Tattoo ideas

I have been dreaming of a new tattoo for ages, and spent last night searching for pictures. These are some options, but I'm still so undecided! I just want them all...

Viva la Revolución!

Not to toot my own horn (toot toot!), but thanks to me, most of you know more than the average person does about Kyrgyzstan (for starters, you know it IS a country, it's not Kurdistan, and you know more or less where it is). Now, thanks to the recent revolution and worldwide news coverage, you know even more than before and your ears probably perked up when you heard the reporter stumbling over all those consonants.

During my time in Kyrgyzstan, there was a lot of talk about a possible revolution. We waited and secretly hoped it would happen to throw some excitement into our lives, but nothing ever happened. The day it was supposed to happen was rainy and people just couldn't be arsed. I was quite surprised when I heard that on April 7th (probably a sunny day) the Kyrgyz men were up out of their Asian squats and ready for political change. Gas and electric prices had skyrocketed, corruption was getting out of control and people were sick of it. It started out as a mostly peaceful demonstration outside the White House. Things got out of hand as they often do when vodka and policemen in riot gear with automatic weapons are involved, and tragically 85 people were killed. It's been said that the president's brother gave the police the command to start shooting protestors. In the end, Bakiev was ousted, the interim government is being led by a woman (!) Roza Otunbaeva and millions of dollars were lost by businesses as a result of horrible looting. Roza must come a shock to many of my Kyrgyz students who said that a woman's only place is at home raising children.

I was worried about my friends there and sad to see what had happened to the already poor country, so I was disappointed to see reports like this:

Kyrgyzstan’s capital is under siege in a brutal riot that appears to have ousted Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the brutal leader who himself came to power in the Tulip Revolution.

Oh, and if your reaction is, “Who the hell cares about Kyrgyzstan?” recall that Manus Air Base is the key transit point for US and NATO resupply in Afghanistan.
(from here)

First of all, it's the Manas airbase. Secondly, why is something only newsworthy when the US is involved? The world does not revolve around the US, contrary to what some people seem to think. People losing their lives while standing up for something they believe in is something to care about, regardless of how small or 'insignificant' the country is.

On this site is a video of the state that Vefa Centre was in following the revolution and looting. Vefa Centre was the big Turkish shopping mall just down the road from where I lived and I visited it more than once a day for groceries, dinner, phone credit, or money changing. Sad.

And to me, this poignant picture sums up the entire revolution: Kyrgyz men, police, death and kalpaks.

( Vyacheslav Oseledko / AFP/Getty Images / April 7, 2010 )

Bakiev was put in power as the result of the peaceful Tulip Revolution of 2005 that ousted Askar Akaev, the leader since the fall of the Soviet Union. (Akaev is happily in exile working as a physics professor in Moscow. Bakiev dreams of opening a toy store in his post-presidential exile-life. He'll no doubt find a way to steal money from the store and the children who shop there.) Bakiev had promised to develop the country and avoid corruption but clearly forgot that even before the looted buildings had been cleaned up. I hope that Roza Otunbaeva and the interim government stay true to their promises and avoid the path of corruption. Long-suffering Kyrgyzstan finally needs to be given a break.

The Best Homework Ever

In Kyrgyzstan it was hard to find students with imagination so many homework assignments about their lives were quite dull. Once I gave a homework assignment to an Upper-Intermediate class to write sentences using new vocabulary we'd learned. This particular class was mostly teenagers but I had one middle-aged Kyrgyz woman whose seriousness always brought about heated debates with other students. She handed in this homework assignment and this successfully helped me convince the office staff that she wasn't really high Upper-Intermediate material. This hung on my wall all year in Bishkek and I also carried her assignment from Kyrgyzstan through Central Asia and Turkey, where it has since been sitting on my bookshelf getting a laugh out of me every time it catches my eye. I can't even figure out if she googled the words and wrote an excerpt of the first sentence she found containing said words or if she used a dictionary and translated from Russian or Kyrgyz or if she did something entirely different- but I can guarantee that these definitions are not her own mind's creation. See for yourself- what level would you place her in?

Click for the larger picture.



(the missing section for 'militia' reads "against a criminal")

Kyrgyz Memories

It has been almost 6 months since I left Central Asia, so I've had a lot of time to process my thoughts and put on some rose-coloured glasses. If being nostalgic was a resume-worthy skill, I would have employers tripping over each other to hire me, but unfortunately it's not. Life in Central Asia was not always easy and at the end of May I was ready to get the heck out of there, but I had some amazing experiences too.

