My First Year in Kyrgyzstan

We've just passed our 1 year mark in Kyrgyzstan!  It's crazy to think about, 27 months used to seem like an unimaginably long time, especially when I first arrived.  I remember thinking that PST was never going to end.  But now here we are, a year in, I survived the winter, and I have enough landmarks to see me through the rest of my service.

Here's what I've been up to in this last year:

Mom and dad came to see me off at the airport.  We had a pre-departure orientation in Washington DC and I got to meet the people I would be spending the next 27 months with.

We arrived in KR and spent the first few days in Cholpon Ata at a nice hotel.  I remember seeing the snow capped mountains across the massive lake, and that all of the food was white.  We were introduced to the numerous types of kasha (like oatmeal made with milk, and can be almost any kind of grain) and more dairy than I've had in years.

Tim and I met our PST host mothers for the first time at the PST family matching ceremony.  I could barely say hello and was incredibly nervous.  It took me several months before I realized how awesome, relaxed and accepting my PST family was.  I had no reason to worry!

PST was hard but I look back on it now fondly.  Our LCF was amazing and made language classes fun, this is us practicing how to speak to a mashrutka driver.   We took a break everyday for group lunches with our host families.  Kyrgyz people are very competitive and this played in our favor, our host moms and kalins prepared awesome meals for us.  These were some of the best meals I've had in country.

Less than two months later we were assigned to our permanent sites.  Summer was an adventure.  On my own for the first time I had to figure out how to live in KR: shopping, taking taxis, cooking on a hot plate, bathing in a banya.

My host family took me on a picnic by the river.

Meeting up with other volunteers was a nice break, it was a relief to be able to speak English!  We hiked up to Altyn Arashan, the weather was pretty terrible, it started hailing and the mountain turned to mud, but the hot springs at the end were great!

  

I went to a garlic festival at a another volunteer's village.  We sang a couple English songs and watched a game of kokbaru.

We returned for a few weeks in August to finish training.  It was nice to be reunited with our host families and other volunteers.  I felt like I was coming home for spring break.  I even brought all my dirty laundry to wash at my PST house!  

Kunduz taught us a Kyrgyz dance and we performed it in front of our host families and volunteers.

I taught a group of boys about reproductive health and HIV at TOBE camp, and got to hang out on the beach!

In October I took a short trip to Istanbul and was happy to see my parents, and enjoy the sights and delicious food.

As soon as I got back we had our first snow... and well, this was pretty much how my winter went:

But the perk of being in Issyk Kul is that we get to do fun things like ski and go snowshoeing in the mountains.

And I got to meet Obama.

Тамаша.  

But I did check out the Obama bar and the Putin pub in Bishkek.

In March I moved to Ak Suu, I was sad to leave my old host family but excited to start my new job!  And the view is pretty amazing too.

Anna and Becca came over for Easter and we decorated Easter eggs with my host siblings and introduced them to pad thai and brunch.

It's getting warmer now and I'm thrilled that summer is on it's way with all of the wonderful things that it brings like cheap vegetables, fresh jams, and hiking, and the joy of being outside without freezing to death.

I've started a fitness club in my village.

And I ran my first half marathon!

It's slippery out there!

Well, I finally did it, I fell on the ice and broke something. 

The roads here are terrible, especially in the villages. The main street in my village is paved but the rest of them are mostly gravel or dirt and since it's been warming up a little bit here now the roads are just covered in mud and ice.

This weekend, as I was walking home, I slipped on the ice right down the street from my house. At first my main concern was that I had gotten mud all over my pants, but when I looked down at my finger, I realized that it looked a little funny.

It turns out it was broken. Although I didn't find this out until the next afternoon because my village is seven hours from the capital and it's dangerous to travel at night here so I couldn't leave until morning.  Fortunately it didn't hurt that much, and I had plenty of ibuprofen.

Aside from the delay though Peace Corps medical care is pretty much the best I've ever had. Even expensive concierge medical services in America have a much larger patient to doctor ratio than we do. We have under 80 volunteers in the country right now and two doctors and a medical assistant to take care of us.  I was able to call my doctor on a Saturday evening and he arranged for me to come in and went with me to the orthopedic for x-rays.

