Today Mike and I went to Osh Bazaar with the newest teacher at The London School, Daniel. Is is dual citizen British/American, and grew up on both sides of the pond. We took him for his first experience with a Central Asian bazaar, and he seemed to really enjoy it.
It's been ages since Mike and I had been, so it was great to be back. Osh Bazaar is my favorite place to be in Bishkek, since there's so much to see, cheap things to buy, and it's of course a great place to practice Russian and Kyrgyz.
Kyrgyz and Uzbek men and women who work in bazaars always wear rubber shoes to keep their feet dry. They wear warm socks or fur-lined booties inside the rubber shoes to keep their feet warm. In Tashkent I wanted to buy a pair to really complete my "Central Asian poor person" look, but we didn't really have enough Uzbek sum and I didn't want to have to carry them all through Kazakhstan. So today I decided to ask about the price of them and also practice my Kyrgyz. The conversation went as follows: Salamatsyzby (hello), kanchadan? (how much...and I pointed to the boots), and then a lot of miming, trying them on, showing that they were too small/too big, raxmat (thank you) and I double-checked the price since my Kyrgyz numbers aren't so good: djyz otuz som: 130 som (less than 4$). So it's great and I'm wearing them now and I'm sure I stand out a lot since we do live in a pretty affluent part of town, these kinds of shoes aren't worn around here. If I pair these with my Kyrgyz hat and my furry Kyrgyz sweater dress, no one will be able to tell me apart from a foreigner!!
Also, we went to lunch in a cafe in the bazaar, and I got plov. It was cheap and good, Uzbek-style plov, with good non-white rice. But for some reason, my serving had more than 5 little pebbles in it! How that many rocks end up in a dish of food is beyond me, especially since Mike had the same thing and had no rocks in his. By the end of my time here, ALL of my molars will have fallen out. I don't think I chipped any teeth today, but I could have.
Tomorrow is test day, so I get to sit in all of my classes and read while my students take their final exams. Next month I have all the same classes but one, which isn't too bad...the one class I don't have was the worst class anyways, so I'm really glad about that. And there are only 4 teaching months left! This month has FLOWN by, so I'm sure the next few will as well. Then Mike and I are off traveling!
We are looking hardcore for jobs now, and we're nothing excluding anywhere. We really want to work in Istanbul, but it's really expensive there and accomodation isn't provided by most schools, so we wouldn't be able to save up much money. We're now looking into Azerbaijan and a bunch of other random places... Honduras? Maldives? Malaysia? Ukraine? Thailand? I'd love to work in Slovenia, but I can't find anything there at all. We'll see where we end up!
The weather is wonderfully warm here and all the snow is finally melting. Last night was supposedly +2 Celsius! Hopefully winter is gone for good...
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Drama at The London School, or, Why Kyrgyzstan isn't Fun Anymore, Round 2
So. We currently get paid in dollars. It is in our contract. Up until now, we've been, every two weeks, getting dollars, exactly like our contract says. The exchange rate keeps improving (more som to the dollar), so we keep getting happier and happier. Until yesterday.
We all had individual meetings with our boss, who told us that because of the economic situation in Kyrgyzstan, they can't afford to pay us anymore in dollars or they will go bankrupt. They earn their money in som when the students pay for their lessons, and they change som into dollars for us, so every month they are effectively having to pay us more (more som to get the same dollar amount). So, to recify this problem and "prevent the school from going out of business," if/when the exchange rate hits 41 som to the dollar, we will get paid in som instead of dollars, at the rate for 40 som to the dollar. So, instead of getting 650$/month, we will get 26,000 som per month. If the dollar keeps getting better, we will be making less than 650$ in comparison. If the dollar (hopefully) gets worse, than we'll be making more than $650. The school is taking a gamble by changing our contracts, because if the dollar gets worse, then they will still have to pay us the 26,000 som, even if the exchange rate changes. But it probably won't. Oh well. So when we go to change our som into dollars when we leave Kyrgyzstan, we'll get a lot less than we would have gotten if we'd just been paid in dollars in the first place.
Personally, I don't care. I came here thinking I was going to earn $500/month anyways, so eveything is more than that. But some of the other teachers thought it was wrong just on principle for them to basically give us all paycuts, which if course I can understand from their point of view too. But it's just another little thing that makes life a little bit worse here.
