Summer Camp Grant!

Well I'm home. After 85 hours of travel, I made it to the promised land. So far I got my haircut, and I've played with my cat (who is much larger than I remember), and have tried not to be too out of control when it comes to all the tasty things available for me. My grant for my toilet project is almost finished, I hope to finish that today and get it sent in. My other grant however is done! Yeah! 

 

Joni and I wrote a grant for summer camp next summer. Summer camp is an amazing opportunity for kids from our area. It's not something they usually get to do, and many kids get a break from working in the fields. One of our sessions will be on Life Goals. It may not seem like a big deal, but Kyrgyz children are never asked what they want to be when the grow up. Many students have not thought about it. They get to 11th form and suddenly they have to think about what they will do next year. Will they go to university? What will they study, where will they go? Our camp will offer students the opportunity to learn and do things they would otherwise never be exposed to. 

 

The form of grant we wrote is a PCPP grant (Peace Corps Partnership Program grant). With this type of grant, it goes up on the PC website and our friends and families can donate to our grant. Other people can also search for our grant and donate as well. All donations are tax deductible. Joni and I worked it out; it's approximately $35 per person attending camp. Every little bit counts, so think about it, and help the Kyrgyz kids attend a week of fun!

Follow this link to look at our grant and donate: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=307-143

And Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

These past few weeks have gone by in a blur. Winter is here in full throttle- it really makes me miss the sweltering days of summer. Joni, Alex and I held another teacher-training seminar, and we had a really great turn out. Usually we have five or six teachers show up, but this time we had nineteen! Our great turnout was probably due to the fact that we announced we were handing out applications to get a Peace Corps volunteer.  But the teachers were attentive and participated, and the seminar went well.

 

Just after our seminar, Ariel, Joni and I headed to Osh. We spent the night and ate 'American' food at a restaurant in the city. A little taste of what's to come- my stomach and digestion did not enjoy the meal as much as my taste buds did. The next morning we headed to Kara-Suu, which is a bazaar town on the Uzbek border. The town has the largest bazaar in southern Kyrgyzstan.  We were more curious than we were looking for a deal, but it was an adventure. Ariel's host sister told us that the bazaar in our village is second only in size to Kara-Suu's bazaar, in the South. I'm not sure how much I believe her, especially after experiencing the full scale of the Kara-Suu bazaar.

 

In light of recent events over the past couple of weeks I've been thinking a lot about what another volunteer mentioned on Thanksgiving. We were going around room, just before we ate six delicious pies, and saying what we were thankful for. Most everyone mentioned how we were thankful for the amazing volunteer community we had in Jalalabad, and how despite the fact that not one of us was with our families for the holiday, it still felt like we were. And then we got to Anthony. He said he was thankful for being an American.

 

I can honestly say that I've never thought about being an American, and how it's even something I should be thankful for. Especially after studying abroad, and surrounding myself with other cultures, I always felt that being an American was something to be embarrassed about. What was there to be thankful for? But as I sit here, wrapped in my sleeping bag, with no heat, intermittent electricity and really needing to pee (the outhouse being across the courtyard through a snowstorm) and I've realized that I am thankful to be an American. Tolerance, justice, the way women are seen as equal and not as something you can steal; all the things I've taken for granted. Life here isn't like it is back home- maybe it's a good thing, maybe it's a bad thing (it's certainly different). I have to be careful not to become entrenched in the idea that America is better than everywhere else, we certainly have our share of things to be ashamed of, but for once I can actually say I'm thankful to be an American.