James J. Swift

London Zombies, suit-dorks and hip-hop

2011-03-12T04:07:00.000-08:00

Am I old fashioned? Perhaps. I do like to hold the door open for ladies, and shake hands with a firm grip and look in the eye, bow to royalty and the like. Still, I can’t help but think there’s something missing in today’s world…

I remember when I was 16 I used to walk around my neighborhood with my headphones in listening to my music (Everclear, Nirvana, The Offspring (before they sold out), etc, etc.) just to escape from the rigors of adolescence where no one understands you and authority is all flawed. You know, raise the ol’ punk flag and change the world one concert at a time sort of thing. We’ve all been there. It’s good for it’s time and place. Today though I see everybody wearing headphones walking around like zombies, otherwise known as teenagers, listening to their own music in their own world completely disconnected from their surroundings and everyone else. Only these people aren’t pubescent angry beasts attempting to balance their assertion of adulthood while ignoring their math homework. No. These are grown adults wearing suits and classy skirts on their way to create the next banking crisis. Do they really need the constant drum of music distracting them from real life? Is real life, in fact, that terrible?

Don’t take me wrong, I love to hear a mix of Jazz, gangsta rap, teen pop, and 80’s rock on my way to work. To be honest it really brightens up my day listening to the musical variety while trying to read my paper and nurse off the previous night’s hangover while still staying steady. But then there’s the crazies listening to music loud enough to drive out Noriega whilst walking around the bustling city.

London is huge, and cars don’t stop for anyone. Yet everyone with earphones in are wandering about crossing streets at random and generally living oblivious…

Isn’t it nicer to hear the world around us? I love walking around hearing different languages and listening to the City sounds of busses and cars (minus the sirins, they’re worrisomely all too frequent!) and think having all 5 senses alert and focused is just a tad bit more engaging, generally. Imagine if people didn’t wear their headphones at all hours of every day? Would we acknowledge other people more? Would there be more smiles or helpful people as opposed to countless frustrations as headphone wearing zombies bump and push past other headphone wearing zombies just to get to their meaningless destinations roughly one minute faster than if they walked at an even pace and smiled at a stranger?

I don’t know. Is this just a rant for the day? I suppose so, but I have a feeling that everyone that isn’t listening to headphones on a minute-by-minute basis throughout their transitory day will quite possibly agree with me. Or, at the very least, crack a smile the next time they hear a fusion of Jazz, punk, and hip-hop on public transport just thinking about the poor zombie oblivious to their own cliché.

The Latest and Greatest

2011-02-26T00:22:00.000-08:00

I'm sick of starting my blog with "it's been a while since I've last posted..." so I'm going to ignore that superfluity and cut straight to the chase. Damn. Now I actually don't know what to say. I suppose I could start with life at the moment. It's good. Though London over the past two years has witnessed some extreme changes in my life. I moved here with about 750 dollars, and no job. I was unemployed for three months before getting a job as the head bartender in the Terrace Bar in Harrods through a combination of charm and outright lying, then somehow managed to segue that into a job as the Business Development Manager for Skyline Worldwide, a serviced apartment company. Through the year and a half I've been with the company I've been directly responsible for increasing our corporate client-base tremendously while exponentially increasing the number of apartments we operate in Canary Wharf and The City to just over 150 at last count. Before I came on there were about 12 apartments only operating in Canary Wharf, and 0 corporate accounts. I guess I'm pretty good at this, and it's fun too! Plus, and the biggest news thus far, it's allowed me to purchase my first flat! I've just recently exchanged contracts on a brand new two-bed/two-bath apartment on the 9th floor of a Barratt Homes development near Greenwich called Renaissance (http://www.renaissancelondon.co.uk/). I'll be completing in June, moving in shortly thereafter and hopefully finding someone to rent out the spare room. Wow. Definitely would not have seen this coming when I moved here...let alone even six months ago!

Enough patting on the back. That's all the big news: great job, bought a flat, life's improving, London rocks. Done and dusted. What I've been recently feeling more and more of though, despite all of this opportunity and good news is a slight feeling of homesickness. This is a feeling that I've only experienced once before, and it was back in 2004 when I was studying abroad in Perugia, Italy. I was working as a bartender in two bars, and an after-hours club while also organising discotheque trips for all the other college kids to the huge discos right outside of the city. I was drinking for free, had 100's of "friends" but (believe it or not) got so incredibly sick of the constant partying that by December of that year I was desperate to go back to Seattle, back to my real friends and normalcy. I guess that may be it, actually, the friend-aspect of living here. My best friends are in Seattle, and I'm lucky enough to have quite a few very close friends there - a large group, if you will...whereas here, I've got about 5 - 7 or so solid mates. I know a lot of people, but have yet to establish solid relationships outside of the 5 to 7 aforementioned lucky devils here. Two of which I knew before I came here, one is like my sister-from-a-different-mister, and the other few are in & out but always around. I suppose I just miss the diverse-whilst-close companionship Seattle offered. Though I can't help but draw the conclusion (do you feel the dread creeping in) that the reason for my friendlite diet is because I'm American.

My mate Ian told me shortly after I first moved here that I needed to not act so "excited" all the time, and to "keep my voice down" while in public, private, parties, work, transport, and generally all other areas of life; though singing in the shower is still, I suppose, allowed. I appreciated it at the time and worked diligently to suppress my optimism, outgoing attitude, and interactive style of interaction. I still don't think I quite got there though, as further relationships have been damn near impossible to come by. It'd be easy to blame myself for this, however after going back home for Christmas and getting such a warm heart-felt reception from so many people I now know that the truth is unfortunately it's actually just a cultural difference of behaviour that has acted to alienate me somewhat...seemingly out of my control. Well, that or people just generally don't like me. I'm going to go with the former while ignoring the latter because my ego is far too fragile for that fallacy to formulate a factual base...

I got along so well with the Italians because they're warm and inviting, outgoing, and interpersonal. I got along with the Kyrgyz because they're loud, friendly, warm, loving, party-animals that welcome everyone (especially if you speak Кургуз) into their homes and lives. After living here in London for almost two years I can't help but feel that the reason I haven't been accepted by the British in a similar manner is because they're (strictly generally speaking) quiet, reserved, polite, and just a bit reluctant to become friends as immediately as their Yankee counterparts. I'm none of that. This isn't a knock against the friends I do have here, because God-knows I love them. I think it's just a simple fact. Because I haven't been able to expand my friend-group as far as I have in the past this feeling of homesickness has lately been making and slow and steady return. How to combat this then? Rally against all that has taken me in over the past two years and fly my American flag at the top of my roof? Or perhaps I could convert entirely to the British way of life by adopting a posh accent and discussing the weather constantly while espousing the health benefits associated with regular Marmite intake? No. Neither for me, thank you. I think the trick is to just keep at it, be myself and let the chips fall where they may. Professionally this has worked a treat. Slowly but surely, I have no doubt, this will progress further into my personal life too.

C'est la vie.

I've got huge, nay tremendous opportunities over here. The reason that I do is because I'm outgoing, loud, I push my way into what I want without apology, I'd like to think that I'm at least somewhat charming, friendly, and welcome everyone into my friend-sphere immediately. I'm not tooting my own horn well, I guess I am, but I'm not saying this strictly to brag but rather to perhaps dually explain not only my rapid rise to this present success but also why I'll never really fit in here. Maybe that's a good thing. I think that the fact that I'm an outsider has actually helped me out a lot in my business. It's set me apart from the pack. The only down-side to this is that the British tend to only accept as friends people from within their pack.

I've taken my mate Ian's advice, I have toned down a lot. My American friends would be shocked at my timidity as equally as the British still find my behaviour outlandish. It's just a cultural thing. Instead of trying to become more "British" I've found myself appreciating my own strengths more and more against the backdrop of England, while of course observing certain cultural norms with only a hint of my own Americaness.

In June I will move into my own house for the first time. This is a huge step, and could never have been accomplished had I not taken the initial first step of coming over here and trying my luck. In the past two years I've grown emotionally and intelligently. I've changed a bit, but have also learned to not change too much because who I am is who I am. Who I am is what has gotten me this far, and it's exactly what will get me even further in the future. I do miss Seattle, and I miss my friends and family there more than words can describe. I'm 27 years old though, before long (hopefully) I'll have a wife and kids and these selfish days will be nothing but a distant memory. Live it up while you can James, I say! Do this, and never apologise for who you are. "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams; live the life you've imagined." - Henry David Thoreau

Previously added on March 21st, 2009

2011-02-26T00:10:00.000-08:00

The below blog was originally written and posted on March 21st, 2009 while I was still a volunteer with the US Peace Corps serving in Talas Oblast in Kyrgyzstan. Needless to say it caused quite a stir when I posted it and sharply divided the volunteers and the staff still in-country. Basically it divided the volunteers between the people that were there and could personally attest to the veracity of what I'd written, and the volunteers who weren't there...the staff were divided as well, mostly down different lines. I deleted this shortly after moving to London which happened to coincide with a revolution in Kyrgyzstan. I don't think that my leaving encouraged the people's revolt but this has as of yet remained unproven (note: that was a joke. Bad taste perhaps, but a joke nonetheless). I removed the below post upon arriving in London out of respect for the country and the volunteers still there, and I'd also ruffled the feathers of my now-sworn enemy to a sufficient extent so I felt the posting was no longer required in the public domain.

Now enough time has elapsed, and because I'm hoping to start blogging more often I've decided to re-post this because it was a major event in my life and other people's lives, and the true story should be told. Below is what I'd originally posted in it's entirety:

_______________________________________

The following, though I know how it will sound, is completely true.

Two weeks ago I was in Bishkek for the K-16 PDM (Project Design Management) seminar. My new counterpart from my new school was there and we designed, what hopefully will still someday be, a great project. We planned to take a room in the school and turn it into an English Language Resource Center. Because my new school is the largest public school in my Rayon (Kyrgyz equivalent of “County”) we are always hosting many teacher-training seminars. This room would be ideally suited to host those, as well as function as a one-stop source for English Language materials for teachers and students to use as a library of sorts, as well as a great study room/English club room. Because all Peace Corps seminars are ‘business casual’ dress, I packed my backpack full of slacks, dress shirts, my suit coat and a nice pair of black shoes. This left room enough for only one other change of clothes to use for ‘leisure activity’ (that will make sense further on). Anyway, PDM was highly successful and my counterpart and I both left feeling excited to embark on what will be a huge project involving grant writing and lots of time and organization—perfect for the summer when school is out!

Friday was given to PCV’s as a ‘travel day’ back to our sites to go back to work on Monday. However, Friday also happened to be my good friend Francis’ birthday. He decided to celebrate by renting an apartment in Bishkek large enough to host about 10 volunteers, and we would use that as the party location all night. So far, nothing here is out of the ordinary. Volunteers have been renting apartments in Bishkek for one-night-at-a-time parties for years. Because it was Francis’ birthday I bought a bottle of Beefeater Gin (by far, the best dry Gin to mix in a G n’ T), and a few other people bought some other nice liquors so that we wouldn’t be beholden to the Kyrgyz standard vodka that we’ve all come to loathe/love accordingly.

Once we dropped all of our baggage off at the apartment we left to go to the store to buy picnic supplies because the weather had taken a remarkable turn for the better. We bought a couple beers, bread, cheese, sausages, tomatoes, black olives and some guacamole and chips. Then we all caught a bus to head to a huge park to hang out listening to our portable iPod’s and just lounge in the sun. Thus far, considering the success of our PDM, and what this day was turning into it’s truly been one of my better days in country.

We got back to the apartment around 5 and started hanging out watching English-language TV and drinking the first of our mixed drinks. At this point there’s just a few of us there and it’s pretty chill. Then around 7 o’clock about 10 other volunteers show up (honestly, not a big deal ‘cause we’re all friends and the apartment was huge) and we began a rousing game of Beirut (or Beer-pong to west-coasters). At this point I was getting a bit exhausted due to the abnormal amount of sun I’d had that day, the few G n’ T’s I’d had (honestly, just a few) as well as the compounding of PDM and the parties that rightfully accompanied it, so when everyone decided to head out to a local bar (Metro, I think I’ve mentioned it in a previous blog) I decided to take a nap and pick up the party when everyone returned. About an hour later Kristen, who also decided to not go to the bar due to exhaustion, woke me up to go to the balcony and drink some Starbuck’s out of her French-press coffee maker (Thanks Mr. & Mrs. Kennedy—it was delicious). A short while later we decided to take a walk to the store around the corner and pick up some more cheese and crackers, as well as a couple of beers to split.

Once we got back to the apartment we sat in the room her and her roommate-for-the-night claimed earlier and ate and talked for about an hour until everyone came back from the bar. They all came in a bit agitated and proceeded to tell us about a drunk old man who’d accosted everyone outside the apartment trying to get money. He even grabbed my friend Alex by the neck to try and take him out of the elevator before he head-butted my other friend Lee as he was trying to subdue him. Everyone came back to the apartment without actually fighting back (something Peace Corps stresses repeatedly in our ‘safety-security’ sessions) and although shaken up we all started hanging out again and relaxing. At this point I was in the room with Kristen, Alex, Kelly, Erin and Amber. Alex and Amber had not been drinking at all (this will matter further down). About 30 minutes later there’s a very loud knock at the door, and when we open it about 5 militsia guys come in (the local cops) and proceed to question us and collect our ID’s. I tell Francis that he needs to call Mahabat (our Peace Corps Safety/Security person) immediately and inform her of the situation. He does, as well as a few other volunteers and she comes in about another 20 minutes. The entire time the militsia is there they are asking for a “fine” to make them go away. Now a “fine” in America means you get a ticket and deal with it in court. A “fine” in a 3rd world country means “bribe me so I don’t fuck with you any further.” Peace Corps always tells us not to, so no one does which only serves to frustrate the militsia. When Mahabat arrives the militsia asks for her ID and tries to bribe her into getting it back. At this point I’m stressed out so Kristen and I, as well as a few other volunteers, go back into her room where I start drinking a beer to calm down and we just keep to ourselves. This is where it gets interesting…

One of the militsia guys was so drunk when he arrived in our apartment that he rushed to our window and puked out of it. Yes. I’m serious. The cop was so drunk when he arrived that he puked out of our window. Then he puked in the bathroom a couple of times before sitting down with my friend Joe who offered him some water and pizza we had left over. The entire time he’s sitting down all he keeps saying is “I just want to go home; I don’t know why I’m here”. As this is going on the militsia keeps questioning Mahabat and threatening to report us to the Kyrgyz Ministry of Foreigners because of the “neighbor’s complaints of noise” and the “old drunk man’s (who attacked my friends) alleged story of abuse against him”. They also claim that because the apartment was only agreed to for 10 volunteers having 20 is illegal. Anyone who’s ever been to a Kyrgyz party knows that this “law” isn’t really enforced…but if you’re looking to mess with some Americans it really does do the trick. Anyway…

Mahabat at this point asks the militsia to point out the “really drunk” volunteers. The militsia man takes three ID’s off the top of the pile he has and proceeds to read off names. Once she realizes that he’s just going to go through the stack she stops him. Joe’s, Alex’s, and my name were all read by the militsia as being “really drunk”. Now, Joe is talking to the actually really drunk cop, Alex hasn’t drank all night and is in the room with me, and aside from the beer I was presently drinking I hadn’t drank for about 4 hours at this point. I’ve dealt with the militsia before and although they’re basically just thugs looking for a hand-out I’ve always been able to walk away without losing my shirt in the process. This time, however, Mahabat comes into the room I’m in (where she sees me drinking a beer…to my endless regret) with a Peace Corps security guard and tells us that Peace Corps is sending a bus over to take us all to the head office for the night. So, we all gather our belongings and head out. On the way down the 9 flights of stairs Joe carries on a full conversation with one of the security guards while I speak to anyone who will listen about how much utter bullshit this entire situation has turned out to be. On the bus ride over I try to lighten the dreary mood by cracking some (in retrospect inappropriate) jokes and just generally bitch about our situation. I really didn’t help anyone by doing this, and I think Mahabat was sick of listening to me…but damn man—you would never have these concerns in the 1st world…lessons to be learned, right?

When we get to the Peace Corps head office in Bishkek Claudia (our CD Country Director) is there and all she does is bitch at us when we’re all feeling like the victims of a corrupt system full of corrupt cops and (for once) a situation that wasn’t remotely created by any one of us. We all pass out on the tile floor wherever we can find room and wake up at 7am to have a meeting with Claudia to see what’s going on. She proceeds to tell us that now the embassy has gotten involved, Mahabat has still not gotten her ID back and she needs to go meet with the Embassy staff as well as the militsia and the alleged “complaint-filers” to gather evidence.
We’re all shocked, and when Alex tries to interject by saying “wow, Claudia…I think we’d all at least really appreciate a ‘how are you all holding up?’ question to maybe accompany the undeserved belittling you’ve just delivered to all of us” her response is “Well, I have at least four witnesses who say you were incredibly drunk last night so your word doesn’t mean anything to me right now.” At this point all 20 of us look at each other in disbelief because we all know there’s no way that can be true…

Later that afternoon we all find out that the next day we will all receive “Consideration of Administrative Separation” letters with which we’ll have 24hours to write a rebuttal to.

The next day we all go into Claudia’s office one by one to receive our letter and give our side of the story. Thank God we have nothing to hide because in this situation all every one of us has to do is tell the truth and the story will be rock solid…or so it would seem. When I finally go in for my letter and ‘interview’ my letter has a slight change from everyone else’s letter that basically states that when the militsia arrived I was drunk to the point of incomprehension and posed a security risk. I’m left staring at this in disbelief and I look Claudia in the eye and tell her that is completely and utterly untrue. Her response is “well Peace Corps staff said that you were unruly and they smelled alcohol on you” to which I respond “yeah, I was pissed off and voiced my opinion…my smell? Maybe it’s because I’ve been wearing the same clothes for a week of partying every night and I might have sweated out the limited Gin I had in my system while I was sleeping as everyone else was at the bar.” Then she says “well, I have at least four other volunteers that report seeing you drunk beyond control.” Now wait. Does that number sound familiar? Four people saw Alex (who wasn’t drinking) drunk, and four saw me as well? Hmmm….

My response to this line of questioning is “well Claudia, those ‘four’ are lying because I was in a room with Erin, Alex, Kelly, Kristen and Amber almost the entire time the militsia were present and you haven’t (at this point) interviewed any of them so who might these “four” mysterious liars be?” Her response “well, I’m not at liberty to say at the moment.” Interesting strategy, I must say…it would almost seem as if she was trying to turn us all against each other to get the response she was looking for, wouldn’t it? Luckily we were all planning on telling the truth so I wonder how that strategy worked out in the end…

As soon as my interview was through I went back to the Resource Center and typed up a full page in which I refuted every single one of the claims made against me, as well as everyone else, giving detailed time descriptions, names, and events as I clearly remembered them. I also apologized for my vocalized anger directed at the militsia (while we were on the bus and I was surrounded by only my peers and Peace Corps staff…how exactly is that a “security risk?”) and explained that it wasn’t due to drinking but brought on by the unfair treatment I felt we’d had by the militsia as well as the absurdity of the entire situation…what exactly did we do wrong?
I’m now back at site and all of our (20 fucking AdSep letters…unbelievable) letters and rebuttal’s are making their way to Washington where Peace Corps as well as the American Embassy in Kyrgyzstan will make a final decision. Because Joe, Alex, Kelly and I all had ‘extra’ lines we all felt like our futures in the program were more on the line than the rest (though an AdSep letter is absolutely serious and never to be taken lightly, so technically 20 people’s future is in doubt) so we had every volunteer that was there that we could find (volunteers at the party that live in Chui Oblast, where Bishkek is located, went back to their sites because they would have their interviews and receive their letters later) and had them sign our rebuttal letters verifying the veracity of our version of events and asserting their witnessing our behavior as not being remotely what the charges are that have been leveled against us.

Now we’re all on site-restriction which means we can’t leave until Peace Corps either says “okay, you’re clear” or “come to Bishkek, we’re sending you home”.
When I left for Peace Corps I never imagined I’d find myself in this kind of situation. I’ve been in-country now for almost 9 months and I finally feel like I’m starting to do the job I set out to do in the first place. I’ve got two successful English Clubs up and running, I ran a tremendously successful winter camp for my local youth, as well as youth in and around Talas city paid for with a PEPFAR grant from Washington, I’ve just begun work at a new school with a new counterpart who has the greatest “go-getter” attitude out of all of the other Kyrgyz teachers I’ve come into contact with, and I generally finally just feel like my service here has some direction. I can speak the local language, I’ve got great community contacts, my host-family situation is stellar and I can honestly say that for the first time since coming here I can easily see myself here for the next 1 ½ years remaining on my contract. Now all of this is in jeopardy due to a drunk man who attacked my friends, then called the cops who tried to collect a bribe and decided that they’d further fuck us when we wouldn’t comply. Also, for all their preaching to us during our training, Peace Corps hasn’t got a single one of our backs. Claudia seems much more concerned for her job and the political wrangling involved in covering this incident up, and the press that might follow, than the well-being and support of her volunteers that have all just been through a fairly traumatic occurrence at the hands of corrupt cops and a broken system in a 3rd world country we’re supposedly welcome in.

Oh, and for the record, when the neighbors of the apartment we’d rented were interviewed they all said that they didn’t even know Americans were in their building, and not a single one of them called the cops or complained at all. Also, when the drunk man was contacted (sober) he apologized profusely and regrets ever exacerbating a situation that he admitted was completely his fault. Alex has decided to press charges against him for assault…which Claudia tried to talk him out of because of the “time and work it would take.” Thanks for supporting us Claudia, it really means a lot.

Now I’m sitting in limbo waiting for an answer. Will I stay or will I go. If I’m cleared, will I even want to stay? If I’m not, and I’m sent back home…what then? Time will tell. I promise another blog post to conclude this as soon as I find out!