BUT, on a good note (and there almost always is a good note), this coming week is test week. Another month of teaching down, and it's an easy week because it's just test review and test writing! Only 4 months after this to go. I got great feedback from the student surveys, so they all seem to like my teaching.
Today the school organized a trip into the mountains. It was about 45 minutes out of Bishkek, to a place none of us had never been before. 9 teachers and foreign students went, and we walked around in the mountains for a few hours, played in the snow, and sat by the river. It wasn't a strenuous walk at all, it was just pleasant. Than there was a (naturally?) heated swimming pool that we relaxed in for a while before heading back to Bishkek. It was as Soviet as you could imagine, with walls/ceilings that clearly hadn't been de-molded and sculptures of Russian space shuttles and Sputnik on the wall. It was definitely an experience, and the water was really warm!
Tomorrow we're going to have a bonfire in our courtyard again, just like we did in September. We'll make shashlyk and hopefully find marshmallows at the supermarket to roast! Mike and I are going to the bazaar tomorrow, where we'll practice our Kyrgyz language skills.
Next month I'm taking Russian with my friend Kole from WI, so it will be interesting to have a conversation partner in class- up til now, all of my lessons have been one-on-one. His speaking is better than mine, so I'm sure he will motivate me to improve my speaking. My Russian teacher told me that my speaking is pretty horrendous, but that I have good grammar. Go figure, I would have said it was the other way around! Ah well :)
We all had individual meetings with our boss, who told us that because of the economic situation in Kyrgyzstan, they can't afford to pay us anymore in dollars or they will go bankrupt. They earn their money in som when the students pay for their lessons, and they change som into dollars for us, so every month they are effectively having to pay us more (more som to get the same dollar amount). So, to recify this problem and "prevent the school from going out of business," if/when the exchange rate hits 41 som to the dollar, we will get paid in som instead of dollars, at the rate for 40 som to the dollar. So, instead of getting 650$/month, we will get 26,000 som per month. If the dollar keeps getting better, we will be making less than 650$ in comparison. If the dollar (hopefully) gets worse, than we'll be making more than $650. The school is taking a gamble by changing our contracts, because if the dollar gets worse, then they will still have to pay us the 26,000 som, even if the exchange rate changes. But it probably won't. Oh well. So when we go to change our som into dollars when we leave Kyrgyzstan, we'll get a lot less than we would have gotten if we'd just been paid in dollars in the first place.
Personally, I don't care. I came here thinking I was going to earn $500/month anyways, so eveything is more than that. But some of the other teachers thought it was wrong just on principle for them to basically give us all paycuts, which if course I can understand from their point of view too. But it's just another little thing that makes life a little bit worse here.
BUT, on a good note (and there almost always is a good note), this coming week is test week. Another month of teaching down, and it's an easy week because it's just test review and test writing! Only 4 months after this to go. I got great feedback from the student surveys, so they all seem to like my teaching.
Today the school organized a trip into the mountains. It was about 45 minutes out of Bishkek, to a place none of us had never been before. 9 teachers and foreign students went, and we walked around in the mountains for a few hours, played in the snow, and sat by the river. It wasn't a strenuous walk at all, it was just pleasant. Than there was a (naturally?) heated swimming pool that we relaxed in for a while before heading back to Bishkek. It was as Soviet as you could imagine, with walls/ceilings that clearly hadn't been de-molded and sculptures of Russian space shuttles and Sputnik on the wall. It was definitely an experience, and the water was really warm!
Tomorrow we're going to have a bonfire in our courtyard again, just like we did in September. We'll make shashlyk and hopefully find marshmallows at the supermarket to roast! Mike and I are going to the bazaar tomorrow, where we'll practice our Kyrgyz language skills.
Next month I'm taking Russian with my friend Kole from WI, so it will be interesting to have a conversation partner in class- up til now, all of my lessons have been one-on-one. His speaking is better than mine, so I'm sure he will motivate me to improve my speaking. My Russian teacher told me that my speaking is pretty horrendous, but that I have good grammar. Go figure, I would have said it was the other way around! Ah well :)
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Blog Gadgets
So I've been amusing myself by adding gadgets to my blog. In case you haven't noticed, I now have the current time in Bishkek and also Bishkek weather on the side bar. [Note: I took off Bishkek time because Jon mentioned that it isn't actually Bishkek time, it's current time to wherenever the reader is. So it defeats the purpose. Boo.] Today, I added a curency converter to the very bottom of the page, so whenever you are interested in seeing the exchange rate dollar-som, you can check it out here! It's listed under "Kirghiz som" instead of "Kyrgyz som," just FYI.
