Almaty like we'd been hoping. The Kazakh Embassy in Bishkek is a nightmare, so I'm really glad we waited until we got to Uzbekistan.
The weather was terrible today- dismal, cloudy, cold, and wet. It turns out that both pairs of shoes that I brought leak, so I've had to suffer with wet feet the entire duration of our trip thus far, and for the next 10 days too, unless I buy new shoes at a bazaar somewhere. Blah.
Today we just wandered around. We had lunch at an amazing Turkish restaurant, where I had the best Iskender Kebab I've ever had. We then found the statute of Amir Timur (Tamerlane) and went to the Uzbekistan History Museum, which was fairly interesting and actually had captions in English! We're staying at the same hotel tonight, Tomorrow we're going to check out the Bazaar and the Old Town,and if all goes well with our Kazakh visas, we'll pick them up at 5 pm and then Mike and I will take the train to Samarkand, where we'll spend Christmas Day and then head to Bukhara.
Merry Christmas! I miss you all and I'm glad that you read my blog and are interested in my life here in Central Asia!
We stopped at a car repair shop, and sat around for more than 30 minutes while our driver had something under the hood checked out- we think he was getting his lights changed (?). We just sat around in the car slowly freezing.
There was another mountain pass we had to get through, and it was blizzarding horribly for most of the pass. We had to drive slowly, and at one point the road in the other direction actually closed down. There were a few bulldozers plowing the road in the other direction, and quite a few dump trucks full of dirt, with men in the back shoveling onto the road. There were many cars that had 2 or 3 people perched on the hood or trunk of the car, covered in snow because of the blizzard. We weren't sure if they were just hitchhikers, or if they were picked up from cars that got stuck in the snow. There were also some lonely-looking donkeys wandering down the road, covered in snow. Mike made up a song about them. It was cute. We had a Daewoo just like most of the rest of the drivers in Uzbekistan, but miraculously we made it up and down the mountain without getting stuck.
We got to Tashkent around 20:00 and went to a hotel at the train station that Lonely Planet recommended. Rooms were 10,000 sum (about 8 dollars), and I was in a woman's dorm and Mike and Evan in a man's dorm. It turns out that we both had the rooms to ourselves, but we couldn't just stay in one room in case others came in during the night. Since it's close to the train station, locals seem to appear if they have hours to kill between trains. There were no other tourists there at all. There was a great housekeeper who spoke English and helped us out. We had dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant.
This morning we set out pretty early because we wanted to go to the Kazakh Embassy to apply for our transit visas. We did, and the process was painless and quick- we just needed to get copies of our passports. We have to go back tomorrow evening to pick them up. We got 5-day transit visas, so Mike and I will have time to stop in Turkistan and Almaty like we'd been hoping. The Kazakh Embassy in Bishkek is a nightmare, so I'm really glad we waited until we got to Uzbekistan.
The weather was terrible today- dismal, cloudy, cold, and wet. It turns out that both pairs of shoes that I brought leak, so I've had to suffer with wet feet the entire duration of our trip thus far, and for the next 10 days too, unless I buy new shoes at a bazaar somewhere. Blah.
Today we just wandered around. We had lunch at an amazing Turkish restaurant, where I had the best Iskender Kebab I've ever had. We then found the statute of Amir Timur (Tamerlane) and went to the Uzbekistan History Museum, which was fairly interesting and actually had captions in English! We're staying at the same hotel tonight, Tomorrow we're going to check out the Bazaar and the Old Town,and if all goes well with our Kazakh visas, we'll pick them up at 5 pm and then Mike and I will take the train to Samarkand, where we'll spend Christmas Day and then head to Bukhara.
Merry Christmas! I miss you all and I'm glad that you read my blog and are interested in my life here in Central Asia!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
You'll never believe all of this.
Mike, Evan, and I made it safely to Osh.
We took a cab from home to Osh Bazaar (in Bishkek), the best place to get a cab for a long-distance journey. There were Kyrgyz men left and right trying to get us to go with them to Osh. The first driver we agreed on a price with (1300 som per person) then told us once we sat in the car that we either would have to wait for a 4th person to come and fill the car, or if we wanted the car for the 3 of us, we'd have to pay 1300 som for the extra seat. So we got out and tried a new driver. This time he agreed for the 3 of us, the whole car, 4000 som. BUT as soon as we set off, he said he had to stop at home to pick up his son, who would come to Osh with us! We obviously didn't want that, so we got out. We found someone finally who agreed on 4000 som ($100) for the car, no children or extra people. Bartering for a cab is great Russian practice, and our driver was super friendly and nice and talkative and I got to practice a lot of Russian with him.
We got out of Bishkek pretty quickly up into the mountains. It was snowy and the roads were pretty slippery. According to Lonely Planet, the highest pass we reached was 3580 meters or something like that. Our driver was really skilled at snow driving and manuevering down the mountain turns. At points it was snowing heavily, other times it eased up. We were driving in the mountains for hours and hours, and there were beautiful views everywhere we looked, assuming we could see through the snowfall. Our back seat windows were darkly tinted, so I had to look out the front windshield to see much. Darkness fell quite early, and going was slow anyways because of the bad roads. We stopped for some good food along the way, but mostly drove straight through. We called and arranged for sleeping at Osh Guest House, a Soviet block apartment building turned into a backpackers' dorm. Driving got really dangerous around 20:30, where there was lots of fog on the mountain roads and white-out snow falling, like the PC screensaver with the stars coming at you. I was getting stressed out for the driver just remembering what it's like to drive in weather like that. There were times we were just guessing where the road was and hoping a car would come in the opposite direction to light our way. Sometime in the middle of all of this, there was a bad car accident in the middle of the road. We stopped and our driver got out to see if he could help. He ended up telling us that we had to take 2 bodies with us in our car. There were other Kyrgyz men at the crash site, and it took quite a few of them to carry one old woman and dump her in the trunk of our station wagon, and the same amount of men to take another woman and put her in the back seat with Mike and me. Mike was in the middle, so he was propping her up and checking her pulse every time the driver asked him to. There was no pulse the whole time, and no movement or sound from the old woman in the trunk, either. One of the cars in the accident was horrible damaged; it looked like it had been a head-on collision. There was an old Kyrgyz man sitting in the passenger seat of the other car where the old women had come from, and he was conscious and talking, but didn't look too well. We drove for about an hour, with Mike constantly situating and re-situating the old woman, who was passed out/dead and slumped over onto him. We finally got down the mountain and into the village/town of Ozgun, where we drove around looking for the hospital.
Finding a hospital in this village was like finding a needle in a haystack. Our driver stopped every few minutes to ask directions from some of the many people who were out wandering the streets at midnight on a Saturday. We found some buildings, but people kept sending us to other buildings. Finally we arrived at a place where men in white doctor coats came out to the car. They brought out a stretcher and sort of dumped the woman from the trunk onto the stretcher and carried her inside. Then there was lots of wandering around, smoking cigarettes, writing down our license plate number, and then finally someone came out to get the woman leaning on Mike. The doctor asked how long she hadn't been breathing, and we tried to explain that we didn't think she'd been breathing the whole time she'd been in the car with us.
So they unceremoniously pulled her out of the car and plopped her down onto a stretcher, and then accidentally shut her foot in the door as they were closing it again. Evan, Mike, and I just sat in the car for about 30 minutes, waiting to see what was going to happen. We wanted to call the guesthouse and tell them we were going to be late, but weren't sure if we were going to arrive at all that night or if we were just going to overnight somewhere in Ozgun. We actually had no idea how far we were from Osh at all. So we just waited. At one point a nurse came out of the hospital and dumped a big pail of blood into the snow next to our car. I will say here and now that I will NEVER allow myself to be admitted to a Kyrgyz hospital- I'd rather give myself surgery, or just die. It seemd ridiculous and disorganized and people were smoking the patient rooms.
Finally our driver came out and we set off again. Both of the women had died, either before they got into the car with us, or sometime along the journey. There was no sound or movement out of either of them the whole time, so at least it didn't feel like they were dying in our presence. It was still not a good thing to experience. I'd never seen dead people before, except at open-casket funerals, which is a bit different. I'm having so many new experiences in Kyrgyzstan!
Our driver talked to the guesthouse staff, and they met us in Osh when we finally arrived around 1:30 am and took us to the apartment. It ended up being about a 14 hour trip (usual time is about 8 or 9 hours). But the taxi driver was fun to talk to, funny, and a really good driver, so I was sad to see him go. What an experience to share! I wish I had gotten his phone number so that he could be my next long-distance journey taxi driver also. I'll just have to go back to Osh Bazaar and search for him.
Today Evan, Mike, and I have just wandered around Osh. There's not much to see here, but we went to the bazaar, which is said to be one of the best in Central Asia, and climbed Souleyman Mountain, which is very sacred to Muslims because it's said that Mohammed prayed there. It was a beautiful sunny day, Osh is covered in a pretty blanket of white snow, and we had great cheap Uyghur food for lunch. We're going to eat at "California Cafe" for dinner, and then head back to the guesthouse.
Tomorrow morning we're setting off to Tashkent by taxi! Hopefully that journey will be less surreal and snowy, and there will be no dead people involved.
We took a cab from home to Osh Bazaar (in Bishkek), the best place to get a cab for a long-distance journey. There were Kyrgyz men left and right trying to get us to go with them to Osh. The first driver we agreed on a price with (1300 som per person) then told us once we sat in the car that we either would have to wait for a 4th person to come and fill the car, or if we wanted the car for the 3 of us, we'd have to pay 1300 som for the extra seat. So we got out and tried a new driver. This time he agreed for the 3 of us, the whole car, 4000 som. BUT as soon as we set off, he said he had to stop at home to pick up his son, who would come to Osh with us! We obviously didn't want that, so we got out. We found someone finally who agreed on 4000 som ($100) for the car, no children or extra people. Bartering for a cab is great Russian practice, and our driver was super friendly and nice and talkative and I got to practice a lot of Russian with him.
We got out of Bishkek pretty quickly up into the mountains. It was snowy and the roads were pretty slippery. According to Lonely Planet, the highest pass we reached was 3580 meters or something like that. Our driver was really skilled at snow driving and manuevering down the mountain turns. At points it was snowing heavily, other times it eased up. We were driving in the mountains for hours and hours, and there were beautiful views everywhere we looked, assuming we could see through the snowfall. Our back seat windows were darkly tinted, so I had to look out the front windshield to see much. Darkness fell quite early, and going was slow anyways because of the bad roads. We stopped for some good food along the way, but mostly drove straight through. We called and arranged for sleeping at Osh Guest House, a Soviet block apartment building turned into a backpackers' dorm. Driving got really dangerous around 20:30, where there was lots of fog on the mountain roads and white-out snow falling, like the PC screensaver with the stars coming at you. I was getting stressed out for the driver just remembering what it's like to drive in weather like that. There were times we were just guessing where the road was and hoping a car would come in the opposite direction to light our way. Sometime in the middle of all of this, there was a bad car accident in the middle of the road. We stopped and our driver got out to see if he could help. He ended up telling us that we had to take 2 bodies with us in our car. There were other Kyrgyz men at the crash site, and it took quite a few of them to carry one old woman and dump her in the trunk of our station wagon, and the same amount of men to take another woman and put her in the back seat with Mike and me. Mike was in the middle, so he was propping her up and checking her pulse every time the driver asked him to. There was no pulse the whole time, and no movement or sound from the old woman in the trunk, either. One of the cars in the accident was horrible damaged; it looked like it had been a head-on collision. There was an old Kyrgyz man sitting in the passenger seat of the other car where the old women had come from, and he was conscious and talking, but didn't look too well. We drove for about an hour, with Mike constantly situating and re-situating the old woman, who was passed out/dead and slumped over onto him. We finally got down the mountain and into the village/town of Ozgun, where we drove around looking for the hospital.
Finding a hospital in this village was like finding a needle in a haystack. Our driver stopped every few minutes to ask directions from some of the many people who were out wandering the streets at midnight on a Saturday. We found some buildings, but people kept sending us to other buildings. Finally we arrived at a place where men in white doctor coats came out to the car. They brought out a stretcher and sort of dumped the woman from the trunk onto the stretcher and carried her inside. Then there was lots of wandering around, smoking cigarettes, writing down our license plate number, and then finally someone came out to get the woman leaning on Mike. The doctor asked how long she hadn't been breathing, and we tried to explain that we didn't think she'd been breathing the whole time she'd been in the car with us.
So they unceremoniously pulled her out of the car and plopped her down onto a stretcher, and then accidentally shut her foot in the door as they were closing it again. Evan, Mike, and I just sat in the car for about 30 minutes, waiting to see what was going to happen. We wanted to call the guesthouse and tell them we were going to be late, but weren't sure if we were going to arrive at all that night or if we were just going to overnight somewhere in Ozgun. We actually had no idea how far we were from Osh at all. So we just waited. At one point a nurse came out of the hospital and dumped a big pail of blood into the snow next to our car. I will say here and now that I will NEVER allow myself to be admitted to a Kyrgyz hospital- I'd rather give myself surgery, or just die. It seemd ridiculous and disorganized and people were smoking the patient rooms.