Finally...an update! Albeit a brief one:(

2009-09-25T04:57:00.000-07:00

So much has happened over the past couple weeks…wait, how long has it been since I wrote a new post? Months!? No…well then, I guess not much has happened at all then, you know, all things considered. I did quit my job at Harrods, then I moved, now I will be starting a new job on the 28th, I had two friends visit me for a week, then another friend visited for another week, I had an amazing day today wandering around Hampstead Heath park, and am going to make dinner in a bit. That should do a fairly good job of catching ya’ll up to my latest happenings. What’s that? You want details? You actually want to hear about what I’m thinking and my opinions on how things are going over here? Well, you must not be upper management at Harrods then…’nuff on that though, I’m not sure what sort of contract they still have me under…
Yes yes, the excitement that I felt at the outset of my time with Harrods was quickly over-shadowed by the deep rooted dread that begins at the pit of one’s stomach when they realize that they’re heading down the wrong path in life…or working in the service industry. For me it was a bit of both actually. It all culminated one day when I was asked to go to a different restaurant than the one I was bartending at to be a busser, which, for those of you in America that have never had the pleasure of serving asshole’s food or drink professionally (and all customer’s do generally morph into one gigantic asshole by the time you’re wrapping up your third double shift in four days and the comedian at the six-top orders another round of mojito’s without actually knowing what they are before complaining that they took too Goddamn long to make), a busser is the Mexican (in America, that is) in the restaurant that takes away your dirty dishes. However I don’t speak Spanish, and I was wearing a bow-tie and button-down shirt whilst being assigned to the Kid’s restaurant to clean up after their half-eaten hotdogs laying amongst the chips on a multi-colored table laden with grotesque written Disney jubilation along the lines of “I’m a boy, I’m a real boy!” while the actual servers all had atmosphere-appropriate ugly brown shirts. If any customers wondered why the dapper young gentleman was scrubbing away at their child’s ketchup-assisted rendition of The Scream while the brown-shirted plebeians all giggled with joy, they showed no outward emotion whatsoever. That’s when I decided that my degree from the University of Washington was just not being put to good use.
Sure, I said that I came over here to act and pursue music…both of which I’m still doing, but I also have pride. I’m not saying that people who work in the service industry don’t, it’s just that I have pride that is inflated, absurd, undeserved, and generally recalcitrant when it comes to viewing myself and my profession in an egotistical light. That last bit about the “profession” is something I have only very recently discovered about myself, and although the entire previous sentence could read as either sarcasm or actual self-loathing I prefer to view it as factual. I am in fact prideful and boastful, however my knowledge of these facts generally (unless I hear otherwise sometime soon) keeps both pompous personality persuasions in check. At least it did until I stormed up to my manager and gave my one-week’s notice. Yes, they only required one week’s notice because I was still in my probationary period, and yes I worked every single effortless day until my last. That said, I’m on to bigger and better!
I got hired in a sales position with Vanet Apartments to act as the point-man for new international business and liaison for current international clients. I have nothing else to say about this as I haven’t started yet…but my pride is excited to be ‘back in the game.’
I also moved. My lease in Florence Villa was up September 15th, and although the landlord gave me the option of extending I knew that I wasn’t going to stay there forever. It was an excellent transition house, but I’ve moved on to bigger (figuratively, not literally) and better (literally, not figuratively). I’m now living with three great mates (no, we’re not actually attempting procreation, that’s just the British word for “friend”) of mine in Zone 2 which is closer to the city and our house is located in a very nice suburb right across the street from Ringo Starr’s son, seriously…well, if what my mat-er-friends have told me is true. Unless, that is, they were just taking the piss and having a laugh at my expense. There, some more Britishisms for you to chew onJ
Other than all that, not much has really changed. I still love it over here and today I spent a couple of hours wandering around Hampstead Heath which is the largest park in London and full of nature trails and natural growth—it also has a view of the entire city from Parliament Hill, and is only about 20 minutes from my new place! I’ve got the transportation system down pat, and am slowly working on my greater England geography—but not too seriously, the spellings here don’t match up at all with how we (as Americans, that is) would naturally want to say things. Take Leicester for example. As in, Leicester Square. It’s actually pronounced Lester, not Li-chest-er. Or Gloucester. It’s pronounced Gloster. Mind boggling. Yet when I ask my friends over here if they actually do see “Lester” when looking at “Leicester” they all look at me like I’m crazy and say “of course!” so I think that I ultimately don’t really stand much of a chance…better to shift my focus elsewhere.
I got a chance to see Coldplay with Jay-Z at Wembley Stadium for FREE the other night, that was cool. My friend (who’s American) Aaron works as the Digital Marketing Manager for Polydor Records in London and hooked them up. That was an amazing show and the few beers that I bought for him hardly made up for the experience, but he’s also the one who hooked me up with the amazing night at Bungalow 8 nightclub in Covent Garden way back when I met La Roux and Sebfontaine so I doubt he expects me to ever actually repay him. Having my friends visit was cool. I like showing people around, and when Stacey stayed with me I found the perfect excuse and finally went to every single tourist attraction in the city in 48 hours! I’m glad she came because I probably would have just kept putting that off forever. The highlight of that experience was seeing “As You Like It” at the Shakespeare Globe Theater for five pounds! We were standing like the crowd used to back in the day and it was the best Shakespeare I’ve ever seen! Simply incredible…
I’ve written a script that my cousin Charlie said would be great as a short play, so I think I’m going to take her advice and get involved with the Actors’ Center here once I get a solid schedule at work to get that off the ground. I’m also performing at open-mic’s regularly and having a blast with that. Since I arrived I’ve had TWO jobs in this terrible economy, my creative side has been allowed to flourish with new opportunities around every corner and my prideful side is finally going to get the profession that it’s been longing for. Not a bad move, all things considered.
I do miss Kyrgyzstan though, and tomorrow I’m going to go to the Kyrgyz embassy in London to try to wrangle up a weekly language tutor…I won’t eat беш бармарк ever again but I would like to keep my language going. If anything just to rub it in the volunteers’ faces that I meet up with after they COS (Close of Service)…
That’s about it! I’d promise to keep this more up to date, but I think we all know that’s just not going to happen. Remember, if slow and steady wins the race then late and lethargic should set the pace. Goodnight and good luck.

Ahh...I finally have a job and it's summer in London! Wait, only one of those is actually a good thing...

2009-07-10T09:18:00.001-07:00

Last night I celebrated my two month anniversary with London. I know, I know we’re still in that ‘lovey-dovey’ stage, but I’m beginning to think that she really could be The One. London is everything I’ve been looking for thus far: amazing nightlife, endless creative opportunities and outlets, central location for European travel, beautiful women, friendly people, and of course, the double-decker busses! Those really are amazing, by the way. If you’re lucky enough to grab the front seats on the top deck you’ve basically just been given the best sightseeing tour available for the cost of your one-way ticket! Why would anyone sign up for a cheesy tour when they can see the real London for a little over a quid (that’s slang for £ pound…like the American ‘buck’)?

To celebrate London and my two-month commitment to each other I decided to finally get out and attend an open mic night. I brought my new Italian housemate, Laura, along and we went to the closest open mic near our house, The Ship Aground—it’s a Jamaican Reggae bar! Needless to say my music didn’t necessarily impress the dreadlocked and grooving crowd, but I got many compliments after my two-song set and Laura said I did a great job…well she actually said “you-a did superb music-a style” but I got the gist:) The owner of Florence Villa (the name of my house, but don’t get too excited—it’s still East London) told me about two more open mic nights near our place up in Walthamstow that would probably be a little bit more conducive to my music-a style, so I’m going to try to start going to those regularly now that I’ve gotten my feet wet.

It’s strange how I feel, because not too long ago I was in Seattle surrounded by my family and closest friends feeling completely out of place. Leaving Kyrgyzstan due to political bullshit and director bias certainly didn’t help matters, but for the first time in a long while I feel like I’m really doing what I need to be…what I’m “meant” to be doing, if you will. I have been making excellent in-roads with my family over here and hope to see them again sometime very soon. My Grandfather is eager to have me stay with him and my Grandmother in the countryside for a weekend, and if I can get the time off from work I think I’m going to take them up on that. It’d be more refreshing than going to another house-party that keeps me occupied until 6:30am…though I did meet a great girl because of that; work the next day was horrible, but fuck it:)

Work. That’s something new as well. Coming out of unemployment for two and a half months I started working in The Terrace Bar on the fourth floor of Harrods doing 9 hour shifts behind the bar for seven days straight (now I’ve got two days off per week, but that first stint was torture!) and I love it! Being a bartender is amazing. I now know that beyond a shadow of a doubt when I retire as a multi-millionaire (one can always dream, right?) I’m going to buy a bar and run it with minimal staff for the rest of my life. There’s something about people and alcohol that have always clicked with me—not to mention the creativity required for mixing cocktails for princes and celebrities…seriously, but I can’t name name’s because I signed a VERY strict confidentiality agreement with Harrods (in fact, I’ve probably said too much already so don’t tell anyone, okay?). The people that I work with are from all over the world, there’s an Australian, a Spaniard, a couple Brazilians, and tons of Italians, oh, and one British girl. It’s strange to think about it, but the only British people that work in the service industry are bartenders. You almost never see Brits working as servers…interesting indeed, I wonder why? Must be a class status thing—although all but dead, there’s definitely remnants of the class system here. It’s most notable in the accents, but a lot of it comes down to job status and postcode. I live in E10 which basically translates to a Londoner as “I live in a shithole”. If you have any W1, or N1 postcode then you’re incredibly posh and probably drink in my bar. God, I love it here:)

Side note: For those of you that are curious about British culture and maybe fancy yourself a bit of an anglophile then google “Meet The British”. Although it’s no longer available through the BBC website a savvy techy could probably track down some clips elsewhere. Meet The British was a series of films created by the BBC to sell British culture abroad. All of these films were created in the 1960’s and have been compiled into one 60 minute show. I saw it at about 2:30 the other night/morning after coming back from yet another insanely crazy house-party. I was sitting on the couch drinking some water and eating toast when I almost fell off due to laughing so hard at the ridiculousness of it all! Seriously. If you can, look for Meet The British and tell your friends. It’s probably the greatest documentary of British life ever created and is hilarious in its poor 1960’s production quality.

London has also afforded me my first opportunity to save someone’s life. Before I get into that, allow me to lay the groundwork for how my day started and progressed. It was two Sunday’s ago and USA was playing Brazil (2-0, USA going into the half—incredible match!) so I mentioned to my friend Angela who works with me and is Brazilian that we should go to the pub and cheer our respective nations together. She agreed, and we went to a local pub in Knightsbridge just around the corner from Harrods to have a few pints and watch the game. After the incredible match we wanted to keep the party going so she suggested that we go to a Brazilian dance club she knows about near Holborn. I’m excited, she’s hot, we’re drunk, I’m thinking HELL YES! So we go. We ended up staying at this club until it closed just dancing, and drinking, having a blast before I walked her to her bus stop. We ended up making out obnoxiously but neither of us cared, and once her bus arrived to take her home I slowly made the walk back to my bus stop to go all the way back to East London…feeling pretty damn good, I might add:) Anyway, as I was standing at my bus stop I saw the number 38 complete a turn into the bus lane heading for my stop when a guy stepped right out in front of it and got clipped by the corner! He immediately fell to the pavement and the bus slammed on the brakes. Before I could even comprehend what had happened I was already at the poor man’s side holding his hand and staring at a seven inch long gash along his forehead that was open about an inch wide exposing his skull. Blood was pouring out of his head pooling on the pavement and another bloke came off the bus to help me with some napkins. So I pinched his head together and applied pressure to his wound with the napkins soaking up the blood. He was obviously in shock because his eyes kept rolling in the back of his head, then snapping back and looking at me with an iron grip on my hand asking “what happened?” It only took the ambulance about 3 minutes to arrive after another bus passenger dialed 999 (like 911, but in England) and they took him from there. I was able to stay remarkably calm during the whole incident because of my adrenaline, but once the cops started taking my statement and asking me what happened all I could do was stare at my hands covered in the man’s blood and I came this close to having a panic attack. Luckily I didn’t lose my shit completely and ended up talking to a nice lady cop for about an hour while they wrapped up the scene. She eventually drove me to the hospital to get blood work done (the last thing I want is to catch anything from this dude’s blood), and I eventually got back home at about six in the morning. Angela and I have decided it’s best that we just remain friends, and I recently completed the pile of paperwork the Metropolitan Police sent me to fill out as an eye-witness to the scene. All in a day’s work my friends, all in a day’s work!

London is CRAZY!!

Other than that bit of chaos, there’s really not too much more for me to report. I’ve got a great group of friends that seems to be ever-expanding, my family here is amazing—I’m going to Thai with Laura (my new Italian housemate) and my cousin Rose and her boyfriend in about two hours, and I finally have a job!

Things are looking good all around…if only the weather was better:)

London-Town, the land of adventure!

2009-06-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

Wow, it really has been a long time since I’ve updated this! So much has happened I don’t even know where to start. Then again, like most modern stories I suppose the best place to start is right in the middle, then I can chop and change the order of events until the conclusion then ties it all together—I’d be considered a cinematic genius (if I’d come up with this in the 1980’s), but maybe that technique isn’t best suited to my narration…how about the beginning? Yeah, that sounds good.

After an epic month back home in Seattle where I spent as little money as possible while enjoying the company of my closest friends (you all know who you are, and you made my integration back into the hedonistic consumerism of America so much easier) and being treated to, in all fairness, more free drinks than I possibly deserved (again, you know who you are, and thank you:) I finally felt that it was time to leave Seattle for my next adventure. It’s strange, but coming home I just felt out of place. My friend’s were all still there, and I know now that we’ll all remain friends for many years to come, but I felt like I didn’t belong there. I kept thinking about my path, should I choose to stay, in Seattle: get a job, get into grad school, get a real job, get married, get kids, get rich, get dead. Yeeeaaah, it just didn’t appeal to me the way that it probably should, or does to most. Perhaps it was the time I’d spent in Kyrgyzstan walking 500+ yards just to get water, the constant lack of electricity, the terrible food, harsh living conditions, or the shitting outside that made me realize that people can live on, and with, a lot less than most 1st world country dwellers will really ever understand. I just knew that there was more for me somewhere else. At least that’s what I told my parents, the truth is I just wanted to get the fuck out of Dodge. I’d done the whole “Seattle” thing, it was time for something new, something crazy, something sort of like trying to make it as an American actor living in London. So, that’s what I decided to do.

Before I could do that though I wanted to check in with my old Peace Corps buddies that also got their shit kicked back to America. I’d been in contact with most of them, but Alex and Jonathan and I really stayed in touch so we all decided that we’d meet in New Jersey and stay with Alex before I left from Newark on my epic voyage (again). We spent three days in New Jersey, and one night in Manhattan. I could go on here but let me just sum up those three days with some very carefully chosen bullet-points:

*New Jersey is beautiful if you can get past the smell wafting from the factories right next to just about everywhere you need to drive.

*The suburbs are actually beautiful. That’s because everyone that lives there works in New York.

*When you go out in Manhattan with your buddies, then wake up in a girls’ apartment in Brooklyn only to have to catch a train to get back to New Jersey where your buddies pick you up and you all go out for ice cream (seriously, Cold Stone is an amazing hang-over cure!) you know you’ve done something right.

*Rutgers University is out of this world. Coming from the West Coast it’s like another planet. They talk different, look different, drink different; it’s really really just different. But they DO know how to party!

*Catching an international flight at 8am from Newark means that you have to be there by 5 to check luggage and make sure you’re on board, which means when bars close at 2 you really don’t have a choice but to keep partying and hope someone is sober enough to drive you to the airport (thanks Alex).

*You know you’ve got good friends when one of them flies all the way from Minnesota only to go back two days later just to say goodbye. Jonathan, you rock my friend! Also, when one of them convinces his parents to serve you a delicious flank steak on your last night there because he knows you’re going to be dirt poor and starving once you arrive. Alex, thanks buddy!

Well, I hope that was educational.

After all of this I boarded Virgin Atlantic on a one-way ticket to London. If you ever get a chance, fly Virgin Atlantic. It’s the absolute nicest international carrier I’ve ever flown…I could go into details, but you really should just take my word for it and be pleasantly surprised.
I forgot to mention (funny statement considering I could have just inserted what I’m about to say into the first paragraph, thereby eliminating the need to elucidate here; but whatever) that about two nights before I left for New Jersey (or was it the night before? …ask my Mom) I received an invitation to audition for a TV Pilot “The Leisure Virus” on May 10th—the day after the night I was slated to arrive! Of course I said yes, then promptly forgot all about it when my mate Ian picked me up from King’s Cross and we proceeded to go out in Angel until about 4am. I woke up the next morning with a pounding headache, sore throat and severe congestion but I still managed to barely make the audition at 1pm. The next day I found out that I got the part. Thanks alcohol!

Which brings me to my next interesting bit of news. Because I realized that my monetary situation would be a little less than flush once I got to the land of the one-for-two-dollar deal I decided that I wouldn’t buy any booze (thereby cutting one of my greatest expenditures over the past ten years) until I had found some gainful employment. Thus far I’ve managed to stay quite true to this because a) I have some very generous friends here, and b) my definition of what constitutes actually buying booze is quite flexible. However, my money is secure and I have every sign in the world that a job is looming…more on that later…

I stayed with Ian for about three nights, during which we both made a trip up to Leyton to check out Florence Villa (seriously, it’s the name on the door—but don’t get your hopes up) where I met my future house-mates. I’d arranged this interview after doing some research online prior to my London arrival and got in contact with the man in charge, Simon, who invited me to see the place on Monday the 11th—two days after I arrived. They invited me to move in which was quite nice, but there was the little matter of rent. See, I had only the money in my pocket and no job. I’ve worked in property management and I was fully aware that I was any landlord’s worst nightmare, but I was honest and said “okay, so ‘first and last month’s rent’ is all fine and good, but how about I just give you first months’ rent and we call it a deal?” As Simon was carefully considering a delicate way to say “fuck off you bastard” my friend Ian chimed in, and said “no worries, I’ll cover James’ last month’s rent.” I looked at Ian about as shocked as every single one of my housemates sitting there with Simon and, well, it worked. Now I just have to work out a payment plan with Ian to get him back £390 once I start working. Ian, thank you!
Now, for those of you playing the home game that means that in the first 48 hours of touching the great green British soil I 1) got pissed drunk with my long time mate Ian, 2) had an audition, 3) got the part, and 4) found a place to live. Not bad for a first going, eh? I stayed with Ian for another couple of nights before crashing at my Cousin Rose’s place. That weekend I went up to Pangbourne, Reading to stay with my Aunt and Uncle and see my Grandparents while enjoying the sights and sounds of the British countryside. The next Monday I moved in to my place here in Leyton—it’s only £390 per month with ALL utilities, including internet and 500+ channels of Sky TV included. Plus, it’s only about a 40 minute bus ride or a combined 20 minute bus/tube ride into the center of the city. Not bad James, not bad indeed (you must be saying). I’d be quite inclined to agree with you too, however one more issue has to be addressed before we can all start giving each other blowjobs. I have still not found work. Every single hour of every single day I walked the streets of London handing out my resume like a pauper selling candle wax only to be rebuffed with the same tired excuse “the economy, the economy, the economy won’t let me hire you.” “Who is this economy?” I wondered aloud as I continued my fruitless journey into the seedy underbelly of London’s unemployment lines just to register for my National Insurance Number. Why does this “economy” hate me so? Oh yeah, it’s not personal it’s just business, right? Right. So I continued on…and on and on and on and on…until WHAM! It hit me like a Tyson left circa ’86. I actually can’t pay rent if I don’t have a job. First and last month’s rent is paid for, but what about June-July and July-August (I only signed a four month lease May 14 through September 14…another sweet deal)? That’s two rent payments that I can’t make…oh, and I only have £100 to my name for the next _________ until I get a job! That’s when my Grandparent’s picked me up to attend my Cousin’s art exhibition and gave me a bond worth £1300. They said they purchased it a while ago to give to me when I turned 21 but because our family history is a little off kilter (that’s, like, 30 more blogs I’ll never write) they’ve never had a chance to give it to me until now. “Thanks,” I say as I’m quietly thanking God, Yahweh, Allah, Buddah, Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, and the seven dwarfs “this has completely covered my rent and expenses for the summer.” I spent all day lounging in the sun with my house-mates Gidon and Diana on Monday and Gidon said it best: “just when you thought you couldn’t go any further, the universe opened up and said ‘you’re on the right path man, here’s a gift.’” Yup my friend. Yup indeed.

Don’t take this the wrong way; just because I was lounging in the sun all day on Monday doesn’t mean that I haven’t stopped my futile perquisition of perpetual inefficacy. Quite the contrary, I have a final interview with senior management at Harrods tomorrow (Friday) to be a bartender in their Terrace Bar, I have an interview at Career Legal for a data-entry job starting next month, and the guy that I acted with in the Pilot brought me in to his company, Casting Call Pro, to work a couple of days in exchange for membership—which, according to the owner, could very well lead to a full time job with them in a month or two! So, I decided that as long as the sun is shining (which in London is rare) I’d take full advantage of it; not stress, and relax because ultimately my rent is paid for and I won’t starve. Life is good.

On the acting front I’ve had four auditions and I have another one tomorrow (Friday) and one on Sunday. That’s six auditions in the first month that I’ve been here and there’s no sign it’s going to slow down! Out of the four I’ve had I’ve landed the part in one, and these other two might just pan out—so the odds are looking good my friends, very good indeed! This is encouraging because I wasn’t sure that there was much need for American actors of my age over here. I thought I might have to brush up on my British accent and play the fool, but no. Because of the professional work I did in Seattle before leaving for Kyrgyzstan I was able to join British Actors’ Equity which is basically a BIG stamp saying “this guy’s serious, knows how to act, and has been employed before” and the fact that I’m American (and make that fact very well known on my resume as well as online info) seems to be working to my advantage! I had the theory that there would be work out here for American’s, but because VISA’s are so tough to get there wouldn’t be a lot of competition…it’s looking like I might be quite right. Stay tuned!

If, out of some sick curiosity, you want to see my professional actor page visit: www.spotlight.com and type in 6574-6724-7449 where it asks for a “Name or PIN.”

