Making pancakes with skinheads

I had an awesome weekend!  It’s a tradition that all of the volunteers in an oblast meet up somewhere so that the new volunteers can meet the old ones.  We met up in Balykchy which is about 2 and a half hours from me on the North shore of the lake.  It was like a little paradise.  Balykchy is a touristy beach town, which is not something I usually like, but after a few months in Kyrgyzstan I was thrilled to have indoor plumbing, I mean, the works! a toilet, a shower, with hot water no less!  And it was fun to see people doing things like jet skiing and parasailing.  It was a very Western.  I spent some time on the beach  (although i didn’t get past my knees, the water is way too cold for me!) and rode the ferris wheel, it’s huge!  It takes twenty minutes to go around.  We went out dancing one night and made awesome meals like salads and pancakes!

 I don’t think I’ve gone one day here where I haven’t said something completely ridiculous.  Fortunately everyone at work has a good sense of humor.  Yesterday I was the first one at the office and went to ask if anyone had the key.  Unfortunately I mixed up key and door, and then mispronounced it on top of that which meant that what actually came out was: ‘Do you have the donkey?’  Today I was telling my director about how much fun I had this past weekend and how we had great food, like the delicious pancakes they made with chocolate and raspberry sauce.  Of course when I was trying to explain how to make pancakes I said that they are made with taz.  My director started laughing hysterically and informed me that the word for salt is tooz, taz is a skinhead (or in English a bald person).  We both got a good laugh out of that.  Fortunately I finally found a Kyrgyz teacher, so hopefully I’ll get the hang of it soon.

Studying Kyrgyz has definitely made me more sympathetic to the mistakes EFL students make.  I had the first meeting with my English club today and they kept adding extra a’s and switching y’s with u’s.  Understanding the sounds the cyrillic characters make and some of the more common sounds in Kyrgyz words, I understand completely why they make these mistakes.