Mike and I didn't go ballroom dancing yesterday after all, because he's coming down with the cold I had last week. Maybe next week?
I read Derelict Heaven (my friend Joey's book) which I got in one of my Xmas packages from home. It was just as good the second time around. I'm passing it on today to one of my Turkish students.
Our night out last night was slighty disappointing. Our friend Chris, whose birthday we were going out to celebrate, didn't even end up coming out. But we got to watch some amusing drunk Russians dance, which is always hilarious.
Next Saturday is a school excursion to a national park, different from Ala Archa, where I've already been twice. No idea what we'll do there, but it will definitely be nice to get out of the city again.
I am so happy to have Butterfingers and Sour Patch Kids! Rhonda sent me tons of them and it's amazing and I'm sure making my teeth rot even faster than they already were. If anyone knows a dentist who happens to be visiting Kyrgyzstan in the near future, please give me a heads up... :)
Mike and I didn't go ballroom dancing yesterday after all, because he's coming down with the cold I had last week. Maybe next week?
I read Derelict Heaven (my friend Joey's book) which I got in one of my Xmas packages from home. It was just as good the second time around. I'm passing it on today to one of my Turkish students.
Our night out last night was slighty disappointing. Our friend Chris, whose birthday we were going out to celebrate, didn't even end up coming out. But we got to watch some amusing drunk Russians dance, which is always hilarious.
Next Saturday is a school excursion to a national park, different from Ala Archa, where I've already been twice. No idea what we'll do there, but it will definitely be nice to get out of the city again.
I am so happy to have Butterfingers and Sour Patch Kids! Rhonda sent me tons of them and it's amazing and I'm sure making my teeth rot even faster than they already were. If anyone knows a dentist who happens to be visiting Kyrgyzstan in the near future, please give me a heads up... :)
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Silver lining
It's not all bad here in Kyrgyzstan! My cold is getting better and my mood is improving.
The exchange rate is now over 40 som to the dollar- that means that now every month, I am making 4000 som more than I was at the beginning of my contract... so that's 100$ more every month! Woot! I'm RICH :)
Mike and I are starting ballroom dancing today! We were going to last week, but we were just too lazy... but this week I don't feel as ill as I was, so we're meeting up with one of my students and she's taking us there. We'll see how it goes!
Tonight is our friend Chris's birthday, so we're going to Promzona, a rock club a ways out of town to celebrate. We haven't had a night out yet in 2009, so it's high time we have some fun!
The exchange rate is now over 40 som to the dollar- that means that now every month, I am making 4000 som more than I was at the beginning of my contract... so that's 100$ more every month! Woot! I'm RICH :)
Mike and I are starting ballroom dancing today! We were going to last week, but we were just too lazy... but this week I don't feel as ill as I was, so we're meeting up with one of my students and she's taking us there. We'll see how it goes!
Tonight is our friend Chris's birthday, so we're going to Promzona, a rock club a ways out of town to celebrate. We haven't had a night out yet in 2009, so it's high time we have some fun!
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Why Kyrgyzstan isn't fun anymore...
So, I'm getting sick of Kyrgyzstan. I already told my boss that I'm finishing 2 months earlier than my contract says so that Mike and I can finish at the same time and travel to Turkey in the summer. So we'll be done at the end of May. But the way things are looking right now in Kyrgyzstan, I'd be ready to leave even sooner than that, even though I won't.
The weather is wintery, and none of the sidewalks are plowed here. So walking anywhere is horribly dangerous, because all the sidewalks are sheer ice. Going even just down the block means that every step must be taken carefully, and you always have to look exactly where you're going to make sure you don't step on an uneven part of the sidewalk. This makes it difficult to go anywhere, because it's just ice no matter what part of town you're in. I don't have any shoes with grip, so I just hold on to Miek and hope that he has better balance than I do. It also means that going to the bazaar is basically impossible, because all the walkways there are sheer ice as well. I can't imagine shoppping while also watching where I'm stepping (and making sure that all the other people passing don't slip and take me down with them)!
