A day in which I get served plov with 5 stones in it and I buy rubber Kyrgyz shoes

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...