Sorry this is so long but i've had two blog posts all written up and ready to go but haven't been able to post them...so here what's been going on in Kyrgyzstan!
It’s clear to me that becoming a professional blogger is not in the cards for me. I have not been very good at keeping this up to date, but in my own defense, I only get access to the internet one day a week and only for a few minutes. Luckily my wonderful sister has been able to post a few things here and there for me (Thanks Seester!).
Life in Kyrgyzstan in wonderful! Honestly wonderful right now. We’ve been told that the “Honeymoon” phase is over and now is when shit really sets in, but so far I’m holding up like a champ. It sounds super cheesy but every day I have these “WHOA” moments where I feel so incredibly lucky to be here and can’t believe that I am actually here…it’s a weird/amazing feeling. It’s a hard emotion to explain and put into words. Thank goodness for my wonderful volunteer buds who completely know what I mean, you’re the bomb.
What’s also weird and amazing are the things that at first seemed strange but have now become normal. Exhibit A: Having soup…for breakfast. It’s decided that there really isn’t a bad time for soup; it’s for any and every occasion. Also, slurping is A-Ok. What’s probley not ok is me hiding the fatty meat under noodles, bread, in my napkin, whatever I can so as to avoid having to eat it…I wonder how much longer I can keep up this charade… Something else incredibly normal, sitting down to dinner and tuning into the worlds’ worst soap opera, all in Russian, all of which I can’t understand, but secretly wondering what drama will take place tonight (it’s no ‘Days of our Lives’ but desperate times…).
I don’t have this one quite figured out and it makes me a little nervous but for the last couple of nights I’ve heard some kind of wrestling around/weird creaking noises inside my bed. Then just this morning as I was sitting on my bed getting my computer up and running my bed was moving/shaking just ever so slightly…kind of how your furniture will move when the washer and dryer is going….only we don’t have that here so I can’t blame it on that. Which means that there is something, whatever it is, that has made its’ home in my sleeping quarters. I haven’t seen anything but I’m not sure I even want to. Anything big enough to make me physically feel its movement isn’t something I want to lay eyes on. Stay tuned….
I did however solve a different mystery. Anytime someone asks my name, they always give me a weird look after I tell them what it is and then they don’t say anything else. Well the other day we were having lunch at another volunteer’s house and her Ata (dad) asked my name, to which I responded “Melissa” and I then got the puzzled look and he said “Militsia?” Which is the Kyrgyz word for Police. So it would appear that all this time, people have been misunderstanding me and I’ve told them all that my name is the police. I guess this would also explain why my Apa always takes a long time sounding out my name to people…hahah it would sound something like this, May Lease Ah. I think I will also start sounding it out this way as to diffuse anymore confusion and bazaar looks.
So last week we finally got to go visit our permanent sites!!! So exciting and nerve racking. Now for the fun stuff…I’ll take you back to last Wednesday (May 11, 2011) when all the fun began.