Finally our driver came out and we set off again. Both of the women had died, either before they got into the car with us, or sometime along the journey. There was no sound or movement out of either of them the whole time, so at least it didn't feel like they were dying in our presence. It was still not a good thing to experience. I'd never seen dead people before, except at open-casket funerals, which is a bit different. I'm having so many new experiences in Kyrgyzstan!
Our driver talked to the guesthouse staff, and they met us in Osh when we finally arrived around 1:30 am and took us to the apartment. It ended up being about a 14 hour trip (usual time is about 8 or 9 hours). But the taxi driver was fun to talk to, funny, and a really good driver, so I was sad to see him go. What an experience to share! I wish I had gotten his phone number so that he could be my next long-distance journey taxi driver also. I'll just have to go back to Osh Bazaar and search for him.
Today Evan, Mike, and I have just wandered around Osh. There's not much to see here, but we went to the bazaar, which is said to be one of the best in Central Asia, and climbed Souleyman Mountain, which is very sacred to Muslims because it's said that Mohammed prayed there. It was a beautiful sunny day, Osh is covered in a pretty blanket of white snow, and we had great cheap Uyghur food for lunch. We're going to eat at "California Cafe" for dinner, and then head back to the guesthouse.
Tomorrow morning we're setting off to Tashkent by taxi! Hopefully that journey will be less surreal and snowy, and there will be no dead people involved.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Last post before a MUCH needed vacation!
One more day of teaching and I'm off to Uzbekistan!! Mike and Evan and I are getting a taxi Saturday morning to Osh in Southern KG, and then we'll overnight twice there. We'll explore on Sunday and go to the bazaar, and then Monday morning get a taxi across the border and to Tashkent. Beyond that, we have NO plans. At all. We'll wing it and see how it goes! We're going to try to get a Kazakh visa in Tashkent, and we might try to venture all the way to the Aral Sea (or what's left of it). We'll see.
We had our first real winter snow last night! It was beautiful to wake up to, but now the sidewalks are frozen and walking is dangerous. All day it was slushy and horrible and brown, but the trees look pretty.
I got one package from home, a St. Nicklaus envelope, but I guess 6 parcels are somewhere between America and here, or more than likely lost forever.
Nothing else is new. I'm power-knitting a scarf for my friend Ben, and I really have to be done by tomorrow, because he's going home to England before Mike and I get back from Uzbekistan... but I have a long way to go still.
On Saturday all the teachers went to Ala-Archa National Park to frolick in the snow. It was great fun just wandering around, climbing on an old metal bridge, watching the river, and looking at the snow-covered mountains. Pictures will come, at some point.
Mike and I went to Osh Bazaar, my favorite place in Bishkek, on Sunday. I bought some amazingly warm and cozy winter lined jeans, and Mike and I got a backpack to take with us to Uzbekistan.
Tomorrow I'm going to call Conti and test of the IP-telephones for the first time. It's her birthday on the 23rd! I'll do some sort of Xmas lesson and then it's VACATION! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
We had our first real winter snow last night! It was beautiful to wake up to, but now the sidewalks are frozen and walking is dangerous. All day it was slushy and horrible and brown, but the trees look pretty.
I got one package from home, a St. Nicklaus envelope, but I guess 6 parcels are somewhere between America and here, or more than likely lost forever.
Nothing else is new. I'm power-knitting a scarf for my friend Ben, and I really have to be done by tomorrow, because he's going home to England before Mike and I get back from Uzbekistan... but I have a long way to go still.
On Saturday all the teachers went to Ala-Archa National Park to frolick in the snow. It was great fun just wandering around, climbing on an old metal bridge, watching the river, and looking at the snow-covered mountains. Pictures will come, at some point.
Mike and I went to Osh Bazaar, my favorite place in Bishkek, on Sunday. I bought some amazingly warm and cozy winter lined jeans, and Mike and I got a backpack to take with us to Uzbekistan.
Tomorrow I'm going to call Conti and test of the IP-telephones for the first time. It's her birthday on the 23rd! I'll do some sort of Xmas lesson and then it's VACATION! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Christmas is just around the corner.... eek!
It's hard to believe that there are not too many more days until Xmas! Only 6 more teaching days and then we have 2 weeks of vacation. Mike and I got our Uzbek visas, so now we just have to work out the logistics of what we'll do for 15 days and how we'll get around.
We decided not to get a Kazakh visa here in Bishkek, because the bureaucracy apparently makes it really complicated. We'll wait until we get to Tashkent, and then see if we can get a transit visa there- thorntree says that it's much easier there. If we can't get one, we'll just amuse ourselves in Uzbekistan for a few more days. We'll start by getting a marshrutka/taxi down to Osh, the second-largest city in Kyrgyzstan, only 10 km from the Uzbek border. Spend a day or two there, then get a taxi across the border to Tashkent. After that, we haven't decided yet. It doesn't really matter, because whatever we do, it will be wonderful!
Last weekend was a three-day weekend, because Monday was Kuman Ait, marking 40 days since the end of Ramadan. Kyrgyz people don't do much on the holiday except eat lots of food and visit friends and family. Some go to pray in the main square downtown. I wanted to go and watch, but slept right through 8 am and missed it.
Mike and I spend the weekend just hanging out in Bishkek. On Saturday, we went to Dordoi, the biggest bazaar in the city. I was looking for some lined jeans for winter, but of course ended up getting other things that I didn't really need. I bought two pairs of beautiful, hand-knit, Fair-Isle-style warm socks, just because they were cheap and beautiful- one pair is teal, and the other is orange! I also got a fuzzy sleeveless sweater-dress. It's a style worn by all the people who work at the bazaars- it must be very warm. The bottom hem is angled like a cavewoman dress, so I look quite amusing in it, I'm sure. But it's really warm! Mike said that it sums me up as a person when I wear it because it's eclectic. I like it. I'll post pics when I get around to it- I'm still a few weeks behind my facebook albums. Some night I'll pay 80 som and stay at the internet cafe until I've posted them all.
I mailed some Xmas cards over the weekend, and Mike bought a new camera! We went to the main department store, Tsum, and wandered around the electronics floor until he found one he wanted. It's exactly like the one he had last time (the one that was stolen), only a newer model with a better zoom. He managed to haggle 25$ off the price, so he was happy. The salesman was super adorable and nice and spoke cute English, and I cried because Mike lied to him: "But today's my birthday! Can't you give it to me for 8000 som?" But hopefully he just felt like he made some foreigners day by giving him a good deal.
We also went to the National Museum. We paid extra to get a permit to take pictures, without which it totally would have been boring. There were almost no signs in English, so we just wandered around taking sometimes inappropriate pictures with the Soviet statues. The second floor was devoted to the Soviet era, with lots of ceiling murals and copper-colored statues. Again, I'll post pictures when I get around to it! The top floor was devoted more to Kyrgyz history, with petroglyphs, old coins, jewelry, and felted rugs. There was also a yurt set up, with the inside set up with blankets the way people traditionally lived in them. Afterwards, we bought some Christmas cards in the gift shop.
We went back to New York Pizza, which has pizza that rivals even Willington Pizza. It's pretty expensive for Bishkek, but totally worth it.
We also went to a "gay club," located in the Red Light District near the circus, with Evan and Alex, a British guy here studying Russian. We met up with Alex's Kyrgyz friend Anton there. I put it in quotes because it was the least gay gay club I've ever been to. There were some men who probably were gay, but there was no outward proof of it- men didn't even dance together! The only hint of non-straightness didn't come until after 1 am, when men came out dressed as old babushkas- the drag show! There was a man dressed like Jasmine and a man in a fat suit with huge balloon breasts and a hideous green floor-length dress. It would have been only a mediocre night, except that we met a Scottish professor who looked EXACTLY like my dad. Anton had found him upstairs, and brought him downstairs to our table to meet us. He didn't know it was a gay club and had been brought there by his colleagues, and he said it definitely was a new experience for him! He said he'd love to have us over some night for dinner, so I'll have to make sure I get a picture with him to prove the resemblence. He said he's been to America only once, and he visited some friends in Connecticut. He said he had a horrible time, and his impression of Connecticutians is that they're hypocritical and serious and religious. I will have to show him how wrong he is!
It was a warm weekend so we walked a lot around Bishkek. We ate cheeseburgers and schwarmas from the stands near our house, and watched a lot of movies. It was a good holiday weekend!
On Tuesday night, we had a going-away party for Derek, who is returning to America on the 12th. It was also our Xmas party, where we exchanged white elephant gifts. I ended up with exactly what I brought- a DVD of 10 Russian language movies and a Kyrgyz slipper Xmas tree ornament. Mike got a CD of over 1000 Kyrgyz songs, which will take a while to get through. Hopefully Salam Kyrgyzstan is on the CD, but since all the song titles copied to iTunes as symbols rather than Cyrillic, it will be hit-or-miss if I ever find it! The best gift was a framed picture of Derek wearing a kalpak (traditional Kyrgyz hat), with the words "We are Young People" written across it in marker. The quote is an inside joke, but the picture is great even without understanding the reference. It was stolen from Mike during the white elephant, and Andy ended up with it. It's now displayed in his classroom, and he's going to bring it back to England when he goes for Xmas, to show to his family as the description of Kyrgyzstan in a nutshell. Derek also cooked his last meal for us, champagne chicken, which was, as always, wonderful.
On Saturday the school is organizing a trip for all the teachers to Ala Archa, where we'll frolick in the snow and wander around in the mountains. I hope it won't be as strenuous a trek as the one we took in September, because I was exhuasted after that day! It's also the final weekend before everyone goes away on holiday, so we will go out to celebrate. Ben is going back to England on the 3rd of January, so it's our last weekend with him.
The weather is still very mild for December- at this rate, it will never snow! There are still days when I can wear my fall jacket rather than my winter coat. It's wonderful, and it makes it more likely that we'll be able to get from Bishkek to Osh by car. If there's too much snow the road will be closed, so let's hope for our sake that the highway stays clear.
We decided not to get a Kazakh visa here in Bishkek, because the bureaucracy apparently makes it really complicated. We'll wait until we get to Tashkent, and then see if we can get a transit visa there- thorntree says that it's much easier there. If we can't get one, we'll just amuse ourselves in Uzbekistan for a few more days. We'll start by getting a marshrutka/taxi down to Osh, the second-largest city in Kyrgyzstan, only 10 km from the Uzbek border. Spend a day or two there, then get a taxi across the border to Tashkent. After that, we haven't decided yet. It doesn't really matter, because whatever we do, it will be wonderful!
Last weekend was a three-day weekend, because Monday was Kuman Ait, marking 40 days since the end of Ramadan. Kyrgyz people don't do much on the holiday except eat lots of food and visit friends and family. Some go to pray in the main square downtown. I wanted to go and watch, but slept right through 8 am and missed it.
Mike and I spend the weekend just hanging out in Bishkek. On Saturday, we went to Dordoi, the biggest bazaar in the city. I was looking for some lined jeans for winter, but of course ended up getting other things that I didn't really need. I bought two pairs of beautiful, hand-knit, Fair-Isle-style warm socks, just because they were cheap and beautiful- one pair is teal, and the other is orange! I also got a fuzzy sleeveless sweater-dress. It's a style worn by all the people who work at the bazaars- it must be very warm. The bottom hem is angled like a cavewoman dress, so I look quite amusing in it, I'm sure. But it's really warm! Mike said that it sums me up as a person when I wear it because it's eclectic. I like it. I'll post pics when I get around to it- I'm still a few weeks behind my facebook albums. Some night I'll pay 80 som and stay at the internet cafe until I've posted them all.
I mailed some Xmas cards over the weekend, and Mike bought a new camera! We went to the main department store, Tsum, and wandered around the electronics floor until he found one he wanted. It's exactly like the one he had last time (the one that was stolen), only a newer model with a better zoom. He managed to haggle 25$ off the price, so he was happy. The salesman was super adorable and nice and spoke cute English, and I cried because Mike lied to him: "But today's my birthday! Can't you give it to me for 8000 som?" But hopefully he just felt like he made some foreigners day by giving him a good deal.
We also went to the National Museum. We paid extra to get a permit to take pictures, without which it totally would have been boring. There were almost no signs in English, so we just wandered around taking sometimes inappropriate pictures with the Soviet statues. The second floor was devoted to the Soviet era, with lots of ceiling murals and copper-colored statues. Again, I'll post pictures when I get around to it! The top floor was devoted more to Kyrgyz history, with petroglyphs, old coins, jewelry, and felted rugs. There was also a yurt set up, with the inside set up with blankets the way people traditionally lived in them. Afterwards, we bought some Christmas cards in the gift shop.
We went back to New York Pizza, which has pizza that rivals even Willington Pizza. It's pretty expensive for Bishkek, but totally worth it.
We also went to a "gay club," located in the Red Light District near the circus, with Evan and Alex, a British guy here studying Russian. We met up with Alex's Kyrgyz friend Anton there. I put it in quotes because it was the least gay gay club I've ever been to. There were some men who probably were gay, but there was no outward proof of it- men didn't even dance together! The only hint of non-straightness didn't come until after 1 am, when men came out dressed as old babushkas- the drag show! There was a man dressed like Jasmine and a man in a fat suit with huge balloon breasts and a hideous green floor-length dress. It would have been only a mediocre night, except that we met a Scottish professor who looked EXACTLY like my dad. Anton had found him upstairs, and brought him downstairs to our table to meet us. He didn't know it was a gay club and had been brought there by his colleagues, and he said it definitely was a new experience for him! He said he'd love to have us over some night for dinner, so I'll have to make sure I get a picture with him to prove the resemblence. He said he's been to America only once, and he visited some friends in Connecticut. He said he had a horrible time, and his impression of Connecticutians is that they're hypocritical and serious and religious. I will have to show him how wrong he is!
