What an adventure!

Wow. What an amazing weekend! I travelled to Bishkek with 13 other volunteers from Talas braving the freshly snowed mountain pass of the majestic Ala-Too Mountains to meet up with about 20 or so other volunteers from around the country for one entire weekend of hedonistic indulgence. We all arrived in Bishkek at around 3pm on Friday (a Kyrgyz National Holiday, so we all didn’t have school) and checked into three separate apartments that had been pre-arranged for our excursion. After my friend Kristen and I gathered together the bulk of the volunteers to stay at our apartment, summarily named “the ‘party’ apartment” and handed over the keys we made our way to Beta Café. Beta Café is the best place in the city to buy reasonably priced hamburgers that are American style, as well as delicious pizza. After we decimated our bellies with long-sought-after grease we headed to The Metro. The Metro is owned by a British ex-pat and is absolutely the best place in the entire city to go for their wide array of available drinks as well as their stunning and delicious menu of food items, however it is not for someone working on a Peace Corps budget. Luckily I have saved for this trip of indulgences for the past two months so I was prepared to completely let loose. We met up with Nick, another volunteer, and swapped stories for a couple of hours over pints of Hoegaarden and Jack Daniels. One will never have a truer appreciation for American liquor than if one’s been forced to only consume copious amounts of cheap vodka for months at a time. Jack, thank you. After this we headed back to the “party apartment” and drank and talked with the other volunteers that we hadn’t seen (Kristen lives in Talas, we kick it every weekend:) for a month and a half…though after what everyone’s already experienced it really felt like a lifetime of absence.
The we headed to The Golden Bull. This is a nightclub in the center of the city that is popular with American Servicemen and prostitutes alike. Being any American, however, gets you in for free and escorted to the VIP section so it’s worth the hassle…or so I thought. I organized gigantic discotheque club excursions when I bartended in Italy and have been to clubs in Vegas and Hollywood…not to mention some pretty good one’s in Seattle. I don’t know what I was expecting, but evidently not many people travel to Kyrgyzstan to get their groove on because this place was horrible. The prostitutes were everywhere and the American Servicemen all looked like they wanted to fight, not to mention that this was all taking place along with drinking and dancing in a club no larger than the average American garage. I grabbed my friend Tim and he and I left pretty much as soon as we arrived.
With that slight downturn of events the remainder of the night turned out quite well. I got into a very deep and long drunken conversation with my friend Jeanne until about 4am on the stairwell of our apartment and passed out in the hallway. The next day was epic. Saturday morning Jeanne and I went to go get breakfast at The Metro. We split a plate of nachos and she got a chicken burrito which I matched with my own plate of fettuccini alfredo with spinach and parmesan cheese. We both drank some Irish Coffee’s and played FREE POOL for a couple of hours joined intermittently by more and more volunteers who decided to debauch their wallets for the sake of flavor for the first time in five months as well. After that it was about 3pm (did I mention it was a late night the night before?) so Jeanne and I decided to go pick up some more supplies and head back to the apartment to meet up with everyone else. By and by people decided to head out for dinner. I went to this gorgeous Italian restaurant right in the center of town where I ate thinly sliced beef marinated with lemon and a plate of cauliflower and melted swiss cheese. Oh, and I split a bottle of champagne with Kristen!
Terrible foresight can sometimes lead to disaster…but it can also lead to unexpected adventure and excitement—which is exactly what my own forgetting of our apartment keys did! It wasn’t until we were all walking back from our amazing Italian culinary delight when I remembered my mistake. I had left the keys with another group that wouldn’t be back for over an hour. At this point it’s about 30 degrees Fahrenheit and beginning to hail so we all ducked inside a seemingly empty café to wait. Soon enough an old Russian lady comes out and tells us that it’s her birthday in the next rented-out room and that we should all come join her. Fuck it, we’ve got an hour to kill and this lady seemed drunk which means there’s at least something going on in there—why not? We all head in and are greeted like kings. Jonathan and I proceed straight to the dance floor and I dance with just about every single lady over the age of 60. Needless to say that we were such a hit that the DJ even took a second for everyone to recognize the “Americanskis”, and we were given a round of enthusiastic applause before being led back to our table. The table that Francis, Erin, Kristen and Jenna were sitting (not dancing like Jonathan and me) at was soon brought a bottle of champagne and we all toasted our generous host. After that I asked the host to dance and we danced an epic number to the theme from Top Gun…it was indeed as romantic as I just made it sound. She was so enamored that she brought me over to her table and sat me at the head of it. Although I attempted to make inroads with conversation, her husband was not very impressed…though he did toast to my health. Come to think of it I really hope he’s not mafia because that toast could take on a whole different meaning. No matter. After she sat me down she gave me plate after plate of delicious Russian food (really, I don’t know why the Kyrgyz insist on making theirs so disgusting…Kyrgyz food is easily some of the worst culinary disasters on the planet!) and introduced me to her daughter. How nice of her! Anyway, this was towards the end of the night and my stomach was full of great food, great champagne and great vibes so I followed everyone else out. As a thank you for my dancing and I’m sure for bringing every other American to her birthday party the host gave me a huge hug, kissed my cheek and handed me a plastic bag. When I got outside I opened up the bag to find a nice freshly ripened banana. How nice! By this time people were in the apartment and the party there was getting started so we all made our way over, with a great story to tell to boot! The night at the apartment turned out as would be expected with some notable stories and names that shall remain nameless, but it was the Russian lady’s birthday party that made it a great night indeed.