Things I miss:

Frequent weekend trips away to small villages with beautiful scenery and traditional ways of life
Lagman and plov, staple foods of Central Asia, when done well (the greasy/fatty/bony versions don't make this list)
Old men in hats, be it a kalpak or an Uzbek skull cap
The gritty sound of Kyrgyz coming from round babushkas with a full set of gold teeth
Being able to cheaply buy everything under the sun at Osh Bazar
Having students with conversational English to chat with
The starry night sky over Lake Issyk-Kul
Soviet cars
Eating on a tapchan
Yurts
Buying tea by the pot for less than a dollar
Flat-rate taxis
Speaking Russian
Being connected to local culture
4-day work weeks and 14:30 starts
A 30-second commute to work
Soviet blocks
Outdoor activities/festivals like Ulak-tartysh (dead sheep/goat polo) and eagle hunting
Crisp fall weather with the smell of wood/charcoal stove smoke in the air
Donkeys, donkeys, and more donkeys
Knowing that everything I saw, did, or ate was interesting and exotic to people back home who had no knowledge Kyrgyzstan


Now, this doesn't mean I'm going to pack up and head back to Bishkek on the next plane, but I have been able to look beyond the negative memories that stuck firmly in my mind last spring as reasons for wanting to leave. I think I can finally keep the good times close to my heart without forgetting the bad memories and creating a perfect nostalgic Kyrgyzstan. I hope to return to Central Asia one day, but I'll make sure it's not to Bishkek in winter.

Eternal Fame

So, in Kyrgyzstan there was a teacher who didn't like me because she thinks I "stole" Mike away from her. She left Kyrgyzstan less than 2 months after I arrived, so we didn't have too much time to not get along, but the feelings of hatred within her must have been so strong that she still feels the need to blog about me!

http://janesdailyblah.blogspot.com/2009/08/so-many-enemies.html

Check it out. At least she was still able to enjoy the book I recommended.

Off to the Pamirs

Mike, Evan and I spent the night in the Turkish high school in Jalal-Abad our first day out of Bishkek. Our Turkish student used to work there, and he put us in contact with his friends, who would let us stay for free. Mike and Evan stayed in the boys' dorm, and I stayed in the girls'. There were about 300 Kyrgyz girls living at this high school, and they all wanted a chance to talk to me. I was tired, but I stayed up til midnight talking to different groups of girls who came in wanting to practice their English or listen to my Russian. They were all super sweet and nice, and in the morning a Turkish student helped Mike and I get a cheap taxi to Arslanbob. We said goodbye to Evan, who headed off for 3 months in China. We're going to miss him!

We had an amazing time in Arslanbob, an amazing village of Uzbeks a few hours north of Osh. My dream came true to ride a donkey in Kyrgyzstan! The hospitality was unbelievable, and it's likely that we'll come back in a few years to volunteer and teach English. Our homestay dad offered us a room in his house and free food if we come back and teach at the local school- he's a math teacher and he'd arrange everything for us. It was the highlight of our months and months in Kyrgyzstan. I can't wait to go back!

We spent a few days in Osh just waiting for a car to fill up for Tajikistan... we found 2 Swedes to split the $175 taxi to Murghab. This morning I chipped my front tooth mysteriously, either brushing my teeth or eating a plum. It's the same one I chipped when I was 7 playing animal circus, and then re-chipped playing volleyball in high school. I decided I had to visit a Kyrgyz dentist, because it'd be no good to have problems in the middle of the Pamirs. Luckily there was a dentist right next to our guesthouse, so I went in and checked it out. There was a nice old Kyrgyz woman dentist, and she gave me enough reassurance to go ahead with it. She fixed it in exactly the same way I'd gotten it fixed in America, it was quick, it was painless, and my tooth is NOT gold. It was only 300 som (less than $10)! In America it would have cost over $150. Hopefully the glue/filling will last atleast until I get to Turkey. There were 4 dentist chairs in one big room, old, hefty Soviet chairs. At the chair in front of me, the dentist was drilling a girl's cavity and talking on his mobile phone at the same time. My dentist's drill was run by a long rope that spun quickly around when she pressed the foot pedal. It was definitely an experience (how many people can say that they visited a Kyrgyz dentist and lived to tell the tale??) :)

Tomorrow morning we're off to drive the Pamir Highway, with a driver our friend Chris Rickleton had when he went to Tajikistan. (Check out his article about his trip here). We'll spend about 20 days in Tajikistan, and then 15 days in Uzbekistan. I'm sure it will be a great time! I'll post an update and pictures sometime when we find internet again, probably not for atleast a week. In the meantime, check out www.pamirs.org for information and photos of where we'll be for the next few weeks.

The End of Bishkek!

Tomorrow morning Mike, Evan and I are getting a taxi to Jalalabad, where we'll stay a night in a dorm at the Turkish high school there with a friend of one of my students, and then Evan will go to China for 2-3 months and Mike and I will head north to Arslanbob, home of the world's largest walnut grove. A few days there, and then we'll head into Tajikistan for the real start of our summer travels!