Also, the police presence seems to have only gotten worse in Bishkek in the new year. I mentioned in my last post that some friends got stopped just down the road from our apartment, outside our favorite restaurant, Aktan. Today, Mike and Evan got stopped at exactly the same place. They refused to give any documents to the policemen, who were apparently being jerks, and they called the office staff, who came and bailed them out. They didn't have to pay any bribes, but it's just getting to the point where I don't feel comfortable walking anywhere, alone or not. We got ID cards from the school, which we've been told will get us out of any run-in with the police, but I HIGHLY doubt it will do any good at all. It's a little, red, leather, business-card sized booklet that says on the outside "Kyrgyz Republic ID" and on the inside has my picture and a piece of paper with The London School stamp and my name and job written in Cyrillic. If anything, this would probably make police matters worse, because they'll just laugh at the ridiculous booklet. Ah well. I carry a copy of my passport and a copy of my Kyrgyz visa and registration, but I'm not sure these would hold up if I do someday meet up with policemen. Blah.
I also have a bad cold, so I don't really feel in the mood to do anything except watch movies and stay at home.
However, not everything is bad! Yesterday and today I got 7 packages and 3 letters from America, so I feel so loved! I got 9 DVDs, some candy canes, and 3 books. There's another package waiting for me at a different post office that I'll go pick up tomorrow too. I think it's from Rhonda, which means (hopefully!) it contains candy and chocolate!
So all in all, I'm glad that I'm leaving here in June instead of August. I'm sure things will get better when the wather warms up and I can do things again. There are still many places I'd like to see in Kyrgyzstan, but Bishkek is just getting on my nerves now. There are still things to look forward to too- In February there's the International Festival of Santa Clauses, and then in the spring I want to go to Arslanbob in Southern Kyrgyzstan, and of course back to lake Issyk-Kul when it gets warmer. I'm looking forward though to living and working in Turkey- Mike and I have started to look for jobs in Instanbul to get a feel of what our options are.
Two new London School teachers are arriving in the next few weeks, so that will add some excitement as well to our lives. Hope they'll be fun!
The weather is wintery, and none of the sidewalks are plowed here. So walking anywhere is horribly dangerous, because all the sidewalks are sheer ice. Going even just down the block means that every step must be taken carefully, and you always have to look exactly where you're going to make sure you don't step on an uneven part of the sidewalk. This makes it difficult to go anywhere, because it's just ice no matter what part of town you're in. I don't have any shoes with grip, so I just hold on to Miek and hope that he has better balance than I do. It also means that going to the bazaar is basically impossible, because all the walkways there are sheer ice as well. I can't imagine shoppping while also watching where I'm stepping (and making sure that all the other people passing don't slip and take me down with them)!
Also, the police presence seems to have only gotten worse in Bishkek in the new year. I mentioned in my last post that some friends got stopped just down the road from our apartment, outside our favorite restaurant, Aktan. Today, Mike and Evan got stopped at exactly the same place. They refused to give any documents to the policemen, who were apparently being jerks, and they called the office staff, who came and bailed them out. They didn't have to pay any bribes, but it's just getting to the point where I don't feel comfortable walking anywhere, alone or not. We got ID cards from the school, which we've been told will get us out of any run-in with the police, but I HIGHLY doubt it will do any good at all. It's a little, red, leather, business-card sized booklet that says on the outside "Kyrgyz Republic ID" and on the inside has my picture and a piece of paper with The London School stamp and my name and job written in Cyrillic. If anything, this would probably make police matters worse, because they'll just laugh at the ridiculous booklet. Ah well. I carry a copy of my passport and a copy of my Kyrgyz visa and registration, but I'm not sure these would hold up if I do someday meet up with policemen. Blah.
I also have a bad cold, so I don't really feel in the mood to do anything except watch movies and stay at home.
However, not everything is bad! Yesterday and today I got 7 packages and 3 letters from America, so I feel so loved! I got 9 DVDs, some candy canes, and 3 books. There's another package waiting for me at a different post office that I'll go pick up tomorrow too. I think it's from Rhonda, which means (hopefully!) it contains candy and chocolate!
So all in all, I'm glad that I'm leaving here in June instead of August. I'm sure things will get better when the wather warms up and I can do things again. There are still many places I'd like to see in Kyrgyzstan, but Bishkek is just getting on my nerves now. There are still things to look forward to too- In February there's the International Festival of Santa Clauses, and then in the spring I want to go to Arslanbob in Southern Kyrgyzstan, and of course back to lake Issyk-Kul when it gets warmer. I'm looking forward though to living and working in Turkey- Mike and I have started to look for jobs in Instanbul to get a feel of what our options are.