Now, I’m sure all of my female friends are wondering how the girlfriend search is going. Well, my first week here I met a Canadian girl at an Internet Café, took her out the next week for an epic 24 hour long date and she’s since moved to the Greek island of Ios for the summer. Basically if you’re a fan of “signs” and where they’re pointing you, within the first 72 hours of arriving in London I found a flat, got a great acting gig, and got a girl. Right, she’s in Ios this summer, but it’s the point of the whole thing right? If I can pull a Canadian girl in Britain who knows where I’ll go from here! Things are looking good my friends, looking very good indeed!
Oh, although the nice little bonus my Grandparent’s gave me will cover my rent and basic food supply for the summer if you would like to send me anything—even a little postcard would be nice—please don’t hesitate to do so at this address (for the next three months):

James Swift
27 Norton Rd.
Leyton
Greater London
E10 7LQ
United Kingdom

I’m trying to think about what else I can say about my time over here thus far…I’ve solidified some already great existing friendships, made a ton more and in my first month already have a really solid base of great friends, not to mention my amazing housemates. Yeah, let’s talk about them! Gidon is a Dutch Jew who grew up in Southern California and is now living in London working on a music career. He’s one of the most chilled-out dude’s I’ve ever met! Diana is a Czech girl getting her MFA in Documentary Film, and we found like-spirits once we had a walk down the canal near my place to Victoria Park where we met up with some of my other friends and ate and drank all day (I really am looking for work, I swear!). Kristi is a Canadian girl (a different one) who’s getting her Ph.D in the Psychology of Human Sexuality…dinner conversations with her are great! Rob is an Irish guy getting his medical degree in physiology and he’s training to be “Mr. Ireland.” He rocks, is addicted to good coffee and knows how to party. I’m the unemployed American who moved to London after getting kicked out of Peace Corps and is now trying to be an actor. We’ve all got some great stories, and the house is amazing! It’s three stories, has a full kitchen, large garden with a creek, two decks, BBQ, washer/dryer and excellent chilled-out lounging abilities. The owner, Simon, is a guy who lived in the Caribbean as a diving instructor, became a primary school teacher, parties like a rock-star, found himself working in IT and now owns the house I live in, the one next door, makes bank, and sails on the weekends. All in all, I’d say this is the absolute perfect house for me to be in right now. Even if it is only for four months…fuck, what I great introduction into the international flavor London has to offer!

Family has been amazing too. It would take many more blogs (mentioned as a slight joke above) to explain this one, but they’ve all really taken me in as a member of the family with only a single connection lost decades ago to go on. My Aunt, Caroline, even allowed me to use her house as my ‘permanent address’ so that I could get my bank account set up, join British Actors’ Equity Union, get my National Insurance Number and so on and on and on…so generous and loving for a woman I’ve met less than five times. But we truly are family, and I can’t help but feel so thankful to be getting to know them all now. My Grandparents are amazing, and I really wish I’d known them longer but they’re so funny, nice and warm it’s a wonder I never did. My cousin Rose is an AMAZING artist. When I went to her art exhibition I couldn’t think of enough words to describe how in awe I was of her talent, so I was left with a few simple sentences. Coming from someone who messes up tracing a line on a page, and knows nothing of art or technique, I could still see how gifted she is. My other Cousin, Charlie, is also quite talented at music. Although she wouldn’t let me listen to any of her recordings when I visited two weeks ago, her talent with sound-design is unbelievable for being only 15 (and looking older than 18 year old Rose). Check out my Spotlight page, and click on ‘voice clips’ for proof. My Uncle is a really cool guy, he’s quick to joke and friendly with everyone. My entire family over here is actually just one big happy bunch of loving people. I feel honored to be a part of them (finally) and hope to have many more experiences to come.

I can’t think of much else to say actually. It’s been an action-packed month with some train mis-haps, beautiful days spent doing nothing but lounging in one of London’s many parks (I’ve now officially spent an entire day in three of them), stressing out about lack of work then having a gift-from-God in the form of my lovely Grandparents’ given bond saying ‘chill dude, come what may my man’, meeting new friends, great girls (God bless you Canada) and even greater opportunity and just generally having the time of my life. All that for nothing but a one-way ticket on the greatest airline on earth for $280. Not bad. Not bad at all, I’d say!

Cheerio!

Old life, present life, new one a-comin'!!

2009-04-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, it has been quite a while since I’ve updated this! Maybe it’s because I just haven’t been able to put into words what I’ve been up to, or maybe it’s because I haven’t actually been up to anything…probably the latter, though the former was closer to the truth when I first got back to America. Either way, it’s good to be back!

Coming back from Kyrgyzstan was difficult. Once I was on the flight from New York to Seattle I was by myself and my own thoughts for the first time since the whole debacle began. I wrote a lot and watched as many movies as possible before my terrible battery ran out, but nothing could prepare me for the shock of being back home in Seattle. As soon as I entered SeaTac Airport from the airplane I almost had a panic attack. It was all I could do to keep myself together as I made my way to the baggage claim to reclaim my baggage that, as fate would have it, was missing (only to be miraculously delivered to my parents’ house three days later). Not only missing, but there was no record of it even leaving Bishkek! Okay, I thought as I shrugged off yet another setback, at least I’m safe. My parents picked me up and I struggled to explain to them what had precipitated my return from Peace Corps. I slept remarkably well that night, and awoke the following morning to have the first proper shower I’d had in nine months. It was just as amazing as I’d imagined, and my skin was drier than I’d ever experienced…it’s remarkable how well one’s body adjusts to periodic vs. regular bathing!

I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks just reconnecting with my friends here and laying around the couch at my parents house in Woodinville figuring out my next step. That’s probably why I’ve decided to post this now, because I’ve finally figured it out! Well, not exactly…but I have an idea, and many great men have relied on less…no, actually, if they had less than an idea I guess they’d just be lucky not great…hmmm…well, with what I’m going to do I think I’m going to need both the ‘idea’ and a not insignificant amount of ‘luck’ to get me through it. Anyway, I’m moving to London!! I’ve always said that I wanted to take advantage of my dual citizenship and live and work in London for a time, and I knew that following a successful twenty-seven months in Peace Corps I’d actually do it so why should a not-so-much-though-still-quite-nice-just-cut-short-successful nine months make that decision any different? Exactly. Have a plan, stick to it. So I bought my ticket on www.1800flyeurope.com one-way from Newark, New Jersey to London on Virgin Atlantic for $280!!! I swear I’m not going to make a habit out of plugging things like this, but if you want some cheap airfare from the US to Europe check that website out!

Before I leave I’m going to spend about three days in New Jersey with my friends Alex and Joe, two guys who also “had” to leave Kyrgyzstan with me, kicking around Tony Soprano’s hometown wreaking havoc on unsuspecting “girls in their summer clothes” (sorry, blatant Boss reference) while soaking up as much Americana as I can before moving to the old country!
Why London, one might ask? Why not Paris, or Rome, or Fiji? Well, to this query I have but three simple responses: 1) they speak roughly the same language as your dear writer here, and after struggling with a Turkish-Asian ancient hybrid I just don’t want to think that hard, 2) I have family and friends there to ease my transition, so as much as being a homeless backpacker sounds romantic and not altogether an impossibility considering my lack of funds as of late, the possibility of having a couch when I need it does sound quite nice. Plus, I’ve really taken to bathing on a regular basis and I’m just not willing to give that up again! 3) I want to act. No, that statement will not be followed by a clever quip meant to stimulate your frontal lobe into an uncontrolled example of what makes gelotologists love their work, no. I’m serious. I’ve acted ever since I was a freshman in High School and even had the audacity to major in it as a student in University. Though my love for the stage and faith in America’s economy have both given me little hope for the future, I feel that now is the perfect opportunity to devote myself entirely to a passion that might (or might not, but there’s no need to mention that here) work out and in a country where my “type” will be a valuable asset. I’ve wanted to act ever since I first discovered that I have a knack for dressing up in other people’s clothes and pretending to be someone I’m not. It’s an art. Seriously, any three year old will tell you that. But in order to set myself up for the greatest chance of success I feel that I need to do it somewhere other than New York or L.A. where there are thousands of American males who look and act just like me. I’m at the unique advantage of having dual citizenship, and I’ve recently been accepted to join Spotlight, the professional actors database for Great Britain so I’m off to a good start. I also recently discovered that as soon as I get my NIN (National Insurance Number, like a Social Security Number but in England it does more for you) I’m eligible to join British Actors’ Equity Union, the premier union for professional actors in Great Britain. So there you have it. As soon as I arrive in the great London town I’ll be visible to all of the agents and casting directors that could make or break me, and as soon as I sort out my NIN I’ll be able to join the union which means I’m then eligible for ALL professional work. All of this can possibly take place within my first month of residence.

Enough bragging, I’m pretty excited but there’s no reason to harp on these things here. I’m writing all this to let you know that I’m not just doing this on a whim. I’m treating my moving to London as a serious endeavor, and I think I may actually have a shot at getting some good work over there. At least I won’t have to work my way up as an extra like I would if I moved to L.A. or New York. Nor will I have to deal with any of the bullshit that comes with the acting scene in those two cities; I’m sure London will have plenty of its own to keep me rolling my eyes but it should be just foreign enough to keep things exciting! At least that’s my sanguine ideal of what I actually don’t know anything about. We’ll see, and rest assured I’ll be updating this blog to let ya’ll know how things progress.

Before I leave I’m just going to keep hanging out with my friends and getting as much time with family in as I possibly can. May 9th is the last day I’ll be in America for ____________months or years. Then again I was pretty sure I’d be living in Kyrgyzstan for two years instead of the short nine months it turned out to be so I guess that old adage is true: Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans. I can only hope that life has something good and exciting ready to greet me on the grand isle!

Changing job, changing weather, etc.

2009-03-06T01:19:00.000-08:00

I had my first day of work in over two months today and it was awesome! Maybe it was the kids fresh off a two month winter hiatus and their accordingly renewed spirits that helped, perhaps it was my own re-energized vigor and commitment that just gave me some different colored lenses to see through, then again, maybe it’s because I just so happened to be in a completely different school with a new teacher that actually gives a damn. Yup, that’s right. I’m in a brand new school. I was supposed to start last week like everybody else, but the Sunday before my “first” day back my (now former) counterpart called and said that she was in Bishkek, but she’d be back soon. Knowing full well Peace Corps’ policy of TEFL volunteers being required to work with their counterparts at all times (it also goes so far as to state that should a counterpart be absent, the volunteer must be too…we’re not substitute teachers after all) I smiled into my phone and said “okay, just call me when you return.” When Thursday finally rolled around and I still hadn’t heard from her, and hadn’t gone to school myself, I finally tried to reach her to no avail. That’s when I called my PM (Program Manager) and said “fuck this, I’m out.”
Now I’m sure you just read that final statement of mine and thought to yourself “well, that’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? James probably could have shown a bit of restraint and given it a bit more time…or, it could just be a cultural thing!” I would actually be inclined to agree with you…had this occurred only once, twice ah hell, if it had even occurred only seven times I still would have sucked it up, chalked it up to some miscommunication and let bygones be bygones. However, at my former school with my former counterpart this whole “Ah, James’ll be there I don’t have to really work” attitude was so consistent an annoyance that my PM back in NOVEMBER wanted to move me. My thought then was “but I fit in here, I know the kids and my way around, why bother?” Although after a two-month period of literally doing nothing but watch the world become a frozen wasteland from the comfort of my freezing cold bed in near zero temperature bedroom I found that I really had lost all patience…especially considering it was the first bloody week back! So I called my PM, apologized for not allowing her to move me sooner and found a new job in a new school with a new counterpart about a mile from my old school. I didn’t have to change sites, so I’m still living with my awesome host-family and getting along great!
My first day back was truly amazing. I had forgotten how much energy I get from the kids in the class. They’re so crazy and goofy they really break down the “adult” barriers that seem to be getting more and more a part of my comfort zone and they reminded me how much I truly do love what I’m doing here. That’s not to say that I love teaching in general. I still feel as though I owe my former teachers a long heart-felt apology for ever bothering to exist in their time, but it’s the greater work that I’m doing here that reminded me today how cool this job really is. Also, my new counterpart is phenomenal. We’ll see how the rest of this year and next year go but already today I saw a distinct difference between her methods and my former counterparts’. You know, she actually has a lesson plan and uses group activities to engage the kids instead of just standing there and reading from a dry Soviet-era text expecting them to learn on their own. Also, she goofs around with the kids. They obviously love her and she obviously really likes what she’s doing…I don’t particularly want to go into more here so you’ll just have to read some prior blogs for an adequate comparison to what I came from…sorry—today was just too good to rehash bad experiences!
So, yeah…life is good, or in Kyrgyz жакшы өмүр, sorry, I just find this language pretty fascinating is all:)
On another note…I just recently got accepted into the position of PCVT (Peace Corps Volunteer Trainer) and will be training the new volunteers the first month they’re here. I am a Kyrgyz Culture Trainer so I will visit each of the training sites during my four weeks as a trainer (PST is three months long so there are three shifts of PCVT’s…I’m in the first:)) to deliver presentations on Kyrgyz culture and answer questions as the arise. Which, considering the fact that I’m in the first shift there should be plenty! This also means that I have to be away from my site for a month living in an apartment in Kant (it’s a big-ish city about an hour away from Bishkek) with the other PCVT’s. At first I was excited at the prospect of what being a PCVT will entail, i.e. meet the new volunteer’s fresh from America, kick it with other volunteers working together on projects for a month in close proximity to the “big city”, etc. But now I’m not so sure. I’m still excited to be a PCVT, and can’t wait to get started working with the other volunteers and Peace Corps staff on developing some really great PST material, but I just started work at my new school so it’s going to make my transition there all the more difficult. Plus, today after my first 7th form class a couple students came up to me immediately afterward asking about when I’d be starting my English Club! When I told them I couldn’t do it until the end of April, they all looked really disappointed. I’m sure parents are used to seeing their kids get disappointed but man, these kids really show their emotions and I felt bad…these new volunteers better rock!
I’m sure they will:)
Next week I’m heading to Bishkek with my new counterpart for a week-long PDM (Project Design Management) training session and we’ve already discussed what project we’re going to focus on! Isn’t she amazing:) We’re going to write up a grant to hold monthly teacher-training seminars focusing on the 4-Mat (not enough time to explain here…use Google) lesson plan and how to successfully navigate away from the defunct Soviet-style while not shocking everyone around you. This might sound strange, but yes, kids can actually learn and have fun in group activities at the same time…shocking. Then I’m back at site for a week, then I go back to Bishkek for a week-long TOT (Training of Teachers) to prepare for my new role as a PCVT—then the new volunteers arrive and everything gets kicked into gear!
Every day here the weather is getting a little bit warmer (birds are actually chirping outside my window as I type this) and the roads are slowly turning from ice into thick, sticky, deep mud, which I’ve heard lasts for about the length of time that I’ll be living in Kant, so I really don’t mind. I’m only 5 months away from only having a year left (weird…) and everything is finally starting to fall into place. Once I return from training during PST I’ll have about two months left of school, then summer, then my second, and final school year, then summer, then…? Weird…just got to take it one day at a time and make sure that I make the most out of everything I can while I’m here. Oh, that’s another good thing about my new counterpart—she’s really excited about organizing these teacher-training seminars with me so I think that in my new school I’ll finally be able to accomplish everything that I set out to do!

Ahh...winter is OVER!!!

2009-02-26T21:47:00.001-08:00

Well, I had my first Valentine’s Day in Kyrgyzstan and it turned out to be the first holiday that I’ve celebrated exactly like I would have back home! My site-mate, Patrick, and I met at our local café where we ate cheap food and drank cheaper beer while watching terrible Russian music videos play for about 4 ½ hours. Okay, so I probably wouldn’t have been watching Russian music videos back home, but the cheap food and beer has been pretty much the Valentine’s Day norm for me throughout the past couple years so for the first time in a long while I felt right at home! I stumbled home drunk (again, pretty much the norm for a successful Valentine’s Day…at least according to my past) and ate some Kyrgyz food while answering questions from my family regarding this wonderful holiday. “So James, you don’t have a girlfriend? Why not?” Or, “So, when will you get married?” Or my personal favorite: “twenty-five is very old to not be married, you should have at least a few children by now…otherwise it’s considered quite ooyat (see previous blog post for ‘ooyat’ explanation).” I know, I know (my usual response to this line of questioning) when I get back to America I will marry a nice girl and settle down (this is usually spoken through stifling laughter) then I’ll have lots of children to work on my farm (again, stifling laughter). This seems to placate their concerns for my family-man-future enough to continue eating and ignore the giant “single” elephant in the room long enough to finish their meal and call it a night. What a Valentine’s Day indeed!
On a different note, my Winter Camp has been going great! I had some excellent people come from the local health center to give a two hour long presentation on HIV/AIDS and discuss safe-sex in a culturally appropriate manner the first day, then the second day my other site-mate Liz gave an excellent presentation on reproduction. All in all the first two presentations were stellar, and considering how bad they “could” have been (considering how extremely sensitive these two subjects are in Kyrgyz culture) I feel that the first two days kicked the camp off nicely! Wednesday, my buddy Cameron gave a great presentation on nutrition. I specifically asked him to do this because being exposed to the Kyrgyz diet over a prolonged period of time has given me plenty to be concerned about and I think that he got his points across nicely…again, while not completely dissing on Beshbarmark (see previous blog post for explanation) which I never could have done! Thursday all of the volunteers that I’ve invited to my camp gave some excellent information on drug and alcohol abuse through presentations and skits and Friday I gave out certificates to everybody then organized a rousing game of Dodge Ball! I purchased the balls with my camp money as an “extracurricular activity” expense and gave a brief overview before letting the kids at it. Even though I had the translators there to help me the kids played like they’d been doing it for years. It must be something instinctual in all of us that says throwing things at other people is not only really funny but also a lot of fun! Anyway, I got some great feedback from the other volunteers that helped me, the translators I organized, my counterpart, the school director and all of the kids involved (55 in total!)…all in all, it was a huge success!!
Other than that these two brief snippets there’s not really much more to report on my end. This winter has been extremely relaxing, if not quiescently irresponsible, and I finally go back to class on March 2nd…which is one week before I got to Bishkek again for PDM (Project Design Management conference) for another week. I just can’t seem to escape the big city, which all things considered isn’t really that much to complain about at all!

Keeping a Watchful Eye (now...)

2009-01-26T21:05:00.000-08:00

I arrived to the new bus station in Bishkek after a hellishly long trip from Talas due to three kids that constantly needed potty breaks thereby disrupting my otherwise serene winter marshutka ride, at around 4:30. The driver of the marshutka was kind enough to arrange a taxi for me to get into that would take me directly to Peace Corps’ head office nearby, just about a 60 som trip. It was all going according to plan until the taxi guy had the nerve to pull out onto the main road to get going and was immediately flagged down by a policeman (Мылытся). Normally these guys just check the driver’s papers, make up some infraction that the driver can then get out of with a bribe and everyone is happy and on their way. However, my driver did not have his papers in order so the nice policeman took his keys away. This left me to go find a taxi on my own that would take me the 10 minutes to Peace Corps. Seeing as I’ve caught my own taxi numerous times in this country and can speak the language I was not at all concerned and my guard was certainly down…do you see where this is going yet? I found a taxi, negotiated the price and threw my bags in the back seat. No sooner had my hand left my backpack than the motherfucker took off screaming down the street with the back door still open and me left standing there like a fool screaming obscenities. This damn terrible person had just made off with my computer, clothes, all my bath supplies, my sleeping bag and my water bottle. My heart was beating out of my chest as I struggled to find the appropriate curse word that would adequately express my severe hatred for this man when all of the other taxi drivers gathered around me, obviously intrigued by my dilemma. Who is he? I demanded, what’s his taxi number? Where does he live? Who are his children so I can eat their hearts in front of his stupid face? These questions were met with appropriate responses and as I was putting this information into my cell phone I noticed two taxi drivers get on their cell phones and walk away from the group. This was the first sign that these bastards were in cahoots. I called Peace Corps and tried to subdue my trembling excitement enough to speak coherent English to the poor Kyrgyz duty officer so they could understand my pain when not more than 5 minutes passed and this thief of a taxi “driver” came tearing back to the lot with a shit-eating grin on his face and all of my belongings neatly secured in his back seat where I left them. I got off the phone and stormed over to him. What the fuck? I wanted to say, but seeing as the Kyrgyz language doesn’t allow as much leeway in obscenity as English gratefully provides I was left with a meek “Эмнеге Бул Байкей” which roughly translates to “why that older brother?” To this inquiry he smiled and said “come on, we’re friends right? I was only joking…come on, now I will take you where you need to go”…in Kyrgyz, of course:) I shamed him with a good long ooyat (see a previous blog post for explanation) and found another sympathetic taxi driver to take me to my meeting with Peace Corps where I promptly reported him. Peace Corps is in tight with the police here so I hope this dude rues the day he dared to cross…um, me.
Looking back at this incident I realized a couple of things: first, as soon as the other taxi drivers realized that I can speak Kyrgyz and was getting all of this douche-bag’s information to give to the police they called him, gave him a head’s up, so he came back with his tail between his legs. If I were a tourist or anyone that didn’t speak Russian or Kyrgyz I would have been royally screwed, which brings me to: 2. From now on I will never put my stuff in a taxi, when I’m taking it alone, first. I will get in, and then throw my stuff in the back. 3: now that I’ve been in this country for some time and know the language enough to get around comfortably I have made the mistake of letting my guard down. The problem is that I stick out like a sore thumb here and especially in Bishkek, the “big city”, there are a lot of people around looking to ruin my day. I’ve got to remain vigilant…
Don’t worry, I’m safe, I got all of my stuff back and I learned a great lesson. But damn…what an adventure! Lessons learned for next time, that’s for sure…
I’m heading back to Bishkek February 5th for a Culture Committee meeting…oh yeah, I’ve been appointed to the culture committee for the incoming volunteers so I’ll have a perfect place to get my crazy stories and Kyrgyz-life-lessons heard by the greatest number of people! Hopefully another blog post doesn’t come out of that trip…but in this country you never know!
Other than that crazy mishap there’s really not much more to report here. I just got all of the money for my winter camp and will be meeting with my Talas connection and the other volunteers that are helping out next week before I head to Bishkek to nail down the particulars. Until then I’ll just continue playing guitar, reading, watching movies, and sometimes change the order of the three. Winter is crazy here, huh?

More to say...