The last weeks here have FLOWN by- the weather has gotten super hot (more than 30 Celsius) and my classroom was unbearable. Last week Mike and I went to lunch with one of his students. We drove out into the mountains where her parents spend the summer in a yurt, so we had the real Kyrgyz experience. We drank Kyrgyz National "Fire" tea, which is tea, oil, milk, and salt heated together.. pretty good. I also finally drank Kymyz, fermented mare's milk. It was even worse than I'd imagined. It tasted like horrible moldy cheese made into liquid. Then we had Beshbarmak, the Kyrgyz national food made of noodles and horse meat, but it was MUCH better than beshbarmak I've had in restaurants here. It was actually really good, except for the horse intestines full of horse fat. I couldn't really handle that part. It was great to see real Kyrgyz life, and to spend time with Sabira's family. They were so welcoming- it was a glimpse of the Kyrgyz hospitality that Kyrgyz people brag so much about.

Mike got a haircut 2 weeks ago! It was a big big change but I've gotten used to it. It will be

My favorite class threw me a party on Friday and brought in a cake. I have two teenage boy students who talk to me more than my other students, and I think I'm going to miss them the most! One of them might end up going to uni in Istanbul, so maybe he'll be my student again in the future.

On Saturday there was a London School trip to Ala Archa National Park. We went along and spent some time with some students, but most of my students weren't able to attend. Mike and I walked into the mountains and saw a Mountaineer's Cemetery, which was really peaceful and beautiful. Pictures are on facebook. It was really hot in the morning, but started hailing in the afternoon. Luckily we'd made it back to the bus before the downpour started.

I'm not sure if there's any internet for most of the Pamir Highway, but I'll update when I can. If our trip down south involves more dead people, I will make sure to post about that when I get to Osh.

Our itinerary is as follows:

Jalalabad June 1-2
Arslanbob June 2-5
Osh June 5-6
Tajikistan June 6-24?
Uzbekistan June 24?-July 9
Istanbul July 9-16
Bratislava July 16
Vienna July 16-17
Salzburg July 17-31
Budapest, Bucharest, Bulgarian Black Sea? (still not sure, we'll see how much money we have) August

Then hopefully getting a job in Istanbul with accomodation provided! Woohoo!

Happy Summer :)

Cold Showers

On May 14th the hot water went off, and it's been just cold showers ever since. Hot water won't be back until June 14th, by which point we'll have bid Bishkek goodbye. The weather isn't warm enough yet to make a cold shower tolerable, so it's been pretty miserable.

Today I went to Dordoi Bazar with Mike, Josh, and Liz. I bought a new purse which is one thing that I actually need, since the one I got at Aissa's grocery store is falling apart. I also got some more souveniers. Liz is going to Istanbul tomorrow and took a backpack of stuff for Mike and me, so it's great that we got books and some other stuff out of the way. It will make our bags a lot lighter!

Packing is going to be terrible. As always, I have a lot of clothes, and have aquired more since I've been here. I also have jewelry, a hair dryer, a Kyrgyz rug, and other things that will add up. Combine that with the fact that I hate carrying backpacks full-stop, and travelling this summer will be Hell on Earth for me.

We got our Tajik visas the other day with no problems at all. We walked to the Consulate with good directions from our friend Michael, so we found the place okay, even though we had to walk by what looked like a marshrutka graveyard. But past the graveyard, there were lots of giant and beautiful NGO houses and the Tajik Embassy. We got a one month visa for 51$ plus 50 som, issued in one day. The only thing left to make our travel plans complete is to buy tickets from Tashkent to Istanbul. Maybe tomorrow we'll get that out of the way, and then we'll have all our pre-departure costs sorted!

Only 1.5 weeks left... Craaaaazy!

Lake Issyk-Kul

We had a much -needed vacation from the London School the last week of April, and Mike and I decided to explore the northern shore of Lake Issyk Kul. We set off on a Saturday morning and caught a marshrutka from the bus station to a small village called Tamchy, known for having more donkeys than people on the beach in the off-season. We wandered around a little looking for a homestay, but there was really nothing going on. We asked some people if they rented rooms, and one woman pointed us in the direction of a man who rented rooms. He had a whole apartment building that he said in summer fills up with Kazakhs, but it was completely empty. We dumped our stuff and then wandered up and down the beach. We spent ages looking for the CBT office, which Lonely Planet said offered donkey rental, but unfortunately never found it. The beach had a few grazing donkeys, cows, and sheep, but that was the only thing going on. There was a little mosque and a small Russian cemetery, but Lonley Planet was about right, there is more life in a morgue than in Tamchy. It was a nice way to start our holiday because it was so calm and peaceful compared to Bishkek! We had dinner and breakfast cooked by the wife of the man hosting us, and had to pay the hefty cost of 500 som for some buckwheat and a fried egg- but it was the only option since there wer NO restaurants or cafes in the whole village.

