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:)
21 November 2008
What an adventure!
Wow. What an amazing weekend! I travelled to Bishkek with 13 other volunteers from Talas braving the freshly snowed mountain pass of the majestic Ala-Too Mountains to meet up with about 20 or so other volunteers from around the country for one entire weekend of hedonistic indulgence. We all arrived in Bishkek at around 3pm on Friday (a Kyrgyz National Holiday, so we all didn’t have school) and checked into three separate apartments that had been pre-arranged for our excursion. After my friend Kristen and I gathered together the bulk of the volunteers to stay at our apartment, summarily named “the ‘party’ apartment” and handed over the keys we made our way to Beta Café. Beta Café is the best place in the city to buy reasonably priced hamburgers that are American style, as well as delicious pizza. After we decimated our bellies with long-sought-after grease we headed to The Metro. The Metro is owned by a British ex-pat and is absolutely the best place in the entire city to go for their wide array of available drinks as well as their stunning and delicious menu of food items, however it is not for someone working on a Peace Corps budget. Luckily I have saved for this trip of indulgences for the past two months so I was prepared to completely let loose. We met up with Nick, another volunteer, and swapped stories for a couple of hours over pints of Hoegaarden and Jack Daniels. One will never have a truer appreciation for American liquor than if one’s been forced to only consume copious amounts of cheap vodka for months at a time. Jack, thank you. After this we headed back to the “party apartment” and drank and talked with the other volunteers that we hadn’t seen (Kristen lives in Talas, we kick it every weekend:) for a month and a half…though after what everyone’s already experienced it really felt like a lifetime of absence.
The we headed to The Golden Bull. This is a nightclub in the center of the city that is popular with American Servicemen and prostitutes alike. Being any American, however, gets you in for free and escorted to the VIP section so it’s worth the hassle…or so I thought. I organized gigantic discotheque club excursions when I bartended in Italy and have been to clubs in Vegas and Hollywood…not to mention some pretty good one’s in Seattle. I don’t know what I was expecting, but evidently not many people travel to Kyrgyzstan to get their groove on because this place was horrible. The prostitutes were everywhere and the American Servicemen all looked like they wanted to fight, not to mention that this was all taking place along with drinking and dancing in a club no larger than the average American garage. I grabbed my friend Tim and he and I left pretty much as soon as we arrived.
With that slight downturn of events the remainder of the night turned out quite well. I got into a very deep and long drunken conversation with my friend Jeanne until about 4am on the stairwell of our apartment and passed out in the hallway. The next day was epic. Saturday morning Jeanne and I went to go get breakfast at The Metro. We split a plate of nachos and she got a chicken burrito which I matched with my own plate of fettuccini alfredo with spinach and parmesan cheese. We both drank some Irish Coffee’s and played FREE POOL for a couple of hours joined intermittently by more and more volunteers who decided to debauch their wallets for the sake of flavor for the first time in five months as well. After that it was about 3pm (did I mention it was a late night the night before?) so Jeanne and I decided to go pick up some more supplies and head back to the apartment to meet up with everyone else. By and by people decided to head out for dinner. I went to this gorgeous Italian restaurant right in the center of town where I ate thinly sliced beef marinated with lemon and a plate of cauliflower and melted swiss cheese. Oh, and I split a bottle of champagne with Kristen!
Terrible foresight can sometimes lead to disaster…but it can also lead to unexpected adventure and excitement—which is exactly what my own forgetting of our apartment keys did! It wasn’t until we were all walking back from our amazing Italian culinary delight when I remembered my mistake. I had left the keys with another group that wouldn’t be back for over an hour. At this point it’s about 30 degrees Fahrenheit and beginning to hail so we all ducked inside a seemingly empty café to wait. Soon enough an old Russian lady comes out and tells us that it’s her birthday in the next rented-out room and that we should all come join her. Fuck it, we’ve got an hour to kill and this lady seemed drunk which means there’s at least something going on in there—why not? We all head in and are greeted like kings. Jonathan and I proceed straight to the dance floor and I dance with just about every single lady over the age of 60. Needless to say that we were such a hit that the DJ even took a second for everyone to recognize the “Americanskis”, and we were given a round of enthusiastic applause before being led back to our table. The table that Francis, Erin, Kristen and Jenna were sitting (not dancing like Jonathan and me) at was soon brought a bottle of champagne and we all toasted our generous host. After that I asked the host to dance and we danced an epic number to the theme from Top Gun…it was indeed as romantic as I just made it sound. She was so enamored that she brought me over to her table and sat me at the head of it. Although I attempted to make inroads with conversation, her husband was not very impressed…though he did toast to my health. Come to think of it I really hope he’s not mafia because that toast could take on a whole different meaning. No matter. After she sat me down she gave me plate after plate of delicious Russian food (really, I don’t know why the Kyrgyz insist on making theirs so disgusting…Kyrgyz food is easily some of the worst culinary disasters on the planet!) and introduced me to her daughter. How nice of her! Anyway, this was towards the end of the night and my stomach was full of great food, great champagne and great vibes so I followed everyone else out. As a thank you for my dancing and I’m sure for bringing every other American to her birthday party the host gave me a huge hug, kissed my cheek and handed me a plastic bag. When I got outside I opened up the bag to find a nice freshly ripened banana. How nice! By this time people were in the apartment and the party there was getting started so we all made our way over, with a great story to tell to boot! The night at the apartment turned out as would be expected with some notable stories and names that shall remain nameless, but it was the Russian lady’s birthday party that made it a great night indeed.