Two new London School teachers are arriving in the next few weeks, so that will add some excitement as well to our lives. Hope they'll be fun!
Monday, January 5, 2009
The rest of vacation
So to pick up where I left off, Mike and I arrived in Tashkent early in the morning on the 29th of December. We walked to Lonely Planet's budget hotel "pick", which said it was a great deal and also helped with travel arrangements. We needed to figure out how to get across the border to Kazakhstan since one border was closed AND it was near the holidays and we weren't sure when the other border would be open. However, the hotel was nothing like Lonely Planet made it sound. There was no one there who spoke English, it seemed pretty seedy because all the walls outside the building and in all the rooms were covered in mirrors. Our TV didn't work either. It was the worst place we stayed by far, so Lonely Planet definitely needs updating. We were semi-harrassed by drunk Uzbek men in the evening too. We asked the receptionist/creepy old man how much a car to the Kazakh border cost, and this drunk guy came into the hotel and said, basically, "A taxi will cost 15,000 sum, but I'll take you for 20,000 sum. Ok? Ok?" For breakfast we got one little fried egg. I'm glad we only had to deal with one night there.
But anyways, the first thing we had to do was get the money that my mom had Western Unioned to me, because, like idiots, we didn't bring enough moeny with us. We thought our trip would be a lot cheaper than it was! So my mom sent the money, and we just had to go to the bank and pick it up (or so we thought). BUT, it turned out that all the Western Unions at all the banks we went to were closed for the week. They told us we'd have to come back on the 5th of January. We needed the money that day or we couldn't even afford to get back to Kyrgyzstan, so we kept going to bank after bank hoping one would be open. Finally someone told us that Capital Bank had an open Western Union, so we found or way there, but it turned out that the building had moved from its original location, so we had to find the new building it was in. When we finally saw working Western Union people, we were so relieved! I got my money no problem, but we'd spent half a day being super stressed out and worrying we'd be stranded in Uzbekistan with no money.
No idea what else we did on this day...
The next day, we searched for the Central Asian Plov Center in the northern part of Tashkent, which Lonely Planet says is the best place in Central Asia to have plov, the wonderful wonderful dish made of rice, meat, and carrots, and in Uzbekistan, chick peas and grapes. However, it turns out the Plov Center is no longer in existence. Too bad for us. We found plov elsewhere, which was still really great. It was snowing a lot, so walking around wasn't very pleasant.
We took a night train to Turkistan in Kazakhstan in order to avoid problems with getting across the border. Not only didn't we know where the border actually was, but Thorn Tree said that it would cost about $80 apiece to get from Tashkent to Shymkent in shared taxis and including border bribes. The train bypassed the corrupt border, meant that no taxis were involved, AND meant that we could stay inside and be nice and warm across the borders because the police enter the train.
We got cheaper seats in platskartniy vagon, which aren't compartments but an open wagon of sleeping beds. The car was almost empty, so it was nice and cozy. The Uzbek/Kazakh border is said to be the most corrupt in Central Asia, but we paid no bribes. On the Uzbek side, a nice policeman sat and talked to us in English for a while. He'd learned English when he lived in Samarkand from American Peace Corps volunteers, so he seemed happy to be able to practice it. On the Kazakh side, we had a bit of a scare when the policeman tried to tell us that since we were on transit visas, we had to be travelling DIRECTLY from the border to the Kyrgyz border. We argued that that's impossible since no trains go from Tashkent to Bishkek, AND that a 5-day transit visa says NOTHING about direct travel, and he took our passports and went away for a while. We assumed we'd have to pay something when he came back, but we actually never saw him again. A woman came by and gave us our passports back, and there was nothing more said about our visas at all.
We got into Turkistan early in the morning, and took a cab to "downtown." Turkistan is a town of 400,000 people in the middle of the desert, so there's not much of a center. We could only find one hotel, so we took a room, even though the front desk guy was a wanker. We had to change money, but the first bank we went to was closed for New Year's! We went back to the hotel and there was a non-wanker front desk guy who called up another bank in town and made sure that they had a money change facility open. So we did get our money changed.