The next day we hitchhiked to Cholpon-Ata, 35 kilometers further East along Issyk-Kul. A nice man stopped and picked us up, and told us how he has multiple guesthouses in summer to host tourists in Cholpon-Ata. C-A is the hub of Issyk-Kul tourism, the Costa del Sol of Kyrgyzstan. In summer it fills up with local resort-goers, the president, and Kazakh businessmen. But luckily for us, it seemed that we were the only tourists. We were stopped almost immediately by a Kyrgyz guy wanting to speak to foreigners, and he started conversation off by whipping out his phone and asking me to translate some things for him into Russian. They were all about "Jesus's love is the best love" and "Christ died for us." My religious vocab in English is terrible, so translating into Russian was abysmal. He offered to find us a place to stay. We didn't really want to spend time with him since he was sort of creepy and talked ONLY about Bible School and religion and asked why we weren't believers, but he came with us to the Lonely Planet-recommended guest house and when there was no answer, he told he he wanted to take us to a cheap room. We went to the Tourist Info Office in hopes they'd have a good recommendation for us, but alas, they were more useless than navel lint. So in the end, we got the guy to take us to a place he said rented cheap rooms. We made a deal with a guy who had a room, and the Kyrgyz Jesus took off and left us alone.

The first thing we did was set off uphill to see the famed KC-A petroglyphs. As we were waliking on dusty mountain roads, a car stopped and a man got out and asked us how we were doing. It turns out it was the same guy who gave us a lift from Tamchy, and he offered to drive us to the petroglyphs, since we'd gotten a bit lost. There was a giant field of rocks, and some of them had ancient petroglyphs- deer, reindeer, long-horned sheep, and people. They weren't marked though, so we wandered around looking at a lot of rocks. There were also 3 Balbal, which are old carved rocks with faces.

We talked to the grandmother of the man we were staying with when we got back to the house, and she recommeded a public beach to walk to to see Issyk-Kul in the evening. It was so peaceful and calm on the beach, and it was hard to imagine the place crowded with Kyrgyz families. The next day we caught a marshrutka to Karakol.

We got in mid-afternoon, but the weather was horrible and cold. We booked a homestay through CBT, and it started raining as we were walking. We took a nap (we did a LOT of sleeping on our vacation- went to bed at 8 or 9 pm and woke up at 8 or 9 am) and then went to find dinner. We had chosen the worst time to leave the house because the rain turned to hail and snow and we were soaked when we finally got to a cafe. But there was good food and it wasn't raining so hard on our walk back.

Next day we decided to go to Jeti-Oguz, a small village and a place with famous red rocks and a nice jailoo (mountain pasture). Jeti-Oguz means 7 bulls in Kyrgyz, and there are 7 red rocks that people believed looked like 7 bulls. Erosion has made now more like 10 or 11 bulls, but the name has stayed. There is a Soviet sanatorium there, famous for being the place where the first meeting between the first Kyrgyz president Askar Akaev and Boris Yeltsin took place. Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut, also used to relax there. There was nothing much to see, but there were still some nice paths in the woods to walk on and some interesting statues. We walked along a river 5 kilometers into the moutains, where there was a great jailoo known as The Valley of the Flowers, which contains no flowes. Guidebooks say that it's full of poppies in spring, but the man at CBT said that it just has that name to entice tourists to come. Who knows. But we saw unone. There were lots of horses, sheep and cows grazing in the jailoo, and it was realy beautiful and vast and green. We walked back down by the nice mountain river, and spent the evening reading Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne.

We went to the Karakol Zoo the next day, which is the only zoo in Central Asia. Strangely, it's not mentioned in either guidebook I have on Kyrgyzstan. It may not compare to Western zoos, but it seems interesting enough to be included about a city that doesn't really have much else to offer tourists. Entrance fee was only 25 som, which is about 50 cents. There were more animals than I had expected- 3 bears, a golden eagle, 9 grey wolves, a vulture, owls, Turkmen lynx, llamas, goats, donkies, a yak, 2 camels, a moose AND a cage full of guinea pigs (?!). I've never seen them at a zoo! The cages were small and the animals didn't seem very happy, but they were happier than the animals look at the St. Paul Zoo, which is a feat considering this is Kyrgyzstan. We saw zookeepers taunting the moose and one guy spit on a goat. After that, we got a marshrutka back to Bishkek. We had been planning to go all the way around the lake and stop off somewhere on the southern coast, but we'd been there already 3 times and are going in a few weeks again, so we just went the north road back, which is a lot quicker.

After relaxing a day in Bishkek, eating non-Kyrgyz food, and doing laundry, we took a day-trip with our friend Josh to Kochkor, a small town in the center of Kyrgyzstan. It's known for being the best place to buy shyrdaks, which are felt Kyrgyz rugs. There is a women's cooperative there, where all the money goes back to the woman who make the items. It's a nice way to help the Kyrgyz village people.

There was a room FULL of shyrdaks and all things felt. There were so many to choose from, and I hadn't brought a lot of money in order to avoid temptation. Josh got a giant beautiful red and beige rug for 100$, and I found the perfect one for me- an orange and purple one! BUT, I didn't have enough money for it. I was going to settle for a beige one with neon green trim, but the orange one called my name. So Josh, Mike and I put all our small change together and were able to get almost exactly the right amount. So Josh and I had beautiful rugs, we got a taxi for SUPER cheap back to Bishkek, and spent the rest of vacation relaxing and preparing for our last month of teaching.