2009-01-22T04:16:00.000-08:00

Well. IST went off without a hitch! Despite the socializing with my fellow volunteers that kept my attention pre-occupied into the wee hours of every morning I still somehow managed to set the revelries aside long enough to make it to every session that began promptly at the un-Godly hour of 8am. The first two days were honestly a bit worthless though because they were dedicated to counterpart training and my counterpart was unable to attend. However, at the end of the week I did receive a candy-bar for “best dressed volunteer”…how nice! We also got treated to the finest food the Issyk-Kul Hotel had to offer. Really, I’m not saying much here but considering the local alternatives it was truly the highlight of my stay:)
I took another language test and received an Intermediate High ranking. The rankings for US Government LPI’s (Language Proficiency Interview) go from Novice (low, mid, high) to Intermediate (low, mid, high) to Advanced (low, mid, high) to Superior then Fluent. Considering that coming out of PST my Kyrgyz language ability was at the Intermediate Low level I’m pretty pleased. At the rate I’m going I should be able to slaughter a sheep and eat it’s intestines with relish while communicating fluently in no time!! Actually, the best part about this new ranking is that I’m now allowed by Peace Corps to begin learning Russian. With that said I can receive Russian learning materials from Peace Corps for free and I might be able to come out of my time here having learnt two languages! Who says you have to be completely selfless to join The Peace Corps??
I had a hell of a time getting to IST though. My site-mate Patrick and I decided that it would be a safer option to go through Kazakhstan’s flat roads instead of the dreaded mountain-pass that is the Ala-Too option in Kyrgyzstan (see a previous blog post for a full explanation). We set out from our town at about 7:30am and reached the Kyrgyz-Kazakh boarder at about 9. Because Patrick served in Georgia before coming here they hassled him about his Georgian visa and tried to extract some well-earned som from his pocket. We both politely refused to be manipulated and were on our way to standing in line for an hour surrounded by CIS members that all conveniently don’t know how to stand in line at all (see a previous blog post for a full explanation). By the time we finally reached the bazaar in Taraz, Kazakhstan it was 11am. We promptly headed over to the bus-station (or Автоваксал, for those that care to be impressed with my new and improved language ability) where we found out the one available marshutka to Bishkek only had one seat available. Damn, we thought as we both sat down to have a beer and discuss. Luckily we got enough information from the lady selling Samsa’s that there was another one coming “azr” (see previous blog post for a full explanation). As we waited in the freezing cold for what turned out to be two hours we had a lively conversation involving nothing more than grunts and nods as we both have come to realize that if you don’t want people hassling you it is of utmost importance that you don’t appear to speak their language. Seeing as the Kazakh language has about as much difference from Kyrgyz as the Canadian language does the American, we both felt at ease with our mouths shut. Around 1pm another marshutka arrived and we both rushed forward to get to it, however as soon as I found a seat a very nice Russian girl who spoke flawless English asked if I had my ticket? No, I replied, I always just pay the driver. That is, after all, what allows the drivers in Kyrgyzstan to attempt to rip you off every chance they get. No no no, she replied with a twinkle in her eye. This is Kazakhstan, we actually have infrastructure in place to prevent such vile happenings! Oh, I said, I’m terribly sorry. Then Patrick and I gathered our belongings before heading over to get a taxi straight to Bishkek for an exorbitant price considering our meager Peace Corps monthly allowance and limited options at the time.
That’s where things got interesting. We negotiated with some local drivers for about 20 minutes before finally choosing a very nice vehicle that had two people waiting inside already. We were ready to have a lovely, flat and safe drive straight to Bishkek. That is until the driver took a hard left instead of staying straight to go to the boarder. Where are you going? Patrick and I managed with panicked looks on our previously frozen faces. Almaty (Алматы), is what the driver asserted after repeated questioning. Almaty is not only one of the sixth or seventh most expensive cities in the world, but it’s also about another four hours away from where we actually needed to be going. My language ability is (as previously stated) at an Intermediate High level. I’d like to think that I’d be able to understand the difference between Bishkek and Almaty in a sentence! Um, also, yeah, for those of you that question whether the pronunciation of these two cities is at all similar…no, it’s not. So as Patrick and I are half freaking out and half excited about the prospect of getting some good touring in what is supposed to be a gorgeous city, we finally figured out that he promised to take us to the boarder, not through the boarder. And, yes, to and through are actually very similar in Kyrgyz/Kazakh. They don’t say either one of those words but tack on a grammatical ending to the subject word to make their point. But that’s neither here nor there. What does matter is that when the guy took Patrick and I to the northern Kazakh-Kyrgyz boarder he was nice enough to arrange a taxi with a friend of his who would take us through and not charge anything. Now, believe it or not that really did go according to plan and before we knew it we were sitting comfortably in a café sipping on some beers reminiscing about our days’ adventure while waiting for Kristen to show up. Oh, and when Kristen did show up she said that she’d been in Bishkek for about 5 hours because she decided to brave the Ala-Too mountain pass that Patrick and I were so afraid of (again, see a previous blog for explanation) and arrived in under four hours for 50 com off her fair because she had to share her taxi with a sheep! Female intuition, I guess.
At any rate, there’s really not much to report about IST except a lot of government-mandated rigor moral and hilarious alcohol-induced antics that don’t have much place here. So, I guess I actually am integrating and learning the language after all! Now I only have PDM (Project Design Management) training in March then I’m out of trainings completely. Scary to think that Peace Corps puts that much faith in me after so little training, but I did get a candy-bar out of this last one so I guess that’s something!

Psychic Wanderings through this desolate land...

2009-01-08T00:15:00.000-08:00

I’m psychic. Yup. All available evidence points to the fact that I am completely psychic. I’m not just any run-of-the-mill psychic, mind you, I’ve got a specialty of a sort…a uniqueness that should be in high demand if I can ever find a way to market my services via late-night infomercials. I’m a food psychic! I can predict now beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly what my host-family will serve me for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Jealous? Yeah…us psychics look at all you common folk with a certain loving placation knowing that you’ll never fully appreciate the grandness of our universe…even if it is limited to Kyrgyz culinary disasters.
Every day for the past month I’ve predicted correctly the bread and butter for breakfast, the soup made of a mysterious amalgamation of potatoes, beans, meatish substance and broth that constitutes every lunch, and last night I had a dream about the Beshbarmark I’d be eating for dinner tonight. If I haven’t yet fully explained the absolute terribleness of this particular dish please allow me a brief digression while I illuminate the particulars for you, my loyal reader.
Beshbarmark is made with large, flat and greasy noodles piled on a large round plate. Well, sometimes the plate is square or even rectangular but that doesn’t matter here. What does matter is the meat that is dumped on top of it. If you’ve ever been to Safeway’s meat section you have no idea what I’m talking about. If you’ve ever been to an actual butcher shop, you still have no idea what I’m talking about. In fact, short of anyone who’s actually slaughtered a sheep and taken a good look at what makes a sheep tick on the inside, no one but the Kyrgyz and their honored guests know what I’m talking about. The “meat” that’s piled on top of the large, flat, and greasy noodles isn’t actually “meat” (at least as Americans know…nay, the entire western world knows it) at all but a combination of intestines, stomach, liver, kidneys, and bits of meat still attached to a bone with the head of the sheep on top. Yeah, the HEAD of the sheep sitting on top of this gastronomic monstrosity! All of the meat (except the head, more on that later) is boiled for a couple of hours so that it loses all nutritional value and tastes like rubber before it’s ready to be thrown on top of the fat greasy noodles. Now, the head of the sheep actually gets fire. However it gets only enough fire to make its brain cook (yeah, the brain is still inside) and its hair fall off. Then it too gets thrown on top.
Maybe this doesn’t sound too bad to you? Maybe boiled intestines and other miscellaneous organs layered on top of fat, greasy noodles actually sounds appetizing? Well my friend, welcome to every single Goddamn Kyrgyz party I’ve ever been to. However, the reason that Beshbarmark is served on a large plate isn’t to ease the distribution of servings to dinner guests…oh no, it’s so that everyone can sit around it on the floor and dig in with their hands! There’s nothing quite so breathtaking as the sight of a 75 year old Kyrgyz woman sitting on the floor, mashing up noodles and intestines with one hand and shoving the whole mess in her mouth, before reaching for some fresh noodles that you’ve carefully stashed as close to you as possible to minimize organ contact, thereby getting her organ/noodle/saliva mix thoroughly drenching her hand evenly distributed around the group-plate as fairly as possible. Then she asks why I’m not eating with the same carnivorous delight as the rest of the eager participants! Well, my dear, it just so happens that I don’t like meat (easiest response, and in my case a complete fallacy whilst enjoying the comforts of America, but it’s veracity due to my temporary Kyrgyz zip-code cannot be questioned). Oh, she says, you’re Apa says you eat meat all the time. Ha ha ha, I say before feigning a bout of terrible misunderstanding (I am still new to this country after all) as I relieve myself to the toilet.
But I digress.
Last night I had a dream about being back home in America and explaining Beshbarmark to my friends and family while sitting around a lavish Thanksgiving dinner replete with wine, Turkey, (insert every item you’ve ever imagined would be at your ideal Thanksgiving dinner here) and a nice medley of various Holiday music permeating every conversation. Why and how Beshbarmark made its sordid self known to this otherwise lovely dream of mine I have no idea. However when I awoke with a tear in my eye and the taste of home fading into yet another distant memory I remembered that I am, indeed, a food-psychic. That’s when I broke out into a cold sweat and looked at my reflection in the mirror as the winter sun slowly rose in the early morning sky. I cried and cried screaming say it isn’t so, please God, say it isn’t so! I’ve had such a great Beshbarmark-free two weeks, why now? Why now oh God of mine—WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!! Ours is not to question why though, only obey and suffer as Catholicism dictates. Comfortable accepting this dogma I made my way once again to my now-frozen sheets and spent the next few morning hours loathing my profound psychic gifts for ever making themselves known.
Sure enough, I awoke later this morning to the smell of freshly baked bread (out of all of the otherwise tasty foods that the Kyrgyz have somehow managed to make practically inedible, their bread is delicious. Seriously. I will miss it when I’m gone…it’s truly the best bread I’ve ever had, and I’ve been to France) and ready-made coffee permeating the restless atmosphere of my sanctuary, er, room. So I sat down and said well, that’s only one out of three meals…maybe, just maybe I’m not psychic after all! But alas, oh no, I thought as I sat down to lunch of potato, bean, meatish, and broth soup…I’m 2/3 of the way towards certain disappointment!
I spent my afternoon hours studying for the GMAT (yeah, this summer I’ll be taking it in Almaty, Kazakhstan) and reading On the Road. Then I got the dreaded “James, kel, kel, azr biz jaybiz!” As soon as I exited my adventures with Neal Cassidy and Jack Kerouac I smelled the smell of smells. I heard the simmering water still reeling from its intimacy with untouchables. Finally, I saw the eager smiles from my Apa and her guests as they dug in to the dreaded dish with a voraciousness unmatched in the ages. Come James, they beckoned me, come and eat our national dish (oh yeah, Beshbarmark is the Kyrgyz mothafuckin’ national dish…hence, it’s served at every single party in the entire country) and partake in our floor-sitting affair! Well, I did. Luckily I was at my house so I grabbed a separate dish into which I then scooped fresh (hopefully) untouched noodles and choice pieces of identifiableish sheep-meat while trying not to make eye-contact with the newly brazened beasts’ head before me. I ate what I thought was an acceptable amount (don’t want to insult them, after all) and I quickly made my leave saying I was busy watching a movie. I thanked them all for their hospitality, and declined to marry the teenage daughters they always seem to offer at every party (are they joking? I’ve been here for six months and I’m still not quite sure) before heading back to my room to devour as much candy as possible to get the taste of sheep out of my mouth.
And that, my friends, is what I call Wednesday.
I’m out of school until March 1, and before my AIDS Awareness and Life Skills training camp begins the third week in February Peace Corps has decided that all of the K-16’s need additional training (actually, it’s part of the whole program, everyone does it three months in to their site-service) so I’m going to Bishkek on January 9th for what will be plenty of good times with my fellow volunteers all week long at the infamous Issyk-Kul hotel for our IST (In-Service Training). Thank you Peace Corps, thank you.
Until then, Jakshay Barangiz (go well) and more updates to come from my soon-to-be renowned exploits during IST!

Happy New Year!

2008-12-27T00:03:00.000-08:00

Wow. Christmas has come and gone and now I’m surrounded by about two feet of snow everywhere, well below freezing temperatures every night, no school until March, and a brand new year just around the corner. It’s odd. It never really felt like Christmas at all over here. Granted, I am living in a country that is 98% Muslim, with the remaining 2% Russian Orthodox Christian which is its’ own unique kind of old-school faith so there was nothing at all to remind me that it was the Christmas season. No supermarket songs and decorations laid out beginning sometime obnoxiously after Halloween, no advertisements for classic Christmas movies on TV, not even the usual break people in school and work get around the big 2-5!
I woke up Christmas morning at 7:30, got dressed in my suit and tie and went to a local school to help administer the regional English Olympiad test. I tested and interviewed 9th-11th graders until around 1pm, then went to the banya and had a beer with my site-mate Patrick. I got home after a quick café trip at around 5 and hung out with my Kyrgyz family until my American family called at 9pm (my time) to wish me a Merry Christmas. It was certainly the oddest Christmas I’ve ever had…
In Kyrgyzstan the big holiday this time of year is Janga-Jil, literally translated to New Year. What’s so odd about it though is that they decorate Christmas trees, give presents and even have a guy that looks identical to Santa Clause (called Ayaz-Ata, or Frost Father) that treats the kids to whatever wish they may have…and they party for a full two weeks before the actual New Year on the 31st. Even then, because it’s not directly Christmas related, it still didn’t feel at all like Christmas!
I do like the way they celebrate their Janga-Jil though. On Christmas Eve…sorry, December 24, my school had their big Janga-Jil party for the upper classmen (9-11 grade). This was just like any other high school dance, but everyone was eating various salads, eating various breads, drinking various champagnes and dancing various dances with various dance competitions that became really quite varied once the various champagne was drank by all attendants in various ways. Needless to say it was a very fun party!
On a more professional note: Because I am out of school for two full months (this is due to the fact that Kyrgyzstan may or may not have power to heat the schools throughout the winter) I volunteered to go to Bishkek for a week (last week) and complete a training session on grant-writing and camp organizing. Subsequently I have written a PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) grant for a week-long AIDS, sexual health, and Life Skills camp for my area’s youth to be held in Talas. Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan has never done this before, nor have I, so this is going to be a learning process all around. Hopefully I get approved; PEPFAR has granted $2800 per camp, of which my budget only requires $2100 and some change so I should be okay. Especially considering that Kyrgyz culture is very indirect in addressing sensitive subject matter (and just about everything else) this camp is going to be extremely beneficial to the youth who otherwise would never receive this information. I’ve lined up a translator and two area health professionals to give presentations, and a bunch of other volunteers have jumped on board to help as well…I’ll keep ya’ll posted on the progress as I go. On top of that it looks like I’ll be teaching the teacher’s at my school English through the winter, as well as my host-mother who for some reason loves the nasally American accent. No school basically means I get to wake up as God intended--whenever the fuck I feel like it for two months, but I’m also certainly going to be busy which is a huge relief:)
All in all Peace Corps is going quite well. It’s harder, and easier than I thought it would be. If that sounds like a contradiction than you’ve obviously never been a Peace Corps volunteer so please just take me at my word. I’m finally getting to do some “real” work outside of my committed schedule which is extremely rewarding and on top of all that my Kyrgyz language ability has gotten to the point that I can talk to anybody about just about anything…as long as it’s a very simple subject and they forgive my grammatical mistakes:)
Keep on keepin’ on…I can’t remember where I heard that, but it seems appropriate for my state of mind at the moment. I’m just keepin’ on with keepin’ on…

Doing fine again...

2008-12-14T22:47:00.000-08:00

“::::: and it is either make this thing permanent inside of you or forever just climb draggled up into the conning tower every time for one short glimpse of the horizon :::::” –Tom Wolfe The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
I just read that passage today, and it immediately struck home. It affected me especially because doing what I’m doing, doing what every other Peace Corps volunteer the world over is doing is hard. Every single one of us has the choice to pretend to do what we’re here to do, i.e. go through the motions and act the part, instead of actually accomplishing what we only vaguely knew we wanted, no, needed to do before we came. I know a couple of volunteers, and I am guilty of being one myself at times, that do their job and leave. They let their local language lag, or stay holed up in their room locked into their computer or iPod because they’re the only things in the entire country, other than the other Americans, that make any sense. I can either make this ‘thing’, this ‘idea’ or ‘goal’ real inside of me or I can wake up every single day and go to work pretending that I’m doing exactly what I came here to do; conning myself into believing that I’m doing great, when in reality that greatness is just over the horizon, mocking my ignorance. But what we’re here to do is more than a job, it’s more than a life…it’s…
Melancholic introspective ramblings aside, I never want to hear the words “svet jok” as an excuse for something not working ever, ever, EVER again. It happened when my marshutka broke down on a snowy mountain pass at night on my way back from Bishkek, and it happened again today. I understand if “no electricity” is an excuse for something not working that requires electricity. But just because the electricity is out is no reason to not get my package from behind the fucking door! Sorry. I’m still a little wound up. I’ve tried to get a package from the local Post Office that my friend sent me three times now. The first time it was “no, come back tomorrow.” Well, I have a job that doesn’t exactly work around the three hour lunch breaks that seem to be government norms so my next option was the weekend. But, like Post Offices at home, their weekend hours are beyond decipherable so that didn’t quite work out either. Today I lucked out and my Apa informed me that I couldn’t go to my English Club because our neighbor was joining the army so we had to go to a party at their house. Luckily I managed to weasel my way out of there before too late and walked to the Post Office two hours before they were supposed to close. Remember, there just so happens to be no electricity. No matter (I think), retrieving my package shouldn’t require such modern luxuries. I’m fairly certain that packages have been sent around the world without such a cloud-created-convenience for at least the past, oh I don’t know, thousand-plus Goddamn years so why should today be any different? Well, when I get there that lady says “no, come back tomorrow.” She’s helping other people, why not me? I get a little flustered and enquire further. To which I’m met with an abrupt “svet jok.” Yes, it indeed appears that Post Offices the world over consist of rude people who genuinely don’t give a shit because they make government benefits and you and your package can kindly fuck off! It wouldn’t be so bad if this was the first time this had happened, but I had a little liquid courage (I was just at a party) and decided to press the issue. Was I getting obnoxious? No. Should I have let it go? Yes, maybe. But I was on a roll and my diatribe climaxed precisely at the moment that I saw an old lady leave the back-room smiling because she had just received her package! Well, now they had no excuse. I proceeded to brilliantly argue that if the lack of electricity has temporarily disabled their arms and legs from retrieving my package how had they been able to recover from their temporary paralysis in time to give the nice old lady her precious parcel? To this my friends, they had no excuse. Instead, they took it one step further and informed me that it wasn’t so much the lack of electricity per se, as much as it was that they were out of the bloody forms for me to sign! “Well,” I asked “how’d that nice old lady waltzing out of here with her arms snuggly wrapped around her new present manage to defeat this red-taped behemoth of bullshit bureaucracy?” (not in so many words, of course). “Oh,” the electricless woman informed me “she just wrote down her information here.” At which point they handed me a piece of paper. I left five minutes later with my battle-won spoils and never looked back.
If it weren’t for the generous helping of candy inside (really, it’s amazing what you miss when you live abroad for an extended period of time) I’d probably have been writing this with slightly more venom. As it stands, my belly is full and I’m as ever amazed at what in the hell I’m doing here. It’s easy, no, it’s extremely easy to get disenfranchised with this whole endeavor. I’m in fact only writing about today’s lovely incident because the aforementioned quote made me take some stock of my situation and view it a little bit more…abstractly. I could have just as easily written about the countless other little cultural idiosyncrasies that I encounter every hour of every day with just as much detail, and quite possibly a bit more sarcasm, though I wouldn’t want my loyal readers to think that I’m just having fun here:) I was mad. I was mad at the disrespect that I received in such a cold manner, I was mad at the cultural red-tape I had to cut through just to sign my name and get the hell out of there, but more than that I was mad because I have absolutely nowhere to go for any sympathy. Other volunteers help, sure. But there’s a point when the bitching gets too negative and instead of the cathartic experience one craves it actually just brings you down more. I’ve decided to leave all of that alone for a bit. Instead, after opening my package and devouring the contents, I holed up in my room with my American books, my American computer, my American iPod and every other American device from home that I fully understand and am completely comfortable with in order to make precisely the same mistake so many who’ve come before me have made. Today I willingly climbed the ‘conning tower’. Sure, I had some encouragement from my frustration and I gladly leapt up the final two steps in time to reach my personally projected plateau of defeat, but I certainly went blindly. I didn’t realize what I was doing until I was three more chapters deep in Mr. Wolfe’s masterpiece. After I read that quote I realized that I wasn’t feeling any ‘better’. I was still just as frustrated. Only instead of dealing with my frustration head-on, like I would in America, I hid in my room, shut the door and escaped. I conned myself into believing that what I was doing was right when in reality I was even further from making ‘that thing permanent inside’ of me than I was before this whole debacle.
I thought about it, then closed my book and went outside to socialize with my host-family. I didn’t bitch about the Post Office lady, though I did make a quip or two about Kyrgyzstan’s president who “assured” the country we’d have power all winter…they quickly added their own carefully worded comments in agreement with that as well. But for the most part, I integrated. Not completely, mind you. Today, like every other day, is a work in progress. I’ll actually never be that far gone because such a commitment would involve copious amounts of Bishbarmark consumption that my gastrointestinal tract will never be able to handle. I did however accept where I am, what I’m doing, and am as ever getting closer to answering why…or in the words of Mr. Wolfe, now I’m “back on the bus.”

Sonnet 2

2008-12-05T21:18:00.002-08:00

Questioning decisions yet to be made
my mind fears what it does not know will be.
All my life, and of all the things I gave
I’ve not let fate rule out uncertainty.
Challenges met, and goals that I’ve achieved
birthed not the peace or calm I’ve wanted for.
Both stress and fear do cloud what I must see
in that all I have gained I still want more.
Hunger must be what drives my restless soul,
and its’ insatiable quest to quench it.
As the red heat fades in my last-turned coal
I look anew to keep my fire lit.
Life’s a journey, not a destination.
This is just temporary placation.