Turkistan was freezing cold, but there was a nice old mosque to look at (as if we hadn't seen enough mosques already) and the best part of the whole trip, WILD CAMELS!!!!!! They were just grazing in a field and it was awesome! I wanted to take one home with me, but alas, it wouldn't fit into my purse. Walking around the old walls of the city, we ran into 4 Kazakh girls who were so excited to see foreigners. They spoke to us for ages and gave us their phone numbers, invited us to their house, gave us a pocket calendar and a mirror so we'd always remember them, and took about 100 pictures of us. They spoke broken Russian, so it was amusing all of us trying to communicate in non-native Russian. It's quite strange that once you're out of Bishkek, most teenagers don't speak fluent Russian. Here in Bishkek, most teenagers speak Russian and if anything, they have non-native Kyrgyz. In Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, it was normal that students spoke Russian not at all or clearly as a second language, instead speaking Uzbek and Tajik together as native languages.
We had dinner at a hip Kazakh place, where there were lots of New Year's Eve partiers already dancing, even though it was 19:00. We bought some chocolate and alcohol and headed back to our hotel to celebrate New Year's. We walked through the center square where there were lots of people gathered. There was a big stage, people performing songs, and lots of children shooting of fireworks. I was trying to take a picture of Mike in front of the Xmas tree when two policemen came up to us and told us to return to our hotel, since it wasn't a safe place for foreigners since there were so many "hooligans" around.
We went back to the hotel and watched the Russian New Year's Eve show on TV. We fell asleep early and missed 00:00!! So it was a quite uneventful New Year's Eve, but no many people can say they spent in in the desert in Kazkahstan, so it was still nice.
Next morning, we headed to the bus station to see about buses to Almaty. Tickets were only about $10 for the 12-hour journey, but the bus didn't leave until evening. There wasn't anything else really to see in Turkistan, so we had lunch, played cards for a while, and then sat outside at the bus station for a few hours. The weather was sunny and pretty warm, so it was nice. There were tons of stray dogs at the station, so I had hours of fun petting the little puppies. Central Asians see dogs as dirty animals rather than pets, and so they would never dream of petting them. I got some strange looks! If anything, boys amuse themsevles by kicking the dogs, which I witnessed first-hand when a guy picked up one of the little puppies by the scruff of its neck and pretended to kick it. I think it was the expression on my face that made him stop.
The bus was horribly uncomfortable. There was less leg room than economy class on an airplane, and all night people were playing loud music on their cell phones. They did play the movie Rendition, which Mike and I followed quite well, even though it was in Russian. We were very glad when we finally got to Almaty, again early in the morning.
We got a cab to the one budget hotel in Lonely Planet that sounded decent. Well, we tried to get a cab. The driver didn't know where he was going, even though we gave him a street address AND a landmark. He didn't even drop us off at the Russian Embassy like we'd asked, so we had to walk around for a while in the freezing cold until we found the hotel, exatly at the address we told him in the first place. Idiot. He didn't even give us our 100 tenge change back from the cab fare, because it said that since he had to drive around extra it was "normal."
Once daylight came, we dressed warm and went on the walking tour of Almaty. It is a much bigger city than Bishkek and it has a more European feel, but it was SO expensive compared to Kyrgyzstan. We went to 5 restaurants before we found a place for lunch that we could afford. Prices are comparable with normal US restaurants. We saw 2 cathedrals, but were most interested in finding H&M and McDonald's, neither of which we ended up finding at all. We had dinner at a super super expensive Uzbek restaurant, where we paid about $9 for a plate of plov, which is usually about $1. It wasn't even better than cheap plov. Living in Almaty would be great if the salary was a lot more than our Bishkek salary, as it seems to be a much busier and more cosmopolitan city than any place in Kyrgyzstan.
The next morning, we went to the bus station to find a marshrutka to Bishkek. We found one easily and had no problems at the border. We got back home early afternoon on Saturday, we meant we had a day and a half to relax before having to start work.
Back in Bishkek, it was our friend Ben's last day before going home to England. He let us go through all the stuff in his room that he wasn't taking home, so Mike and I got a bunch of stuff from him. My room is now much homier and wonderful, and we got kitchen utensils, a tv stand, and lots of spices. We had a "last supper" at a Syrian restaurant, which has wondeful falafel and hummus.