My birthday came and went with not much happening. Mike bought me the Kyrgyz epic poem, Manas, in English, and that will be a great souvenier to leave the country with. It's not even available on Amazon.com, so if I didn't get it here, I'd never get to read it. From my students I got a silly pig ashtray, a porcelin giraffe, and wooden figurines in Kyrgyz national dress. In the evening we had friends over and smoked hookah and drank rose' wine. It was a good birthday!

There are only 3 weeks left in Bishkek, and my schedule has started to fill up for the first time since I arrived. Last night I went out for a drink with some of my students, and tomrorow they are taking me and Mike to the mountains for the day. Next weekend, Mike and I are going to an Afghan students house for Afghan food, and on Sunday a friend from Minnesota is coming with his family, AND a coworker is getting married! It will be a real Kyrgyz wedding, and I'm SO excited. The next weekend is a school trip to the south of Issyk-Kul, to go trekking in the mountains for the day. I hope there will be time to swim in I-K, it was too cold when we were there. I can't leave Kyrgyzstan without doing that! The weekend after our last teaching week is a student-teacher trip to the moutains, so we'll spend one last day with our students and then leave Bishkek on the 31st.

Our travel plans have changed a bit- a few days in Arslanbob (Kyrgyzstan), then 2-3 weeks in the Pamirs and Tajikistan, 2-3 weeks in Uzbekistan and the Aral Sea, then flying to Istanbul, probably finding an apartment and/or a job, and then going to Austria for 2 weeks to meet up with my parents and my brother. It will be great!

Today is Victory Day, but there wasn't much going on in the Central Square today. Kyrgyz men are out getting drunk tonight though, so I'm going to avoid bars and nightclubs.

Time is flying! I'll be sure to update again a few times before leaving Bishkek.

Does anyone know an oral surgeon in Bishkek?!

My wisdom teeth are coming in and they have started to hurt me. A lot. I do NOT want to go to a dentist here for many reasons. 1) I don't want to end up with gold teeth. 2) I have lots of cavities AND need 4 wisdom teeth out, and probably can't afford all that, even if it is super cheap compared to America. 3) I can't take off from work so I'd have no time to recover. 4)I hate dentists full stop. 5) Kyrgyz healthcare in general. 6) I don't know any dental vocabulary in Russian. 7) My dentist at home said that my teeth are impacted and my mouth is small that it will be a very difficult operation for even the best American surgeon.

So it would be a disaster all around, but I don't know where I would get better care. Istanbul? Mike said that Hungary has good cheap dentistry, so maybe I can wait until September or so and pop into Europe from Turkey? Who knows. Blah.

Mike and I are leaving on a week's holiday on Saturday and going around Issyk-Kul. Hopefully Friday night we're going to see our friends' band playing. Then there's only one month left of teaching, which makes me sad! I love all my students now and I feel like I'm really getting into teaching. Hopefully we can find jobs in Istanbul that are as good as this one!

Winter is back again. It's gloomy and cold. I really want to get out of Bishkek!

Our boss is taking us to Issyk-Kul the 3rd weekend in May as a going away celebration, which should be great fun. Not sure yet where...

Crazy that I've been here 7.5 months! Where has the time gone?!

Updates!

Well, it's been ages since I've written. There is just really so much nothing going on here that I haven't bothered.

Spring appears to have come and gone. It's been cold, dreary, and rainy for the past 4 or 5 days, and I'm back to teaching in mittens and sweaters since the heat was turned off by the government at the end of March.

In a week and a half we have a much needed holiday, and Mike, Kole and I are taking a trip around Lake Issyk-Kul. No cemented plans on where exactly we're going to stop, but we're hopefully going to find a yurt to stay in, and drink some fermented mare's milk finally.

My friend from college, Jon, and his family are coming to Kyrgyzstan in a few weeks! They are actually coming to visit some friends in Osh, but they're going to spend a few hours or maybe a day with me in Bishkek, so that will be great! A friendly face from home, a cute kid to play with, AND someone to talk linguistics with! Woo!

Nooruz holiday came and went. It is one of the biggest holidays celebrated in Central Asia, so Mike and I went to the main square to watch the celebratory festivities. It was actually not all that interesting. We drank symolok, which is the national Nooruz drink. It's wheat and sugar mush basically. Not too great.
There was a performance in the main square of children waving pom-poms, children dancing traditional dances, people dressed like animals dancing... and President Bakiev gave a speech. It was the first time I had ever seen a President actually in the flesh with my own eyes. He was a long way away and I didn't understand anything he was saying, but it was still cool to take pictures of a real President! But other than that, not much happened for the holiday.