Expanation of a Celebration

2008-12-05T21:18:00.001-08:00

WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS NEXT POST IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 10…OR 13 IF YOUR PARENTS ARE OVERBEARING AND WANT TO KEEP YOU AS A CHILD FOREVER. OR IF YOU CAN’T FACE REALITY AND HAVE TROUBLE ACCEPTING LITTLE FACTS OF LIFE AS THEY COME AT YOU! SERIOUSLY!!
Santa isn’t real. Everyone realizes this at one point or another and (though it might take time, and years of expensive counseling) they eventually forgive their parents for lying to them about the one thing that made childhood remotely bearable since the day they were born. Tonight I attempted to explain to my Kyrgyz family what Santa is and how he relates to Christmas.
Quick note: I’m not even going to remotely try to explain to them the story of the three old dudes who found a baby in a desert who grew up to do some magic tricks and died a terrible death…no, there’s not enough time in the world to explain that one considering how difficult my retelling of the Christmas story from the north pole went! But I digress.
I began with the basics: He lives in a huge castle in the North Pole and has little people who wear green costumes working for him. Okay. Then I explained how he wears a red suit, has a white beard and is really fat. Okay, they’re actually still with me at this point. Then I explained that he has eight flying reindeer (‘reindeer’ isn’t in my dictionary so I had to act it out…it was about as funny as it sounds:)) who take him to every house in the world in the course of one night to deliver exactly whatever present(s) that particular child wants. At this point they’re all nodding in agreement and saying, ‘hmmm, this Santa fellow seems like a really nice guy’. I then proceeded to explain how every child leaves out a glass of milk, a couple of cookies, and a carrot or two…
quick note: no one ever leaves eight carrots, has anyone ever thought about how cruel that is…we’re assuming Rudolph is the lucky bastard that gets the one carrot that is left out, if one is at all, and the others are forced to fly behind the gastronomically satisfied little bastard rubbing it all in their face with a bright red nose to cap it all off. Really, first we lie to our children from an early age which probably only serves to propagate the plentiful nightmares the proportionately peculiar youth already have to put up with, but now we’re also saying that it’s okay to choose favorites on the one night of the year we should all be considering selflessness! Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to lie my ass of when I have kids…I just think it’s an interesting point. But again, I digress.
The point in my story telling that really gets my family confused is when I tell them that Santa enters and leaves every house on his journey via their fireplace. Then, in all honesty, my Apa speaks up and says (in Kyrgyz, of course) “Doesn’t his suit get dirty?” I laugh, and say “of course not, he’s Santa!” My Ata ponders this for a minute then he asks “so after he distributes the presents and somehow doesn’t get their house dirty with soot on his black boots, he climbs back up the chimney staying clean the whole time!?” Again I stifle laughter as I reply “no, he wiggles his nose and shoots up the chimney like magic!” Now my family is roaring with laughter and they’re saying ‘oh, you’re making this all up, there is no Santa Clause!’ As if the flying reindeer weren’t clue enough, right? It then takes me the better part of an hour to explain to them in great deal how Christmas really works, ie. Kids make a list, give it to their parents who promise to ‘send’ it to Santa, then they buy presents, hide them in the house until Christmas when they finally take them out and lead their children to believe that it was actually a mystical fat gentleman in a terribly tailored suit that generously procured their various enjoyment instigators until next season. To which my host sister replies “so…parents lie to their children!?” Then my whole family starts giving me looks like, ‘wow, maybe America isn’t so great after all…’
There you have it. I’m just here spinning elaborate tales that evidently do little more than highlight all Americans’ natural talent for deceit. Oh, I also teach English.

Sonnet 1

2008-12-05T21:17:00.000-08:00

If there were only some way for me to
reach back and touch the love I used to know
I’m sure that all that we have both been through
would ease my forgiveness in what time’s shown.
And yet my heart cringes still with past pain
at the memory of what could have been.
All that was said cannot be said again;
as time’s cruel clock moves forward still unseen.
Promises made in vain that still seem right,
their haunting echo coursing through my head;
whispers uttered softly in the dark night—
memories reminding me what is dead.
If only time could cease its’ churn and bind
and send me back, who knows what I would find.

Ooyat...

2008-12-05T21:16:00.000-08:00

Ooyat. That’s roughly how the Kyrgyz word is spelled with Latin characters. Its literal translation (like most Kyrgyz words) is tough to nail down but it roughly means shameful. A lot in Kyrgyzstan is Ooyat. My host-Apa has been talking about sending a package to my parents in America with various jams and some Kyrgyz clothing despite my repeated assertions that such a package would be insanely expensive to send in Kyrgyz som. At any rate she had a friend of hers who works at the post office over for chai and began to ask her how much it would cost to send a two-kilo package to America. Her friends’ response is “oh, it’d be expensive” to which my Apa replied “well, how much exactly?” Her friends’ response is classic “Oh Jildice (my Apa’s name) you can’t ask me how much it would be exactly, that’s ooyat.” I got another example of a very ooyat thing at dinner tonight when I accidently put my bread round-side down on the table. My host-sister freaked out and tells me: “oh James, you can’t do that, that’s ooyat!” Being the curious ooyated-American that I am I enquire as to why putting my bread down on the table one way isn’t shameful at all, yet putting it down in another manner warrants such a strong reaction from my keepers? She proceeds to thoroughly explain to me that it’s because…well…it’s because it is.
It’s very interesting living in this culture for a number of reasons, but the one that I encounter every single day is the Kyrgyz’s firmly held beliefs such as this: it is because it is. As Americans we demand facts and scientific exploration before we make wide-arching speculations…well, unless we’re the governor of the largest state in the union; then we can accept just about anything on our extremist faith alone, but I digress. How can I prevent a sore throat? Eat raw pig fat. How can I avoid getting sick in the winter? Swim in a freezing cold lake, but be sure not to drink any of the water because that will immediately reverse its healing properties! How much money do I make per year? This question seems to crop up in every single conversation I’ve ever had over here, and it’s perfectly culturally acceptable; but God forbid I ever ask the precise cost of anything! The list could go on: brush your teeth, but not for too long because that’s bad for you. When invited to a party it’s considered very rude to show up any less than three hours late. When visiting a house you must eat something, even if you’re only dropping something off it is quite ooyat if you don’t at least “Ostee” (literally ‘taste’) a tiny morsel of what is probably day-old bread left out on the table, otherwise the home-owner whom you are visiting will get a sour reputation as a terrible host…even though they weren’t hosting anything.
The list could go on forever however I don’t wish to sound as if I’m ‘bitching’ or complaining, or anything of the sort. I am actually quite enamored with this culture and the people I live and work with. As my language improves I understand even more of the intricacies that make up the daily life of the Kyrgyz, and it is as ever extremely fascinating! It’s a privilege to be the ‘American’ experiencing this all first-hand. I am not necessarily bound to the same constricted social norms as the people that surround me, though a certain amount of adherence is certainly appreciated and has only furthered my ability to integrate successfully, but being the outsider that my appearance, speech, and mannerisms obviously illuminate has given me the great opportunity to impartially view and discern all of these tiny cultural idiosyncrasies that many Kyrgyz themselves only acknowledge once I bring it to their attention. Thus, I have essentially been given a front-row seat to one of the most interesting shows I’ve ever had the honor of attending! Not only do I get to watch the drama play out on a daily basis, but I actually get to interact with the players themselves.
Every time I get frustrated or stressed out (which is often because, let’s face it, Peace Corps is inherently stressful) I remind myself that I’m not here to “become Kyrgyz”, but I’m here to share my culture while learning about, and interacting within, theirs. This recognition has given me the much-appreciated ability to ‘step outside the box’, take a good look around in order to see what I’m doing anew. Though I’ve only been here five months I feel that this ability is something that is going to sustain me when it really starts to get hard. So, keep the Ooyat’s coming. Although I really couldn’t care less about which way my bread sits on the table my host-family does, and in the end that’s all that matters.

More to say...

2008-11-21T01:32:00.000-08:00

It’s Tuesday night at 8:39pm as I write this. I’m a wee bit tipsy and to be honest a bit enamored with the whole idea of what it means to “be Kyrgyz”. It’s more than a birthright. It’s like a way of life. I could go back to America tomorrow and still employ some time honored tricks to living that I’ve learned from my adopted homeland. (1) When it’s your birthday, don’t just celebrate the day of instead, stretch it out over a week and have progressively larger parties until the final blow-out spectacular that’s actually two days after the calendared day of your birth. My Apa’s thirty-fifth birthday is/was today (November 18). We had a small get-together on Sunday to celebrate the beginning of her birthday but tonight we had the real birthday party replete with presents, vodka, bishbarmark, vodka, music, vodka, dancing, vodka, and a little vodka to make sure everyone had a good time. Then as I was stumbling through my goodbye’s (linguistically and physically) I overheard that the real party is on Thursday (that’s forty-eight hours after my Apa’s birth thirty-five years ago, for those of you playing the home game) at a local café. They’ll have a DJ, vodka, dancing, vodka, more people speaking a language I am just beginning to get a grasp of, and yes, vodka as well. That’s pretty cool, no? (2) When you get paid fuck your job, just DRINK! Today was pay-day at my school. Because I live in a cash-based society the teachers are paid in cash (repetitive? Yes. Needed? I think so…who else gets paid IN CASH as an adult unless you are working for “the union”?) so when I arrived at my school promptly at 9:30 for our first class at 9:40 I walked into the teacher’s lounge to find every single teacher in the school there. They were all milling about and keeping a stern eye on a man I’ve never seen before who was sitting in the corner with a large metal box in front of him. Two things: One, the Kyrgyz have absolutely no sense of what it means to stand in line, so everyone literally rushes forward at the same time in a “may the best man win” type of situation. Two, the man with the metal box turned out to be the banks’ representative. He had every single teacher’s salary hidden in the confines of his large metal box. Sort of makes you appreciate your direct deposit, doesn’t it? As the teacher’s all rushed forward screeching their names to the metal-box-carrying-man hoping that he’ll pay them first I played about thirty-five intense games of Snake. For those of you that have never owned a cheap Nokia phone, Snake is the greatest game in the history of the universe. I could describe more but Google should do it justice. Anyway, as I was playing the last level of the “Campaign” option in Snake (the level is called the “apartment” and it’s FUCKING HARD) I watched a teacher get knocked to the ground. No sooner could I swear under my breath and stand to help her up than other teachers were already pushing her to the back of the crowd so they could yell their names to the pay-box-man as loud as they could. As soon as I saw that the poor lady that was too weak to elbow her way to the front of the melee in front of me was okay I began to laugh. I’d been there for almost two hours and only about six teachers had been paid! If they’d all just waited in line and been ordered about the whole endeavor they would have been in and out in a matter of minutes! But I digress. The reason that this is all so related to number 2 (stated much too far above) is that as soon as my counterpart, Narjan, was paid she grabbed her purse and said “James, let’s go.” Now, being the ignorant American that I evidently am, I took this to mean “James, let’s go teach at least one bloody class today because we’ve just conveniently missed two of the three we were supposed to teach.” How wrong I was. She led me directly into the English Club Room where our director (Kyrgyz equivalent of the American principle) was sitting with two bottles of vodka, a gigantic bottle of beer, meat, cheese, bread, and a ton of candy. Fuck it. IT’S PAY DAY! The best part is that as my director, my counterpart (who happens to be vice-director) and three other teachers were enjoying our pre-noon imbibing and copious sustenance consumption numerous diligent students stopped by enquiring about their supposed lessons! Silly kids. IT’S MOTHERFUCKIN’ PAY DAY, MAN! One by one the teacher’s of the subject in question got up to address these ignorant youngsters and explain to them that IT’S MOTHERFUCKIN’ PAY DAY, MAN!! No self-respecting teacher works on pay day. Silly kids…(3) If you get a phone call in the middle of class, whether you’re a teacher or a student, answer it and make sure everyone is aware of your popularity as you do so. A specific instance of this didn’t happen today, or any day mentioned thus far but this scenario has happened on more than one occasion and therefore I feel that it is duly worth mentioning here. I team-teach with Narjan and yet in the middle of a grammar lesson involving such intricacies of the English language as the distinct difference between “a” and “an” (sarcasm at its finest: every schoolboy knows that “an” is only used to preface an indirect noun beginning with a vowel [basically…you want more? Look it up yourself, I’m tired], but when you’re teaching it to 9th form kids who have been learning English for seven years and they look at you like it’s new information it’s a bit disheartening, nay, ridiculous) she’ll get a phone call that she’ll immediately answer and take outside. This has happened more times than I can count. It’s more than a little distracting, but am I wrong if I also think it’s completely hilarious in its absurdity? Thank you. Finally (4), if someone who is not employed by any health related agency and has absolutely no degree or certificate in medicine has ever given you advice or concluded anything about any health-related matter either directly or indirectly believe it and adhere to it as if it were given to you by the hand of God. One of my favorite myths that every Kyrgyz propagates is that drinking cold water is bad for you. It is. Actually yes, I’m not being sarcastic. Drinking cold water infected with bacteria such as Giardia or the like is actually quite bad for you. I have tried numerous times to tell my host family, both my current one and my PST one, that it’s not the cold that’s bad for you, but the bacteria that (if left un-treated) lives in the cold water that’s bad for you. The Kyrgyz have figured out that if you boil your water and add tea that it becomes okay. They refuse to believe, however, that my “magical distiller-device from America” (it’s Peace Corps issued and not that great, but it does the job) actually makes cold water okay. I have thus been forced to resort to drinking my cold water in private and away from the judging eyes of those around me because of the fear they have of what the “cold” might do to me! That’s right. I’m a closet-drinker-of-COLD-water. Are you as ashamed of me as I am of myself? It’s okay…according to Kyrgyz folklore you’re absolutely in-the-right. However, last night my Apa explained to me that if you don’t want to get sick during the winter all you have to do is SWIM IN A FROZEN BODY OF WATER. Yeah, I capitalized that last bit because I wanted to emphasize how ABSOLUTELY INSANE it is. Okay, so I can’t drink distilled cold water, but I can swim in a frozen-fucking lake and THEN I’ll be healthy? Hell...I’ll believe it. Just give me the activities of six paydays in a row combined into a two-hour time span and I’ll believe anything!
I very well could have broken the above stories into a few different paragraphs and worked on the grammar, punctuation and the like but I neglected to do so because I’m drunk and I like the free-flowing nature of my prose. If you don’t, then FUCK OFF CRITIC! For everyone else out there: Enjoy. Believe me, I certainly am:)

What an adventure!

2008-11-21T01:31:00.000-08:00

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.

Kazakhstan!

2008-11-02T01:05:00.000-07:00

My host sister didn’t pass the FLEX test. FLEX is a program that sends roughly 60 students from each ‘stan’ country to America for a year of study abroad while they are in high school. We’d been studying together for about a week and the big day finally came on October 28th. I went with her at 7 in the morning to Talas city for moral support as well as to help with the proctoring of the exam. Damn, this test is hard! She was in the first round of students to take it and I got a chance to see the test before it was administered and honestly I don’t know how many native English speakers would score 100% on it! This first round of testing covered English grammar, phrasal verbs, context reading and vocabulary. Had she passed onto the second and third round of testing there would have been essay writing and interviews for her to excel at before being given the chance to go to Bishkek for the final decision. Hopefully she does better next year (she’s actually got two more years of eligibility), and at least in the meantime we’ll know what to focus our studying on.
At my main job in Manas Secondary School I have begun to prepare three girls for the ‘English Olympiad’ that’s coming up in about a month. This is more of an opportunity for the students of each respective competing school to win bragging rights for their school than any real opportunity for themselves, but it will at least give me a better taste of victory than the impossible FLEX test did:) With that said, things are going better here in lovely Kyrgyzstan. It’s now dropped to a manageable yet bloody-freezing degree outside and the days are remarkably shorter, but I’m finally feeling a bit more settled in to somewhat of a routine. The fact that I’ve begun these little side-teaching projects has certainly aided in my continuing sanity so for them I’m eternally grateful. I also have a very supportive group of friends here in Talas. Every single one of the K-15’s and remaining (we’ve had two ET since getting here) K16’s are awesome! Honestly, I couldn’t have asked for better site-mates or a better and more supportive group of great people than the one’s I wound up with!
All in all everything is shaping up to give me a very positive outlook on what my next two years have in store for me here. We’ll see how I feel once the winter really kicks in, but that’s only about 3-4 months of sheer freezing torture so I’m sure it won’t be that bad! Plus, I’ve got so many more adventures coming up already. Today I just got back from my first sojourn into Kazakhstan. As a volunteer in Talas I’ve been given a ‘multiple-entry/exit’ VISA for Kazakhstan because I’m so close and “in an emergency” it’s safer for me to go there than all the way back to Bishkek. So, of course, I’ve already made use of this privilege for tourism purposes:) Taraz, the big city closest to the Kyrgyz-Kazakh boarder, is gorgeous! Anyone who’s seen the movie “Borat” probably thinks of Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan for that matter, as backwards remnants of their Soviet past. While that may certainly be true in small villages and isolated instances Taraz is by far the most glaring exception I’ve experienced here thus far. It has beautiful wide boulevards, three lined intersections and great great great food! My site-mates Patrick, Liz and I all went to eat at a local Georgian restaurant (no, not like ‘Georgia’ in America, but ‘Georgia’ the country…that was a necessary explanation for my American readers out there:)) and split a bottle of vodka at the table while indulging in the best tasting food I’ve had in almost 5 months! Then we walked around, and actually met a Kazakhstan volunteer named Susannah! We’re all going back the first weekend in December and will meet up with her and some other Kazakh volunteers so that was a great connection:) At any rate we caught our taxi back in time and have made it back to Talas for my friend John’s birthday. So far this weekend has been a blast, and next weekend a bunch of volunteers (and yours truly, of course) are going to Bishkek for two nights of Bacchanal debauchery. Between getting my teaching off the ground and all of these extracurricular activities I have planned my time is just soaring by!

Hanging in there:)

2008-10-17T01:15:00.001-07:00

Thank God for my adult English club! The kids in my school are terrible. I really feel like I should write a personal letter to every teacher I’ve ever had with whom I had poor relations and apologize profusely. Kyrgyzstan is a country in a very strange transition. It is extremely poor by Western ‘standards’, but is one of the wealthier countries in all of Central Asia. Subsequently it also suffers from all of modern societies social ills; namely very passive and just down-right bad kids in school. I hear a lot of stories from other developing countries about the students there being “eager to learn”, or “walking 10 miles to and from school” just to get a basic education. In America I feel like a lot of kids would rather spend their days playing videogames or sports with their friends because American society is so comfortable they truly don’t know how lucky they are. Kyrgyzstan suffers from the same problem. Although their society is about 200 years behind America in general, there’s enough modernity to distract its youth and give them a false sense of security and inevitability. Due to this, and the fact that in this country if they don’t pass into the Lyceum (good High School) in the 8th grade they can pretty much immediately lose all hope for a higher education, most of them genuinely don’t care. So I guess it’s modernity’s social ills coupled with an education system still modeled after the now-defunct, yet still-in-use (just one of many contradictions in this continent) Soviet style that’s been providing so many little pains in my ass for the past few weeks! Sorry for the bitching, but these kids just don’t appreciate the fact that they have an education system period, and it’s hard for me to watch them piss away what future they could have on a daily basis. Wow, and I’ve only been teaching for three weeks…two more years of this could get interesting!

On another note: I am again the “no-strings-attached” James (or “Joey” as my friends Natalie and Tiffany lovingly call me:)) that I was coming into this crazy adventure. Yup, that’s right o’ loyal readers ye, Becky has flown the coop…or to use the technical term, “ET’d”. ET stands for Early Termination, not the lil’ brown Spielberg alien…although that’d be awesome if Peace Corps was in on that secret! As much as I already do miss her, she decided to quit for her own reasons and that’s enough…eh, c’est la vie!

Also, in case you’re curious as to why I posted another blog so soon after my two-fer last time, it’s because I’m in Talas city again this weekend! Thank bloody God that it’s only a 45 som Marshutka ride from my city to Talas…I think I might actually do this every weekend! A bunch of us Talas volunteers are throwing down on a ‘flop’, or shared apartment for us all to use any time we come into town for any reason. Subsequently my friend Kristen and I have decided to kick it there tonight watching Season 1 of Deadwood and drink vodka while making delicious Americanish food. It’s going to be one hell of a night…and considering the time difference, rest assured that by the time you read this, it was one hell of a night!

Well, there you go. I couldn’t very well use the Internet/pay to use the Internet without providing my friends, family and other interested parties back home with a little update, now could I? Although the first paragraph was a bit of a diatribe, rest assured that I am still having a blast here and have even begun to lay the groundwork for my epic plan mentioned in a previous blog posting. Sure as it’s about to get to negative-fucking-freezing here I’m going to master this language enough to give my kids the ol’ “сенин апасын айтып!”…yeah, that’s “I’m going to tell your mother!” in Kyrgyz:) Then again, it never worked for me so…ah hell, I’m screwed!

Newer Blog!

2008-10-12T00:52:00.000-07:00

This posting is a follow-up to the last one. I wrote the previous blog last week, though haven’t been able to use the Internet until now, and upon reviewing it I realize that the tone is a little bit sarcastic and misplaced. Last week was a pretty stressful week, so that’s why the frustration I was feeling came out through that blog. I haven’t edited it at all, but I want to post this one as well in order to express some positives to balance out the overall tone of my page.

My school celebrated “Teacher’s Day” on Saturday (students are in school 6 days a week, though I only work Mon-Fri) and I was informed by my director that I needed to be at the school at noon in order to attend a concert the children were putting on. I arrived promptly at twelve o’clock, waited around (“Azr, James, Azr” the teacher’s kept saying) until 1:30 before finally making my way to a classroom where the kids sang and performed skits for twenty minutes. After this “concert” the teachers all went back to the teacher’s lounge to wait until three o’clock when the café that had been rented would be ready. During this time the 11th form class (highest class—equivalent to ‘seniors of High School in America) came in to wish us a happy Teacher’s Day and presented everyone with a flower and card. Before leaving one of the most out-spoken of the boys also held up a bag and said “To our beloved teacher’s, please entertain yourselves with this…” he then set the bag down and left. One of the teacher’s closest to the bag opened it to reveal three bottles of expensive Kyrgyz vodka, wine and two 1-liter bottles of Sprite and Fanta soda’s. Wow. Imagine the seniors of your local High School presenting that as a gift to their teachers, in front of the Principal nonetheless! But, of course, this is Kyrgyzstan and all of the teacher’s were very thankful and we went through all three bottles (plus five more) throughout our four-course meal at the café we arrived at around promptly at four o’clock.

