English Club Part I

During our 4 week English course, there is a time for beginners and a time for intermediates and after that is the conversation club, for the advanced and intermediate students which I help do. Each evening we have a different topic to talk about and activities, and on Thursday we watch a movie in English, and on Friday, we have an American style party. The first movie we watched was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp. I love that movie! I think it is hilarious! They liked it too! Afterwards, I explained some of the phrases and idioms that are used throughout the movie, and there are quite a lot in that movie! The next night for our party, we had pizza and it was game night! We played Guesstures! It was a lot of fun!! They did a great job of acting and guessing! Last week, I decided to introduce them to one of the all time classic movies- The Princess Bride! I can say it is one of my favorites, but when you are watching a movie and considering the audience that will be viewing it, it is sometimes hard to know how they will react to it: Will they ‘get’ the funny stuff? Will they think it is interesting? To my relief, they really enjoyed it! But then again, who wouldn't enjoy the Princess Bride? That would be "Inconceivable"!! :) The next day’s party was about food! I made brownies, and brought in marshmallows and some of the candies that I received from home- Shock Tarts, SweetTarts, etc. They really enjoyed the brownies, and afterwards, some of them wanted the recipe. But I was too embarrassed to say it was from a box mix and not from scratch. Oh well. I will let you know how the next two weeks go. It is getting harder to do something even better than the week before, but I think this week’s party is going to be the best one yet! I am making a Pinyata! I hope it holds up long enough that most everyone has a chance to try to hit it!!

To Swim At Last!

Finally, Ira and I made it to the pool!! On my way home from Russian lessons I pass by a sports store, and finally got brave enough to go in and see if they had any swim caps which I could buy for Ira and myself. Well, my Russian is very much in its simple form, and since the term for swimming cap, has not been introduced into my vocabulary yet, I was forced to speak simply and use gestures. :) So I asked the lady if she had any ‘swim hats’ and then acted out those very same words. She understood, which made me feel good. It is a good feeling when you can communicate, no matter how limited your vocab. So Ira and I planned our next visit to the pool- Saturday, after baseball and the picnic with the people from English club. I don’t think we could have picked a better time to go! On Saturday it was about 106 degrees! So after playing baseball, and having been to the detention center earlier that day, it was sooooooooo nice to get into a nice cool pool!!!! It was like heaven. Well maybe not quite that good, but it was close! We swam for the entire time (you pay by the hour), and by time we left, it was a little after 9pm- the sun had gone down and it was a nice night with a cool breeze. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to end the day!! Though, maybe not having to take the long marshruka ride and then walking three blocks home, might have been a little better. After such a long day, I was completely exhausted! But when I got home, I was hungry and asked Tanya and Salavat if they would like to eat, and then we ended up walking to the 24hour store to get some food! We didn’t end up eating until midnight. Which is normal, well, maybe not normal, but I don’t think I can remember when I last ate dinner before 9pm. Oh wait, when Ron and Ruth were visiting. But I am told that it is a very Asiatic thing to eat dinner so late. I guess it can be a good thing, because Tanya says I am really an Asiatic person. She thinks I am more Asiatic than American. I take it as a compliment. It just confirms that I was made to be here! :) That, and I can be late to any function and it is normal- because everyone else is too! I love Central Asia!!!

Hitchin' A Ride

Ok, so just incase you are ever in the country, and you need to bum a ride, it will cost you 5 som per person. I know that hitchhiking is usually free in the states, but not so here. And for those of you who are now beginning to worry as to why I am hitchhiking here, before you get too concerned, let me explain why. One of the places our team goes to visit is in a village outside of the city. So we take a marshruka to the bazarre where we then get on a larger marshruka that goes out to the villiages. Once we are at the village, we then take a taxi to the detention center. Though when we return, we cannot get a taxi. So we walk to the nearest road and wait for a car (or horse drawn wagon if there are really no cars), and if they want, they will stop and then drive us to the main road where we again catch a large marshruka back to the city, to catch a smaller marshruka to get back home. So it is perfectly normal. Though it can be pretty interesting if there are five of you and the back seat of the car is really only made for three people. :)