It was a warm weekend so we walked a lot around Bishkek. We ate cheeseburgers and schwarmas from the stands near our house, and watched a lot of movies. It was a good holiday weekend!
On Tuesday night, we had a going-away party for Derek, who is returning to America on the 12th. It was also our Xmas party, where we exchanged white elephant gifts. I ended up with exactly what I brought- a DVD of 10 Russian language movies and a Kyrgyz slipper Xmas tree ornament. Mike got a CD of over 1000 Kyrgyz songs, which will take a while to get through. Hopefully Salam Kyrgyzstan is on the CD, but since all the song titles copied to iTunes as symbols rather than Cyrillic, it will be hit-or-miss if I ever find it! The best gift was a framed picture of Derek wearing a kalpak (traditional Kyrgyz hat), with the words "We are Young People" written across it in marker. The quote is an inside joke, but the picture is great even without understanding the reference. It was stolen from Mike during the white elephant, and Andy ended up with it. It's now displayed in his classroom, and he's going to bring it back to England when he goes for Xmas, to show to his family as the description of Kyrgyzstan in a nutshell. Derek also cooked his last meal for us, champagne chicken, which was, as always, wonderful.
On Saturday the school is organizing a trip for all the teachers to Ala Archa, where we'll frolick in the snow and wander around in the mountains. I hope it won't be as strenuous a trek as the one we took in September, because I was exhuasted after that day! It's also the final weekend before everyone goes away on holiday, so we will go out to celebrate. Ben is going back to England on the 3rd of January, so it's our last weekend with him.
The weather is still very mild for December- at this rate, it will never snow! There are still days when I can wear my fall jacket rather than my winter coat. It's wonderful, and it makes it more likely that we'll be able to get from Bishkek to Osh by car. If there's too much snow the road will be closed, so let's hope for our sake that the highway stays clear.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
School Trip
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Winter vacation plans
In 3.5 weeks winter vacation begins, and I haven't started planning! Mike was denied days off from work, so he, Ben, and Evan aren't going to Iran anymore, which is wonderful (for me)! It means that Mike will come with me. We decided we are going to do Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan- 4 days in KZ: Almaty, Turkistan, and Shymkent, and then going to Uzbekistan and doing Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara. We have to get our visas sorted out SOON... tomorrow we'll probably go to an agency and get it done there, it's hard and time-consuming to do it directly with the embassy. I think we'll do land travel for most of it: buses, trains, shared taxis, and marshrutkas, but we might fly back from Tashkent, depending on timing. We finish work Dec 19, and start teaching again Jan 5. It will be wonderful, no matter where we end up going!
This coming weekend, the school is taking the "new" teachers to a village at Issyk-Kul. It will be great to have a paid-for weekend away! I'm not sure what there is to do there in the winter, but it will be great fun no matter what. Then, the weekend after, we will go to Cholpon-Ata on the north side of Issyk-Kul, and Kochkor, where the best shyrdaks (Kyrgyz rugs) are for sale. We have a 3-day weekend because Dec 8 is a national holiday here, so we'll spend a night in Cholpon-Ata and check out petroglyphs there, and then head to Kochkor to shyrdak-shop and wander around.
Weather has been AMAZING this week- I checked weather.com and then next week should be in the 60s! Hopefully it will be as nice for weekends away.
My new Russian teacher is HORRENDOUS. I'll give her one more lesson to redeem herself, otherwise I'll get a new teacher. Absolutely horrible. :(
Last night we had absinthe night, but we were all too tired to drink enough to feel it. We have enough left for next time, when hopefully we'll all be more in the mood.
Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and Josh arranged for the Kyrgyz restaurant around the corner to make 2 turkeys for us. Not sure if I'm interested in that- I might rather eat something completely different, than eat turkey that doesn't live up to American Thanksgiving. It will be about 300 som per person, and that is just for the turkey- no sides included. We'll see.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Eat extra for me :)
This coming weekend, the school is taking the "new" teachers to a village at Issyk-Kul. It will be great to have a paid-for weekend away! I'm not sure what there is to do there in the winter, but it will be great fun no matter what. Then, the weekend after, we will go to Cholpon-Ata on the north side of Issyk-Kul, and Kochkor, where the best shyrdaks (Kyrgyz rugs) are for sale. We have a 3-day weekend because Dec 8 is a national holiday here, so we'll spend a night in Cholpon-Ata and check out petroglyphs there, and then head to Kochkor to shyrdak-shop and wander around.
Weather has been AMAZING this week- I checked weather.com and then next week should be in the 60s! Hopefully it will be as nice for weekends away.
My new Russian teacher is HORRENDOUS. I'll give her one more lesson to redeem herself, otherwise I'll get a new teacher. Absolutely horrible. :(
Last night we had absinthe night, but we were all too tired to drink enough to feel it. We have enough left for next time, when hopefully we'll all be more in the mood.
Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and Josh arranged for the Kyrgyz restaurant around the corner to make 2 turkeys for us. Not sure if I'm interested in that- I might rather eat something completely different, than eat turkey that doesn't live up to American Thanksgiving. It will be about 300 som per person, and that is just for the turkey- no sides included. We'll see.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Eat extra for me :)
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Warmth
After a few days of really wintery weather, it's been unseasonably warm the past 2 days. Today I wore my jean jacket instead of my winter coat, and I even had to take it off while we were walking around town. We tried to go to a Japanese Drumming Festival this afternoon, but when we got there all the seats in the theater were full and we didn't want to stand in the lobby watching the performance on a television screen. Instead, we went to TSUM, the biggest department store in Bishkek and wandered around. Ben is going back to England at the beginning of January, so he is starting his souvenier purchases. I bought a packet of 15 Soviet Bishkek postcards for 50 som, back from when it was called Frunze instead of Bishkek. Mike got Dark Knight in English on DVD, so he can finally join the rest of the world in having seen it. I also got a great pocket sized map of Bishkek for those days when we aren't where we think we are in Bishkek and need to get elsewhere.
My friend Derek, here on an NSEP scholarship from Arizona State, has decided to not return to Bishkek after spending Xmas break in the States. He has been stopped by the police a lot, and a few weeks ago had a gun drawn on him by some drunk policemen. The incident with Evan's mugging did nothing to make him want to stay more, and the murder of a Polish university professor here last week during a mugging (read about it here: http://www.polskieradio.pl/thenews/news/?id=96149) made him decide to transfer to Vladivostock to do the rest of his scholarship year. It will be sad to not have him back, he's a lot of fun to hang out with. He cooks for us 2 nights a week too, and his food is wonderful. Last night I hosted dinner in my apartment, and it was so cozy having 9 friends sitting around and eating champagne chicken and drinking.
Next weekend or the weekend after, we're planning a trip to Kochkor, which is a town a few hours from Bishkek. They make cheap and great shyrdaks there (traditional Kyrgyz rugs) and Ben wants to buy some before he leaves. I guess there isn't much to do there, but it's just fun to hang out together, eat, and wander around Kyrgyzstan.
We had lunch at a wonderful Japanese restaurant today, and are branching out and trying new restaurants rather than our regular hangouts. New York Pizza, a semi-expensive pizza place, has the best pizza by far that I've had in Bishkek, and it even might beat some pizza I've had in the States. There's also a Georgian place, some Dungan places, and an Armenian place we want to try soon, as well as some other Kyrgyz restaurants.
Andy, Nicola, and I saw James Bond in Russian earlier this week. We went out planning on seeing a Kyrgyz folk music festival, but we couldn't find the building where the festival was being held. Instead, we decided on Bond, in Russian of course. I understood more of the dialogue than I thought I would, and I had read the synopsis before we went, so I basically understood the plotline. Casino Royale was better, but you can't really go wrong with Daniel Craig. We also found a bookstore with some cheap used books, and I bought a Kyrgyz language learning book, in Russian. So I can learn Russian through Kyrgyz. On Monday the new month of teaching starts, and I have 4 Russian lessons per week, as well as one hour of Kyrgyz! Mike, Nicola, and I are studying Kyrgyz together, and it will be great fun :)
Here's more about the Polish man who was killed:
Polish teacher killed in Kyrgyzstan
A Polish language teacher, Maciej Chowaniok, 28, from the Silesian University in Katowice, was murdered last night in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan. Silesian University spokesmen told PAP on Tuesday that the circumstances of the incident are yet unknown. According to a local web portal Chowaniok was brought to a clinic in Bishkek with heavy wounds by a knife in his neck. The man died of blood loss caused by one of the wounds, which had severed an artery. (http://www.visegradgroup.eu/main.php?folderID=912)
All the articles that seem to have more information are visible only with an online subscription.
Supposedly the power will start being shut off again. We had three weeks of no power outages, but apparently the government will punish Bishkek and turn the lights off to get back at us for not conserving energy as much as we should have. We'll see if it really happens. I was getting so spoiled by constant lights that it will be really unfortunate to go back to headlamp and candles. Also, one of Ben's students said that Kyrgyz meteorologists are saying that this will be the coldest winter in history in Kyrgyzstan.
If you're ever interested in reading news about Kyrgyzstan, here's what I would say is the best website to do so:
http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/kyrgyzstan/articles/index.shtml
My friend Derek, here on an NSEP scholarship from Arizona State, has decided to not return to Bishkek after spending Xmas break in the States. He has been stopped by the police a lot, and a few weeks ago had a gun drawn on him by some drunk policemen. The incident with Evan's mugging did nothing to make him want to stay more, and the murder of a Polish university professor here last week during a mugging (read about it here: http://www.polskieradio.pl/thenews/news/?id=96149) made him decide to transfer to Vladivostock to do the rest of his scholarship year. It will be sad to not have him back, he's a lot of fun to hang out with. He cooks for us 2 nights a week too, and his food is wonderful. Last night I hosted dinner in my apartment, and it was so cozy having 9 friends sitting around and eating champagne chicken and drinking.
Next weekend or the weekend after, we're planning a trip to Kochkor, which is a town a few hours from Bishkek. They make cheap and great shyrdaks there (traditional Kyrgyz rugs) and Ben wants to buy some before he leaves. I guess there isn't much to do there, but it's just fun to hang out together, eat, and wander around Kyrgyzstan.
We had lunch at a wonderful Japanese restaurant today, and are branching out and trying new restaurants rather than our regular hangouts. New York Pizza, a semi-expensive pizza place, has the best pizza by far that I've had in Bishkek, and it even might beat some pizza I've had in the States. There's also a Georgian place, some Dungan places, and an Armenian place we want to try soon, as well as some other Kyrgyz restaurants.
Andy, Nicola, and I saw James Bond in Russian earlier this week. We went out planning on seeing a Kyrgyz folk music festival, but we couldn't find the building where the festival was being held. Instead, we decided on Bond, in Russian of course. I understood more of the dialogue than I thought I would, and I had read the synopsis before we went, so I basically understood the plotline. Casino Royale was better, but you can't really go wrong with Daniel Craig. We also found a bookstore with some cheap used books, and I bought a Kyrgyz language learning book, in Russian. So I can learn Russian through Kyrgyz. On Monday the new month of teaching starts, and I have 4 Russian lessons per week, as well as one hour of Kyrgyz! Mike, Nicola, and I are studying Kyrgyz together, and it will be great fun :)
Here's more about the Polish man who was killed:
Polish teacher killed in Kyrgyzstan
A Polish language teacher, Maciej Chowaniok, 28, from the Silesian University in Katowice, was murdered last night in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan. Silesian University spokesmen told PAP on Tuesday that the circumstances of the incident are yet unknown. According to a local web portal Chowaniok was brought to a clinic in Bishkek with heavy wounds by a knife in his neck. The man died of blood loss caused by one of the wounds, which had severed an artery. (http://www.visegradgroup.eu/main.php?folderID=912)
All the articles that seem to have more information are visible only with an online subscription.
Supposedly the power will start being shut off again. We had three weeks of no power outages, but apparently the government will punish Bishkek and turn the lights off to get back at us for not conserving energy as much as we should have. We'll see if it really happens. I was getting so spoiled by constant lights that it will be really unfortunate to go back to headlamp and candles. Also, one of Ben's students said that Kyrgyz meteorologists are saying that this will be the coldest winter in history in Kyrgyzstan.
If you're ever interested in reading news about Kyrgyzstan, here's what I would say is the best website to do so:
http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/kyrgyzstan/articles/index.shtml
Sunday, November 16, 2008
One final detail about Saturday's mugging
Mike and I were in his apartment eating dinner last night, trying to forget about the scary mugger in his room. The doorbell rang and I looked through the peephole before I opened the door. It was one of the office staff who lives in our building, just checking to see that we were okay and seeing if there was anything that she could do to make us feel better.