Mike and I bought travelling backpacks at the bazaar. Now the problem will be when it comes time to pack, as I really do have a lot of stuff. I came here with 2 suitcases, 50 lbs each. And now I'll be leaving with just one measly backpack. What to do what to do!

Now that I only have less than 7 weeks in Kyrgyzstan, I'm starting to really like the place! My students this month are really great, weather (had been) getting better, and the leaves are out! I guess once it gets to be 40 degrees Celsius I'll be glad to be leaving.

Mike lost or had his camera stolen, so he'll have to buy another before we head to the Pamirs!

We've decided 100% that we are going to Istanbul in August, and we're planning on just showing up and getting a job once we get there, but we're still applying online in the off-chance we get something before we arrive.

Mike has been my roommate now for a few weeks, and we have a nice living room where we can hang out, watch TV, and socialize with the few friends we have here.

Well, this has been mundane, but an update of some sort I guess is better than nothing. In a few weeks there'll be lots to tell because we'll have been on a week holiday!

Happy Belated Easter to everyone.

Hair Cut

I got a haircut last week, just a trim, and it turned out just as I wanted, even though I realized I had absolutely no haircutting vocabulary in Russian. I just mimed everything and it was fine.

The space bar doesn't work well at this computer so that's all for now. This afternoon a bunch of teachers are going to play some basketball! Finally some exercise :)

Spring is here to stay, leaves are out and it's warm!

Spring

It seems ages since I've updated- sorry. It's just because not that much is going on here.

Today Mike and I are going to Osh Bazar to buy travelling backpacks. Initially when I thought my mom was coming, we were just going to have her bring them, but she's not anymore and getting them shipped here from America would be lots of money and lots of hassle. So we saw some at Osh that look pretty durable, so we're going to buy them now if they're still there. They're 1500 som each, which is about 40$.

Yesterday I bought some new sunglasses since I broke my other ones. Tonight my roommate Nicola is leaving Bishkek and Mike is moving into my apartment, so tonight and tomorrow we'll be busy moving stuff and rearranging furniture. It'll be great to have 2 rooms to ourselves- a bedroom and a living room! We can start entertaining :)

Spring is here. There was talk of a revolution on Friday, but it was raining and nothing to speak of happened. Too bad! We were hoping for some excitement around here, and maybe some days off work.

Another month of teaching is done- only 2 more to go! Time flies when you're having fun I guess...

Oh and we saw The Vagina Monologues last night. It was presented by mostly non-native English speakers, but the parts that I was able to understand were pretty good. I'd never seen it before.

Ok, we're off to my favorite place, Osh Bazar. I'll update again soon!

Sun!

Spring has arrived in Bishkek, and it's glorious. The past 4 days have been sunny and cloudless, and I've spent the most part of all the days sitting in The London School courtyard reading, listening to music, and knitting. Today it was so nice that I was out in shorts and tanktop! According to one of those big temperature signs, it got up to 23 degrees Celsius today in the sun. I haven't checked a weather forecast, but I don't think it's going to get cold again- I think spring is here to stay!

The trees are all budding and the leaves look like they'll be coming out in full-beauty in a few days.

Everyone seems happier, and it's great to walk to and from the center of town in just a t-shirt!

I knit Mike a great orange and blue beanie, and knit myself a teal and orange one, with the same pig pattern as my tattoo. It's by far the coolest and most complicated thing I've ever knit, and everyone says it looks like it was store-bought. If anyone wants one, let me know! I can make it however you want :)

Nothing else is new. Saturday is Nooruz, which is Kyrgyz/Muslim New Year, so I hope that I can see some Kyrgyz men singing the Manas epic poem. Also, now that spring is here, Mike and I are going to start leaving Bishkek on the weekends again. In the near future, we're going to go to Kochkor, where they sell shyrdaks (Kyrgyz rugs). I'm going to buy a bright-colored one, which hopefully will fit into my rucksack that I will somehow pack full of all my stuff to take across land to Turkey.

Mike and I are going to Istanbul in August. If we have a job or not, we'll show up, and find a job there if we don't have one already. Should be cool!

Happy Nooruz :)

I'm fed up with Kyrgyz people!

Ugh. What is it with people here! So I went out to a bar last night with Mike and some friends. We were making plans for going out to a club, and our friend Ben came from the other end of the table to talk to Mike. He sat down at the end of a booth occupied by three middle-ages Kyrgyz women, who were sitting at the other end. Not even one second after he had sat down, the woman started yelling at him in Russian. She called him names and told him to fuck off, just for sitting there. He swore back in Russian and called them bad names, and they got REALLY angry. A jerk Kyrgyz guy, Daniyar, who'd started speaking English with us earlier came up to BEn and told him to leave them alone. He used the excuse, "Kyrgyz women are different from Western women." (which is bullshit...someone swears at you unnecessarily, you can sewar back. What did they expect?! Kyrgyz men would just have beaten them instead, maybe they'd have preferred that.) One of the male waiters came to Ben and told him to relax, but he said that when he is sworn at for no reason, he has the right to defend himself. THe women left the bar, but each one individually came back into the bar just to swear at him once more and to bare their set of gold teeth. We left as soon as we could, be we were sure that they'd call their man friends to come beat us, because that's what Kyrgyz men do.