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are said to have much more police presence than Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan is actually called a Police State. We did see lots of policemen, but not once was there a bad experience. In fact, they were all super nice and friendly, and were interested to talk to us. It's the opposite in Bishkek. Our friends were were walking home from our favorite local restaurant just around the corner when they were stopped by policemen. They didn't have their passports on them since it's just down the road, and the police were really aggressive, threatening to deport them and trying to get bribes. The office staff from school had to go and help them argue their way out of it, but now I have to carry my passport on me at all times, and it puts a cloud of danger over our favorite cheap restaurant. If things keep getting worse here, it will be no fun in Bishkek at all!
Today it's back to teaching and the real world. It was great to have a 2-week vacation, and Mike and I are already planning April vacation.
But anyways, the first thing we had to do was get the money that my mom had Western Unioned to me, because, like idiots, we didn't bring enough moeny with us. We thought our trip would be a lot cheaper than it was! So my mom sent the money, and we just had to go to the bank and pick it up (or so we thought). BUT, it turned out that all the Western Unions at all the banks we went to were closed for the week. They told us we'd have to come back on the 5th of January. We needed the money that day or we couldn't even afford to get back to Kyrgyzstan, so we kept going to bank after bank hoping one would be open. Finally someone told us that Capital Bank had an open Western Union, so we found or way there, but it turned out that the building had moved from its original location, so we had to find the new building it was in. When we finally saw working Western Union people, we were so relieved! I got my money no problem, but we'd spent half a day being super stressed out and worrying we'd be stranded in Uzbekistan with no money.
No idea what else we did on this day...
The next day, we searched for the Central Asian Plov Center in the northern part of Tashkent, which Lonely Planet says is the best place in Central Asia to have plov, the wonderful wonderful dish made of rice, meat, and carrots, and in Uzbekistan, chick peas and grapes. However, it turns out the Plov Center is no longer in existence. Too bad for us. We found plov elsewhere, which was still really great. It was snowing a lot, so walking around wasn't very pleasant.
We took a night train to Turkistan in Kazakhstan in order to avoid problems with getting across the border. Not only didn't we know where the border actually was, but Thorn Tree said that it would cost about $80 apiece to get from Tashkent to Shymkent in shared taxis and including border bribes. The train bypassed the corrupt border, meant that no taxis were involved, AND meant that we could stay inside and be nice and warm across the borders because the police enter the train.
We got cheaper seats in platskartniy vagon, which aren't compartments but an open wagon of sleeping beds. The car was almost empty, so it was nice and cozy. The Uzbek/Kazakh border is said to be the most corrupt in Central Asia, but we paid no bribes. On the Uzbek side, a nice policeman sat and talked to us in English for a while. He'd learned English when he lived in Samarkand from American Peace Corps volunteers, so he seemed happy to be able to practice it. On the Kazakh side, we had a bit of a scare when the policeman tried to tell us that since we were on transit visas, we had to be travelling DIRECTLY from the border to the Kyrgyz border. We argued that that's impossible since no trains go from Tashkent to Bishkek, AND that a 5-day transit visa says NOTHING about direct travel, and he took our passports and went away for a while. We assumed we'd have to pay something when he came back, but we actually never saw him again. A woman came by and gave us our passports back, and there was nothing more said about our visas at all.
We got into Turkistan early in the morning, and took a cab to "downtown." Turkistan is a town of 400,000 people in the middle of the desert, so there's not much of a center. We could only find one hotel, so we took a room, even though the front desk guy was a wanker. We had to change money, but the first bank we went to was closed for New Year's! We went back to the hotel and there was a non-wanker front desk guy who called up another bank in town and made sure that they had a money change facility open. So we did get our money changed.
Turkistan was freezing cold, but there was a nice old mosque to look at (as if we hadn't seen enough mosques already) and the best part of the whole trip, WILD CAMELS!!!!!! They were just grazing in a field and it was awesome! I wanted to take one home with me, but alas, it wouldn't fit into my purse. Walking around the old walls of the city, we ran into 4 Kazakh girls who were so excited to see foreigners. They spoke to us for ages and gave us their phone numbers, invited us to their house, gave us a pocket calendar and a mirror so we'd always remember them, and took about 100 pictures of us. They spoke broken Russian, so it was amusing all of us trying to communicate in non-native Russian. It's quite strange that once you're out of Bishkek, most teenagers don't speak fluent Russian. Here in Bishkek, most teenagers speak Russian and if anything, they have non-native Kyrgyz. In Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, it was normal that students spoke Russian not at all or clearly as a second language, instead speaking Uzbek and Tajik together as native languages.
