11 November 2009

Snowy village pictures

Images of a Jehova's Witness that lives in my village and always tries to convert me (in a very friendly manner though), the statue of Lenin in front of my school that looks like he is wearing a life-preserver, a shepherd with sheep grazing them through the snow, and the hazards of doing laundry during winter-time...




Snow, snow, go away, even though you're here to stay...

22:00 10 November 2009

I feel like one can judge the spirit of someone by their reaction to snow. If it is one of giddiness and excitement, they are young and full of hope; if it is gloomy and disappointed, they are old and cynical. Well, I think I have finally crossed that line. Even last year (a year which by everyone’s account was incredibly mild and had little snow) I still got excited whenever it snowed, which even though it was mild, was still a lot more than at home. This winter, by everyone’s account, will not be so forgiving, and so far it has proven to be so.

The first snow of the season (on the lower lands around the lake, it has been in the hills and mountains for a while) was yesterday but was just a dusting that quickly melted. However, as I arose this morning, I found myself mortified looking out the window at about ten inches of snow already on the ground and not far from white-out conditions as the snow fell horizontally. Yikes. It was cold, but not too bad, by the time I got up it was already almost 30 degrees outside, but the wind and stinging snow made my walk to school absolutely miserable. The direction of my walk brought the wind into my into my face exactly; it was so strong and the snow so stinging that I couldn’t even raise my face up and had to continuously look down at the five feet in front of me. Luckily the same wind had intensity (lesser) but not direction for my walk home and so in addition to keeping the snow off my face and myself pretty warm as I walked back, the wind also helped propel me along the slippery way.

Unsurprisingly, outside the yard of a house, snow removal is non-existent and pedestrians are left to wander the roads single file searching for car tracks to trudge along. Often, in the semi-frozen conditions of today’s snow, you are left to step into what is certainly a icy muddy puddle or a fresh snow bank with a mystery at the bottom. The potholes, open manholes, ragged pavement, and uncovered gutters become even more dangerous with the introduction of a concealing layer of fresh powder.

By the time the snow had finally finished this afternoon it lay thick on the ground, up to about a foot and a half in places… That’s a lot of snow for me, more than I have seen in a long time, and I think not much less than the entire quantity we got last year. And while my twenty minute trek to school left me hating life and cursing the cold, once the wind died down and I walked home, I appreciated a little bit that indeed, it was really beautiful outside. So while I can’t say that I am looking forward to this winter, I just have to keep a good attitude and look at the positive sides of this cold and snow- beautiful landscapes and good skiing. Saori, a true hater of the cold though, probably is glad that she’s not here for this one… :o)

(Interesting Post Script: I just looked back through all my entries and apparently last year, the first real snow was on November 11th, just about the same time as this year, and according to that journal entry I was not as excited as I remembered… I guess perhaps even a year ago I was already too jaded to enjoy it.)

Why, that is just capital!

21:35 08 November 2009

I just got back from three days in Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, and have a lot to report from the trip. First of all, I went during the time of our quarter-end break which was a week long but passed much more quickly. I went for two main reasons, to visit a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a while and to hopefully buy tickets for a vacation this winter. Luckily, I was successful on both accounts. You’ve already read the sad story that was the dark cloud over my trip, but other than that I had a wonderful time.

Thursday night I spent with my youngest host sister Aijan who is studying in Bishkek. I hung out with her, her cousin, and one of her roommates in great Kyrgyz-style, eventually sleeping the four roommates and me all on the floor of a one bedroom apartment. I felt very integrated and treated like family. It was great, and I met for the first time my cousin’s older brother (I have met my cousin many times, she and Aijan both speak competent English but we usually speak a weird mix of Russian, English, and random Kyrgyz that they have taught me when we are together). But the brother used to be a member of an elite Kyrgyz military group and meeting him and seeing the pictures from his service (there was a lot of joint training with US military personnel) was really interesting for me.

Coming to my original host family, other than the sad news I already reported, I found out that my twenty one year old host sister Alyuna is getting married! She has been dating a guy since I have been in training and so amid their sadness there is the joy of Alyuna’s upcoming marriage. I am hoping to go once again this Friday to go to the wedding. Should be exciting and fun and a good event for the family to come together for a joyous occasion. I have been to and chronicled Kyrgyz weddings so I will be excited to see a Russian one, I am sure there will be many differences!

Ah, but perhaps the biggest news from my trip to Bishkek was that I bought tickets for a winter trip to Japan! As you can imagine, I have been missing Saori quite a bit since she left, and I will be overjoyed to be reunited with her in December for a few weeks. I have to admit, that I think that the culture shock will overwhelm me- Tokyo is even more developed than US cities and hearing her stories of the technology there make my head spin (their toilet is button operated and has all sorts of special features like a heated seat and music or something- my toilet flushes with a bucket of water…)

While I went primarily to visit Host Country Nationals that I have been close with, I also was excited my last night there to visit with some volunteers that are from Chuy oblast. I stayed with one of them (the one with whom I played Frisbee when I first got to my training village, if you remember that far back) and it was great to catch up with all of my friends from the capitol region. Also, I one a bunch at poker! Well, actually only about $3.50, but that’s a lot here! All in all though, it was a great trip to Chuy oblast and I am very happy that I was able to go.

R.I.P.

20:00 08 November 2009

I was originally going to include this post as part of the one that follows it, but felt that it really should stand alone.