(ok, so maybe I'm SLIGHTLY overgeneralizing here. But I'm bitter, because we can't go out for a night of fun without witnessing some ridiculous fight, probably caused by one of the guys in my group of friends standing near someone's girlfriend, or glancing in the vicinity of the girl that a Kyrgyz guy wants. And that is NOT exaggerated. Kyrgyz men are EXTREMELY possessive, of girls that don't even "belong" to them.)

Mike and I were out to lunch the other day when a Kyrgyz man wanted to sit at th e seat behind Mike, and he needed him to pull his chair in a little bit. Instead of just asking nicely like a normal person would do, he said, in Russian, rudely... "AMERICAN, move your chair." So Mike obviously isn't AMerican. But we let it go. THen he turned around and said, sneeringly, (in Russian, loosely translated because I didn't understand the words, just the sentiment) "What do you think of the Airbase leaving? Bye Americans. I'm SOVIET!!!!" And was generally just haughty and agressive.

THEN, last night, before the event above with the gold-teethed women, we were in a different bar, and were were meeting two of our friends. There were no chairs, so we stood around for a few minutes deciding where we were going to go. A woman with a guitar at the table next to them started bad-mouthing us in Russian, "I want to sing. I can't sing because the foreigners are talking loudly. We: STAY. FOreigners: GO HOME." I made eye contact with her friend and made it clear that I had understood. He whispered to her and she covered her mouth in embarrassment. Ugh.

The jerk Kyrgyz guy from last night, Daniyar, was also an ass. As soon as he found out I was American, he stood up, sagged his pants, started doing rapper hand gestures and said "Oh, I bet you call everyone nigger and listen to rap music." Said in the right tone of voice, this could have been taken as a joke, because here rap is one of the most popular things to come out of America. But, he said it agressively as if he was accusing me of something rather than making a joke. In any case, it wasn't funny. At all. Then he kept being annoying and basically demanded that we let him come out with us to the bar. So we said we'd meet him outside when he'd paid, and we quickly booked it to make sure he didn't make it out in time.

Enough of that though. Tomorrow is International Women's Day, so I sure hope my students will bring me cards and chocolate and flowers on Monday. The office staff gave all the women carnations. Mike and I will probably go to our favorite Dungan restaurant, which will be celebration enough. Tomorrow our favorite rock bar is re-opening after a few months of renovation, so we're going out.

And except for today, which is cloudy and drizzling, I think spring is coming! The past few days have been sunny and warmish- I've even had to turn on the AC in my classroom. Bishkek will get a whole lot more beautiful when the leaves come out!

On a different note- Did anyone read about the chimpanzee in Stamford, CT that attacked his owner's neighbor?! She lost both her hands, her lips, her nose, and her eyelids! That would be pretty terrible, to say the least.

My Russian is good enough to buy medicine!

So it turns out I have ringworm on my leg :) And before you get TOO grossed out, it's not a worm, it's a fungus. Anyways. I've had this circle on my leg since Kazakhstan in January, and I just thought it was irritation from wearing the same jeans for 2 week... (haha)
But it never went away, and the circle got bigger. It started to really look like giant bite marks on me, which of course it wasn't! So finally I googled treatments, and then wikipediaed the names of the creams in Russian, and went to a pharmacy, found them in Russian, and it seems to be working! So Kyrgyz pharmacies can be useful after all :)

There was something else random and not interesting that I was going to post also, but I can't remember... maybe I'll remember tomorrow!

Spring has sprung?

Spring is finally here, hopefully. Mike and I spent the weekend just walking around Bishkek, enjoying the warmth and the sunshine! We went again to my favorite place in Bishkek, Osh Bazar, just to wander around and explore. It's such a big place there are always new aisles to walk down! I bought a necklace and neon yellow comb.

Nothing too much is new since I last posted. Mike and I got tattoos last weekend though, which I'm sure most of you know from facebook. We heard about the tattoo place from Mike's students and decided to check it out. Mike wanted to add to his collection of 4 tattoos, and I wanted to get one for the first time. It seems shady to most foreigners to even imagine having a tattoo done in Kyrgyzstan, but the salon was really clean and hygienic, and the woman was Russian, not Kyrgyz, which made us feel a lot better (not to sound too blatantly racist against Kyrgyz people, but...) So we made an appointment and went back the next day. Mike got a tunduk from the top of a yurt and also featured on the Kyrgyz flag, and I got a little pig. (you can see it here, the outline on the right:



This is what the finished tattoo looks like! The woman offered to fill it in with neon orange color for free, so of course I said yes. When the tattoo heals completely, the orange will fade and it will only be visible under blacklight, which will look so cute when we go to nightclubs :)



There is so little to do in Bishkek in winter that Mike and I are saving 450$ per month each, which is great because travelling the Pamir Highway will be SO expensive.