I woke up super excited and a bit nervous. Today was a big day for us volunteers in training, we were finally going to meet our new families for the first time and also see where we would be living for the next two years. It’s enough excitement to make one’s head spin off their shoulders. With my bags packed and the best hairdo I could manage, with 6 days of dirt and grease built up, I was ready. We loaded onto buses and headed back to the Issuk-kul hotel where it all began. As soon as we arrived we were taken straight into a large room where on one side all our new Apa’s sat staring anxiously at us, we felt like pieces of meat. We were placed on the other side. We sat there alternating between fits of nervous laughter and shit your pants nervousness. When I was finally matched up with my Apa, I was very happy but also super nervous-she speaks incredibly fast and as if I wasn’t having a hard enough time with the language as it is, they use different accents in Talas-Yikes (they speak a lot of Russian and also because I’m only about an hour to the border of Kazakastan, that has influenced the Kyrgyz language as well). Then came the task of getting ourselves and our bags to our final destination. Luckily it appeared that Sarah’s Apa and my Apa were friends and we’d all be making the 6+hour trip together, thank goodness. So while everyone else was getting taxies arranged, our Apa’s marched us out to the road and hailed a marshrutka. Now this may not seem like anything major but imagine a van, now imagine how many seats are actually available, now triple the number of people that should legally fit, now add Sarah and I with our luggage, what this adds up to is my face in someone’s arm pit, TIK. We were attempting to make it to the bus/taxi station but none of us knew where the heck we were going, so finally at one point the driver told us to get off and pointed in the direction that we should be headed. So we walked for about 15-20 mins in search of the bus station, all the while Sarah and I are cracking up trying to haul our bags through the city. Mine kept flipping over every two minutes and I’d have to attempt to get it right again while dodging multiple obstacles and trying not to pee my pants laughing. We finally make it and lined up a taxi headed to Talas. But then we wait- we waited for about another 45 minutes and then we are finally on our way, TIK
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Now to set the scene, it was rainy, which had produced a good amount of fog, our taxi driver had one CD that produced the same 8 songs (8 songs, 6 hours of driving- you do the math) and incredible mountains, stunning but terrifying when you add in the other factors, factors like our driver having a death wish. KWA. It’s hard to explain just how hard our hearts were beating when we’dcome up to a 180 degree turn, with 10% visability (at best) and then decide to pass a semi while playing chicken with the oncoming vehicles. I can only imagine what this drive/trip will be like comewinter time, stay tuned.
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Now to set the scene, it was rainy, which had produced a good amount of fog, our taxi driver had one CD that produced the same 8 songs (8 songs, 6 hours of driving- you do the math) and incredible mountains, stunning but terrifying when you add in the other factors, factors like our driver having a death wish. KWA. It’s hard to explain just how hard our hearts were beating when we’dcome up to a 180 degree turn, with 10% visability (at best) and then decide to pass a semi while playing chicken with the oncoming vehicles. I can only imagine what this drive/trip will be like comewinter time, stay tuned.
Finally I made it to my village, happy dance! My village has a population of about 3,300 people and is surrounded by mountains. Also, we have a sand volleyball court –imagine me jumping up and down like a little two year old when I saw this. Surprisingly, volleyball is an incredibly popular sport in Kyrgyzstan. I have 5 siblings in my new family, 2 brothers who are 25 and 22. The 25 year old lives in Bishkek
so I’m not actually sure how much I’ll be seeing him but the 22 year old still lives at home and I like him a lot. He’s pretty funny and he finds me/my horrible language hilarious. Anytime I would say something he would just crack up and tell me “Azamat!”- which in kyrgyz basically means good job, correct, atta girl! Then I have 3 sisters, they are 16, 11/12, and 4. The 4 year old is pretty funny, we just kept making faces at each other and she would crack up. But I’m really excited to have the older sisters, they seem really excited to have an older sister (they loved my headbands and make-up, so fun). Also on my visit I got to meet my counterpart, Gul’Mira. She is AMAZING! She doesn’t speak any English but luckily we are both animated and she just kept hugging and kissing me and telling me how happy she was that I was going to working with her. She does wonderful work for the village and I have lots to learn from her and look forward to the work we'll be doing together. Also she is responsible for the majority of hilarious encounters I had while on this trip. Now some funny stuff…