The doorbell rang a few minutes later, and I went and looked through the peephole to see who it was. The light had been turned off in the hallway, so I could only see the silhouette, but it was clearly a man. I was too scared to open the door so Mike came out and asked who was there. The man started speaking in Russian, so we definitely didn't open the door. We thought it was the mugger, back for some more! Mike didn't open the door, so he started pounding on the door, jiggling the handle, and ringing the doorbell repeatedly. I called the office manager to see if she could ring the security guard sitting in our office, since I didn't have the number. She said she was nearby and she'd just come back. The guy kept ringing and knocking until she got there. It turned out that it was the policeman who'd taken our story initially. He knew we spoke little Russian, and what could he have possibly needed from us at 8 pm on a Saturday night, knowing we'd just been robbed and were likely very scared? Being that this is Kyrgyzstan, Mike and I think that he was coming to get money from us- he'd seen Mike's apartment, knew how much money we had, and wanted to get some for himself too. The office manager took him into the office and for about 20 minutes was talking to him there. She called me and said that he just wanted to hear the series of events again, which sounds just like an excuse. Tomorrow I'll have to ask more details about what he wanted. It ruined our evening, and we'd just started drinking some hot pepper vodka and were getting ready to go out. We still went out for a bit to celebrate Nicola's birthday, but we called it an early night. Hopefully that was the end of bad things in Bishkek. I onnly want to see the policeman again if he comes back with Mike's camera, my money, and Evan's phone.
The doorbell rang a few minutes later, and I went and looked through the peephole to see who it was. The light had been turned off in the hallway, so I could only see the silhouette, but it was clearly a man. I was too scared to open the door so Mike came out and asked who was there. The man started speaking in Russian, so we definitely didn't open the door. We thought it was the mugger, back for some more! Mike didn't open the door, so he started pounding on the door, jiggling the handle, and ringing the doorbell repeatedly. I called the office manager to see if she could ring the security guard sitting in our office, since I didn't have the number. She said she was nearby and she'd just come back. The guy kept ringing and knocking until she got there. It turned out that it was the policeman who'd taken our story initially. He knew we spoke little Russian, and what could he have possibly needed from us at 8 pm on a Saturday night, knowing we'd just been robbed and were likely very scared? Being that this is Kyrgyzstan, Mike and I think that he was coming to get money from us- he'd seen Mike's apartment, knew how much money we had, and wanted to get some for himself too. The office manager took him into the office and for about 20 minutes was talking to him there. She called me and said that he just wanted to hear the series of events again, which sounds just like an excuse. Tomorrow I'll have to ask more details about what he wanted. It ruined our evening, and we'd just started drinking some hot pepper vodka and were getting ready to go out. We still went out for a bit to celebrate Nicola's birthday, but we called it an early night. Hopefully that was the end of bad things in Bishkek. I onnly want to see the policeman again if he comes back with Mike's camera, my money, and Evan's phone.
Other Recent Bishkek Happenings
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!
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!
Saturday, November 15, 2008
The bad side of Kyrgyzstan
Today I had my first negative experience living in Bishkek.
First, some background information. My friend (and Mike's roommate) Evan got mugged at knifepoint on Wednesday night. He was walking home from visiting a friend after dark, and a Kyrgyz guy started walking next to him and chatting. Evan said they talked about how old they were, where they were from, what they did for a living, etc. As soon as they walked into an underpass, the guy pulled out a knife and demanded Evan's wallet. Evan said he'd had a bad feeling about it, but didn't cross the groad to catch a bus or anything just because. In hindsight it's much easier of course to think about what you should have done. Anyways. Evan caught a bus home and was really shaken up all evening. He had debit cards in his wallet which he cancelled, and he also lost his driver's license and his scuba license. Luckily the guy didn't take his super nice and super expensive camera, which he had in a bag around his neck.
Today, Mike and I were having a lazy day at his place. We made lunch and watched a pretty crazy Japanese movie called Battle Royale. So we were just in bed when we heard Evan come home, the doorbell ring, the door open, and sounds of things crashing. Evan ran into our room, followed by a Kyrgyz guy shouting in Russian. It turns out that he was the guy who had mugged Evan, and had somehow followed him home from the internet cafe this afternoon. When the doorbell rings it's always someone from the office or one of the other teachers, so he just opened the door. The guy wanted the PIN code for Evan's debit card. Evan gave it to him, but I told him that the card didn't work in Bishkek. The guy would have left with the code, but he definitely would have come back when he realized it didn't work. Evan cancelled the card, but I didn't know how to say that in Russian, so I just said that it doesn't work in foreign ATMs because it's an English card. The guy demanded money from Evan, and he gave him what he had in his pocket (about 100 som/3$). Mike got up out of bed and told the guy he had to leave, but he wouldn't. Mike is a boxer so he was ready to beat him, but he picked up a bread knife from the dishrack and started waving it around. He said that if we gave him 500 som, he would leave. Mike took out his wallet and gave him 500 som, but he still didn't leave. He said that he needed 5000 som instead (more than 100$) which none of us had. He picked up Mike's camera which was on the desk and put it in his pocket. He also made Evan give him his cell phone. He then was asking me what was in my purse, which was on the floor near where he was standing. I told him that my name was Mary and I was a student at the American University and that I didn't have any money on me except the 50 som that I offered to him from my pocket. He asked me to show him my wallet and prove I didn't have money, which I didn't want to do because I DID have money in it- I had just changed 100$ into som the night before and hadn't taken it out. But he picked up my purse, grabbed my wallet, saw 4800 som, and started yelling at me for lying to him. While he was distracted by the money, Mike punched him in the face twice. He dropped my wallet but took the money, and then took off running. Mike ran after him, even though he was shirtless and barefoot, and Evan and I followed them. The office staff heard the ruckus and ran out after us too. Mike disappeared around the corner, and when we saw him again he hadn't gotten the guy. But he had really hurt his hand from clocking the guy in the face (it was his hand that he already broke in the past in a fight) and his feet were fucked up from running on gravel. He would have caught up to the guy, but he slipped rounding a corner.
The office staff were upset and they called the police. 6 big burly Kyrgyz policemen came into Mike's room to take down our story. They were scarier than the mugger was, and now I have less faith in Kyrgyz police than I did before- now they just know how much money teachers at our school carry on them, so they'll just probably be more likely to stop us for bribes now! They took pictures of our room, asked for our story twice, and then sat with the staff in the office for about an hour taking notes. I'm sure nothing will come of it. So in the end, he got off with my $100, Evan's cell phone, and Mike's camera. I have to read my insurance policy to see if there's any way to recover stolen money (Mom, any chance you can get it back from property insurance?)
It's my roommate Nicola's birthday tomorrow and tonight is celebration time, so it's a real bummer that Evan, Mike and I really aren't in the mood. I had to change more money, and now I hope to get by this week only spending $50 until payday on Friday, but going out tonight will be about a quarter of that probably. It's sad that my perfect image of life in Bishkek has now been a little marred, and I hope that I don't spend the rest of my time here looking over my shoulder to see if that guy is following me.
First, some background information. My friend (and Mike's roommate) Evan got mugged at knifepoint on Wednesday night. He was walking home from visiting a friend after dark, and a Kyrgyz guy started walking next to him and chatting. Evan said they talked about how old they were, where they were from, what they did for a living, etc. As soon as they walked into an underpass, the guy pulled out a knife and demanded Evan's wallet. Evan said he'd had a bad feeling about it, but didn't cross the groad to catch a bus or anything just because. In hindsight it's much easier of course to think about what you should have done. Anyways. Evan caught a bus home and was really shaken up all evening. He had debit cards in his wallet which he cancelled, and he also lost his driver's license and his scuba license. Luckily the guy didn't take his super nice and super expensive camera, which he had in a bag around his neck.
Today, Mike and I were having a lazy day at his place. We made lunch and watched a pretty crazy Japanese movie called Battle Royale. So we were just in bed when we heard Evan come home, the doorbell ring, the door open, and sounds of things crashing. Evan ran into our room, followed by a Kyrgyz guy shouting in Russian. It turns out that he was the guy who had mugged Evan, and had somehow followed him home from the internet cafe this afternoon. When the doorbell rings it's always someone from the office or one of the other teachers, so he just opened the door. The guy wanted the PIN code for Evan's debit card. Evan gave it to him, but I told him that the card didn't work in Bishkek. The guy would have left with the code, but he definitely would have come back when he realized it didn't work. Evan cancelled the card, but I didn't know how to say that in Russian, so I just said that it doesn't work in foreign ATMs because it's an English card. The guy demanded money from Evan, and he gave him what he had in his pocket (about 100 som/3$). Mike got up out of bed and told the guy he had to leave, but he wouldn't. Mike is a boxer so he was ready to beat him, but he picked up a bread knife from the dishrack and started waving it around. He said that if we gave him 500 som, he would leave. Mike took out his wallet and gave him 500 som, but he still didn't leave. He said that he needed 5000 som instead (more than 100$) which none of us had. He picked up Mike's camera which was on the desk and put it in his pocket. He also made Evan give him his cell phone. He then was asking me what was in my purse, which was on the floor near where he was standing. I told him that my name was Mary and I was a student at the American University and that I didn't have any money on me except the 50 som that I offered to him from my pocket. He asked me to show him my wallet and prove I didn't have money, which I didn't want to do because I DID have money in it- I had just changed 100$ into som the night before and hadn't taken it out. But he picked up my purse, grabbed my wallet, saw 4800 som, and started yelling at me for lying to him. While he was distracted by the money, Mike punched him in the face twice. He dropped my wallet but took the money, and then took off running. Mike ran after him, even though he was shirtless and barefoot, and Evan and I followed them. The office staff heard the ruckus and ran out after us too. Mike disappeared around the corner, and when we saw him again he hadn't gotten the guy. But he had really hurt his hand from clocking the guy in the face (it was his hand that he already broke in the past in a fight) and his feet were fucked up from running on gravel. He would have caught up to the guy, but he slipped rounding a corner.
The office staff were upset and they called the police. 6 big burly Kyrgyz policemen came into Mike's room to take down our story. They were scarier than the mugger was, and now I have less faith in Kyrgyz police than I did before- now they just know how much money teachers at our school carry on them, so they'll just probably be more likely to stop us for bribes now! They took pictures of our room, asked for our story twice, and then sat with the staff in the office for about an hour taking notes. I'm sure nothing will come of it. So in the end, he got off with my $100, Evan's cell phone, and Mike's camera. I have to read my insurance policy to see if there's any way to recover stolen money (Mom, any chance you can get it back from property insurance?)
It's my roommate Nicola's birthday tomorrow and tonight is celebration time, so it's a real bummer that Evan, Mike and I really aren't in the mood. I had to change more money, and now I hope to get by this week only spending $50 until payday on Friday, but going out tonight will be about a quarter of that probably. It's sad that my perfect image of life in Bishkek has now been a little marred, and I hope that I don't spend the rest of my time here looking over my shoulder to see if that guy is following me.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Horse Games
So two weekends ago, Mike, Andy, Nicola and I went back to Bokonbaevo, the village near Lake Issyk-Kul where we went to the Eagle Festival. Our friend Josh tried to order a cab to pick us up after classes ended Friday night, but he couldn't get through to his cab driver, so I asked one woman in our office to call for us. When we went to the eagle festival we'd paid 2600 som to get to Bokonbaevo. This time though, it was 4000 som, and we were told this was "normal". We had no choice since it was last minute and we didn't think we could get a taxi any other way, so we agreed to it. Our driver didn't know how to get there (didn't even know if he was going to the northern coast of the lake or the southern) and had to ask for directions 4 times on the way. He had a tv screen built into the dash where the cigarette lighter usually is, and watched Disney movies the whole way there- I'm surprised we didn't die. He didn't even have good movies- Brother Bear, Pocahontas, Pocahontas 2, Mulan, and Mulan 2, all dubbed into Russian. The songs were dubbed into Russian, but rather than being sung, they were read out by a man with a deep monotone voice. But he did manage to get us to our homestay safely at 1:30 in the morning.
Our homestay hostess spoke German and no English, so I got to be the token spokesperson all weekend since none of us speak very good Russian. We met up with Loh, the Singaporean couch surfer who'd stayed with me in Bishkek the week before.
In the morning we got a cab up to the horse games. We drove for an hour on a dirt road into the mountains. We stopped about halfway up to let the engine get used to the height change, and some Kyrgyz men in an orange Moskvitch stopped too. We had our picture taken with them. It was a beautiful car and I should have asked them how much it cost!
We met up with some other friends we have from Bishkek when we got there, and also ran into an American guy who we met at the eagle festival who is self-publishing a photo book of Kyrgyzstan. There were about 8 yurts set up near a little mountain village, and speakers and a microphone. There was a big field where the games would take place. We got there in time for the Manaschi competition. Manas, the epic poem of Kyrgyzstan about the adventures of a man named Manas, is learned by heart and sung/chanted by men who are called Manaschi. There was a contest to see who performed the best. It is the most amazing music to listen to. I'm trying to get my videos on facebook, because it's impossible to describe the intensity of it. I have no sound here in the internet cafe so I can't say which is best, but check out these videos on youtube....
There were kiss-the-girl races, where a man and a woman race off on horseback, and the man has to catch up to the girl and kiss her. If he does before the finish line, he wins, if he doesn't, they race again and she gets to whip him the whole time.
We dressed for really cold weather, but it was sunny and quite warm for most of the day. We ate lunch in a yurt, and it was wonderful to eat plov and drink tea while sitting on the floor of a yurt, looking out of the roof opening and feeling the warm stove.