I love this country. It’s little nuances of culture like that that keep me smiling to myself. Different school dynamics, and being woken up in bed in order to attend an impromptu dinner at ten o’clock at night surrounded by old women whom I can’t speak with because they all have limited dental facilities are just two of countless reasons for me to just sit back and enjoy my time here! Yeah, the impromptu dinner was interesting…

More than just sitting back and enjoying my time here I feel that I am in a unique position to actually accomplish something beyond the ‘norm’ for the first time in my life. I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea (thank you thank you thank you, Mom and Dad for giving me that book—INCREDIBLE!) and throughout reading it I just couldn’t help but be motivated by every single chapter! I’ve begun to think about ways that I can affect my community beyond the English lessons I currently lead on the side and my daily 4 hour commitment to Manas Secondary School that I fill in the same capacity. I’ve got one idea in particular that is very promising and I’m going to try to meet with the Mayor of Kyzyl-Adyr next week to discuss how feasible it actually will be…sorry, I don’t want to mention it just yet because I really don’t know if it’s possible—more to come, I promise:) On top of that, I feel that throughout these next two years that I’ve committed myself to Kyrgyzstan I will only come across even more opportunity to shake things up a bit…just like in Three Cups of Tea, it’s not skill that counts as much as it is the willingness to succeed that matters in affecting change. I can only hope that my willingness doesn’t falter in times of stress and strife, and that I can walk away from this experience with more than just a certificate.

On another note, it’s my birthday on October 12th. I’m going to be twenty-five years old. Rounding that quarter-century mark in a country I couldn’t even pronounce four months ago is a milestone in itself, but more than that I feel like I’m at a new beginning. For the first time in my life I’m free of every commitment that our modern society places upon its youth; I’m free of credit debt, and have absolutely nothing to live for except every single day that I wake up. What that day brings has been completely different from every single day prior for the past four months, and as far as I can tell that’s only going to continue. I worked in a law office for two and a half years before joining the Peace Corps so I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt—living in the moment of every single completely-different-day-from-the-day-before feels great! A lot of my friends that have turned twenty-five before me complained of the feeling of ‘getting old’ or ‘lost in where their life is going’. I’m sure that this same feeling pervades the festivities of every mid-twentysomething to a certain extent, but I’m happy to say that the thought hasn’t even crossed my mind. I don’t feel that I’m on the cusp of any age, as a matter of fact. I just feel that I’m living day-to-day, soaking it in and trying to get my bearings enough to maybe accomplish a little bit more than the norm. Not a bad feeling at all:)

With that said, if you’d like to send me anything to mark this momentous occasion (goodwill, or as thanks for my entertaining diatribes) all I really would like are Mach 3 Turbo razors, Nivea for Men Sensitive After Shave Balm, and shaving cream. The good-quality American shaving supplies that are available here are too expensive for my meager monetary means, and the local stuff will tear my skin apart before burning it worse than lemon juice in a paper-cut. Yeah, I’m shamelessly begging…but if you have the means or the desire please send anything you can to my aforeposted (now I’m creating words for your benefit:)) address. My face will thank you.

I realized after re-reading my last blog that I didn’t mention anything about the guesting I did with my host family at 7 people’s houses that we did to mark the end of Rammadan, nor did I mention how amazing the lungs were that my Apa cooked up, nor did I mention how my English club turned out! I’m tired of typing, so allow me to sum up:
Although we were supposed to all go to seven houses I only managed to make it to five because I was so painfully full of pretty good food. I got into an interesting conversation with an OLD Kyrgyz man about politics from the Soviet era over plentiful plates of Besh-barmahk (Kyrgyz spelling is: беш бармaк, Google it, if you get a chance:))
Lungs are delicious! I can’t speak for every lung out there, but the two my Apa cooked up were buttery, had the texture of boiled chicken and exploded with flavor of garlic, pepper and onion. Had I not witnessed the method of cooking (and the mouth-to-throat breathing entertainment generously provided by my host-mother) I never would have even known what they were! Seriously, if you’re ever offered lung in Central Asia—try it!!
The English club that Annie and I are running had its first successful lesson on Friday. We both had a blast, and I foresee this being one of my weekly highlights for the next two years!

Well, that’s about it. As always, questions and comments are greatly appreciated!

New Blog!

2008-10-12T00:51:00.000-07:00

What am I doing here? What in the hell am I doing in Central Asia “teaching” English to kids that don’t even care? Today my counterpart again left me to teach a class I wasn’t prepared for because she had to run an errand with our director. I wasn’t prepared because for the first two weeks of class all I’m supposed to do is observe, which I have, but this is the fifth time she’s just left me in charge of a classroom with the vague instructions of ‘just teach the English you know’. Well…this might come as a shock to my loyal readers out there, but I happen to know quite a bit of English so this task is a little bit vague, to say the least! The past few times I’ve been left to wing it in front of a class of Kyrgyz/Russian children that really don’t care (after all, how much did you care when you were in a required class between the ages of 10 and 15?) I’ve been fine, but today I was teaching the 6th grade English class. Not only did the boys all disrupt my class in every way imaginable throughout the 20 minutes I attempted to teach, but they began to throw things and mock my lesson. At this point I had it, and decided to just leave to find my counterpart. Of course, she was nowhere to be found so I found the only other male teacher in the school, a wizened old Kyrgyz man whom I get along with famously despite his 0 English ability and my (for the time being) limited means of Kyrgyz communication. I told him my problem and he went to the class and scolded them. This might have been enough if the boys that were causing all the ruckus were actually present, but they were playing soccer in the hallway and couldn’t be bothered. He told me not to worry and that Narjan (my counterpart) would take care of it. Sure enough, she eventually came back and took me back to the troubled classroom. There she lined all of the boys (about 8 of the little hooligans) in a row in the front of the class and proceeded to punish them. I’ve never witnessed corporal punishment before, and this came as quite a shock to me but I stood by as the ignorant foreigner should while this was being dealt out. Afterwards all of the boys apologized to me in Kyrgyz, which I accepted and she and I pleasantly made our way to the next class with the sound of the children’s humiliated tears fading down the hallway.

After school I was walking home with more stress than I’d felt during all of PST and a new type of anger that I’ve never felt before. This anger and angst that I felt was a combination of being so utterly and blatantly disrespected by children half my size, the absolute disregard for our two week ‘monitoring’ agreement that my counterpart showed me today, as well as the introduction to Kyrgyz school punishment that I had hitherto fore never been exposed that set me to a new and scary limit. As I was walking home I stopped by a creek near my house and sat on a rock to think about it all. I realized that I’m not anywhere even close to considering the thought of calling it quits, but I also just couldn’t stop thinking about all of the positive things I could be doing here. I walked home a little calmer, and with some very clear goals in mind. However, this is at 12:10 and I had the rest of the day to think about the days’ activity.

I’ve been reading Three Cups of Tea which is about Greg Mortensen, a mountain climber, turned Pakistan-school-builder and his incredible struggle to get tremendous things accomplished in this part of the world. It has been a huge inspiration for me. I was reading a chapter about his abduction by a remote tribe of sudo-Taliban in Pakistan in 1996 and how he recovered enough to finish his first school and continue building 51 more when I got a text that turned my entire day around. My friend from PST, Annie, texted me to say that she was in my town with 6 people that she’d been roped in to teaching English. Considering she’s a health volunteer she had no idea what to do so she called me. I reluctantly (come on, I was laying in bed in my PJ’s reading and getting ready for dinner…plus, I just had one hell of a day!) got dressed and met her at the ‘professional’ building she was meeting her group at. This is a building that, I’m sure, in the Soviet era was very nice and well equipped, but to say that it’s a shadow of it’s former self would be a tremendous overstatement. The group she was meeting with consisted of six adults (four more are evidently going to be coming) that all wanted to learn English. At first I was a little put off because she literally just threw this at me with no explanation, but after I spoke to them in Kyrgyz enough to understand who they were, why they were there and what they really wanted to do I could tell that they were serious about learning English…this absolutely changed my entire outlook on the day.

I spent the next hour speaking to them in Kyrgyz about their lives, telling them about mine and discussing what their goals were for our impromptu gathering. After I explained that I had no lesson plan ready because I didn’t know what to be prepared for, we set a time to meet every Tuesday and Friday at 5pm to conduct English lessons. After this gathering Annie and I went to a café to share a beer and talk about it. I can’t express more how absolutely elated I was at the prospect of beginning this class, and considering she hasn’t actually been doing much work in her village because Peace Corps seems to place the health volunteers arbitrarily in situations where there’s little to no organization for them to work with she was more than happy to help me with this endeavor, and expressed it wholeheartedly over our Baltica 9’s.

Since I’ve been here it seems that every single stressful situation has been relieved by a seemingly innocuous occurrence that completely turns everything around. Today I experienced yet another. After that horrible class of little bastards that got the shit kicked out of them in front of me I was feeling lost, pointless, and confused. Today, seeing the looks on these adults’ faces, their expressed willingness to learn what I’m here to teach and the eagerness with which they made their case known has one hundred percent brought me back into the fold.

What am I doing here? On the surface I’m here to teach. A little beneath that open-ended answer I could say that I’m here to share a cross cultural experience with my host family and maybe make a difference in my community with my ‘American’ ability. Today I learned that regardless of the boundaries with which my actual set teaching schedule is confined to there is a wealth of opportunity for me to actually make a difference in this village. There are people here that are eager and willing to learn what I can teach, and maybe throughout this process we can share some culture and I’ll be able to pick up even more Kyrgyz…I just need to be open to every opportunity that comes my way! I’m excited at this prospect, and I only have my friend Annie and her surprisingly random text message to thank for this opportunity. After all, it’s not every day one gets disenfranchised and completely converted to the cause again all in one day!

On another note. Have I mentioned how much I love my host family? Today, before the epic text message from Annie, my Apa knocked on my door saying “James, Azr, cen kel, cen kel” which means “James, now (or later, someday, soon, whatever [see previous blog for explanation]) you come, you come.” Ooookaaay…I got up from my bed where I was reading (thank you Three Cups of Tea, you’ve been a boredom destroyer lately!) and wandered out to our kitchen where she showed me the remnants of a cow that my Ata recently slaughtered. By ‘remnants’ I mean that she held up the throat and lungs of the cow and told me to take a closer look. Now I’ve always held an interest in science and biology. Life in all its forms provides an endless fascination for any curious mind, but having my Apa hold the throat of this freshly killed beast up for me with the lungs just dangling there was almost too much to bare. Then, to be sure I understood what they were, she put her mouth to the opening of the throat and blew into it to expand the lungs. Wow. All I can say is that was AWESOME! I told her that she’d better brush her teeth afterwards and she explained that she doesn’t have to because she’s only using her lips…sorry Ata:) Then she had me pour some milk-like substance into the throat through a funnel she’d inserted and I watched as this entire bucket of liquid expanded the lungs to their full capacity before she had me tie off the throat with a string. Then she told me she’d boil it so we could eat it tomorrow. Wow, wow, WOW. Now (‘American’ now, meaning “at the immediate present moment”) we’re going to eat an actually ‘Americanly acceptable’ meal before I head off to another blissful sleep of wonder at this amazing country!

Oh, and tomorrow classes are cancelled because it’s the end of Ramadan (Orozon, in Kyrgyz) so everyone has to go guesting at seven different houses throughout the day…gotta love these Kyrgyz holidays!

More to come soon…I’m sure:)

Talas Life...

2008-09-27T23:41:00.001-07:00

Well I am definitely settled in to my permanent site! My new host family is just as great as I remember, and these first few days of school have been amazing! The ride up here was interesting though. We left the Issyk-Kul Hotel in Bishkek at 9:00am in a rented marshutka. I was with four other Talas volunteers and our respective counterparts (the ‘counterpart’ is the teacher that we will be working with or the next two years) riding through the Ala-Too mountain pass with all of our luggage, when our driver hit a turn a bit too fast and blew out a tire going about 30km/h. Granted, it’s not that fast but in the Marshutka that blown-tire felt like a bomb going off! He made us all pile outside while he worked on fixing it but we were all wearing shorts and t-shirts because Bishkek was about 80 degrees, but on the mountain pass the temperature was hovering somewhere between ‘damn-cold’ and ‘fucking freezing’ with a 40mph wind to cap it all off! He finally got us going again in about an hour which was good because I was starting to wonder if the feeling in my hands and feet would ever return. Luckily the feeling did return in time for my warm welcome at my new permanent site!

My new host-family is great. My new host-Apa is an excellent cook, which is a much welcome change from my PST host-Apa who…well, I’m sure you’ve read the other postings on that subject:) I am still friends with Kolya, the gigantic beast of a dog who according to my host-Ata is ‘an excellent dog-fighting champion’…I really don’t even know how he qualifies though because not only does he look more like a bear wearing a dog costume than an actual ‘dog’ but he’s extremely docile and well behaved…when he’s not stealing my left-overs:) We’ve all had some lively dinner-time conversations and my Kyrgyz is improving incrementally by the day; baby steps for sure, but it worked for What About Bob? so I’m sure I’ll get there eventually!

School is awesome! I finally feel like I’m actually doing what I set out here to do. The monotony of PST is finally over and I’m really teaching! Yes, that’s right, I’m really teaching. I was supposed to watch my counterpart teach for the first two weeks before coming up with lesson plans together, but yesterday (24-09-08) she said in her very broken English “James, I am tired. I have to plan our party tomorrow so can you teach this last class?” Me: “Ooookkaaayyy…sure. What should I teach them?” Narjan (my counterpart): “English.” Me: “Right. Okay. English…” Sure enough I went into the 8th grade class and began with introductions, then worked my way from there for the next 45 minutes just by judging what they already knew (not much at all) and what was in the room that I could translate/explain to them. It actually went quite well, and I’ve already got a good grasp on keeping them in order. Once they all figured out that Narjan would not be in there some boys in the back started goofing off so I made them come up and write a sentence on the board. Luckily for me Kyrgyz culture is not as egocentric as American culture so being put in the spotlight is the ultimate humiliation. They were quiet for the rest of my “class.” :)

Now back to the party. As I write this (25-09-08) I’m at home (we actually have electricity past 9am!) waiting to go back to school at 2:00pm for the party. My first class today was scheduled for 10:30 so I arrived at 10:15 to find teachers running all over the place and not a kid in sight. I tracked down Narjan who in very flustered English explained: “No, we no teach today. Today is our party.” Me: “Okay, that’s cool…ummm…when’s the party” Narjan: “Azr”. Now o’ loyal readers is a great lesson in Kyrgyz culture. What Narjan said in response to my query was “azr” which literally translates to “now” and/or “soon”. It’s used interchangeably between the two English definitions and really does mean now and/or soon. By the way, it’s the only word the Kyrgyz even have for “now”. So I of course offered to help prepare for “our party”, but Narjan said that she wanted me to wait in our English classroom because the party would begin “azr”. So I waited. Then I waited some more. Then I took out my deck of cards and had four rousing games of Solitaire, all of which I lost to the dealer. Soon enough (about 4 hours later) Narjan comes back in and says: “Okay, now I leave, but our party will begin azr, you can wait or go home and come back at 4 when our party begins.” “Oh.” I say “the party begins at 4?” Narjan: “Yes, of course, that is what we’ve been planning for weeks!” (I just got here three days ago, remember.) Me: “Oh, yeah, I must have forgotten that tiny all important piece of information from a couple of weeks ago when I wasn’t here…I guess I’ll go home and come back at 4.” The part of my last quote prior to the ellipsis was of course a very funny internal monologue that I repeated for the duration of my walk home.

So there you have it. Kyrgyz culture summed up with one word. The strangest part to me though was the fact that although all of the teachers were running around trying to prepare for the party all of the kids were sitting dutifully in their classrooms waiting for their teacher to appear! When I asked Narjan why the kids were even in school if no teachers were teaching she said: “the children must be in school.” Then I asked why they even bothered going class to class if there were no teachers around? Narjan’s response: “maybe some teachers want to teach.” I guess that tells it all right there. ‘Now’ can also mean ‘soon,’ and when there’s a party going on teaching is purely optional!

I love it here. This style of living fits my personality quite well. I honestly didn’t mind the fact that my entire day was wasted because, honestly, what did I have to do anyway!? I’m really just along for the ride. Lately I seem to have had a crash-course in Kyrgyz professionalism (a bit of an oxymoron, but entertaining nonetheless) and every singly meal I’ve had with my new host family thus far has more than made up for the gastric pain I endured throughout my three months of PST:)

NEW CONTACT INFO.!!!

2008-09-14T00:50:00.000-07:00

Now the begging begins! Just kidding…here’s the address to my permanent site for those of you that are interested in sending me any packages or letters. Because my site is a Rayon Center (Rayon is like a “county” in America, so Kyzyl-Adyr is like what Seattle is in King County) you can send everything directly to the post office which cuts down on the amount of hands that might get to it. Liz, the K-15 that’s also at my site said that she’s become friends with the lady that works at the post-office and the lady just calls Liz directly whenever she gets anything. Hopefully I can use my wit and charm to win her over and receive the same privilege…for the time being, please just assume that I can:) With that said, because I still can’t figure out the formatting on this blog site although I’ve put the two addresses (Latin and Cyrillic) one-below-the-other, please put the Cyrillic address one to two inches to the right of the Latin-letter address.

722700
Talas Oblast
Karabura Region
Kyzyl-Adyr Village
ATTN: JAMES SWIFT
Kyrgyzstan

722700
Талас областы
Карабуура району
Кызыл-Адыр айылы
Джеймс Свифт
Кыргызстан

That’s all for now, I just wanted to get this out there! On Thursday I have my ‘swearing-in’ ceremony and Friday I take a taxi to my permanent site to begin work in Manas Secondary School on Monday!! I’ll post an updated blog with how all of that goes in the next week or so.

Thank you so much to everyone who has sent me packages/letters!!! You have no idea how much I appreciate receiving things from home, it’s an incredible feeling to actually get a package, or open a letter sent by my close friends—holding it is like actually being back there. Yeah, I know I’m being a bit cheesy but I really mean it. Thank you thank you thank you!!!

I typed this out about a week ago, and have just been able to use the internet. A little outdated, but just ignore the incorrect use of future tense.

2008-09-05T23:38:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting in my (soon-to-be) permanent host-family’s gorgeous living room typing this out on a brand new Pentium IV computer next to a really nice TV that’s actually hooked up to cable. Yeah…it’s going to be pretty sweet once I finally move in here for good! Kizul-Adyr is also incredible! Everything I said about it before turned out to be absolutely true, and then some! The town is huge by Kyrgyz standards. It’s got numerous cafés (with working beer taps—I forgot how good those really are!), a ton of really big super-market-type (again, by Kyrgyz standards here folks) shops that carry anything I might need and my future school is amazing! More on that later though…Kizul-Adyr also hosts a huge park right in the center off from a giant bazaar selling tons of fresh fruit, vegetables, marked-up personal products, and beans…lots of beans. Talas is known as the “bean-capital” of Kyrgyzstan, and Kizul-Adyr doesn’t do much to diminish that reputation at all. I have honestly never seen so many of the little tasty buggars! As I mentioned at the start of this paragraph, my host family’s house is absolutely beautiful! Do I need to mention that we’re dealing with Kyrgyz standards again? I hope not…but with that said, it really is a very nice house that I’m going to be living in for the next two years. Aside from the aforementioned niceties they also have a great fridge with freezer, nice kitchen and a huge yard! My mom would love it because this yard has cows, two sheep, and 12 chickens…she’s got a bit of a chicken fetish—don’t ask. At any rate, it is a very nice place. They have a sun-shower like my current temporary host-family but they also have a working banya! I think I might have mentioned this ingenious device in a previous posting, but for a quick refresher the banya is basically like a low-grade sauna that you wash your self in as well as ‘cleanse’…like a sauna. All of my friends that have tried one rave about it, so I really can’t wait to get in there! Plus, in the winter if you don’t have one you really don’t have any opportunity to wash yourself at all—I’m going to be getting plenty use out of it this winter for sure!

Now on to my school. The opening day ceremony was yesterday (September 2), and I’ve really never seen anything quite like it! All of the kids came dressed in little French-maid dresses for the girls and the guys in their finest two-sizes-too-big suits. As soon as I’m able to post pictures you’ll be amazed! The younger classes all brought flowers for their teachers and all of the teachers were treated to a feast of sandwiches and vodka by the parents of the newest class (equivalent of kindergarten). Following this party we had a teachers meeting at which my counter-part held her own despite the morning (yes, vodka at roughly 10am) activity…honestly I think that vodka should be a requirement for any meeting—it just makes things so much more entertaining! Following this we went to my counter-part’s house (my counter-part is the Kyrgyz English teacher that I’m paired up with to ‘team teach’) with my director (principal) and three other teachers. There we had another feast and quite a bit more vodka (it’s about noon at this time, so the guilt is less than before, but by now I’m a little drunk…) following this we went to the ‘main party’ at a local café. This party was hosted by the parents of the newest class again, but in style. They had a DJ, a huge feast (honestly I couldn’t even see the table under all of the food, vodka and champagne) and we danced, ate and drank until about 9pm. I finally got home around 9:30 and promptly passed out. That is not before Colya (my host-family’s dog-fighting champion that weighs about 150lbs.) accosted me outside the front gate and ate all of the food I brought home for my family from the feast. He’s really a very sweet dog, but doesn’t have much humor when it comes to food—then again, what dog does? Yes, he’s a ‘dog-fighting’ champion according to my host-father and has raked in about $1000 this year alone for my host family. Could that be the reason they’re so wealthy? Eh, I don’t trouble myself with the details, and as long as I’m on Colya’s good side I think I’ll be okay.

Today Im heading to Talas City today to meet up with all of the current volunteers and my fellow Talas K-16’s to go on the huge water slide, hang out in the park and party before heading back to Bishkek tomorrow. Once I get to Bishkek I’m heading straight to Beta Café which has the best cheeseburger and French fry combo in town. It’s not much, but we are dealing with Kyrgyz standards, remember? Then it’s back to Station Ivanovka where I shall remain before I’m sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer at the end of the month. If the next two years of my service are anything like the last two days in Kizul-Adyr have been I think I’m in for one hell of a time!