Sunday came and due to the excitement that preceded that morning everyone decided that one final trip to The Metro was in order. We all rolled into The Metro looking every bit the savages we were/are and sat down to more delicious food accompanied by White Russians. After getting a little buzzed due to the dehydration from the night before and being generally delirious from the pizza, potato skins, chicken-burgers and burritos that once populated our table we missed the last available marshutka out of Bishkek! Uh oh. Those that could get back did, but Joe, Nick, Jeanne and I all were forced to wander around until we found a dormitory-style guest house on the outskirts of town. It had amazingly comfortable beds, staff that spoke English and a very nice outdoor seating area. We also met an Australian named Andrew and Japanese named Taki. After the initial hello’s the Peace Corps group headed out to one final epic dinner at the best Chinese food restaurant I’ve ever been to! The portions were huge, the price was reasonable and the atmosphere electric…seriously, this place was amazing! We took our left-over’s back to the guest house and left them outside because the weather at this point was colder than any refrigerator and picked up some vodka and beer to party with our new Japanese and Australian friends! The next morning we all ate the remnants of our Chinese food before we bussed and walked to the West Bus station where we said our goodbyes. Then the weekend got interesting.
Because I was the only one from Talas that over-extended their stay in Bishkek I had to ride a marshutka with eleven other Kyrgyz people all the way back. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the guy next to me didn’t keep nudging me awake with interesting questions like “how much money do you make?” and “what is your name…for the thousandth fucking time?”. It wouldn’t have been so bad if there wasn’t a baby crying the entire time. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the asshole sitting next to me refusing to let me sleep didn’t have a friend with him that kept coughing, spitting, smoking and drinking vodka. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it didn’t take 9 ½ hours instead of the normal 6. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we didn’t hit the snow in the Ala-Too mountains and almost skid out of control three times. But it especially wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t pulled over to the side of the road on the downhill side of the scariest fucking mountains on the entire fucking earth in time to watch our driver quickly exit the vehicle and run away through blinding snow just as it’s getting dark without saying a word.
When I finally worked through my anger to ask politely “where the fuck did that asshole run off too?” it was explained to me “svet jok.” This translates to “no electricity”, meaning our marshutka has no electricity. It wouldn’t have been so funny if the thought of this crazy guy running off into the night to find more electricity in the middle of a snowy mountain range didn’t crack me up, but the explanation was given to me under the glow of the dome light in the marshutka, which was quite bright and shining with electricity. It’s bad enough I have to teach these people English, but now I was faced with the prospect of teaching them their own bloody language. However I didn’t have time to begin my lesson because the jerk-off to my left interrupted my formation of a brilliant lesson plan with another “hey Los Angeles (his ever-so affectionate nickname for me because he couldn’t remember ‘James’) do you like sheep?”. He meant the meat, not the love that takes place in certain Midwestern American states…but I’d had quite enough of his intelligent probing questions so I just began to pretend like I didn’t speak any Kyrgyz. This worked for a time and he got frustrated with me so I at least got to sleep while freezing my fucking balls off in the middle of a marshutka that doesn’t have electricity, though clearly does, in the middle of a blinding snowstorm on a mountain pass that’s miles from completion surrounded by Kyrgyz Nationals coughing and wheezing. But it was, finally, sleep.
I awoke to the side door being opened and an empty gas can being thrown onto my knees by our missing driver. Oh, I thought, they meant to say that there was no gas…those silly Kyrgyz I thought to myself as I pretended to sleep while getting nudged ever so rudely in the arm by the fool to my left. We were finally on the road again after about an hour and no closer to our destination. It would take another three and a half hours of twisting turns, spin-outs and terrible questioning from my interrogator sitting nearest to me before I would reach Talas. However, by this time it was too late to catch a ride home so I had to crash at my friends’ house.
The next morning I helped with the Flex Testing because I was already in Talas and was treated to dinner by the country recruiter for Flex. I made it home the next day. What a weekend. What a weekend indeed! Now I’m off to school tomorrow at which I shall attempt to explain my three day absence, but it shouldn’t be a problem because that’s just par for the course in this country. Then this weekend I’ll be back in Talas to relive highlights with my good friends there, and next week I’ll be back to my normal schedule eating bishbarmark while teaching and working with with shitty kids. It’s a wonder I still like what I’m doing. But I do, I really do…and that is making all the difference.
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.
02 November 2008
Kazakhstan!
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!
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!
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