Sunday came and due to the excitement that preceded that morning everyone decided that one final trip to The Metro was in order. We all rolled into The Metro looking every bit the savages we were/are and sat down to more delicious food accompanied by White Russians. After getting a little buzzed due to the dehydration from the night before and being generally delirious from the pizza, potato skins, chicken-burgers and burritos that once populated our table we missed the last available marshutka out of Bishkek! Uh oh. Those that could get back did, but Joe, Nick, Jeanne and I all were forced to wander around until we found a dormitory-style guest house on the outskirts of town. It had amazingly comfortable beds, staff that spoke English and a very nice outdoor seating area. We also met an Australian named Andrew and Japanese named Taki. After the initial hello’s the Peace Corps group headed out to one final epic dinner at the best Chinese food restaurant I’ve ever been to! The portions were huge, the price was reasonable and the atmosphere electric…seriously, this place was amazing! We took our left-over’s back to the guest house and left them outside because the weather at this point was colder than any refrigerator and picked up some vodka and beer to party with our new Japanese and Australian friends! The next morning we all ate the remnants of our Chinese food before we bussed and walked to the West Bus station where we said our goodbyes. Then the weekend got interesting.
Because I was the only one from Talas that over-extended their stay in Bishkek I had to ride a marshutka with eleven other Kyrgyz people all the way back. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the guy next to me didn’t keep nudging me awake with interesting questions like “how much money do you make?” and “what is your name…for the thousandth fucking time?”. It wouldn’t have been so bad if there wasn’t a baby crying the entire time. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the asshole sitting next to me refusing to let me sleep didn’t have a friend with him that kept coughing, spitting, smoking and drinking vodka. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it didn’t take 9 ½ hours instead of the normal 6. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we didn’t hit the snow in the Ala-Too mountains and almost skid out of control three times. But it especially wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t pulled over to the side of the road on the downhill side of the scariest fucking mountains on the entire fucking earth in time to watch our driver quickly exit the vehicle and run away through blinding snow just as it’s getting dark without saying a word.
When I finally worked through my anger to ask politely “where the fuck did that asshole run off too?” it was explained to me “svet jok.” This translates to “no electricity”, meaning our marshutka has no electricity. It wouldn’t have been so funny if the thought of this crazy guy running off into the night to find more electricity in the middle of a snowy mountain range didn’t crack me up, but the explanation was given to me under the glow of the dome light in the marshutka, which was quite bright and shining with electricity. It’s bad enough I have to teach these people English, but now I was faced with the prospect of teaching them their own bloody language. However I didn’t have time to begin my lesson because the jerk-off to my left interrupted my formation of a brilliant lesson plan with another “hey Los Angeles (his ever-so affectionate nickname for me because he couldn’t remember ‘James’) do you like sheep?”. He meant the meat, not the love that takes place in certain Midwestern American states…but I’d had quite enough of his intelligent probing questions so I just began to pretend like I didn’t speak any Kyrgyz. This worked for a time and he got frustrated with me so I at least got to sleep while freezing my fucking balls off in the middle of a marshutka that doesn’t have electricity, though clearly does, in the middle of a blinding snowstorm on a mountain pass that’s miles from completion surrounded by Kyrgyz Nationals coughing and wheezing. But it was, finally, sleep.
I awoke to the side door being opened and an empty gas can being thrown onto my knees by our missing driver. Oh, I thought, they meant to say that there was no gas…those silly Kyrgyz I thought to myself as I pretended to sleep while getting nudged ever so rudely in the arm by the fool to my left. We were finally on the road again after about an hour and no closer to our destination. It would take another three and a half hours of twisting turns, spin-outs and terrible questioning from my interrogator sitting nearest to me before I would reach Talas. However, by this time it was too late to catch a ride home so I had to crash at my friends’ house.
The next morning I helped with the Flex Testing because I was already in Talas and was treated to dinner by the country recruiter for Flex. I made it home the next day. What a weekend. What a weekend indeed! Now I’m off to school tomorrow at which I shall attempt to explain my three day absence, but it shouldn’t be a problem because that’s just par for the course in this country. Then this weekend I’ll be back in Talas to relive highlights with my good friends there, and next week I’ll be back to my normal schedule eating bishbarmark while teaching and working with with shitty kids. It’s a wonder I still like what I’m doing. But I do, I really do…and that is making all the difference.