So sick of goat-meat...but good news too:)

2008-08-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

I’ve lost about 15 pounds. Yup. 15 fucking pounds. I read that guys typically lose between 10-20 pounds upon their arrival in-country, but I had no idea the extent to which the veracity of that claim would actually affect me! I don’t look “sickly” or bad, I’ve been able to keep a regular work-out schedule and still eat until I’m stuffed when it’s food I can actually fathom eating. But I think that the cause of my incredible weight loss is due to three equally contributing factors: 1, I’ve had the most amazing (there really is no other word for it) diarrhea for a combined total of about fourteen days since getting here. 2, the only food I’ve consumed has been completely natural with no grease, butter or saturated fat of any kind…it’d be great if it wasn’t so laden with goat meat (more on that later). 3, I’ve finally managed to stand up for myself and clearly define what I will and will not consume as “food”.

About ¼ of every meal that I have the option (now) of eating is completely ridiculous so I only eat when it appears to be digestible by a western stomach. The reason for this sudden change of situational dietary freedom is due to my no longer being viewed as the ‘guest’. I am now really ‘part of the family’. Although my language is equivalent to that of a semi-retarded two year-old from Alabama, I’ve been present long enough for them to get a full grasp of my incredible gift for gesticulation. Through my many mimes I’ve been able to convey just about everything…well, my thorough understanding of present-simple tense Kyrgyz helps a bit too.

Goat meat. The bane of my existence. I could stand it at first because I was really trying to ‘culturally integrate’ but now that shit is out the proverbial window--I’m here, I speak (sort of), I can get around and I’ve got a cell phone…hell, I’m half-way to being native, but I get it. It’s cheaper than beef and the fish here is un-reliable. Oh, by “un-reliable” I mean it either tastes great and you die, or it tastes like pure salt and you live but you have a terrible stomach ache for three days. No fish. But what about chicken? What ever happened to the wonderful bird that cannot fly? I never thought I’d say this, and those that know my Seattle diet best know how crazy it is that I’m now begging for this bird-of-the-ground…but I would honestly do ANYTHING for a simple chicken dinner!!! Funny thing is that it costs about the same as shit-tastic goat meat but no one here eats it! Why? Well o loyal reader I shall tell thee. The truth about a true agriculturally based economy is that everything is truly utilized to it’s full and true potential. That’s the truth. Beef is incredibly expensive because cows are more useful as garden-weeders and dairy-producers than they are as a delicious cut of perfectly brazened rib-eye grilled just shy of medium rare with a cilantro/butter sauce gingerly poured on top whilst seeping through it’s delicate yet juicy interior. Okay…I might just have to quit this crazy thing and come home directly. Damn. Why would I do that to myself? Sorry, okay, now I’m back on track—anyway, the same thing goes for chicken. Chickens are more valuable as egg-producers than they are as (*edited for delicious content) meat. Therefore no one kills a cow and no one chokes a chicken…well, if they do they certainly don’t talk about it! So there you are o loyal reader thee…the truth of my truly despicable predicament!

I had a dream the other night about Red Robin. Of all the things I could be dreaming about (I did just start up a dating game with a certain female PCT) I woke up with my mouth watering at the thought of a big juicy blu-ribbon burger with fries and a side of honey-mustard dipping sauce accompanied by a fruity rum-based smoothie drink. Gay? No, just desperate for something other than dry goat meat and vodka. Okay…I can’t go further with this topic—I’m actually starting to fantasize about pizza and hotdogs from the Capitol Hill street vendors after the bars close…DAMN, STOP IT JAMES! Moving on…

Newest big news: I get to visit my permanent site on Saturday! On Friday all of the K-16’s are staying the night at the Issyk-Kul Hotel (the same one that we partied at…I mean, had our ‘orientation’ at for three days upon our arrival in Bishkek) before leaving with our future host-families on Saturday. I can’t wait! Some of the current PCV’s in Talas have been texting us future Talas Oblast PCV’s about what they have in store for our 4 day stay and it sounds like it’s going to be a blast! Then again, when did swimming clothes and vodka not sound like fun? Yeah, you all be jealous about that and I’ll be jealous about your food…DAMN! Okay, anyway the Issyk-Kul Hotel is really cool, it has an entire back garden area that was built as a millennium celebration in 1995 (It’s Kyrgyzstan…’nuff said) but the sculptures are all “futuristic” and “Soviet” in style…which makes it really creepy and cool! Also as soon as you enter the main grounds of the hotel (think ‘resort’ without resort amenities…then take it a step to the soviet angle and you’ll get an idea of what this entire place is like) there is a tiki bar set up run by children. Well, I’m sure it’s their parents that own it but they’re the one’s serving the booze—it’s actually quite cute once you get over the whole “corruption” thing, and the grounds of this bar have cushions and tables everywhere. It is really quite cool! So I think that between the creepy architecture garden and children-run tiki bar this Friday should be a blast! Also, private time with my new special lady friend is always a welcome commodity under the watchful eye of the US Government:)

So there you have it. The long and short of my current lack-of-consumables-yet-adjusting-to-it dietary and cultural journey. More to come post-permanent site visit with stories of swimming things and vodka galore, I’m sure. Stay tuned o loyal reader—your sympathy and comments go a very long way. Seriously. Keep ‘em coming! I love the contact with normalcy! Until next time…

My permanent site placement!

2008-08-21T04:02:00.000-07:00

I just found out my permanent site today!!! I’m in a large town called “Kizul-Adyr” which translates to “red-something…” No, something isn’t the last word, but I can’t find “Adyr” in my dictionary so as far as I know I’m going to be living in “red-something” for the next two years in the Talas Oblast (“Oblast” is basically what they call each respective “state” here, so Talas is the name of the “state” I’m in and Kizul-Adyr is name of the city). Anyway, I’m stoked! Not only is it in the Northern part of the country, but because for all of my IST’s (In-Service-Training’s) that take place in the capitol city of Bishkek various times throughout the year I have to travel through Kazakhstan on the main highway, I’m given a “travel” Visa for Kazakhstan that doesn’t expire until I leave the country. That means that on school vacations and summer break I can travel throughout Kazakhstan and visit other PCV’s there! This is a privilege only extended to Talas volunteers, and only out of necessity, which makes my site placement all the more UNBELIVEABLY AWESOME!!!

Also, not to brag, but taken verbatim from my site description in the packet I received today Kizul-Adyr’s details boast that “near the large Kizul-Adyr water reservoir…people swim and hang out. You can also rent Jet-Skis and Catamarans by the day, there is also the most exciting water slide in The Kyrgyz Republic”. More and more it’s looking like The Kyrgyz Republic is where I was meant to be placed. As excited as I was for SE Asia when I was initially nominated I just can’t imagine being anywhere but here, right now, with these people. I’ve also started dating a girl in my training class; she and I have both been placed in sites that, although far from one another, are each only 5 hours from Bishkek respectively…which means many weekend trips to the big city are already in the works!

Life here is going great! I’ve met some amazing people (as well as one particularly attractive one:)) and I just found out that I’m going to be spending my next two years of service in paradise! From what I’ve read Talas is beautiful, mountainous, and possesses a comparatively more liberal Kyrgyz culture from what one might experience in the southern regions. Today I also found out that my really good friend Kristen, whom I’ve had the pleasure of being neighbors with throughout PST, has also been placed in Talas! We’re about 30 minutes away from each other, so these next two years are going to be an absolute blast!

Sometimes I still wake up and look at the beautiful hand-woven carpet hanging on the wall next to my bed, I hear the train rattle by in the distance while my cow moos at the rooster to stop crowing and it feels so unreal…almost like a dream, but I’m living it. I guess it still hasn’t fully sunk in yet that this is where I’m living now, this is what I’m doing now, and for the next two years as I slowly perfect my Kyrgyz and more fully integrate myself into my respective community—this is my life. It’s just a bit crazy. You know, but in a really ridiculously good way:)

More tips on sending packages (if you are so inclined)

2008-08-07T02:49:00.001-07:00

Just a quick add-on to package sending (of course, only for interested parties):

My friend Adam sent me a package with two magazines, a package of playing cards including UNO and a T-shirt. The T-shirt was stolen out of the box. He did everything right, he put the crescent moon and star all over the package and taped it up really good, but a desperate worker at the Kyrgyz post office still ripped it open and took what was probably a cheap and funny T-shirt that I really would have liked to have received. From this first (of hopefully not many) stolen items I have learned the following about sending packages from the US to Kyrgyzstan:

1) Tape the box with dark colored tape, preferably duct tape as it is easier to see any possible tampering thereby acting as a built-in deterrent.
2) Put the crescent moon and star over the space that the box’s flaps come together so that whomever decides to try to steal any contents has to actually cut through it. Adam did that on the top of the box, but on the bottom he put it on one of the flaps individually, letting whichever thief that stole my shirt have less on his conscience…which very well could have made my box an easy target. In general, I think it’s a good rule to make desperate thieves have to work a little harder than that and deal with the spiritual consequences laterJ
3) Pack all of the items in the box under copious amounts of popcorn packing material and put the most valuable items in the middle of the box (preferably in their own box, so they can’t be quickly identified…though what use a Kyrgyz man has for a funny and ‘inside-joke’ sort of shirt I have no idea)…also it’s best to declare a shit-ton less value than the contents may actually be worth. Adam did a stellar job of this, but evidently there’s a hot black-market for funny shirts in Kyrgyzstan that I’ve yet to encounter…until now, unfortunately.
4) Pack items in a bigger box than necessary. I think they ship by weight and not so much by size, and the bigger the box the less easy it’ll be to quickly open and close without a supervisor seeing.
5) DO NOT WRITE “USA” ANYWHERE ON THE RETURN ADDRESS!!! I know this might sound dangerous, but if it needs to be “returned to sender” for any reason it will eventually get back to you. Having USA on the return address is the easiest way for any scummy-bastard-T-shirt-stealing-goat-fucker to see that the box’s contents might be worth pilfering. Just write your return address like you would if you were sending it within the US and it’ll be just fine.

This is of course assuming that anyone wants to send me anything…however, although Adam’s box had only current editions of Time and Popular Science magazines, some pictures and a nice letter (a T-shirt too, but that’s a bit of a sore subject so please don’t bring it up again) I really, really, really appreciated it. Not to guilt trip anyone, but if you see a trinket, a funny game, an interesting magazine…fuck…anything that’s American and you think that I’d like then I can’t stress enough how welcome that sort of gift would be. Plus, my birthday is October 12. I’ll be at my permanent site by then and will post the address as soon as I receive it, but for the next 30 days the address I posted in my previous blog will work great. Also, FYI, Adam sent the package on 7/21/08 and I received it on 8/04/08…not a bad turn-aroundJ

Thank you to all, and I promise many more stories to come…

What is Kyrgyzstan like?

2008-08-07T02:47:00.000-07:00

What is Kyrgyzstan like? It’s certainly a country of great wealth disparity, that’s the most striking observation one can make upon exiting the capital city of Bishkek. It’s beautiful. Beyond words beautiful sometimes. There are days that I’m walking to my language lessons and pass an entire herd of goats and cows against a backdrop of the largest towering mountains I’ve ever seen. That’s another thing, the goat/cow herding. Kyrgyzstan is extremely community orientated so people take turns herding everyone else’s goats/cows…the crazy part is they don’t even herd them directly back to the house they came from—they’ll just walk them down the main street, stopping traffic the entire time and the cows and goats will veer off to their own house without any prodding. Which is strange considering the way they treat their animals here. It’s strange how they treat their animals only because I come from a country that actually has “animal rights activists” and people that treat their animals better than their own children on occasion. Here, they treat their animals as humans have since the dawn of civilized man—as tools to keep the house running, safe, and effective. It’s quite interesting, but tough to get used to. Their treatment of dogs especially. I grew up with a wonderful dog (some of you might have met Panda…she was greatJ) and my parents currently have Cookie, who’s about as tough as her name implies. My host-family has two dogs as well but they’re mean, not allowed in the house under ANY circumstances and barely fed scraps off the table. Actually I don’t know that for certain because I’ve never actually seen them be fed. However, because they’re starving and mean they are the best deterrent to any would-be robber and/or stray animal that might want to gain access to the house. From a sensible security standpoint they are excellent guard-dogs. It’s just tough for me because I grew up with a sense that the dog is a member of the family, whereas here they are basically slaves of a different species. Terrible reference, I know…but entirely accurate.

The towns are beautiful in their simplicity. Station Ivanovka, where I currently reside has no running water, intermittent electricity and the only toilets available are outhouses. Oh yeah, as my buddy Joe found out yesterday, once the outhouse gets full (use your imagination), you just cover it up and build a new one right next to it. And so it goes, the circle of life completely explained with a single reference to outhouses. I’m a genius.

Kyrgyzstan is an emerging country economically and with specific detail to modernity. It’s a country that has more broken and abandoned factories than running ones, but everyone that wants a job has one. The cities are modern, they have running water and electricity and rude people on the streets. The towns, however, operate in much the same way America did in the 1800’s…everyone looks out for everyone else, children are raised by their parents and the community and you shit outside regardless of the weather…yeah, I’m still on that subject;)

The community aspect of Kyrgyzstan is the most striking and evident in my daily activities though. If I’m on a Marshuka (tiny public transport VW van/bus thing) and an old lady gets on, every single young man will stand and offer their seat to her. If a 12 year old punk kid is too busy listening to his iPod everyone is within their right to slap his face and make him move. Seriously. In America parenting seems to be a pride issue. A proud mentality that holds that ‘this is my kid, I’ll raise them how I want’, whereas in Kyrgyzstan people look at the younger generation as future Kyrgyz community members so everyone has a say in how to raise them. I can’t quite make an argument for the merits of either method…it’s just different here.

In Bishkek you can find popular restaurants, hot night clubs, great bars, huge malls and nice paved roads (the difference between nice and not-nice paved roads is another HUGE striking difference here…in America one or two pot-holes is ‘not-nice’, in Kyrgyzstan one giant pot-hole that requires evasive maneuvering every 2 feet is ‘not nice’…’nice’ is slightly better than that) and girls that are wearing the latest short skirt, tiny tank-top fashion that MTV says is cool. In the towns women dress much more conservatively and are judged more harshly by their neighbors and peer groups than the latest chick-flick-high-school-gossip movie would have you believe is the norm in America. Bishkek is beautiful, and it comes with all the big city pluses and minuses that big cities the world over come with. Yes, Drew…they have McDonald’s in Bishkek—but the fries taste completely different!

Kyrgyzstan is a predominately Muslim country, but the men drink, smoke, and sleep with prostitutes…except the one’s that don’t, yet they seem to be few and far between. The women have traditional roles in the home. Some have jobs, but they are still responsible for all the cooking and cleaning. The men work, eat and do the hard labor that every house in every village requires as standard upkeep. The family’s live together for a very long time too…If a family has four sons, when the eldest marries he and his wife will live at his parent’s home until the second eldest marries, then they’ll move out. This will continue until the youngest son marries and he will live with his parents and his new wife until the parents die; he will then inherit their home and the tradition will continue anew.

Overall, Kyrgyzstan is a beautiful country, with beautiful people and a beautiful way of life. The cities are fast-paced and fun, and the towns are so slow it’s hard to move sometimes…days like that though I just get together with my friends here (there’s 10 PCT’s in Station Ivanovka), buy a 1.5 liter bottle of piva (beer) for 40 som (about $1.05) and sit in the park drinking and talking while children run around. It’s amazing. The kids are also ridiculously good at soccer here. We play pick-up games about twice a week (well, me and three other guys here) and the kids are just phenomenal! That’s a whole other story though, and I’m getting tired.

Hopefully this blog post gave you a simple idea of what Kyrgyzstan is like. I’ll be trying to post some pictures soon (maybe next month, when I save up the som to spend the time on the internet they’d require), but in the meantime please keep posting comments with any questions or thoughts you might have. As this is really my only means of communication with my friends back home I ALWAYS love hearing from you!!!

Settling in to Kyrgyz life...

2008-07-31T03:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I am definitely settled in to my PST site! Three days ago I was recovering from the worst bowl malfunction that I’ve ever experienced. The after-effects alone dictated the necessity of a roll of toilet paper and hand sanitizer as constant companions wherever I decided to go; school, training, the kitchen, etc. As such I decided the best idea was to have a roll and bottle in my backpack at all times, as well as some in my room. But I digress. On Wednesday I was coming back via ‘marshuka’ from our ‘HUB’ day (it’s a day when every PCT gets together for long lectures on obvious things [safety, health, how Peace Corps still hasn’t gotten our ID’s ready yet, etc.] that waste a majority of the day…but it’s a great chance to socialize with people other than the folks at my training site whom I see every damn day, so it’s pretty cool:) when one of my friends recognized my Apa (host-mother) in the back. Evidently she was coming back from a shopping excursion in Kant, the same place where we have HUB day, and offered to pay the taxi fare for me and two other people that live near me to get back home.
--note: I live in Station Ivanovka, Ivanovka is the main town that has the marshuka connection to ‘the big city’ Kant. It costs 10 com (about 33 cents) to get from Station Ivanovka (it’s a town around a train station) to Ivanovka via taxi, then another 20 com (about 70 cents) to get from Ivanovka to Kant via marshuka. Then the same back, but in reverse.

Once we got back to Station Ivanovka my Apa insisted that all three of us accompany her to a local ‘magazine’ (shop). There she made it clear that we were all to drink vodka to my health. Keep in mind this local magazine is like 1/8th the size of a small 7-11 back home, and individually owned/operated. She then proceeded to buy a 1/5 of vodka, a giant can of mackerel, and four giant pieces of pita bread, then she asked the ladies behind the counter for a knife to open the can with and cups for our vodka. She was also so kind as to get my friends and me some juice-boxes because we’re weak Americans and have a hard time drinking our vodka straight. Meanwhile old lady’s are coming in and buying their vodka and pita bread while trying to work their way around us…we were honestly taking up over half the available customer space, but no one seemed to care! Over the next twenty minutes (she was pouring double shots for everyone…it’s the only way they drink their vodka here!) we finished the bottle of vodka, ate mackerel and pita bread sandwiches, chased our drinks with juice boxes and gave many toasts in broken Kyrgyz. We were in this tiny shop the entire time, with the shop ladies smiling kindly from the other side of the drink cooler my Apa was using as a cutting board/bar!

The weather here has been a little crazy over the past week and has alternated between raining at 55 degrees and sunny with no clouds at around 100 degrees. In the time we were in the shop it went from being slightly cloudy (you know, Seattle year-round) to a torrential downpour! Well, my Apa wasn’t about to let our heads get wet on our walk home, so she asked the shop ladies for some plastic bags, which she cut open with the knife she used on the mackerel to make little hats for us to wear on our walk back in the rain. Unbelievable. Here I am, trying my damn hardest not to shit my pants, I’m full of mackerel and vodka (roughly 6+ shots worth in 20 minutes…so I’m definitely drunk) and I’m walking home with my Apa and two of my friends wearing plastic bags on our heads. These plastic bags are so thin, however, that the only purpose they really serve is as water soakers that condense the rain into pools that then drop in full force straight down my shirt collar. What a sight!

Luckily after a night of gut-wrenching lack of sleep, I actually did recover and am doing just fine as of the writing of this blog. This is just one of countless stories that seem to happen out of nowhere here!

I’ve had a great time at Ivanovka Station thus far and between swimming in the river, collecting water on my host brother’s motorcycle, and playing pick-up games of soccer with the neighborhood kids I’m really going to miss it when it does come time for me to leave for my permanent site. Luckily I can take solace in the fact that I’ve got two more months of what will surely be more random local happenings to keep things interesting and you, my loyal reader, ever the more intrigued.

How to send me letters, packages, gossip magazines, candy, porn...etc.

2008-07-18T02:37:00.001-07:00

This is taken from an e-mail sent by my "country desk" officer. It details exactly how to send letters and packages to me DURING MY THREE MONTHS OF TRAINING (after training--end of September--I'll have a completely different address, and it takes a little over a month for anything to get to me--FYI)

At the post office: The U.S. Postal Service uses the name Kyrgyzstan. The country names “Kyrgyz Republic” and “Kyrgyzstan” are interchangeable and are equally recognized. You may need to clarify to the postal clerk that the package is to be sent to Kyrgyzstan. Airmail delivery of letters and packages generally take between 4-10 days. Your post office will be able to assist in determining a reliable and cost-effective way of shipping items to the Trainee.
A note on sending packages: Please be sure to seal all packages with strong packing tape. Insuring the package may discourage tampering and pilfering. Unfortunately, from time to time Peace Corps Trainees and Volunteers have found that their packages have been tampered with, opened, and/or pilfered of the items inside. PC/Kyrgyz Republic cannot be held responsible for damaged or open packages.

For example: A letter to Trainee James Swift would have the following address (but instead of being one on top of the other, they should be clearly divided next to each other--English on the left, Cyrillic on the right--I just can't figure out how to format them like that for this blog posting...sorry)

KYRGYZSTAN
722140 Kant City
Lenina 97, RUPS
P.O. Box 22
ATTN: JAMES SWIFT

Кыргызстан
722140 г. Кант
ул. Ленина 97, РУПС
а/я 22

Please remember to put the Trainee’s name on the envelope or package to ensure delivery.

ALSO! BECAUSE CORRUPTION IS SO RAMPANT, THE ONLY WAY TO POSSIBLY ENSURE DELIVERY WITHOUT TAMPERING IS TO PUT THE MUSLIM CRESCENT MOON AND STAR ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE ENVELOPE/PACKAGE. DISPLAY IT PROMINENTLY!!! --Just do a Google image search for "muslim crescent moon and star" and you'll see what to put on there:)

This is, of course, assuming you have any interest in sending me anything other than your well wishes and good karma...which is CERTAINLY appreciated:)

Thanks!

PST placement and host family adventures...