There was Kyrgyz wrestling, where men take their shirts off and wrestle on horseback. The goal is to get the guy to fall off of his horse. It's crazy how long they can stay on horseback!
It was fun just to sit around and peoplewatch too. There were majority Kyrgyz people here, but there were also quite a lot of foreigners- teachers, tourists, NGO workers, Peace Corps volunteers, and Germans doing their civil service year.
Once the sun went down behind the peaks around 4 o'clock, it got cold really quickly. We wandered around and played in the little snow piles there were scattered about, and then found our taxi driver and headed back down the mountain to Bokonbaevo. Our friends were staying in a yurt right at the festival, but we had already booked a homestay in Bokonbaevo and arranged round-trip taxi service, so we couldn't have stayed even though it would have been nice. But sleeping in a yurt in late October is very cold, so we'll wait and arrange a yurtstay in the spring sometime.
We went back to our homestay and walked into "downtown" Bokonbaevo for dinner. We found an open restaurant with heat and food, but they didn't have most of the things listed on the menu, and the food we got served was cold. It was called Goulash, but there was nothing resembling goulash at all. It was pasta, buckwheat, and rice covered with ketchup and some meat and gravy that wasn't mildly red-colored or spiced. It was an interesting experience. Back in our homestay, power came back on, so Mike, Andy, Nicola and Loh played card games and chess, and I knit the scarf I just recently finished for Mike. Now that people know that I can knit, I have a waiting list already 5 people long for requests- scarves, mittens, hats... I'm currently working on a pair of mittens for myself (pig-shaped!!), but when I finish I'll gladly make things for my friends, especially if they buy the yarn :) It's good to feel wanted/needed.
I have to go teach, so Day 2 of the horse games will come later. We had our first real snow last night and Bishkek is white! It's amazing and beautiful and I love the start of winter. Everything smells fresh and crisp and so much like Europe.
Our homestay hostess spoke German and no English, so I got to be the token spokesperson all weekend since none of us speak very good Russian. We met up with Loh, the Singaporean couch surfer who'd stayed with me in Bishkek the week before.
In the morning we got a cab up to the horse games. We drove for an hour on a dirt road into the mountains. We stopped about halfway up to let the engine get used to the height change, and some Kyrgyz men in an orange Moskvitch stopped too. We had our picture taken with them. It was a beautiful car and I should have asked them how much it cost!
We met up with some other friends we have from Bishkek when we got there, and also ran into an American guy who we met at the eagle festival who is self-publishing a photo book of Kyrgyzstan. There were about 8 yurts set up near a little mountain village, and speakers and a microphone. There was a big field where the games would take place. We got there in time for the Manaschi competition. Manas, the epic poem of Kyrgyzstan about the adventures of a man named Manas, is learned by heart and sung/chanted by men who are called Manaschi. There was a contest to see who performed the best. It is the most amazing music to listen to. I'm trying to get my videos on facebook, because it's impossible to describe the intensity of it. I have no sound here in the internet cafe so I can't say which is best, but check out these videos on youtube....
There were kiss-the-girl races, where a man and a woman race off on horseback, and the man has to catch up to the girl and kiss her. If he does before the finish line, he wins, if he doesn't, they race again and she gets to whip him the whole time.
We dressed for really cold weather, but it was sunny and quite warm for most of the day. We ate lunch in a yurt, and it was wonderful to eat plov and drink tea while sitting on the floor of a yurt, looking out of the roof opening and feeling the warm stove.
There was Kyrgyz wrestling, where men take their shirts off and wrestle on horseback. The goal is to get the guy to fall off of his horse. It's crazy how long they can stay on horseback!
It was fun just to sit around and peoplewatch too. There were majority Kyrgyz people here, but there were also quite a lot of foreigners- teachers, tourists, NGO workers, Peace Corps volunteers, and Germans doing their civil service year.
Once the sun went down behind the peaks around 4 o'clock, it got cold really quickly. We wandered around and played in the little snow piles there were scattered about, and then found our taxi driver and headed back down the mountain to Bokonbaevo. Our friends were staying in a yurt right at the festival, but we had already booked a homestay in Bokonbaevo and arranged round-trip taxi service, so we couldn't have stayed even though it would have been nice. But sleeping in a yurt in late October is very cold, so we'll wait and arrange a yurtstay in the spring sometime.
We went back to our homestay and walked into "downtown" Bokonbaevo for dinner. We found an open restaurant with heat and food, but they didn't have most of the things listed on the menu, and the food we got served was cold. It was called Goulash, but there was nothing resembling goulash at all. It was pasta, buckwheat, and rice covered with ketchup and some meat and gravy that wasn't mildly red-colored or spiced. It was an interesting experience. Back in our homestay, power came back on, so Mike, Andy, Nicola and Loh played card games and chess, and I knit the scarf I just recently finished for Mike. Now that people know that I can knit, I have a waiting list already 5 people long for requests- scarves, mittens, hats... I'm currently working on a pair of mittens for myself (pig-shaped!!), but when I finish I'll gladly make things for my friends, especially if they buy the yarn :) It's good to feel wanted/needed.
I have to go teach, so Day 2 of the horse games will come later. We had our first real snow last night and Bishkek is white! It's amazing and beautiful and I love the start of winter. Everything smells fresh and crisp and so much like Europe.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Meh
I haven't updated for a while, sorry. Internet's been slow and I haven't been up to much. I finished knitting Mike a cute green and brown scarf today. Tonight I'm going to a German jazz band concert, and tomorrow I'm going to see Swan Lake the ballet. It will be a cultural weekend.
Today's a dreary, dismal day. Last night my friend Derek cooked really wonderful champagne chicken pasta for all of us, and I went out with some of the teachers to a trashy club. It was great fun, and it was a really cheap night, since foreigners get in free.
I'll try to update more next week, I still haven't talked about the Horse Festival.
Today's a dreary, dismal day. Last night my friend Derek cooked really wonderful champagne chicken pasta for all of us, and I went out with some of the teachers to a trashy club. It was great fun, and it was a really cheap night, since foreigners get in free.
I'll try to update more next week, I still haven't talked about the Horse Festival.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Horse Festival
This was a weekend in which I spoke German, Bulgarian, Russian, and the one word of Kyrgyz I know (jok=no), saw a game of headless sheep polo, got kissed by a drunk Kyrgyz man, ate plov in a yurt, posed for many pictures with Kyrgyz men, listened to an American from LA play a Kyrgyz guitar and sing in Kyrgyz, and was entralled by the Kyrgyz men singing/chanting the Manas national epic poem. It was wonderful and I will with more detail later this week. I didn't celebrate Halloween, but I think a weekend in the Kyrgyz wilderness beats a Halloween party any day.
I have many videos and photos that will be on facebook whenever I get around to it. I just finally put up the last of my eagle hunting photos.
I have many videos and photos that will be on facebook whenever I get around to it. I just finally put up the last of my eagle hunting photos.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Boyfriend
In case you haven't noticed on facebook, or deduced it from the fact that I don't mention doing anything in my blog without him, I have a boyfriend. It's Mike. He teaches here, he's from Manchester England, and he has an adorable accent :) Since we've gotten to the point of being in a facebook relationship, I figured I might as well mention it here.
Freezing
It is SO COLD. State heat hasn't been turned on yet, and I'm slowly freezing to death. In my classroom it's so cold that I teach in a scarf, hat, mittens, and a jacket. It's hard to sleep since it's very cold, and even harder to get out of bed in the morning! It doesn't feel that cold during the day, but at night it gets pretty chilly. My students tell me that the heat will get turned on on November 1st, but I'll believe it when I feel it. We'll see. I can't last much longer than a week though, it's miserable being anywhere since there's no heat.
Mike, Evan, Nicola, Andy, and I are going away this weekend. We booked a homestay at CBT in Bokonbaevo, where we were for the eagle festival, but this time, it's a horse festival. We'll leave Friday night after classes and come back to Bishkek on Sunday evening sometime. It will be interesting since none of us speak Russian. I'd say that I know the most, but it's not even close to being conversational.
We went to the circus on Saturday. I was expecting to feel sad at some points because I knew there were animals involved, but I didn't think it would be as bad as it was. There were cats, poodles, rats, a kangaroo, and some bears. Check out facebook for some videos. I cried. The acrobats weren't that bad, and the circus would have been even better if the animals weren't involved and allowed to be free and happy in the wild where they belong. After the circus, we went to a Chinese restaurant, the same one we were at the night I fell in the ditch, and I got a picture of the ditch to forever remember the place where I fucked myself up.
On Sunday, Mike and I went to Orto-Sai bazaar, another market/bazaar in Bishkek. This one is pretty close to our apartment, so we walked there because it was a beautiful sunny fall day. It is smaller and less confusing than the other bazaars, and it was a very successful shopping trip! I got a kilo of wonderful small plums like they have in Austria for 25 som (about 60 cents!) I also got some knitting needles and a bunch of yarn. I'm going to make myself some teal mittens, and I'm knitting Mike a green and brown scarf. I got a pig potholder, a nail file, a loofah, and we finally found rolling papers! We'd looked EVERYWHERE in Bishkek and they were nowhere to be found, and we'd finally given up. But then there they were! At Orto-Sai bazaar! The locals even say that they don't have rolling papers in Kyrgyzstan. So we've proven everyone wrong :)
After the market, I went to dinner at my friend/student's house. He hadn't told me that it was his wife's birthday party, so I was pretty surprised to see 8 people at their house! He lives about 30 minutes by marshrutka away from my house, close the mountains and on a dirt road. His wife was an amazing cook- there were 6 kinds of different salads as the first course, and a really great Georgian dish with beans and meat. She had also made compot/juice out of what I think were dates, and mulled red wine which was actually really tasty.We had our first course, and then took an hour and a half break because the plov wasn't done yet. We (and by we I mean they) sang karaoke- they had a DVD and microphone with a huge selection of mostly Russian songs! They forced me to sing Yellow Submarine and Hotel California, neither which I even know! But it was good Russian practice to read the Cyrillic song lyrics. His wife and all her friends spoke very good English, but didn't talk much to me. I tired very quickly listening to all the Russian they were speaking- I'm not used to so much of it! After our karaoke break, we finally ate plov. It was wonderful. It's just meat, rice, peppers, and carrots, but it tasted so much better than what you get in a restaurant. She ordered the rice all the way from Uzbekistan; the "real" plov rice comes from there. I got a ride home from one of their friends. It was nice to get out from the city and away from native English speakers, even though of course I enjoy every minute I spend with my friends.
I found a second hand shop just half a block from my apartment and bought a sexy, Marimekko-esque colored dress! I will start going there much more often.
Think warm thoughts for me, it's a long time until Saturday when the heat comes on. I'm off to curl up under 2 duvets and try to stay warm. No class tomorrow so I'm off to another bazaar/market, and I hope to meet up with my favorite Turkish student in the evening.
Mike, Evan, Nicola, Andy, and I are going away this weekend. We booked a homestay at CBT in Bokonbaevo, where we were for the eagle festival, but this time, it's a horse festival. We'll leave Friday night after classes and come back to Bishkek on Sunday evening sometime. It will be interesting since none of us speak Russian. I'd say that I know the most, but it's not even close to being conversational.
We went to the circus on Saturday. I was expecting to feel sad at some points because I knew there were animals involved, but I didn't think it would be as bad as it was. There were cats, poodles, rats, a kangaroo, and some bears. Check out facebook for some videos. I cried. The acrobats weren't that bad, and the circus would have been even better if the animals weren't involved and allowed to be free and happy in the wild where they belong. After the circus, we went to a Chinese restaurant, the same one we were at the night I fell in the ditch, and I got a picture of the ditch to forever remember the place where I fucked myself up.
On Sunday, Mike and I went to Orto-Sai bazaar, another market/bazaar in Bishkek. This one is pretty close to our apartment, so we walked there because it was a beautiful sunny fall day. It is smaller and less confusing than the other bazaars, and it was a very successful shopping trip! I got a kilo of wonderful small plums like they have in Austria for 25 som (about 60 cents!) I also got some knitting needles and a bunch of yarn. I'm going to make myself some teal mittens, and I'm knitting Mike a green and brown scarf. I got a pig potholder, a nail file, a loofah, and we finally found rolling papers! We'd looked EVERYWHERE in Bishkek and they were nowhere to be found, and we'd finally given up. But then there they were! At Orto-Sai bazaar! The locals even say that they don't have rolling papers in Kyrgyzstan. So we've proven everyone wrong :)
After the market, I went to dinner at my friend/student's house. He hadn't told me that it was his wife's birthday party, so I was pretty surprised to see 8 people at their house! He lives about 30 minutes by marshrutka away from my house, close the mountains and on a dirt road. His wife was an amazing cook- there were 6 kinds of different salads as the first course, and a really great Georgian dish with beans and meat. She had also made compot/juice out of what I think were dates, and mulled red wine which was actually really tasty.We had our first course, and then took an hour and a half break because the plov wasn't done yet. We (and by we I mean they) sang karaoke- they had a DVD and microphone with a huge selection of mostly Russian songs! They forced me to sing Yellow Submarine and Hotel California, neither which I even know! But it was good Russian practice to read the Cyrillic song lyrics. His wife and all her friends spoke very good English, but didn't talk much to me. I tired very quickly listening to all the Russian they were speaking- I'm not used to so much of it! After our karaoke break, we finally ate plov. It was wonderful. It's just meat, rice, peppers, and carrots, but it tasted so much better than what you get in a restaurant. She ordered the rice all the way from Uzbekistan; the "real" plov rice comes from there. I got a ride home from one of their friends. It was nice to get out from the city and away from native English speakers, even though of course I enjoy every minute I spend with my friends.