Not Your Average Fish Story

On the 22nd of June our team went to the lake to do some fishing! Some people went earlier in the afternoon and others, like myself, who had clubs to be at, left in the evening. It was a nice time! When we got there, we all had a picnic, and then a camp fire. And of course, we roasted marshmallows. :) We had planned to spend the night and camp out, so we borrowed some tents and sleeping bags from another club, so no one would have to sleep under the stars. Which may not have been so bad had there not been so many mosquitoes! We had a wonderful time around the fire, eating and playing games and singing songs in Russian. Which I knew a few of them! The next morning, those of us who wanted to go fishing got up very early. It was nice to see the sun rise over the lake! It was even nicer to use my new fishing pole! Though I must say, they are a bit different than the ones I’ve fished with back home. As for bait, well, bread and worms were on the menu. Well, maybe I should say baby worms. They certainly were nothing compared to Morgan’s Bait worms!! What I wouldn’t have done for a package of night crawlers! You maybe wondering how successful my first fishing experience in Kyrgyzstan was, well, I did catch a fish! Though it was about the size of a large minnow!! But in Russian, everything is considered a fish- there are no minnows :) I figure, they can only get larger from here on out!! :) But it was a good time.

Moutain Retreat

Tanya and I got a chance to get away to the mountains! It was wonderful!! Through when we were leaving our house, it had just become cloudy and very windy and began to rain, and our taxi driver asked us if we really wanted to go today! And of course we did. It was really the only time for me to get away for a little while. The following week was the start of a 4 week concentrated English course that I would be helping with. Anyways, back to the mountains…..it is amazingly beautiful! We got to go hiking and relax and after the first day, we were the only ones staying at the place where we were at, so we got to know the people who worked there a little bit. They are all very nice, like a close family. They even invited us to one of their evening gatherings with sheshleik (shishkabob), and a lot of other food. In Central Asia it is really important to eat, and I reached a new limit of food intake that night! The place is also open during the winter and has many ski trails, but the best thing is that they also have a ski lift! Which we were lucky enough to go on twice!!! Sometimes people come up for a day and take a ride to see the view. It was incredible! At the top we were ~2,440km above sea level! We could see the city and some other villages from up there. One morning, I woke up about 5am, which is not normal for me, but I figured it would be nice to see the sun rise, and it was a very nice morning! Tanya and I got to play some ‘football’ with a few of the guys that worked there and it was fun. The older couples were our spectators, and they enjoyed the games too! Though I must say, you know that you are not in America when you are playing a game of football and the guys who smoke, smoke while playing football! Yes, running up and down a field while smoking at the same time. Who knew? Though I must say, I don’t know too many soccer players who smoke back home. Anyhow, it was nice to get away to the nice quietness of nature. Upon our return to the city, you realize just how much noise there is, and how much you come to ignore after living among it. Not to mention the pollution and all the fumes from the vehicles. The mountains are wonderful for fresh air, quiet getaways, and spectacular views and hiking.

Saws, S'mores, & Swimming

So, after being without tools, I finally bought some when I went to the bizarre with Natasha. I bought a hammer (for normal uses around the house), a saw (to cut down all the dead branches off of the trees around our house), and a sickle (to cut the grass). And I did create a lot of laughter for some people, me, a girl, buying such items. One guy looked at me weird and asked me where I was from- I told him NY. So this past Saturday, I went around and cut down most of the dead tree branches, big and small, that I could do safely by myself. There are still some more to be taken care of but, by the guys that you can call to do things like that. Sometimes they are referred to as ‘rent-a-men’, they come and do what you need done, like cut down branches or fix the roof, etc. Yeah, it sounds a little weird. But then again, on Wednesday, garbage day, the garbage men drive around on a dumptruck-like vehicle and honk the horn up and down the street and when they are on your street, you run your garbage out and hand it to them and they add it to the pile. So, back to the tree branches, then I had a little help sorting them into small, med and large fire wood. Which we used for a fire this Wednesday night. Isaloo was leaving for the southern part of the country on Thursday morning, so we had a party for her. We had some traditional foods, like ‘monty’, and some salads and sausages. Then we went outside for a fire and made some s’mores which the items were so kindly sent by my mom :) Everyone liked them! Though some took a little practice roasting the marshmallows without burning them. :) It was a good night! The others stayed up all night, but I went to bed because I was going to go swimming the next day! Ira and I had planned to go to the pool, my first time swimming here. But I didn’t really know how to get there so she met me at one major intersection. Since it took us a while to walk to the pool, we missed the entrance time; you swim and pay by the hour here. So we decided to go over our plans for English club and go for the next hour. It was really hot, really hot, and we were outside of the sports center and you could smell the chlorine and so we were really looking forward to swimming. When the time came, we went to the desk and Ira saw a sign that said you needed a swim cap in order to swim in the pool- a new rule since the last time she was there. They said we could rent one for 5som or go to the store by the door and buy one. We didn’t want to rent one, so we went to see how much they cost at the store and they were 70som! So we decided not to buy one and try to go to the “Sports Palace” (translation) on Friday. Well, Ira said she would call and see about swimming there before we went, and it was a good thing she did. They are repairing their pool and they don’t know when they will be opening. Eventually we will go swimming. But for now, we are stuck in what seems like a running gag.