2008-07-18T02:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I’ve been living in Станция Ивановка (Ivanovka Station) now for about a week and am still having a blast! My Kyrgyz language lessons are coming along quite well when I have my books in front of me, but when speaking I’m still limited to жакшы, рахмат, and каечиресиз (good/hello [jakshay], thank you [rakchmat], and sorry [catch-er-isis) but I feel like with the progress I’ve made in my understanding of Kyrgyz grammar the speaking will come along soon enoughJ Ivanovka Station is by far the least scenic of the various PST (pre-service training) stations in the area, but with that said it is still incredibly beautiful! The people here are so warm and friendly and the Kyrgyz mountains that I can see every day I walk to class are so big (honestly they put the Cascades to shame) they take over the sky in front of me even though they’re about 10km away! It’s extremely hot here right now. Every day has averaged about 95+ of dry heat, but there are a few signs that it might be letting up. Last night Kristen’s host mother, or ‘apa’ as we call them all (‘ata’ for host fathers) invited my apa and me over for “guesting” at her place. Guesting basically means you’re treated like a king with more food than you can possibly eat forced upon you and more vodka served than you thought humanely (yes, humanely) possible; then about mid-way though our four hour guesting it rained. Granted, it rained for about 20 seconds but there hasn’t even been a single cloud in the sky since I’ve been here so hopefully the weather will be cooling down a bit soon.

PST is coming along well…though I can’t wait to be done with it and it’s only the second week. They do too much hand-holding for my taste. Those of you that know me know that I am by nature extremely independent (too much so, according to my mother) and being required to dress a certain way, do certain things and have permission for everything is tiresome to say the least. But, I was speaking to a K-14 (I’m K-16) who’s service is up in September about it and he said that once I’m placed at my permanent site not only does the hand-holding stop but they pretty much leave you alone altogether…just 10 more weeks…just 10 more weeks…

I know I mentioned something similar in my last blog posting, but I am still surprised at how adjusted to this I already feel. I know that I’m still experiencing the ‘high’ that comes with travel and living in another culture—I experienced the same thing when I studied abroad in Perugia, Italy, and I know this will be followed by a ‘down-turn’ so to speak. However, after working in a law firm for the past 2 ½ years, and for 8 years before that being so focused on “the future”, finally being thrust into a situation where I’m literally living day-to-day with nothing to concern me except day-to-day activities is incredibly liberating! When I was working at Williams Kastner I was constantly reminded of what day it was, what time it was, and what I had to get done by when. Not that it was necessarily a ‘bad’ thing, but I feel that my daily personal life was sacrificed at the expense of a generous pay check. Now, I’ve decided to sacrifice the generous pay check for the ability to live my personal life day-to-day…not a bad deal, in my opinionJ

Kyrgyzstan is amazing. I’m reminded of that fact every single day I’ve been here. The weather is great (though too hot right now), the people are beautiful, the scenery is gorgeous and the food is amazing! Also, outhouses are not nearly as bad as I feared, and already everyone in my group is becoming somewhat of an outhouse connoisseur. For instance, mine has a wobbly board on the left and is just a big hole, whereas Jonathan’s is brand new, has solid footing and a very nice discrete hole. Though Kristen’s is not as nice as mine she at least has a door that closes properly, and Jenna’s has more open air at the top. I think I definitely drew the short straw with my outhouse, but even still it’s really no different than squatting in the woods. I think that when I’m done with this I’m going to write a definitive piece of literature on the topic of outhousesJ Also, the sun-shower is still the most amazing part of this whole experience. Showering outside is incredible, and with the sun on your face it’s almost heavenly…honestly, if you can get away with it, I sincerely recommend trying it!

My host family is awesome! It’s me, Apa, Erchayim (she’s 22), Tonya (she’s 20) and Adi (he’s 17). On Sunday I helped Adi with some yard work, and then we drove his motorcycle with side-cart up to the water-pump station to fill up three giant jugs of water for use at home. Unfortunately they don’t have running water in Ivanovka so we have to get it from a pump about 4 miles away…but that just means I get to ride on the back of a motorcycle that was probably built in the 1950’s, whipping around turns with a side-cart that’s always threatening to tip us over, while holding on to my host brother who’s ultimately only trying to show off how fast he can go without killing both of us. I love the Peace CorpsJ

Also, the beer here is phenomenal! They don’t have the same quality control that America has, so they can get away with so much more! For instance, they’ve got this beer called “Baltica” that ranges from #1 - #11…#1 is practically non-alcoholic, while #11 will knock your teeth out (it’s roughly 17%)! After much experimentation with Jonathan and Joe (yeah, Jonathan, Joe and James…it’s a sitcom waiting to happen) we’ve concluded that Baltica 8 is the best and actually better tasting than ANY major American brand. They’ve also got this beer called Piva, that’s about 5% but comes in a 2 liter plastic bottle (that’s about four beers in one) and only costs 53c (Som) which is roughly $1.25…Baltica 8 is 35c which is about $1 for a 22oz. glass bottle. The vodka is amazing too. I was really worried about it before I got here because I’ve never really liked vodka, but what they’ve got here is amazing! Take the top shelf Vodka in any American bar and you’ll likely get something that would be considered mid to low range here. Seriously, I’m completely convertedJ

That basically sums up what I’ve got going on right now. Today is “HUB” day, which means ALL the Peace Corps trainees get together in Kant (in Kyrgyz it’s pronounced ‘cunt’…I think I have way too much fun with that oneJ) for medical and technical training. HUB days are every Wednesday in Kant (ha ha ha) and it’s really just a great excuse to see everyone again. All 62 of us got really close during Staging in Philadelphia and Orientation in Bishkek, so now that we’re in our smaller groups (about 5-8 people per location) everyone really misses everyone else. I can already tell that HUB days are probably what I’m going to be looking forward to the most during these next 10 weeks.

That’s it for now…again, I’m actually paying to use the internet so I’ve got to keep this short and sweet. Rest assured o loyal reader, more stories are yet to comeJ

In Kyrgyzstan!!!

2008-07-08T22:32:00.000-07:00

I am writing this in an internet cafe in Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan. So far, this has been an amazing experience. All 62 people in my group are amazing! In such a short while (about a week) we've all really bonded, and there's quite a few people that I know I will be friends with for the rest of my life. That's an odd statement to make after such a brief period of time, but there's something about being thrown into the fire together that really brings people together immediately:)

Training is intense and long, but very very good. I found out that I'll be learning the Kyrgyz language, and have already made quite a bit of progress in it which is encouraging. Also, today (Wednesday 7/9/08) I meet and move in with my host family! I'm going to be in Ivanaka Station in the south about an hour long Marshuka ride from the big city of Kant. Marshuka's are crazy by the way...the drivers are nuts and everyone stands. Imagine an old VW bus with all of the seats ripped out and you'll get the right image. So much fun though:)

I'll be starting my PST (pre-service training) tomorrow and will go through it for the next three months while living with my PST host family. After training I'll move in with a different host family at my permenant site and start working!

Kyrgyzstan is a beautiful country. It's got high green mountains and low valleys. Every day so far it's been sunny and about 90+ degrees outside, so it's a little tough for my British skin to get used to but I'm managing:)

Behind me in this internet cafe is a crazy Russian dude listening to Michael Jackson loudly and on shuffle...where else in the world would that be going on!!?? I miss all of my friends back home, but now that I'm actually doing what I've talked about for the past few years I really don't think I'll be home in Seattle for a very long time. Some of my friends here have already been talking about post COS (close of service...everything is in acronyms here) we're going to take a massive trip (no planes) through Mongolia, China, Thailand, Cambodia, The Phillipines and India. Sorry;)

For those of you that are reading this, thank you. I miss everyone but trust that I'm having the absolute time of my life! All of the stress of leaving is just a distant memory and I'm living in the present moment for the first time in my life. It feels amazing. I know now beyond a shadow of a doubt that I made the right decision and I know that this is going to be the start of some more crazy adventures!

As soon as I figure out how to post pictures I'll post all of the crazy pictures of my staging event in Philadelphia (we all partied every night...what better way to bond?), the crazy layover in Istanbul, Turkey and all of the shinanigans we've been getting into here in Kyrgyzstan. The people here are incredible. They're beautiful and warm, friendly and genuine. Honestly it's a bit of a shock at first, but once you get used to it there really is no better way to be.

Hopefully when I do make it back to America I'll be able to take some of that with me.

Sorry for such a short post but it's 35 som per hour and I'm quickly running out of time. Also, as soon as I get a cell phone over here I'll post my cell phone number so you can text me and/or call me (it's expensive, but how cool would that be?;)

Back from Western Travels...time to move Eastward!

2008-06-28T16:55:00.000-07:00

I had an amazing trip. Too many stories to tell, too many places visited and far too many drinks consumed have made this one extremely difficult blog post...but I'll try my best:) After Chicago I went to England where I connected (I was about to type re-connected, but that would imply a prior connection) with my paternal grandparents, my paternal Aunt, her husband and their daughters--or rather, my cousins. That was actually the highlight of my trip, connecting with people I didn't know yet are my family. It could have been quite an awkward endeavour but luckily we're all related so we're all fairly gifted with gab. That's just one of many comparisons and similarities I could draw between our like personalities based solely on the briefest of encounters. Incredible. I will sincerely try to make it back to London after my service in the Peace Corps to solidify those relationships.

The following weekend I left for Amsterdam. I know, I know...Amsterdam. The first thoughts that come to the American mind are glutenous indulgence in sexual and/or narcotic activities, and I can assure you none (well maybe a wee dose of the latter) transpired. I continue to hold the same opinion of prostitution that I had before: good to have as an option for those that care to use their 'services', but certainly not for me. I had been to Amsterdam once before when I was nineteen. On Spring Break. With three of my fraternity brothers. Even then none of us consorted with the ladies-of-the-night...though the medicinal use of natures green herb was used to an excess I'm sure no one's doctor would recommend:) However, this time in Amsterdam was different. It was refreshing. Not only was I staying a comfortable distance away from the center, but I had a personal Dutch guide to show me the 'real' Amsterdam. Jonathan and I met during my study abroad in Perugia, Italy and have luckily remained in contact these three years later so he was an invaluable resource in my re-discovery of what is truly one of the prettiest and nicest of European cities. We got a chance to bike-ride along all of the canals and tour the best parts of the city. Plus he introduced me to the best coffeeshops Amsterdam has to offer, as well as their various wares-which really should be introduced to our fine culture; if only temperance was a virtue America held dear, as the Dutch so do...but that's neither here nor there.

I digress...following my Amsterdam tour-de-farce I made my way back to beautiful London-town!! London is an amazing city with a seemingly endless amount of activity to offer. I got a chance to see Royal Ascot as well as Taste of London (as a VIP, I might add) and partied with beautiful people in beautiful clothes drinking beautiful drinks on a beautiful deck in the heart of the city. Have I hammered the point home? Good...too many stories to tell individually, but believe me it was incredible.

Post London I had a brief respite from my travels in Seattle, before I made my way to L.A. Well, Hollywood to be exact. There I met up with my friend who works in the industry and met two guys who are leads in a popular sitcom and we partied all. night. long. Quite the Hollywood experience, and certainly one I will not be repeating anytime soon, but well worth the hangover:) Post L.A. I went with my friend Justin to Las Vegas. Yes. We had a good time:)

Now I'm home in Woodinville getting last minute preparations going for my epic departure on Wednesday to Kyrgyzstan. It's strange. I'm neither nervous nor excited..and you can see I have still not alleviated my improper application of alliteration--which is a good thing. It means not much has changed. As the clock slowly winds down to my inevitable departure I can't help but feel anything but grateful. Grateful to my friends for letting me stay with them for free in every city I visited, grateful to my newly-met family for being so warm and welcoming, grateful to my family for being so understanding, and yes, grateful even to my gracious former employer whose steady paycheck slowly allowed me to indulge in this month of debauchery.

The next step is Peace Corps. I have no idea what to expect, yet I know myself well enough to know that anything that's thrown at me will easily be coped with. I'm anxious to get over there and start living the life I've been planning for myself for the past three years. I still have no idea what I'll be doing post-service, but right now that's the furthest thing from my thoughts. Now I have packing to consider, gifts (for my host family) to buy, and local friends to have one last horrah with before I leave. Speaking of which, tonight at 9 at Peso's in lower Queen Anne, if anyone's interested:)

For now I leave you hopefully humored, curious, debating whether you gleaned the proper veracity from my ramblings, yet overall I hope I leave you entertained. More stories sure to come, just give me some time to figure out how to work the Kyrgyz' Cyrillic-Alphabet keyboards:)

Chicago

2008-06-08T20:04:00.000-07:00

I've been here for two full days now and don't think I've sweated more in my life!! It's been 85+ degrees both days with 378% humidity! At any rate it's been a great trip thus far. I've not only been having a great time staying with my friend Dave but I've also re-connected with, and rehashed a close friendship with my ex girlfriend Ann. All three of us went out Friday and Saturday and have had a great time!
Today Dave and I grabbed some breakfast at The Golden Nugget...the greasiest and simpelest breakfast in Chicago--plus the coffee was horrible, so it was a perfect introduction to mid-west life:) Then we picked Ann up and spent over an hour chatting and laughing at an outdoor cafe before meeting up with Dave's friend Dan. Ann left, so Dave, Dan and I all hopped on some bikes and rode around the city (actually the ENTIRE city...I'll post pics soon) for almost 6 hours. We stopped for a bit at "Blues Fest", a free outdoor music festival then kept riding.
Tomorrow Ann and I are going on an "architecture cruise" that Dave hooked up tickets for, and my flight to London leaves at 9:50.
I've got to cut this post short, there's a rousing game of Halo calling my name, but rest assured o loyal reader--more posts on more travels to follow!!

"POPS"

2008-06-05T22:42:00.000-07:00

I had such an amazing night with my friend Jessie last night. She and I have been friends now for about a year, but it feels like we've known each other our entire lives. Actually after meeting her brother at a BBQ at my place where I provided some delicious mojitos we all decided that I was the middle child lost at birth. Anyway, I provide this information so that you know how close we are as great friends.
Seeing as I'm leaving for an indefinite period of time she wanted to take me out for a night out with just the two of us. Seeing as she was paying, how could I refuse!? We hit up a couple bars in Bell Town and finally made it to Black Bottle. This place is a trendy/upscale nightspot/bar/restaurant just north of the main action on 1st Ave in Bell Town. It's also the restaurant we ALWAYS find ourselves at whenever we're drunk together:) At any rate, it seemed like the fitting end to what was a really great night between two close friends. At one point in the restaurant we actually couldn't stop laughing for 15 minutes!
Okay, if you've read my past blogs you should know that I don't bring up useless facts without some point and here it is o loyal reader ye, the definition of the title of this piece: when Jessie and I left Black Bottle we were in the highest of spirits and really just loving life and each other. When we passed The Del Ray on 1st there was a homeless man with an empty water jug hanging around his neck that stopped us. "Can I sing you a song?" he asked. "No," we replied, "we really need to get going..." You know, the usual bullshit you give to homeless people that are hassling you. But then he said: "that's okay, would you like to hear a song for free though?" Now, normally one would assume that this was just a ploy for us to take pity on him and give him change anyway, but there was a manner about his physical presence and a look in his eye that was so peaceful and so giving that both of us independently said "yeah, sure..." Then Jessie said "James is joining the Peace Corps, do you have a song about that?" Now this is when he looked at her with his wised eyes and responded with one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. It lasted only about a minute and was played on an empty water jug, but his voice was so spiritual and the words were exactly what I needed to hear...it was quite literally like he was speaking directly to my heart. Yeah, I know...cliche? Sure...but I lived it and I make no apologies in this post; just the facts o loyal reader, just the facts.
When he was through he shook both of our hands and HE WALKED AWAY. We were dumbfounded. I took Jessie by the arm and led her back to my car, but she wasn't ready to go. She was saying (what I was thinking) over and over that we can't just leave him like that! We got back to my car, drove to the nearest ATM and she took out $20. Then we drove back to where we found him but he was gone. As I was turning around Jessie screams "STOP!! I see him!" No sooner have I put my foot on the brake than she's jumping out of the car and running after him. So, of course, I park and follow her on foot. By the time I get to her she's talking to him about something obviously very personal. With tears in her eyes she gives him the $20, and I lead her back to the car after we both give Pop's (the name he gave us) a hug. When we get back in the car Jessie tells me about a homeless person her family took in a long time ago named Pop's who used to paint in water-color...which our Pop's does as well as sing beautiful poetry on the streets of Seattle...
All in all, considering that each of us had only had roughly 5 drinks over the past six to seven hours and were more tired than any hint of inebriation this was one of the most powerful nights I'd had in a long time.
I share because as a spiritual person with no affiliation with any religion or organization my faith was reaffirmed last night. Not only in my own beliefs, but in the human spirit and the truth of the soul.
I read what I just wrote and I can't believe I said that, but there really is no better way to say it so I'm going to let it stand. I'm going to leave this story for all interested parties to read at their leisure and I'm going to remember Pop's and his empty water jug that he turned into the greatest accompaniment to his sung-poetry that anyone could imagine. I shared this amazing experience with my friend Jessie, and no matter how long our absence from each other or distance between us, last night will be something we will both always remember.
I'm sad to leave, but I'm now more hopeful for the future than ever before. It's time to go, I leave for Chicago tomorrow at 2:40, then London on Monday...my life is finally starting to get interesting, but Pop's showed me that it really always was...and hopefully always will be. By the way, I'm also working diligently on my grammar and use of punctuation but I fear that you may have a long wait as learning Russian is now taking up a predominant amount of my time:)

Stay tuned for more, but in the meanwhile if you see Pop's be sure to ask him for a song, because he's got more to give than you have cash to spare. Think about it.

The Kyrgyz Republic

2008-05-15T15:33:00.000-07:00

I received (and accepted) my official invitation to serve in The Kyrgyz Republic beginning in July 2008!! I will leave for my “staging” event on July 3rd…I still don’t know where it will be yet, but it will be somewhere in America. That’s good, now I’ll be able to celebrate the fourth of July in America before being whisked away to Central Asia for over two years. I am incredibly excited and ready for this adventure! I just have to keep telling myself that it’s more than just a trip; it’s a life-changing move. I am moving to Kyrgyzstan for two years to teach English and involve myself in whatever other community development projects they might need me for.

I’ve already begun practicing Russian with the mp3’s Peace Corps had available to download…and I suck. I think that language will be the biggest barrier for me to cross, but once I do it’s going to be amazing!! Whether I learn Kyrgyz or Russian it’s going to change my life. It’s odd saying that, in a way, “change my life”…one never fully appreciates how much something has changed their life until they have hindsight to give them the proper perspective. Because I’m already fully cognizant of the fact that this will indeed “change my life” I can’t help but feel like I’m about to embark on a truly incredible journey!

I’ve been working at Williams Kastner for 2 ½ years now, and I’ll be leaving for good on May 30th. I can’t stress enough what an amazing experience it has been for me to work with such great people. I feel like over these past two years I’ve grown by leaps and bounds, and that is in no small part due to the attitude, work, appearance, and professional atmosphere that this firm has demanded. It’s strange to think about it in these terms but although I’d planned on serving in The Peace Corps since my sophomore year in college it’s taken this job to actually prepare me financially, personally, and professionally enough to do a full and complete good job with my service. Williams Kastner enabled me to do the proper job I’d always envisioned I would. For that I will always be grateful.

As I look ahead to the coming months I see great changes getting closer by the day. May 30th I’ll quit the best job I’ve ever had. June 6th I leave for Chicago, then London, Amsterdam, possibly Mykonos or Dublin, and then back to London before maybe heading to L.A. for a final goodbye to my good friends down there prior to setting off for staging on July 3rd. Sometime between now and then I’m going to work on my grammar so I don’t subject my loyal readers to these God-awful run-on sentences. Unfortunately for you, this is certainly one of my lowest priorities at present.

As much as I can’t wait to travel in Europe and rekindle old friendships with everyone I know over there and get set for my 2 years in Kyrgyzstan, I have to keep reminding myself to enjoy the present and stay in as much contact with my amazing friends here before I leave. Who knows? Where I end up in The Kyrgyz Republic might not have any easy access to my world back home in Seattle, I might go months without even so much as a letter to remind me of my roots! It could be weeks before I get to take a shower! Electricity could be nothing but a wishful thought, let alone some good pay-per-view to keep me company…ahhh, the ‘great unknown’ that is Kyrgyzstan. I’m so ready!

I just got medically cleared for Peace Corps!!!

2008-04-29T16:45:00.001-07:00

As I've said in my previous blog, I've been nominated to teach English and work with community developement in Asia. I just found out that I've been medically cleared for service in July 2008!!! I am still awaiting the official invitation, but now I am 99% of the way through the application process (that's taken me roughly 2 years to complete). I'm keeping this post short and sweet, because I just wanted to make the ever-so-brief announcement--stay tuned for more updates!!!

It's official...

2008-04-11T15:25:00.001-07:00

May 30th I will be quitting my job at Williams Kastner & Gibbs PLLC. They have been so kind as to employ me for the past 2 1/2 years, but the time has come for me to move to greener pastures. Where might that be, I'm sure you're asking? Where indeed? Well, after I move out of my gorgeous 2 bedroom apartment on Lake Union with views of the city and Gas Works Park (sigh) and cram all of my incredibly useless yet painstakingly accumulated belongings into my parents house I will be leaving for Chicago on June 6th through June 9th to hang out with friends there, and then it's off to Europe! Run-on sentences aside, I will be staying with family (whom I've only just met) from my father's side for the first week, then my Dutch friends in Amsterdam the next week, followed by a brief sojourn to Dublin, then Edinburgh, then finally London again for my final week. I'll be returning on June 23rd to pack another suitcase for my 2 1/2 year stint serving somewhere (I'll find out in May) in Asia with The Peace Corps.

Ah! Now it becomes clear (my reader undoubtedly says), that's why James is writing this blog! Neither because he suffers from any sort of foolish belief in posterity, nor because his vanity has increased to such a level that he actually believes people care about his preposterous ponderings, but he will truly be gone from modernity for an extended period of time. A period of time, which if the past three years are any indication, people will get married, people will die, people will be born and James will be living in a jungle teaching English to those deserving youth in post-colonized ruined countries...while continuing to speak in third person, no doubt.

So, there you have it o loyal reader! The long, short and midway succeeded of it. This blog will be my only connection to you my friends, family, acquaintances and curious voyeurs for at least the next 2 1/2 years. Get used to the language:)

Let's see if this works...

2008-03-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

Okay! This is officially my first blog! As exciting as this moment is, I'm sure the tremendous nervous energy will quickly subside once my loyal reader realizes the only purpose for this post (aside from exuding slight alliteration broken only by unnecessary parentheticals) is to see if my father can conclusively comment<-see...I did it again!

Okay...here it goes. Comment away o loyal reader for new blogs will surely be encouraged by ye efforts!