I found a second hand shop just half a block from my apartment and bought a sexy, Marimekko-esque colored dress! I will start going there much more often.
Think warm thoughts for me, it's a long time until Saturday when the heat comes on. I'm off to curl up under 2 duvets and try to stay warm. No class tomorrow so I'm off to another bazaar/market, and I hope to meet up with my favorite Turkish student in the evening.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Dog meat
We went to a Soviet Korean restaurant last night and ate dog. It was goooooood.
The exchange rate is up to 39 som to the dollar! That's 4.5 som more than when I got here. Maybe I really will buy an orange Lada this year!!
Circus this afternoon. It involves kangaroo boxing and ice skating bears. Should be amusing, and also horribly sad and wrong. Afterwards we're meeting up with a Canadian couchsurfer who's staying with our Kyrgyz friend Mirlan. Mirlan and his friends are cooking dinner tonight, so we might go there after the circus.
My student and friend Seitek and his Uzbek wife invited me over for dinner tomorrow, and she will cook plov (my most favorite Central Asian food!) for me. It should be wonderful! Seitek is studying hard for the TEOFL and the GRE, so everyday he asks me some long obscure English word that I don't know. He also really wants to help me learn Russian, so it's great fun to hang out with him- I get to learn 2 languages! Uzbekistan is the home of plov, so I'm sure that his wife is an AMAZING cook.
Weather is freezing here. I'm wearing my winter boots already, and mittens, a scarf, and jacket, and a hat. I can see my breath. I'm not ready for it to be winter yet, I was just starting to enjoy the cool crispness of fall. The internet cafe reinstalled all their operating systems to get rid of the many viruses, but Skype is no longer installed and I can't install it. So everyone should get google chat, that seems to be the only working chat service- facebook chat quits every few seconds. The internet cafe stupidly also has the heat on right now, even though it's nearly freezing outside. Idiots.
Yesterday and today have both been dismal and rainy, but we have a generator now at school and one working light in each classroom, so we no longer have to read and write by candlelight in class! The first month of classes ended. I am keeping 3 of the same classes which is great, but my 2 favorite students aren't returning next month because of scheduling conflicts, and my highest level class was cancelled because there weren't enough students. I gave my email address to the students leaving and said I would love to meet up with them if they ever want to practice their English. Next month I have classes 9:00-10:20, then 14:30-18:50. I don't have the last class of the day, so I get to mock the other teachers while I'm relaxing in the warmth of my apartment with hot chocolate (if I can find it at the store) and a movie that they'll be teaching for 80 minutes :). But unfortunately again I got shafted with Russian lessons- the only available time I can get is Wed 9-11! I don't want that at ALL, I requested 4 times and week and I would have gotten it if the office staff hadn't stupidly scheduled it right in the middle of when I teach class in the morning! (It's not that hard, there are only about 15 Russian learners to schedule...). So I'm very angry and I might join Mike and Evan's class, even though they aren't as far along as I am, once a week is no good, especially since it means I can't sleep in on Wednesdays! I'm going to look into actually taking classes somewhere else. Mike and Evan only have 2 classes a week, and I'd prefer something a bit more intensive. Ugh. How annoying.
One thing I forgot to mention- I bought a DVD at Osh Bazaar with 10 Russian movies on it- it's of course a black market DVD, but 10 movies for 50 som- what a deal! It has Night Watch and Day Watch, without English subtitles. It'll be a good way to practice my Russian! I'll have to watch the other 8 movies too, even though I'll know even less of what's going on there.
The exchange rate is up to 39 som to the dollar! That's 4.5 som more than when I got here. Maybe I really will buy an orange Lada this year!!
Circus this afternoon. It involves kangaroo boxing and ice skating bears. Should be amusing, and also horribly sad and wrong. Afterwards we're meeting up with a Canadian couchsurfer who's staying with our Kyrgyz friend Mirlan. Mirlan and his friends are cooking dinner tonight, so we might go there after the circus.
My student and friend Seitek and his Uzbek wife invited me over for dinner tomorrow, and she will cook plov (my most favorite Central Asian food!) for me. It should be wonderful! Seitek is studying hard for the TEOFL and the GRE, so everyday he asks me some long obscure English word that I don't know. He also really wants to help me learn Russian, so it's great fun to hang out with him- I get to learn 2 languages! Uzbekistan is the home of plov, so I'm sure that his wife is an AMAZING cook.
Weather is freezing here. I'm wearing my winter boots already, and mittens, a scarf, and jacket, and a hat. I can see my breath. I'm not ready for it to be winter yet, I was just starting to enjoy the cool crispness of fall. The internet cafe reinstalled all their operating systems to get rid of the many viruses, but Skype is no longer installed and I can't install it. So everyone should get google chat, that seems to be the only working chat service- facebook chat quits every few seconds. The internet cafe stupidly also has the heat on right now, even though it's nearly freezing outside. Idiots.
Yesterday and today have both been dismal and rainy, but we have a generator now at school and one working light in each classroom, so we no longer have to read and write by candlelight in class! The first month of classes ended. I am keeping 3 of the same classes which is great, but my 2 favorite students aren't returning next month because of scheduling conflicts, and my highest level class was cancelled because there weren't enough students. I gave my email address to the students leaving and said I would love to meet up with them if they ever want to practice their English. Next month I have classes 9:00-10:20, then 14:30-18:50. I don't have the last class of the day, so I get to mock the other teachers while I'm relaxing in the warmth of my apartment with hot chocolate (if I can find it at the store) and a movie that they'll be teaching for 80 minutes :). But unfortunately again I got shafted with Russian lessons- the only available time I can get is Wed 9-11! I don't want that at ALL, I requested 4 times and week and I would have gotten it if the office staff hadn't stupidly scheduled it right in the middle of when I teach class in the morning! (It's not that hard, there are only about 15 Russian learners to schedule...). So I'm very angry and I might join Mike and Evan's class, even though they aren't as far along as I am, once a week is no good, especially since it means I can't sleep in on Wednesdays! I'm going to look into actually taking classes somewhere else. Mike and Evan only have 2 classes a week, and I'd prefer something a bit more intensive. Ugh. How annoying.
One thing I forgot to mention- I bought a DVD at Osh Bazaar with 10 Russian movies on it- it's of course a black market DVD, but 10 movies for 50 som- what a deal! It has Night Watch and Day Watch, without English subtitles. It'll be a good way to practice my Russian! I'll have to watch the other 8 movies too, even though I'll know even less of what's going on there.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
A weekend of eagles
The exchange rate is getting better, yet again. Now it's up to 38.3 som to the dollar! Pretty soon I'll really be rolling in dough. Tomorrow is payday too, which is wonderful. I spent about 100$ last weekend with food, eagle hunting, transport, and the homestay, so it will be nice to have money again.
I thought that we were going away this weekend to our boss's village near Issyk-Kul, but it turns out it was a misunderstanding. We were invited for last weekend, but we already had eagle festival plans, so we thought it would just be this weekend instead. Our boss thought that since we were already going, we wouldn't want to go again so soon, so it's been postponed to a future date. We were planning on going away, so we have no weekend plans yet. I'm sure we'll find something to do.
The first month of teaching ends tomorrow. Today was test day, so I just got to sit in class for 6 hours listening to music and reading Anna Karenina. I got it from Derek, an NSEP scholarship student here from Arizona, and this time I'm going to read the whole thing. Sophomore year of high school I got most of the way through when I had to bring it back to the library, and then I never got around to renewing it or starting it again.
Mike and I went to Osh Bazaar yesterday, and I got a traditional Kyrgyz felt winter hat and some boots. Boots were 750 som (20$), which isn't that cheap, but they're black and just the right height where I can still walk normally and comfortably. My ankle finally healed enough for me to be able to walk in heels. I was worried my ankle would hurt me forever! I also tried a new fruit. It's called hurma in Russian, and I just discovered that in English it's a persimmon . It looks sort of like a tomato/apple, but doesn't taste anything like either. None of the English teachers knew the English name for this fruit, and my students didn't even know if there was an English name since it's an Asian fruit. But it's great to have found something that I've never seen or really heard of anywhere before! The word persimmon is familiar to me, but I wouldn't even have know that it was a fruit, it sounds more like a spice name.
So- eagle hunting. Friday night after classes ended, 8 teachers took 2 taxis to Kadji-Sai, located near the town of Bokonbaevo on Lake Issyk-Kul. Our friend Josh had arranged the taxis and the homestay, and he'd gone down a day earlier. So we met him there. Our homestay was with one of the eagle hunters. We arrived around 23:00 and went straight to bed- 7 of us were staying in one big room. Electricity was out and there was NO heat, so it was really really cold. Most people slept in their coats and hats.
In the morning, we had porridge for breakfast at the homestay, and then took a marshrutka to the eagle festival. It was WONDERFUL. The festival was situated a little bit in the mountains within walking distance of "downtown" Bokonbaevo. We got there and we were the only foreigners there. There were lots of men in a big field with their eagles/hawks/horses/donkeys/wolfhounds. There were Kazakh eagle hunters with great hoods that resembled something out of Lord of the Rings. We just walked around for a few hours admiring all the birds and taking lots of pictures. Then the show started. There was a stage and there was an announcer speaking Kyrgyz, and then some Kyrgyz pop singers, an accordian player, and the best part, a Manaschi- a sort of bard type of man who sings/chants the epic story of Manas. When I get my videos on facebook, you can sort of hear the chant in the background. He got so emotional that he started crying and had to be escorted off the stage. Then there was an entrance parade with all the eagle hunters, horse racers, and hawk hunters. The festival began with hawk hunting. Men brought a rabbit out into the field and let it go, and then the hawk hunter let his hawk go and it flew out and got the rabbit. They reused each rabbit a few times. There was a hilarious moment when one of the rabbits escaped, and there were a few minutes where 3 men on foot and 2 men on horseback were chasing it all around the field. In the end, the rabbit got away. There was another rabbit that just did not run. It sat in one place, and the man even kicked it a few times to get it to run, but it just sat there until the hawk came and landed on it.
There were a few seats set up in front of the stage, but mostly people were just standing around or squatting, Asian style. We had a lunch break with some bread and cheese we'd brought from Bishkek, and walked a little ways up the mountain so we'd have a good view. There were a long-distane arrow shooting competition, as well as an archery target competition. There were some long long distance horse races all around the valley, which were pretty boring to watch, but there was one race of "Kiss the girl"- where a girl and a boy ride horses, and the boy tries to catch up to the girl and kiss her. Once they'd gotten most of the way around the track, one of them fell off the horse, and as the ambulance was driving to pick up the person, it almost crashed into a ditch. It seems so typical Kyrgyzstan. It was around this time that my camera battery died :(
The only other foreigners we met there were an American guy from Georgia who's been living here for a bit, and an Australian guy who's biking around India/China/Central Asia.
Even with all the animals in the festival, I was mostly amused by the mules. There were 4 or 5 that were ridden by little boys, and I wasted my camera battery taking many many pictures of them. I would love to have my own mule, they are sturdy and adorable!
The "climax" of the festival was the wolf-hunting portion. The men brought a big wooden crate out onto the field, and it took them a long long time to get the wolf out and situated. It was a six-month old wolf cub/adolescent, and it was chained to a large ball weight. We had assumed it would be a wolf let loose and chased by an eagle, but it was really disappointing. First, wolfhounds were let loose on the wolf three at a time. The wolf did a great job fending them off, but every time he got a good hit, some men held him down with a pitchfork-type tool and let the dogs rest. When the 3 dogs were done, 3 more were let loose. All in all, there were probably 12 dogs that had their chance at the wolf, but when it all ended, a few of the dogs were bleeding, and the wolf was still in one non-bloody piece, although I'm sure he was exhausted. But that wasn't the end! Then the men toyed with him for awhile, and tied him up and untied him and moved him to a different place on the field. Then it was the eagles' turn. He still was attached to the chain and the ball weight. The first eagle that was let loose, instead of flying from the mountaintop down to the wolf, turned around and flew into a crowd of people sitting on another mountain, and landed on a man's head. I wasn't close enough to really see what happened, but he clearly got some gashes from the talons. He was escorted down the mountain to the ambulance, and he wasn't walking straight because of the shock. The second eagle that was sent to get the wolf belonged to the man whose house we were staying in. His eagle, instead of attacking the wolf, started a fight with another eagle. People swarmed in and had to pull them apart. Third time's the charm, and the wolf finally was attacked. It wasn't much of a sight because the wolf was on a chain, but he put up a pretty good fight and the bird was injured a bit. The poor wolf was still alive and was put back into its wooden crate. A woman from the Kyrgyz Tourism Board told Derek that he would be released back into the wild, which I'm sure means taken out behind the stage and shot. I couldn't watch any of the wolf hunt, so all of this I know from Mike commentating it to me. It made me want to cry from the get-go because it wasn't a fair fight. Our homestay hunter said that he disagreed with it too, and said that the wolfhounds and the eagles were really unsure of what to do since they are trained to hunt animals that are in the wild and not tied up. The wolf situation sort of put a damper on the mood for the rest of the day, and we decided to leave the festival.