We had dinner at a hip Kazakh place, where there were lots of New Year's Eve partiers already dancing, even though it was 19:00. We bought some chocolate and alcohol and headed back to our hotel to celebrate New Year's. We walked through the center square where there were lots of people gathered. There was a big stage, people performing songs, and lots of children shooting of fireworks. I was trying to take a picture of Mike in front of the Xmas tree when two policemen came up to us and told us to return to our hotel, since it wasn't a safe place for foreigners since there were so many "hooligans" around.
We went back to the hotel and watched the Russian New Year's Eve show on TV. We fell asleep early and missed 00:00!! So it was a quite uneventful New Year's Eve, but no many people can say they spent in in the desert in Kazkahstan, so it was still nice.
Next morning, we headed to the bus station to see about buses to Almaty. Tickets were only about $10 for the 12-hour journey, but the bus didn't leave until evening. There wasn't anything else really to see in Turkistan, so we had lunch, played cards for a while, and then sat outside at the bus station for a few hours. The weather was sunny and pretty warm, so it was nice. There were tons of stray dogs at the station, so I had hours of fun petting the little puppies. Central Asians see dogs as dirty animals rather than pets, and so they would never dream of petting them. I got some strange looks! If anything, boys amuse themsevles by kicking the dogs, which I witnessed first-hand when a guy picked up one of the little puppies by the scruff of its neck and pretended to kick it. I think it was the expression on my face that made him stop.
The bus was horribly uncomfortable. There was less leg room than economy class on an airplane, and all night people were playing loud music on their cell phones. They did play the movie Rendition, which Mike and I followed quite well, even though it was in Russian. We were very glad when we finally got to Almaty, again early in the morning.
We got a cab to the one budget hotel in Lonely Planet that sounded decent. Well, we tried to get a cab. The driver didn't know where he was going, even though we gave him a street address AND a landmark. He didn't even drop us off at the Russian Embassy like we'd asked, so we had to walk around for a while in the freezing cold until we found the hotel, exatly at the address we told him in the first place. Idiot. He didn't even give us our 100 tenge change back from the cab fare, because it said that since he had to drive around extra it was "normal."
Once daylight came, we dressed warm and went on the walking tour of Almaty. It is a much bigger city than Bishkek and it has a more European feel, but it was SO expensive compared to Kyrgyzstan. We went to 5 restaurants before we found a place for lunch that we could afford. Prices are comparable with normal US restaurants. We saw 2 cathedrals, but were most interested in finding H&M and McDonald's, neither of which we ended up finding at all. We had dinner at a super super expensive Uzbek restaurant, where we paid about $9 for a plate of plov, which is usually about $1. It wasn't even better than cheap plov. Living in Almaty would be great if the salary was a lot more than our Bishkek salary, as it seems to be a much busier and more cosmopolitan city than any place in Kyrgyzstan.
The next morning, we went to the bus station to find a marshrutka to Bishkek. We found one easily and had no problems at the border. We got back home early afternoon on Saturday, we meant we had a day and a half to relax before having to start work.
Back in Bishkek, it was our friend Ben's last day before going home to England. He let us go through all the stuff in his room that he wasn't taking home, so Mike and I got a bunch of stuff from him. My room is now much homier and wonderful, and we got kitchen utensils, a tv stand, and lots of spices. We had a "last supper" at a Syrian restaurant, which has wondeful falafel and hummus.
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are said to have much more police presence than Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan is actually called a Police State. We did see lots of policemen, but not once was there a bad experience. In fact, they were all super nice and friendly, and were interested to talk to us. It's the opposite in Bishkek. Our friends were were walking home from our favorite local restaurant just around the corner when they were stopped by policemen. They didn't have their passports on them since it's just down the road, and the police were really aggressive, threatening to deport them and trying to get bribes. The office staff from school had to go and help them argue their way out of it, but now I have to carry my passport on me at all times, and it puts a cloud of danger over our favorite cheap restaurant. If things keep getting worse here, it will be no fun in Bishkek at all!
Today it's back to teaching and the real world. It was great to have a 2-week vacation, and Mike and I are already planning April vacation.
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