It had been too long since I last visited my original host family. You probably don’t remember, but I lived with my host mom Mama Luba (actually grandmother, but functioned as my host mom as she was the one that cooked for me, got me up, yelled at me when I didn’t do something right, and basically was the biggest person that aided me with my integration into Kyrgyzstan), her husband Papa Kolya, their daughter Irina, and their grandchildren Alyuna and Maksim (20 and 17 years old). The expense and travel restrictions of Bishkek mean that I rarely go to the capital city of the country (from which my old host family lives about 25 minutes away) and the last time I had seen them was before I went to Russia. It had been too long and I figured my upcoming Fall break was a good opportunity to see friends and family in capital.

As soon as I got to the house I knew something was wrong. Irina greeted me at the gate with a friendly but subdued greeting and when I entered I could tell immediately that something was off about the atmosphere. Mama Luba was absent. Papa Kolya was happy to see me, but was visibly disturbed. The atmosphere at the table was quiet, something that in three months of living there I don’t think I ever observed- dinner was usually a cacophony of argument which at first seemed to be hostile and unfriendly but later turned out to be nothing more than silly arguments about the exact location of a cafĂ© in town, how much eggs were selling for at the bazaar, or whether they should eat raspberry or strawberry jam. It wasn’t until we after finished eating though that my fears were realized. After I saw Papa Kolya petting the dog and asking “Do you miss Luba? I bet you do… It’s boring without her, isn’t it?” I decided to ask “I am scared to ask, but where is she?” to which, he replied, saying what I hoped not to hear, that she died. Apparently she had been in a hospital for a bit, come home, and then died at home a few days before I got there.

The pain visible in the family wasn’t the dull remembrance of a loved one that I remembered from the Koran recitation at my new village host family, but the acute pain that comes with recent loss. Still people in the village were just finding out and a few came to give their condolences and talk about Mama Luba while I was there. She is someone that probably will not be remembered by many people outside of my training village, but I know that she made a big difference in my life and the life of the other volunteers that were hosted by them. She was a strong woman, forceful in her opinion and rarely convinced that she was wrong. She was also an incredibly… I can’t find the English word for it, but she was shustraya- funny, clever, joking, and a little mischievous. She loved to play pranks on the other Pre-Service Training families and would call them up to tell jokes. She taught me how to do laundry by hand and she criticized me for making the bed wrong and yelled at me for helping shovel another families coal. She mended my pants and told me I needed to iron my clothes more than I did. She praised me for my willingness to help out around the house and my language. She was funny, and strong, and perhaps one of the “realest” people I have ever met.

Mama Luba
1946-2009
Goodbye, I will miss you.

Halloween Fun

16:45 02 November 2009

This last weekend I celebrated Halloween with fellow volunteers in nearby Karakol city. While there were less than ten of us, we managed to have a good time together and were dressed in an assortment of odd costumes that certainly gave the Kyrgyz who saw us on our walk home reason to pause and stare… Haha. As I discussed earlier, I dressed up as Goose from Top Gun and wore the shortest pair of shorts I hope ever to wear in my life. All in all it was a good time though, and a great way to blow of some steam that builds up in the village.

"Success Challenged Activity"

19:35 28 October 2009

Well, Monday I had what I suppose could be called a “mixed success” program with my leadership club. We had what on paper seemed like it could be a good idea, but the implementation for it fell through a lot and it didn’t end up at all how I and Kelechek (the name of the group) hoped it would. However, having a debrief about it at the meeting today was a good opportunity to analyze our mistakes, see what went wrong, and figure out how to correct them in the future. So while it was a bit disappointing for me Monday, I have faith that the mistakes and correcting them will prove to be a positive experience for the future.

Before Saori left, she proposed the idea of holding some type of career festival for the kids of our villages. Career festivals and even the stereotypical parents telling about their jobs day in elementary school are an integral part of many countries’ job and work cultures. Thinking about future professions and seeing the pluses and minuses of each profession is an important process to us but that here seems to get little to no attention. Before attending university or selecting a trade, students have scant opportunities to decide which profession they want to pursue and even less information on how they could go about it. Saori’s idea was to hold a type of training/informational seminar for village kids in the upper classes at schools and have people of different professions come to speak to them about their professions, how they became them, and the benefits and drawbacks about them.

After she left, Kelechek and I began to try and organize the event, first surveying schools to find which kind of professions they would be interested in hearing from, and then organizing the date and logistics of the event. While the first part went well, so well in fact that I probably relinquished too much control to the kids, the latter part was plagued with difficulties and resulted in a somewhat lackluster seminar. I spoke with Saori about how proud I was of the kids and found that my role in the group was diminishing from that of leader to that of facilitator, something excellent for the long-term sustainability of the group and would make the transition easier when I leave next year. I fear that I may have made that move too quickly though, and a discussion post-event with the Director of the Dotz (the organization and place where we meet) where she expressed her disappointment went something like “Yes, they are doing well and are motivated and organized, but they are still kids and sometimes you need to step in and make sure they are taking the proper steps.”

The event Monday was significantly smaller than we hoped. We invited 45 students and about 20 showed up (and more than half of those late). But more importantly, out of the ten people that we invited to speak about their professions, only three showed up and we found two last minute to talk in lieu of the others. Other problems abounded with time limits and the speakers needing to leave early, the questions our kids prepared with sloppy and off-topic, and their was no clear flow of the program as a whole. We had designed this day as an experiment, with the hope of doing school-wide assemblies on the same topic in the future throughout the village. And while it did not go as planned, speaking with the participants after the seminar, it did seem like they still gained some interesting information and knowledge.

I won’t bore you with the details of how we plan to improve it in the future here, but I believe that future events based around the same principles could yield a lot of success and a very under-examined portion of Kyrgyz children’s lives.