Kids will be Kids

There is a girl from our English club on Friday, who goes to a nearby high school and she had asked me if I would be interested in going and talking with her class, and I said “yes”. I had spoken in two university classes already and they went pretty good. After club she took me to her school, which is not far from there, and I met the principle and she said I could come on the following Monday. Well, Monday came and I went to the school, but I had no idea where Kristina was, so I just walked around a little bit. The hallways were just wide enough to maybe fit two people side by side. Then I heard a bell ring, and it was for a break time, which was good because I met her walking down the hall. She took me to her class, and there were some students there, but no teacher. So I started talking with the kids and telling them a little bit about myself and answering some questions about me and the US. One girl was very inquisitive if we had a lot of beautiful boys, or if I had a beautiful boyfriend, or a beautiful brother. I told her she had a one-track mind. :) So then, the bell rings and in walks their teacher, who is a guy, and whom they feel it is necessary to tell him the real important stuff they had just found out about me, like- that I am 27, I am not married, and insinuating that I am available for him to ask me out. That was a little embarrassing. Yeah. Youth, they can be kinda funny sometimes, and usually unpredictable. So I talked with them for the rest of the class time. It was different than at the university classes, I had to actually work at finding something to talk about. They did ask some questions but their attention span was, well, was that of teenagers. I don’t know why I was so surprised. Anyway, afterwards, I went back to meet the principle and she said I could come back in September and work there if I wanted. Which, through some other connections, it looks like I’ll be helping out once a week, speaking and helping the class practice their English by discussing different topics, that they want to talk about, or I plan ahead of time. I am pretty excited about it!

Visitors!!!

I had my first visitors from the States! Ron & Ruth. A very nice couple who also brought with them some items that my mom had mailed to them for me, as well as, some things they brought as well. It was like Christmas morning opening up that suitcase full of goodies!! A family size jar of peanut butter, a box of Cheerios, the makings of S’mores, a Frisbee, nerf football, my wiffle-ball bat (the wiffle balls had been mailed in an earlier package), and some scrapbooking and baking supplies! Yippie! I am not sure why, but it seems like any international flight in or out of Bishkek occurs before 7am. They arrived at 5:10am. We had a nice taxi bus that stopped at the store on the way home so we could pick up some food stuff. It had rained all day the day before their arrival, so I figured it would be nice the entire time they were here, but alas, it was cloudy and rainy almost the entire time they were here!! This is rather unusual for the weather here. But they are from the Pacific Northwest so they like that kind of weather. So I think it was made just for their stay! Regardless of the weather, I got show them around the city and took them on the trolley bus and marshruka. You can’t get the whole experience without riding on the public transportation! They even got to try ‘shoro’! The national drink that is like a Chuck Norris sidewinder kick in the mouth! We ate out at all the restaurants I knew (all two of them! There is a third but I could not find our way there both times I tried to take them!) It was a good thing we went out to eat with Tanya, she knew of a great little Italian restaurant! I assured them, at their next visit, I’ll know my way around the city much better, and we will be able to eat in places where the menus don’t have to be in English, (by then I should know Russian!) But I think for being here for just three months I did pretty good. The best was when we were meeting Tanya at the restaurant, we had to walk because all the taxis were busy because it had been raining all day. So here we were, the three of us walking in the rain with only our rain jackets, we didn’t have umbrellas, and it kept on pouring harder, and harder!!! Anything not covered by our rain coats was soaking wet, and as we get on the street of the restaurant, the rain lets up and even stops! It was really funny. But not. So they got to see a little bit of my life here in Kyrgyzstan, and experience some of the rainiest days we’ve had since I’ve arrived!