New classes start tomorrow, and it means we only have 3 teaching months left! We're working on getting visas now for Central Asia- there's a tour agency here in Bishkek that will do Uzbek and Tajik, and we are hoping we can get Azeri and Turkmen visas in Dushanbe (Tajikistan). We're still working out the details of our trip. AND now we're again thinking about going to Istanbul instead of Thailand, because one of the new Russian students just came from teaching in Turkey, and has many contacts she can give us. So hopefully we'll get a job out of it!

Military Day

Monday the 23rd is Military Day in Kyrgyzstan/former Soviet Union, which means it's also Man's Day and Father's Day. It's a holiday, but we all teach. So if I had a father of my own around town, I would buy him a tie or a watch, get him a card, and cook him dinner. Since I don't, I will have a free day! I guess I have to get Mike a card. Pop, Happy Kyrgyz Father's Day on Monday! (And Mom, Happy Birthday!)

I have had a horrible headache at the base of my skull for over 24 hours, and painkillers aren't helping... it's a good thing it's Friday and we have 2 days off!

Tomorrow or Sunday Mike and I are going to the tattoo place his students recommended. Maybe I'll get a pig tattoo :) Like this! I would get it on the back of my neck so it wouldn't be visible all the time... we'll see!

Just applied for a job in Albania, which would be pretty cool.

Spring might slowly be coming!

I'm getting OLD

I noticed in the mirror yesterday that I am getting wrinkles. There are 3 in my forehead from where my brow furrows. They are there all the time now, it's absolutely horrible. It's all downhill from here!

Valentine's Day was uneventful. We went to our new favorite Chinese/Dungan restaurant, and then walked around the city. It was a grey day, but not horribly cold. Mike bought me bright pink tights for Valentine's Day, and I wore them out last night. I'm like a shining ball of color surrounded by the blacks and greys that are Kyrgyz fashion.

I bought a DVD of Looney Toons, but there were nowhere near 141 episodes like Tom and Jerry, so we already watched them all. Boo.

Two new teachers arrived on Friday. They are from TX and have never taught before. There are so many new people here and I just can't be arsed to befriend them all! Mike and I are leaving in 3 months and it's unlikely we'll see most of our coworkers again, so there's no strong desire to build "lasting" friendships. Blah.

I have developed British question intonation!

My coworker Kole brought it to my attention that I've developed British question intonation. I didn't notice it myself, but now that he's mentioned it, I hear that it's actually different from how I used to talk. Americans go up at the end of questions, but Brits go up all the way to the second-to-last word, and then they go down again. Kole gets really annoyed when he hears me speak like that, because he says I'm a traitor to Americans, and he thinks I'm putting it on on purpose to impress Mike. First of all, Mike isn't perceptive enough that he would notice if I was trying to impress him with my accent, and second of all, I'm not skilled enough with different accents to be able to pull off intentional impersonations. So it's not on purpose, and it's pretty scary to know that in just 4 months I was able to completely change my question intonation! Pretty soon I'll have a Manc accent too :) It will be interesting to see how much British slang I've adopted as my own, whenever I end up back in the States everyone will have to see if they can still understand me! Kole does comment every so often that I should use American words instead of British words, but being surrounded by so many Brits makes it hard not to pick up slang, especially since they have SO MANY funny slang words!

On a different note, tomorrow is, of course, Valentine's Day. I only got one Valentine card today from a student (a girl, 15). I don't have anything romantic planned with Mike- we're going to our new favorite restaurant, a Chinese place with 7 different kinds of laghman, and maybe we're getting tattoos (well, he's getting one, maybe I am). He's getting the Kyrgyz yurt roof opening (like on the Kyrgyz flag)- you can see it here: One of his students told him where a tattoo place is located, but since students are almost 100% of the time wrong, who knows if the place really exists. I got him a Christina Ricci notebook because she's his favorite actress, and a silly little 3som card. We're not big celebrators (we still haven't gotten each other Xmas presents!)

Today was payday, and we were worried that we'd get paid in som because the exchange rate has kept going up and up and up. BUT, exactly today it went down, so we got our dollars! It will be stupid to get paid in som, because then when we go to leave Kyrgyzstan we have to change it all back to dollars.

Mike and I are busy applying for new jobs for August/September... we're now looking at Thailand, Taiwan, Bulgaria, and also Prague. Many many jobs haven't written back to us. I was pretty against going to SE Asia, but then I realized how depressed I am here in winter/coldness, so being steps away from the beach would be amazing!

Time is FLYING- weather is warming up (not that it really was ever cold to begin with), birds are chirping, and hopefully spring is coming! My Russian teacher this month is amazing, so maybe at some point I'll finally begin to speak conversationally.

Happy Valentine's Day!