so I’m not actually sure how much I’ll be seeing him but the 22 year old still lives at home and I like him a lot. He’s pretty funny and he finds me/my horrible language hilarious. Anytime I would say something he would just crack up and tell me “Azamat!”- which in kyrgyz basically means good job, correct, atta girl! Then I have 3 sisters, they are 16, 11/12, and 4. The 4 year old is pretty funny, we just kept making faces at each other and she would crack up. But I’m really excited to have the older sisters, they seem really excited to have an older sister (they loved my headbands and make-up, so fun). Also on my visit I got to meet my counterpart, Gul’Mira. She is AMAZING! She doesn’t speak any English but luckily we are both animated and she just kept hugging and kissing me and telling me how happy she was that I was going to working with her. She does wonderful work for the village and I have lots to learn from her and look forward to the work we'll be doing together. Also she is responsible for the majority of hilarious encounters I had while on this trip. Now some funny stuff…
1)So my first night I didn’t have a bed. I went to my room and the only thing in there was a desk. Keep in mind that the PC requires that our family have specific things for our rooms, I thought this was actually pretty funny and sleeping on the floor wasn’t bad at all. I’ve had worst nights in a bed. But the next day I came home from work with my counterpart and my Ata was building me a bed. My Alaskan friend Megan likes to imagine my Ata coming over and measuring me so he could build me a bed that was just right…
2 )One effective way to meet everyone in your village, have your counterpart take you to a funeral dinner on the first day. So Gul’Mira was taking me around the village, showing me where everything was and introducing me to tons of people, then when lunch time came, she said something about going guesting to a co-workers house for lunch. However Gul’Mira didn’t give me a heads up, and we actually went to a funeral lunch-super awkward! We walk in and the woman (who actually is in fact a future coworker) has a black veil over her head and I just hear her sobbing. My counterpart takes me into the connecting room where about 18 village people are sitting around (we eat on the floor)reading the Koran and saying prayers. Once this group has some food, a new group of people would come in and we’d start the whole process over again. This lasted about 2 hours. It was totallyfascinating while a bit weird at first.
3)My family doesn’t have running water, so you get it from a pipe on the street. This means that we also don’t have a banya (place tobathe)which means…PUBLIC BANYA!!! One of the magazines (convienence store) has a public banya where you go to wash and just pay a small fee for the water. On my second day, my counterpart informs me that we are going to the banya-I’m super excited because any chance to wash is a luxury, however I haven’t had any experience with the public banya and didn’t know what I was in for. So me, my counterpart, and her 11 year old daughter all strip downnaked and go into the banya together. Nothing like seeing your future boss up close and personal, but why stop there…at one point she apparently didn’t think I was doing a good job of cleaning myself so comes over to me and started scrubbing my entire body for me. And whenI say entire, I mean ENTIRE. I’ve never had someone scrub my ass for me. I was cracking up, which in turn made my counterpart crack up, so here we are, naked, my counterpart scrubbing my bottom, and we are just laughing uncontrollably. So after she had given me the full scrub down-side note, my entire body was red because they think clean means removing 10 layers of skin-I then dumped some water on myself to rinse off. Don’t be fooled as I was, one would think that this would conclude wash time, but we then proceed to do this process 6 more times. We spent 2 hours in the banya- I’ve never been so clean in my life. Can’t wait for this to be a weekly routine.
4)On my last night, Gul’Mira had me over for dinner (which I didn’t know was going to happen until I’d already stuffed myself with tons of meat at dinner with my family, which I didn’t want in the first place- it was sheep and took 5 minutes to chew one piece). So with a full belly, I walk over to her house trying to work up an appetite. So Isit down and they bring in a platter full of large flat square noodles (this is a pretty traditional/popular meal but it also includes large chunks of meat…). So I scoop some noodles onto my plate and for the briefest of moments I think that I may get away without having to eat any meat. But no no no, Gul’Mira opens up a pan -seriously this is no joke or exaggeration- and pulls out a charred sheeps’ leg and puts it on my plate. And this sucker was full intact, like hooves, tendons, and all. I wasn’t able to control my facial expression fast enough and everyone just started cracking up and then said something about how I need to start eating more meat and fatten up. Thankfully Gul’Mira grabbed the leg off my plate but then she replaced it with cut up liver parts…KWA. I see a lot of sheep meat in my future, YIKES!