We walked down the mountain back to Bokonbaevo and passed a great cemetery on the mountainside. Cemeteries are really beautiful in Kyrgyzstan- almost all of the gravestones have a photograph or etching of the dead person, and there are many brick walls with the Islamic moon and star. We had dinner at a mediocre cafe and then went back to our homestay. We were all exhausted and wanted to go to bed at 19:30, but stayed up until around 22:00 talking- there was actually power!
The next day we went on a real-life eagle hunt. We had breakfast at our homestay again, and when we woke up at the bottom of the stairs, there was a shoebox of three TINY puppies! I played with them all, and then we learned that one of them was going to be traded for a fox for us to take on the hunt with us (we later found out that the fox we were getting had died overnight, so I don't know what happened to the puppies... I'd probably rather not know. I'm just glad we didn't use it as eagle food!) We took a marshrutka ride about an hour up into the mountains. It was strange and quite scary to be sitting just a few inches away from a giant scary eagle named Tuman. Once far enough into the mountains, we found the horses that we'd hired for the day. I got the smallest, most docile one, but he turned out to be stubborn as a rock and refused to walk for most of the day. I spent probably half the time leading him because when I sat on him he would not move. I was last the whole way up the mountain, and there was about half an hour where he just ate and ate and ate and I couldn't get him to move. Mike tried to lead him, but then Mike's horse wouldn't walk unless mine walked, so we were stranded and left behind as the rest of our group rode to the top of the mountain. We were rescued by our eagle hunter only coincidentally when he came down the mountain to pick up his eagle after the first hunt. He led my horse all the way up, and then Mike's followed. We rode all over the mountain to various peaks where Tuman would lauch from. We'd brought along a Kyrgyz guy from the village who ran around in the underbrush of the valley with a soda bottle full of rocks, shaking it and whistling to scare up some wildlife. Mountains (heights) and horses don't mix for me, and I had a fairly miserable time, especially since my horse was ornery. We rode across some really steep slopes through thorn bushes. At times it was so steep that we had to get off and lead the horses because they were slipping and falling down and it was dangerous to be on them. There came a point fairly early on where I lost interest in the actual hunt, because being on the horse and in the mountains was scary enough. But Mike was super wonderful and stuck close to me and kept me company, and it was a good experience regardless. Finally Tuman caught a fox on the 5th peak we'd climbed to, and then we headed down the mountain. We all got our picture taken holding Tuman- once he'd eaten he was docile and not so scary to be around. At that point it started snowing and hailing- we were stuck in the middle of a blizzard and we were a LONG way from "home". My horse refused to move, AGAIN, and the Kyrgyz guy who'd been scaring up wildlife offered to take my horse and lead Mike's. We walked the whole way down. It was really slippery in the mud on the road down the mountain, and walking was sort of difficult. Ben's horse slipped and landed on his leg, so he had to limp all the way down. The hail quickly turned to rain as we got more into the valley, and we were 1000% soaked through from head to toe. We walked all the way across a giant field, and then through the village basically from one end to the other in the pouring rain, past some miserable looking donkeys, cows, sheep, and goats who were seeking shelter under some measly trees. We finally got down to the marshrutka that was waiting for us. We were all soaked and FREEZING, and it was at least a 30 minute ride back to our homestay. We were all so cold, and some of us didn't have dry clothes to change into! I luckily had sweatpants and dry socks, but no top, and Mike, Evan, and Josh had no dry pants. We got back to our homestay, packed up our stuff, and dried off/warmed up as much as we could, and then we got a marshrutka back to Bishkek.
The marshrutka was much more high-tech than any other one I've been in, and it had a tv screen and a DVD player on board! Our driver put on Kyrgyz music videos, and it was great fun to watch/make fun of the videos here. There was one where there was a blind guy who had his pet canary killed, his girlfriend stolen, and then eventually was poisoned by the same guy- how morbid and politically incorrect! Poor blind teenager. There were other amusing ones where men were eating money, women were seducing pre-pubescent boys, but the best one was Salam Kyrgyzstan, which I mentioned in my last post.
It was a good weekend, and it was wonderful to get out of the city! We didn't really spend time at the Lake, but I saw it from the marshrutka window. There were lots of snowy mountains to admire, and there were strange red sandy mountainy things, which made it feel like we were in a desert.
I was sick most of the weekend, and I thought that being stuck in the rain would make things a million times worse, but I feel much better. My cold is mostly gone. But I used up half of my supply of Sudafed, so next time someone mails a package, include some!
I hosted my first couch surfer this week named Loh! He's from Singapore and is traveling by himself for the next few months. He's really fun and easy to hang out with. He's gone to Issyk-Kul for the week, but we're meeting him next weekend in Bokonbaevo (again!), this time for a horse festival. It involves "kiss the girl", wrestling on horseback, another Manaschi, AND DEAD GOAT POLO! We have to pay for our homestay tomorrow after we get paid, but then everything will be all set and we'll meet Loh there on Friday night after work.
I mailed my absentee ballot last night back to Connecticut, so my voice will count in this election! I just hope it will arrive in time.
Electricty is out more often now- I think it's up to 10 hours a day of no power. It doesn't match the outage schedule anymore, but it seems that twice a week power goes out around 18:00. Winter nights will be VERY dark if our apartment has no lights. Our classrooms all got new lights installed today that are attached the generator, so when we lose power in class, we'll have one measly lightbulb to see by. Better than nothing, I guess.
I thought that we were going away this weekend to our boss's village near Issyk-Kul, but it turns out it was a misunderstanding. We were invited for last weekend, but we already had eagle festival plans, so we thought it would just be this weekend instead. Our boss thought that since we were already going, we wouldn't want to go again so soon, so it's been postponed to a future date. We were planning on going away, so we have no weekend plans yet. I'm sure we'll find something to do.
The first month of teaching ends tomorrow. Today was test day, so I just got to sit in class for 6 hours listening to music and reading Anna Karenina. I got it from Derek, an NSEP scholarship student here from Arizona, and this time I'm going to read the whole thing. Sophomore year of high school I got most of the way through when I had to bring it back to the library, and then I never got around to renewing it or starting it again.
Mike and I went to Osh Bazaar yesterday, and I got a traditional Kyrgyz felt winter hat and some boots. Boots were 750 som (20$), which isn't that cheap, but they're black and just the right height where I can still walk normally and comfortably. My ankle finally healed enough for me to be able to walk in heels. I was worried my ankle would hurt me forever! I also tried a new fruit. It's called hurma in Russian, and I just discovered that in English it's a persimmon . It looks sort of like a tomato/apple, but doesn't taste anything like either. None of the English teachers knew the English name for this fruit, and my students didn't even know if there was an English name since it's an Asian fruit. But it's great to have found something that I've never seen or really heard of anywhere before! The word persimmon is familiar to me, but I wouldn't even have know that it was a fruit, it sounds more like a spice name.
So- eagle hunting. Friday night after classes ended, 8 teachers took 2 taxis to Kadji-Sai, located near the town of Bokonbaevo on Lake Issyk-Kul. Our friend Josh had arranged the taxis and the homestay, and he'd gone down a day earlier. So we met him there. Our homestay was with one of the eagle hunters. We arrived around 23:00 and went straight to bed- 7 of us were staying in one big room. Electricity was out and there was NO heat, so it was really really cold. Most people slept in their coats and hats.
In the morning, we had porridge for breakfast at the homestay, and then took a marshrutka to the eagle festival. It was WONDERFUL. The festival was situated a little bit in the mountains within walking distance of "downtown" Bokonbaevo. We got there and we were the only foreigners there. There were lots of men in a big field with their eagles/hawks/horses/donkeys/wolfhounds. There were Kazakh eagle hunters with great hoods that resembled something out of Lord of the Rings. We just walked around for a few hours admiring all the birds and taking lots of pictures. Then the show started. There was a stage and there was an announcer speaking Kyrgyz, and then some Kyrgyz pop singers, an accordian player, and the best part, a Manaschi- a sort of bard type of man who sings/chants the epic story of Manas. When I get my videos on facebook, you can sort of hear the chant in the background. He got so emotional that he started crying and had to be escorted off the stage. Then there was an entrance parade with all the eagle hunters, horse racers, and hawk hunters. The festival began with hawk hunting. Men brought a rabbit out into the field and let it go, and then the hawk hunter let his hawk go and it flew out and got the rabbit. They reused each rabbit a few times. There was a hilarious moment when one of the rabbits escaped, and there were a few minutes where 3 men on foot and 2 men on horseback were chasing it all around the field. In the end, the rabbit got away. There was another rabbit that just did not run. It sat in one place, and the man even kicked it a few times to get it to run, but it just sat there until the hawk came and landed on it.
There were a few seats set up in front of the stage, but mostly people were just standing around or squatting, Asian style. We had a lunch break with some bread and cheese we'd brought from Bishkek, and walked a little ways up the mountain so we'd have a good view. There were a long-distane arrow shooting competition, as well as an archery target competition. There were some long long distance horse races all around the valley, which were pretty boring to watch, but there was one race of "Kiss the girl"- where a girl and a boy ride horses, and the boy tries to catch up to the girl and kiss her. Once they'd gotten most of the way around the track, one of them fell off the horse, and as the ambulance was driving to pick up the person, it almost crashed into a ditch. It seems so typical Kyrgyzstan. It was around this time that my camera battery died :(
The only other foreigners we met there were an American guy from Georgia who's been living here for a bit, and an Australian guy who's biking around India/China/Central Asia.
Even with all the animals in the festival, I was mostly amused by the mules. There were 4 or 5 that were ridden by little boys, and I wasted my camera battery taking many many pictures of them. I would love to have my own mule, they are sturdy and adorable!
The "climax" of the festival was the wolf-hunting portion. The men brought a big wooden crate out onto the field, and it took them a long long time to get the wolf out and situated. It was a six-month old wolf cub/adolescent, and it was chained to a large ball weight. We had assumed it would be a wolf let loose and chased by an eagle, but it was really disappointing. First, wolfhounds were let loose on the wolf three at a time. The wolf did a great job fending them off, but every time he got a good hit, some men held him down with a pitchfork-type tool and let the dogs rest. When the 3 dogs were done, 3 more were let loose. All in all, there were probably 12 dogs that had their chance at the wolf, but when it all ended, a few of the dogs were bleeding, and the wolf was still in one non-bloody piece, although I'm sure he was exhausted. But that wasn't the end! Then the men toyed with him for awhile, and tied him up and untied him and moved him to a different place on the field. Then it was the eagles' turn. He still was attached to the chain and the ball weight. The first eagle that was let loose, instead of flying from the mountaintop down to the wolf, turned around and flew into a crowd of people sitting on another mountain, and landed on a man's head. I wasn't close enough to really see what happened, but he clearly got some gashes from the talons. He was escorted down the mountain to the ambulance, and he wasn't walking straight because of the shock. The second eagle that was sent to get the wolf belonged to the man whose house we were staying in. His eagle, instead of attacking the wolf, started a fight with another eagle. People swarmed in and had to pull them apart. Third time's the charm, and the wolf finally was attacked. It wasn't much of a sight because the wolf was on a chain, but he put up a pretty good fight and the bird was injured a bit. The poor wolf was still alive and was put back into its wooden crate. A woman from the Kyrgyz Tourism Board told Derek that he would be released back into the wild, which I'm sure means taken out behind the stage and shot. I couldn't watch any of the wolf hunt, so all of this I know from Mike commentating it to me. It made me want to cry from the get-go because it wasn't a fair fight. Our homestay hunter said that he disagreed with it too, and said that the wolfhounds and the eagles were really unsure of what to do since they are trained to hunt animals that are in the wild and not tied up. The wolf situation sort of put a damper on the mood for the rest of the day, and we decided to leave the festival.
We walked down the mountain back to Bokonbaevo and passed a great cemetery on the mountainside. Cemeteries are really beautiful in Kyrgyzstan- almost all of the gravestones have a photograph or etching of the dead person, and there are many brick walls with the Islamic moon and star. We had dinner at a mediocre cafe and then went back to our homestay. We were all exhausted and wanted to go to bed at 19:30, but stayed up until around 22:00 talking- there was actually power!