As with many things here, going to the hospital seems like stepping in a time machine. The staff all seemed very competent, but the equipment looked like it was from Soviet times. They are still using film for the x-rays, they haven't gone digital yet. The nurse made my cast by hand with gauze and plaster dust. I now have a huge cast that seems a little excessive for a broken finger. I'm hoping to get it off soon.

My host family was very sweet. They were all very concerned when I walked in with my crooked finger and they kept insisting that they take me to the hospital I had to explain to them several times that I had to go to the hospital in Bishkek the next morning. When I arrived back home on Monday morning, my host mother wouldn't let me come in the house until she had waved a teacup over my head. They do this when someone has been in some dangerous situation. Traditionally I think you are supposed to spit in the cup three times, but I think it was just water.

On a sidenote, I wrote this all with my iPhone's voice to text feature, since typing with one hand is annoying, and it worked incredibly well!

Skiing and an Olympian!

Issyk Kul is definitely the best oblast, and living right near Karakol is great because I get lots of fun opportunities to go up to the ski base, or the lake in the summer.

This week the US embassy had their winter sports envoy and part of it took place in Karakol.  They invited 20+ kids from two local orphanages to learn to ski with the help of several instructors and a US Olympian snowboarder, Justin Reiter.  

I was surprised how quickly they picked it up!  By the end of the first day a few of the boys were doing jumps and racing down the bunny hill faster than I could on my skis.  

Of course there were competitions too.

Justin Reiter and I

Galentine's Day!

Normally I don't like missing holidays but since I don't have a valentine back home anyway, I didn't feel like I was missing anything and I had a great time with one of my friend's here.  We had a fun girls day filled with mimosas, various delicious baked goods, and rom-coms.  

We even checked an item off our bucket list and sang karaoke at a new cafe in town.

Bishkek!

This week was the health sector's in service training which, more importantly, meant a trip to Bishkek.

I spent the weekend with my training family in Kant.  It was great to see everyone, and they were really sweet and made several salads and had only vegetarian food while I was there!

I felt like I was in America with smart phones everywhere!

There are many things that exist only in Bishkek (and if they don't have them in Bishkek then they don't exist in Kyrgyzstan at all) so it's nice to have an excuse to visit the capital.  My first stop was Osh Bazaar where I heard there were people selling popcorn kernals.  I looked all over and couldn't find it.  Finally I asked a man selling already popped popcorn.  He pointed me in the right direction and gave me a handful of popcorn kernels to show to the vendors.  I ended up finding popcorn with the animal food, no wonder I had trouble finding it!

The butchers

My other important errand at the bazaar was to get the zipper on my boot repaired.

For just over a dollar the guy put on a new zipper and stitched it back up.  Now it works good as new!

Grocery area at Alamedin Bazaar

Our training was held at an awesome hotel with an indoor pool and sauna!  Plus they were good about making special meals for the vegetarians (at least in theory, I did have to explain that we don't eat chicken or fish).  And the showers were fantastic.

The view was pretty great too

But all good things come to an end and last night I returned back to my village.  This morning I woke up to another foot and a half of fresh snow.

 

Snowshoeing!

I'm not a fan of winter but it does have it's advantages.  And Issyk Kul is definitely the place to be to take advantage of them.  

Today was the perfect winter day, not too cold, plenty of sunshine, perfect conditions to enjoy KR's beautiful mountains on snowshoes.  

We started out by the ski base and walked to Ak-Suu village.  The view was spectacular, we were surrounded my mountains and we were the only ones out there.

We had a diverse group, a couple other volunteers, two European expats, and three Malaysians, one has been cycling around the globe for the last 4 years (I know what you're thinking mom, and yes, that does sound like a great idea!)

We came to a section of the valley where a forest had been planted during Soviet times.  There's something creepy about trees planted in perfectly straight lines in the middle of nowhere.