I’m all settled in with my host my host-family here in the KYG. I’ve been here for a few weeks already and so far, very good. All volunteers have been divided into groups of ten or so and are placed in villages. In these groups we have intensive language, cross-cultural, and technical training. Some are in Russian-language groups and others (like me) are learning Kyrgyz. My host family is absolutely terrific. I have mom, a 10 year old sister, an older brother who’s 27 and drives a taxi, 3 cows, many chickens, and a garden loaded with vegetables. I live with a very religious family and my host mom is incredible. She’s always offering me food and Chai (tea). The food here in Kyrgyzstan is above and beyond what I had expected. Every day I eat the freshest of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, eggplant, eggs… this list goes on! The melons: extraordinary. These all come from my backyard. My host mom will pick these foods early and the morning and spend all day preparing them. Man do I eat them up! I’ve never eaten fruits or vegetables this great before. All these foods aren’t grown with the assistance of fertilizers or growth hormone. The livestock we eat (by the way I had sheep for breakfast this morning) is all grass fed. The livestock here are much leaner than the corn-fed cow you would see in the states. Though the meat is a little tougher over here it tastes ten times better. All the food that we eat is unprocessed. Not that I had a whole lot to lose before I got here but by eating this way I’ve actually been losing a few pounds. I eat as much as I want which is a lot. Whenever I finish the food on my plate my host mom quickly throws on another plate full of whatever we are eating. She thinks I’m some sort of garbage disposal or something. I guess this explains the five dumps I’ve been taking every day. The trick is to leave a little food on your plate when you’re full. Then there is no reason to get more food put on your plate. This is called eating seasonally. Since its summer there are LOADS of fresh produce that are in season. Come winter our options will be very limited. Potatoes and some a few veggies will be the staple of our diet. No fruits probably. We’ll see how excited I am about eating seasonally then. Last night I ate cow right off the bone. Skin, fat, meat and all. Welcome to Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz typically don’t drink coffee, just Chai. Chai has hardly any caffeine and is supposed to be pretty good for you. I am a Chai drinking machine. Every meal Chai is served. We’ll have Chai in the morning after breakfast and late in the afternoon. We’ll drink Chai while we talk, while we study language. We’ll have Chai for no reason at all. It is a Kyrgyz belief that cold water will get you sick if you drink it. Drinking hot Chai or hot water is the only appropriate way to drink water. Chai is even drunk when it’s hot outside. It’s been getting close to the 100’s and Chai is still going round. Drinking hot Chai raises your body temp which causes you to sweat and keeps you pretty cool. I’m assuming this is also the Kyrgyz way of keeping cool. I’ve been drinking the chai like a champ lately. My village actually has a serious water problem. There is no running water at my house so we use the community well down the road a little ways. Every few days or so the well will go dry. We have plenty of water on reserve but it’s still pretty scary. The other day I helped my host Aunt climb down to the bottom of the well scrape some grey-colored water from the bottom. Luckily we only used this water for bathing and not cooking. I take a bucket bath maybe twice a week at most. It’s not so bad. The water here is too dirty for Americans. The Peace Corps gave us all these fancy water distillers that filter about a gallon in four hours. We’ve actually had three volunteers already ET (early termination) and headed back to the states. Apparently Kyrgyzstan has a pretty high volunteer dropout rate compared to other countries served. I keep hearing about how hard it will get; especially in the winter. Temperatures can get down into the -20’s and electricity can become almost non-existent. Living here with hardly any language knowledge is pretty difficult. After a field trip to Bishkek a fellow PCVT buddy and I were trying to get a Marshrutka (a taxk-like van that packs passengers in like sardines) back to our village. Since there are no schedules to take this form of public transportation it’s pretty hard getting around to places when you got a time budget. We tried using the little language we know but still the drivers couldn’t understand us. We were getting pretty frustrated (At the time I had to take a monster dump so I was not a happy camper). P.S. after your first bout of Diarrhea in the Peace Corps you become really open about your bowel activity. We eventually hoped on a bus that went through our town for 15 som and made it back safe and sound. My host family is extremely religious. Islam is the primary religion practiced here. My host mom prays five times every day. No television, no music in this household. Because my family is so religious, I don’t have to worry about the infamous Kyrgyz way of pressuring you to down a bottle of vodka in one sitting. (The Peace Corps has been telling us time and time again that the Kyrgyz are very good at pressuring you into shots). I’m pretty relieved that I don’t have to worry about that for the next couple months. I’ve come to believe that if I want to maintain respect from my host family I should not partake in any drinking while I’m here at training. My family does a whole lot for me and to come home slightly belligers from a night boozing with some fellow PCV’s, I believe, I will lose some serious respect. Despite the language barrier, I’m growing pretty close to my host family. Every day when eat together it gets easier and easier to understand what they are saying to me. I’ve been going out on runs on the country roads every other morning or so before language training (it’s the coolest time of day; It gets up in the 100’s during the day). Cattle herders see me and yell “ah Sportsman!” I’m also learning how to hand wash my own clothes which is a workout in itself. There are some intense mountains here in Kyrgyzstan. They aren’t terribly far from our village. I’ll try and post some pictures. Kyrgyzstan is most definitely the Swiss Alps of Asia. Mountains are everywhere. The village I’m training at is a very small rural neighborhood. The way of life here is very slow with a lot of cows and donkeys freely roaming the streets. It’s a lot like the movie Napoleon Dynamite. There is just a lot going on here. I’ve always wants to experience real small town/rural living and here I am. Most homes here have a farm or small plantation to grow foods and raise cattle. The kids here are absolutely hilarious. They all hang out on the neighborhood roads in afternoons and evenings after dinner. No X-Box for these children. I walked out with my little host sister with some gummy worms last week after dinner and all of a sudden 10 kids come out of nowhere each wanting one. The boys come to me every day and want to shake my hand. As-alom al-aikem they say with a hand shake. Al-aikem as-alom I reply. Everyone here is super excited to have Americans in their town. We are almost like celebrities. Since I’m white I’m a minority. Its pain sometimes getting constantly stared at. I’ve found that learning this language well is going to be the key to being successful here. It really makes a lot of sense. The people here are too nice not to talk to. The language training is intense and slowly paying off. It’s definitely something that I’m going to have to work at. My little host sister walks me to class every morning. She insists that she carry my backpack for me. The other day she let me help her milk the cows. Before then I had never milked a cow before. Exhilarating. Speaking of milk I tried the fermented mare’s milk. It’s an alcoholic beverage made from horse’s milk and tastes as good as it sounds. My little host sister can drink this stuff like a champ. In training we are starting to learn about the education system here in the Kyrgyz Republic and how we are going fit in. We’ve started an English club in our village to get some serious English-teaching experience. After spending half of last Friday going door to door spreading the word about our English teaching club we ended up having quite a good turnout yesterday. Children ages 9 to 17 came to learn some killer English skills. We played games like charades and I got a few claps from my monkey impression. Pretty soon we’ll find out where we will be placed for our two-year service. The Kyrgyz Republic is divided into 7 Oblasts (like states in America): Naryn, Issyk-Kul, Batken, Talas, Osh, Dzal-Abad, and Chiu. We could be placed in any of these oblasts except for Batken. Batken borders Tajikistan and Uzbekistan; countries that the Kyrgyz have been having some issue with. There is not internet, let alone computers, in my village so internet has been hard to get. We make trips into the Peace Corps headquarters every week now so I should be able to update my blog more often. By the way the Yurt picture is at a friends house. We got to eat sheep in there one time for lunch. Well that’s it for today. Goodbye! Jakshuh-kalungus!