2 )One effective way to meet everyone in your village, have your counterpart take you to a funeral dinner on the first day. So Gul’Mira was taking me around the village, showing me where everything was and introducing me to tons of people, then when lunch time came, she said something about going guesting to a co-workers house for lunch. However Gul’Mira didn’t give me a heads up, and we actually went to a funeral lunch-super awkward! We walk in and the woman (who actually is in fact a future coworker) has a black veil over her head and I just hear her sobbing. My counterpart takes me into the connecting room where about 18 village people are sitting around (we eat on the floor)reading the Koran and saying prayers. Once this group has some food, a new group of people would come in and we’d start the whole process over again. This lasted about 2 hours. It was totallyfascinating while a bit weird at first.
3)My family doesn’t have running water, so you get it from a pipe on the street. This means that we also don’t have a banya (place tobathe)which means…PUBLIC BANYA!!! One of the magazines (convienence store) has a public banya where you go to wash and just pay a small fee for the water. On my second day, my counterpart informs me that we are going to the banya-I’m super excited because any chance to wash is a luxury, however I haven’t had any experience with the public banya and didn’t know what I was in for. So me, my counterpart, and her 11 year old daughter all strip downnaked and go into the banya together. Nothing like seeing your future boss up close and personal, but why stop there…at one point she apparently didn’t think I was doing a good job of cleaning myself so comes over to me and started scrubbing my entire body for me. And whenI say entire, I mean ENTIRE. I’ve never had someone scrub my ass for me. I was cracking up, which in turn made my counterpart crack up, so here we are, naked, my counterpart scrubbing my bottom, and we are just laughing uncontrollably. So after she had given me the full scrub down-side note, my entire body was red because they think clean means removing 10 layers of skin-I then dumped some water on myself to rinse off. Don’t be fooled as I was, one would think that this would conclude wash time, but we then proceed to do this process 6 more times. We spent 2 hours in the banya- I’ve never been so clean in my life. Can’t wait for this to be a weekly routine.
4)On my last night, Gul’Mira had me over for dinner (which I didn’t know was going to happen until I’d already stuffed myself with tons of meat at dinner with my family, which I didn’t want in the first place- it was sheep and took 5 minutes to chew one piece). So with a full belly, I walk over to her house trying to work up an appetite. So Isit down and they bring in a platter full of large flat square noodles (this is a pretty traditional/popular meal but it also includes large chunks of meat…). So I scoop some noodles onto my plate and for the briefest of moments I think that I may get away without having to eat any meat. But no no no, Gul’Mira opens up a pan -seriously this is no joke or exaggeration- and pulls out a charred sheeps’ leg and puts it on my plate. And this sucker was full intact, like hooves, tendons, and all. I wasn’t able to control my facial expression fast enough and everyone just started cracking up and then said something about how I need to start eating more meat and fatten up. Thankfully Gul’Mira grabbed the leg off my plate but then she replaced it with cut up liver parts…KWA. I see a lot of sheep meat in my future, YIKES!
All in all, my visit to Talas was an adventure and I’m very excited to see what craziness the next two years are going to bring.
On a serious note, this country is BEAUTIFUL!!! Both the nature and the people. Granted I’m limited to a tiny area but I’m going to go ahead and make that generalization. The mountains-breathtaking. I don’t think I could ever get sick of seeing them. And the people…wonderful! My host family is adorable beyond explanation and more patient that humanly possible. If my Kyrgyz was better I’d tell them so myself, but for now, let the miming continue! It’s crazy to me how normal it feels to be here. I’m sure this feeling won’t stay forever, but I feel like this is exactly where I need to be, right at this moment. It feels normal coming home to this village, to this house, to this family.
Livin the dream, how lucky am ?!?!
I’d like to promise that there will be more posts soon, and of better content, but I hate to get your hopes up, so until next time…whenever that may be! But to keep you happy, here are a few photos for your viewing pleasure, enjoy!!!
Love Melis
This was the view from the hotel our first couple night in Kyrgyzstan
Earth Day Clean-Up!
language teacher, Termerlan.
Megan and I- When we get together all we can do is laugh, LOVE IT!
And she has one of the best laughs. Ever.