The next day we went on a real-life eagle hunt. We had breakfast at our homestay again, and when we woke up at the bottom of the stairs, there was a shoebox of three TINY puppies! I played with them all, and then we learned that one of them was going to be traded for a fox for us to take on the hunt with us (we later found out that the fox we were getting had died overnight, so I don't know what happened to the puppies... I'd probably rather not know. I'm just glad we didn't use it as eagle food!) We took a marshrutka ride about an hour up into the mountains. It was strange and quite scary to be sitting just a few inches away from a giant scary eagle named Tuman. Once far enough into the mountains, we found the horses that we'd hired for the day. I got the smallest, most docile one, but he turned out to be stubborn as a rock and refused to walk for most of the day. I spent probably half the time leading him because when I sat on him he would not move. I was last the whole way up the mountain, and there was about half an hour where he just ate and ate and ate and I couldn't get him to move. Mike tried to lead him, but then Mike's horse wouldn't walk unless mine walked, so we were stranded and left behind as the rest of our group rode to the top of the mountain. We were rescued by our eagle hunter only coincidentally when he came down the mountain to pick up his eagle after the first hunt. He led my horse all the way up, and then Mike's followed. We rode all over the mountain to various peaks where Tuman would lauch from. We'd brought along a Kyrgyz guy from the village who ran around in the underbrush of the valley with a soda bottle full of rocks, shaking it and whistling to scare up some wildlife. Mountains (heights) and horses don't mix for me, and I had a fairly miserable time, especially since my horse was ornery. We rode across some really steep slopes through thorn bushes. At times it was so steep that we had to get off and lead the horses because they were slipping and falling down and it was dangerous to be on them. There came a point fairly early on where I lost interest in the actual hunt, because being on the horse and in the mountains was scary enough. But Mike was super wonderful and stuck close to me and kept me company, and it was a good experience regardless. Finally Tuman caught a fox on the 5th peak we'd climbed to, and then we headed down the mountain. We all got our picture taken holding Tuman- once he'd eaten he was docile and not so scary to be around. At that point it started snowing and hailing- we were stuck in the middle of a blizzard and we were a LONG way from "home". My horse refused to move, AGAIN, and the Kyrgyz guy who'd been scaring up wildlife offered to take my horse and lead Mike's. We walked the whole way down. It was really slippery in the mud on the road down the mountain, and walking was sort of difficult. Ben's horse slipped and landed on his leg, so he had to limp all the way down. The hail quickly turned to rain as we got more into the valley, and we were 1000% soaked through from head to toe. We walked all the way across a giant field, and then through the village basically from one end to the other in the pouring rain, past some miserable looking donkeys, cows, sheep, and goats who were seeking shelter under some measly trees. We finally got down to the marshrutka that was waiting for us. We were all soaked and FREEZING, and it was at least a 30 minute ride back to our homestay. We were all so cold, and some of us didn't have dry clothes to change into! I luckily had sweatpants and dry socks, but no top, and Mike, Evan, and Josh had no dry pants. We got back to our homestay, packed up our stuff, and dried off/warmed up as much as we could, and then we got a marshrutka back to Bishkek.
The marshrutka was much more high-tech than any other one I've been in, and it had a tv screen and a DVD player on board! Our driver put on Kyrgyz music videos, and it was great fun to watch/make fun of the videos here. There was one where there was a blind guy who had his pet canary killed, his girlfriend stolen, and then eventually was poisoned by the same guy- how morbid and politically incorrect! Poor blind teenager. There were other amusing ones where men were eating money, women were seducing pre-pubescent boys, but the best one was Salam Kyrgyzstan, which I mentioned in my last post.
It was a good weekend, and it was wonderful to get out of the city! We didn't really spend time at the Lake, but I saw it from the marshrutka window. There were lots of snowy mountains to admire, and there were strange red sandy mountainy things, which made it feel like we were in a desert.
I was sick most of the weekend, and I thought that being stuck in the rain would make things a million times worse, but I feel much better. My cold is mostly gone. But I used up half of my supply of Sudafed, so next time someone mails a package, include some!
I hosted my first couch surfer this week named Loh! He's from Singapore and is traveling by himself for the next few months. He's really fun and easy to hang out with. He's gone to Issyk-Kul for the week, but we're meeting him next weekend in Bokonbaevo (again!), this time for a horse festival. It involves "kiss the girl", wrestling on horseback, another Manaschi, AND DEAD GOAT POLO! We have to pay for our homestay tomorrow after we get paid, but then everything will be all set and we'll meet Loh there on Friday night after work.
I mailed my absentee ballot last night back to Connecticut, so my voice will count in this election! I just hope it will arrive in time.
Electricty is out more often now- I think it's up to 10 hours a day of no power. It doesn't match the outage schedule anymore, but it seems that twice a week power goes out around 18:00. Winter nights will be VERY dark if our apartment has no lights. Our classrooms all got new lights installed today that are attached the generator, so when we lose power in class, we'll have one measly lightbulb to see by. Better than nothing, I guess.
Monday, October 20, 2008
An incredible weekend
I had a wonderful weekend. I got to hold a golden eagle, watch eagles and hawks attack rabbits, foxes, pigeons, a teenage boy, other eagles, and a chained wolf. I went on a horse trek through the mountains and got stuck in a hail blizzard and walked for ages in pouring rain with soaked-through clothes. I played with a shoebox of puppies. I got stuck on the back of a stubborn gluttonous horse and had to be rescued by Mike and an eagle hunter. I discovered a new favorite Kyrgyz song- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC-Ui0N6COQ. I decided I will start Kyrgyz lessons in December because it sounds so cool. I got my hand scratched up on one of the millions of thorn bushes we walked through while riding horses across a steep, brush-covered mountain. I saw many mules and decided that I want to buy one. I will write more when I've sorted out my thoughts more, and dried all my still-soaking-wet clothes from last night's trek. For now, you can read my friends' posts about this weekend:
http://janesdailyblah.blogspot.com
http://crossingturkestan.blogspot.com
Enjoy for now! I'll get pictures up as soon as possible, but my camera battery died midday through the first day, so I'll be stealing my pics from other people.
http://janesdailyblah.blogspot.com
http://crossingturkestan.blogspot.com
Enjoy for now! I'll get pictures up as soon as possible, but my camera battery died midday through the first day, so I'll be stealing my pics from other people.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Exchange Rate and eagles!
I just changed $100 dollars into som, and the exchange rate is now 37.7! When I first got here, it was 35.5, so I'm getting a lot more som for the same amount of dollars!! Yippee!
Tonight right after work, 8 of us are getting into 2 taxis and driving to Bokonbaevo, a village on the South shore of Lake Issyk-Kul for the eagle festival! Depending on the weather, we'll also go on our own eagle hunt Sunday, but we'll wait and decide on that until we get there. So exciting! We'll be back sometime on Sunday.
I found out today that I'll have the same classes next month, which is great because I like having higher levels, and I really enjoy all of my students. I also will have morning class again, which I actually enjoy because it means I get out of bed and do things, rather than lying around until 14:25, which is probably what I'd do if I had no morning engagements. Teaching high levels means that we get to do a lot of speaking, and I don't have to teach grammar! It's fun :)
I'll write again when I'm back from Bokonbaevo! Happy weekend.
Tonight right after work, 8 of us are getting into 2 taxis and driving to Bokonbaevo, a village on the South shore of Lake Issyk-Kul for the eagle festival! Depending on the weather, we'll also go on our own eagle hunt Sunday, but we'll wait and decide on that until we get there. So exciting! We'll be back sometime on Sunday.
I found out today that I'll have the same classes next month, which is great because I like having higher levels, and I really enjoy all of my students. I also will have morning class again, which I actually enjoy because it means I get out of bed and do things, rather than lying around until 14:25, which is probably what I'd do if I had no morning engagements. Teaching high levels means that we get to do a lot of speaking, and I don't have to teach grammar! It's fun :)
I'll write again when I'm back from Bokonbaevo! Happy weekend.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Autumn
Fall is in full-swing in Bishkek! We had a dark and dreary rainy day on Tuesday, but I enjoyed it because it really felt like Austria. We taught 2 classes by candlelight/headlamp on Tuesday when the power went out at 17:45. My students are all wonderful. Next Friday is the end of my first month of teaching, and I'll probably have new classes starting on Monday of Halloween week. I hope that I get to keep all my classes, because I love teaching high levels and I really like my classes, but it's not my decision- I find out on Thursday of next week what my new classes will be.
Tomorrow night 7 of us are leaving to Issyk-Kul lake to see the eagle hunting festival! It's about a 5 hour drive and we won't leave until after classes end at 20:20, so we will get in very late. Josh (an American here learning Russian) has arranged our taxis down and also the homestay and meals for the weekend. Saturday is a free festival where we see eagle hunters (and by this I mean men with their eagles, not men hunting eagles... like a falconer. eagler?) from all over Central Asia hunting wolves, foxes, and rabbits. The prey will be released on cue so it's not a real wild hunt, but on Sunday, we will go on horseback into the mountains with an eagler and hope to get some wild animals! We have to be back at school Sunday night, so I will try to get some lessons planned for next week today and tomorrow so that I am not working late late Sunday night.
Next week we're going to the circus! The Moscow Circus is in town and we'll get to see lots of drugged up performing animals, which is probably even sadder than wolves being killed by eagles, but in Kyrgyzstan I figure I might as well see all the local forms of acceptable animal abuse/death. Next week I'm also going to hang out with one of my students, Janna. She's very motivated to learn English and really wants to teach me Russian, and she's really easy to talk to and tons of fun to hang out with, so it will be great to see her more often than just 80 minutes in class.
Not much else is new- haven't heard much from home lately, so I assume not much is going on. I have to mail my absentee ballot tomorrow!
Tomorrow night 7 of us are leaving to Issyk-Kul lake to see the eagle hunting festival! It's about a 5 hour drive and we won't leave until after classes end at 20:20, so we will get in very late. Josh (an American here learning Russian) has arranged our taxis down and also the homestay and meals for the weekend. Saturday is a free festival where we see eagle hunters (and by this I mean men with their eagles, not men hunting eagles... like a falconer. eagler?) from all over Central Asia hunting wolves, foxes, and rabbits. The prey will be released on cue so it's not a real wild hunt, but on Sunday, we will go on horseback into the mountains with an eagler and hope to get some wild animals! We have to be back at school Sunday night, so I will try to get some lessons planned for next week today and tomorrow so that I am not working late late Sunday night.
Next week we're going to the circus! The Moscow Circus is in town and we'll get to see lots of drugged up performing animals, which is probably even sadder than wolves being killed by eagles, but in Kyrgyzstan I figure I might as well see all the local forms of acceptable animal abuse/death. Next week I'm also going to hang out with one of my students, Janna. She's very motivated to learn English and really wants to teach me Russian, and she's really easy to talk to and tons of fun to hang out with, so it will be great to see her more often than just 80 minutes in class.
Not much else is new- haven't heard much from home lately, so I assume not much is going on. I have to mail my absentee ballot tomorrow!
Friday, October 10, 2008
EAGLES HUNTING WOLVES
Next weekend will likely be the highlight of my time here thus far. There is an eagle-hunting festival by Lake Issyk-Kul on Saturday Oct 18, and Josh, an American here who's studying Russian, is going to organize the trip for us since he knows one of the hunters. We'll leave late next Friday night and get to Issyk-Kul around 2 am. There will be giant eagles that will hunt rabbits and wolves. It will be horrible and bloody but at the same time of course interesting because it's Kyrgyzstan, and eagles, and wolves! On Sunday there's a private hunt, where you go into the mountains on horseback and hunt for wild animals, rather than wolves and rabbits that were raised specifically to be hunted and killed. We all have to be back for classes on Monday, so I'm not sure how much hunting we'll be able to fit in, but we'll see!
Today is my first payday :)
My Russian schedule will change for the next two weeks and I have to go to class on Wednesdays, even though it's mini-weekend. There's no time during the regular school week to fit me in, there are too many Russian learners this month. But it means I'll have my teaching days much more open, and so I can spend more time lesson planning... or procrastinating and playing computer games.
There's a great new English-language magazine/newspaper in Bishkek that has restaurant reviews and current event listings. We've decided to try to frequent as many of the different restaurants as possible, since we're getting sick of the 3 or 4 places we usually go on our block. Taxis are cheap here (about a dollar a person), so getting to places farther away from the school isn't too difficult.
We went to a German restaurant Wednesday night- Steinbraeu. It's owned by a German-Kyrgyz guy, and they brew their own beer. They served lots of different sausages, and I didn't eat them, but the other teachers said they were great. I did have a "beer cocktail"- half beer, half Sprite. It tasted like a Radler and it reminded me so much of Austria!
My class was observed on Tuesday and the feedback I got was mostly positive with some constructive criticism. I'm starting to feel really confident in class and I have a lot of fun with my students- I'm learning SO much from them!
That's all. I uploaded a video of the Kyrgyz beatboxer to facebook, and I've finally gotten around to adding more pictures, so you should check them out.
Today is my first payday :)
My Russian schedule will change for the next two weeks and I have to go to class on Wednesdays, even though it's mini-weekend. There's no time during the regular school week to fit me in, there are too many Russian learners this month. But it means I'll have my teaching days much more open, and so I can spend more time lesson planning... or procrastinating and playing computer games.
There's a great new English-language magazine/newspaper in Bishkek that has restaurant reviews and current event listings. We've decided to try to frequent as many of the different restaurants as possible, since we're getting sick of the 3 or 4 places we usually go on our block. Taxis are cheap here (about a dollar a person), so getting to places farther away from the school isn't too difficult.
We went to a German restaurant Wednesday night- Steinbraeu. It's owned by a German-Kyrgyz guy, and they brew their own beer. They served lots of different sausages, and I didn't eat them, but the other teachers said they were great. I did have a "beer cocktail"- half beer, half Sprite. It tasted like a Radler and it reminded me so much of Austria!
My class was observed on Tuesday and the feedback I got was mostly positive with some constructive criticism. I'm starting to feel really confident in class and I have a lot of fun with my students- I'm learning SO much from them!
That's all. I uploaded a video of the Kyrgyz beatboxer to facebook, and I've finally gotten around to adding more pictures, so you should check them out.
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