Photos

Sultan and Elena!

My room

The baby cow, we're good friends.

The backyard: garden on the left, banya on the right, outhouse in the back behind the blue gate.

My house!
The sweet Kyrgyz mountains.

out

Aselbek the Olympiad

The Olympics are starting on Friday and I am so excited, and so is my village! The only athlete from Kyrgyzstan attending this year's olympics is a boxer from my village. He actually lives just a few houses down from mine. There are billboards of him up all over the country, and especially around here. So when you all watch on Friday, or most likely your Saturday- cheer for my neighbor, Aselbek.

 

The last week has been more language learning, and more hanging out with my host family. My host mom is awesome. We usually manage to talk for an hour after dinner, with less and less miming as the days pass. All of my host family relatives are very interested in how much things cost in America. How much is a car? How much is a watermelon? How much is meat? And when I tell them they are usually doubtful; I need to insist that the prices really are true. The average Kyrgyz person makes 2500 som a month, at 36 som to the dollar. And they always ask for the price in dollars, and then sit there trying to do the calculation in their heads about how many soms that is.

 

My language group is trying to get a trip to Issyk-Ata together in the next couple of weeks. There are hotsprings and a health spa and is quite the local tourist attraction. Hopefully next weekend. We also have a culture day coming up that is trainee wide, which I'm pretty excited about. Each group is presenting a traditional aspect of Kyrgyz life- my group is staging a cradle party. I tell more about it later.

 

One of the K-16s has already had a brush with bride-kidnapping. A week or two ago his host brother bride-kidnapped a woman from a cafe. It's still unclear if it was consensual or not. It will be interesting to see how that develops in the next few months.

 

Much love! And thanks for the responses, and the postcards! They always make my week.