Snow... again.

A snowy street near the center of Tyup


There is no doubt it is winter here in the Kyrgyz Republic, although I’ve heard that the last couple years have been much milder than normal. We get a lot of snow in Tyup though, a lot more than any other place in Issyk Kul that I know of. In fact, on the other side of the lake they get almost no precipitation at all except in the mountains.





My back yard


I can’t complain too much though, my house is warm and I have an indoor toilet which makes makes life so much more bearable.





Tomato sauce!




I’m lucky too that I canned several liters of vegetables during the fall so I have something good to eat besides my normal buckwheat and peas. Living so close to Karakol vegetables are actually available during the winter, but they are much more expensive than they were a few months ago. I splurged this month and bought a few peppers and some spinach and am now completely out of money. Fortunately I have plenty of winter salad to tide me through.

Making Kyrgyz Food

We’ve been cooking up a storm in Tyup this week!  I want to learn how to make a few Kyrgyz dishes before I go and since recipes are just passed down through families I asked my host mother to teach me how to make a couple of my favorite foods.



One of the main dishes in Kyrgyzstan is Manti, a steamed dumpling normally filled with sheep, although I’ve had them with potato.  I wanted to try making them with squash.

We don’t do a lot of measuring here, they all seem to know intuitively how much of each ingredient they need (in fact we don’t even have anything to measure with, I’ve just been using regular spoons and tea cups).



To make the manti, my host mother made dough with flour, salt, water, and oil, in unknown quantities.  I then cut up the squash, potato and onion into tiny pieces and she added pepper and salt for flavor and to draw the water out.  We made small flat circles from the dough and filled them with the vegetables.  I’m still working on closing the manti, it’s hard!



They have these really cool steamer pots here.  They’re tall and open on the bottom.  They hold several round trays with holes and an opening in the middle for the steam.  They use these trays for dumplings and oromo (kind of a Kyrgyz lasagna).  They pots fit right over a kazan of boiling water.  We cooked the manti for half an hour.





Probably my favorite thing in Kyrgyzstan is laza.  It’s a condiment made from garlic and chili peppers and it’s been especially useful since it covers up the sheep taste that permeates everything in the country.  We crushed several heads of garlic and then added a bunch of dry chili pepper flakes and a little salt and then poured hot oil over the mixture.





My host mother made peroshkees too.  Peroshkees are delicious (and totally unhealthy) and I eat them all the time because they're one of the few Kyrgyz foods that doesn't include sheep.  Plus they're cheap.  Peroshkees are fried dough with potato inside.  I like to eat them with laza.

Guesting

Guesting is important in Kyrgyzstan, it's how they catch up, relax and do business.  One of the wonderful Peace Corps LCF's invited us over to guest in his village on Friday.



You can take almost anything in a mashrutka, even a door!

His village is on the other side of Karakol from mine so after taking a taxi in and stopping at the bazaar for some cookies and juice (it's typical to bring some kind of gift for the host) we hopped in a mashrutka, literally hopped because someone had bought a large wooden door at the bazaar and was bringing it home.  I'm still not sure how they got it in there!

Timerlan showed us his orchard, huge dog, and his sheep (he has a few babies and they were so cute and fluffy!)  and then led us into his very nice house to meet his family.  His family is unusual in that everyone speaks English, his wife and sister speak English well and his children are all learning.  His wife had made amazing fried dough, along with salads and horse plov.  I also tried bozo for the first time, it's some kind of fermented wheat drink, like an unfiltered beer.  Of course I don't like beer so it wasn't exactly to my liking.



Timerlan and Luke playing guitar

After a wonderful lunch Timerlan brought out his guitar and we played some songs and sang, it was a lot of fun!

Жангы жылыныздар менен (Happy New Year!)

It’s a new year which means of course that it’s time to make resolutions (to be forgotten in a few weeks time as we go back to our old ways).  I figured this was a good excuse to dust off this blog and make another attempt at telling you about my adventures here in KR...

The end of the year was packed with holiday fun.  I was super excited to share one of my favorite holidays with my host family, I went to the bazaar and picked up lots of stocking stuffers, and some new although probably ill fitting socks (I did see my host brother wearing his the other day, 1 out of 3 isn't too bad).  I woke up early and put on my Santa hat (best idea ever, I had strangers coming up to me on the street and wishing me a Merry Christmas) and waited for my host family to wake up.  As all holidays here are accompanied by alcohol my apa and I had a few glasses of wine sometime before dawn.

This was followed by a low key Christmas celebration with other volunteers at a cafe in Karakol.  We enjoyed delicious American food and played charades.  The internet gods were also kind enough to let me Skype in to the festivities in Tennessee.

I got my Christmas tree a few days late.  Their New Years is like a mishmash of our Halloween, Christmas and New Years.  They have New Years trees and give presents, they have a Santa Claus and from what I could see at the bazaar a bunch of kids wear costumes, and of course there are fireworks too.

Decorating the tree with Kanat, my host brother

My host mother putting the final touches on our New Years tree.

New Years was a fun and tiring adventure.  It began with my friend’s birthday which just happens to be on NYE.  We celebrated the night before with karaoke and pizza.  The next day I caught a taxi (by far the nicest ride I’ve had to Bishkek and for the normal mashrutka price!) to celebrate the holiday with my PST host family in Kant.

The street was shut down in the center of Bishkek where people were gathered to ring in the new year.

My host brother Arlen with a Frozen hat, proof that it doesn’t matter where you are, kids always love playing with the packaging.

Kant is the land of plenty.  We had so much food it could barely fit on the table and curiously several choices of meat, but no sheep!

We each wrote down our goals for the year, lit them on fire and then drank the ashes with our champagne at midnight.  We rushed outside to see the fireworks and I have to say, it was spectacular.  Expensive, coordinated fireworks shows are great and all, but nothing beats walking into the street and being completely surrounded by lights, colors and explosions.  You can buy fireworks anywhere and just set them off in the street.  It was great!

This was followed by something I like to refer to as the Kant crawl where we go down the street and stop in at each of the neighbor’s houses, have some food, make a few toasts, and drink at least two shots of vodka.  Needless to say I was falling asleep at the table by half past 1.  My host family on the other hand was apparently up til 7:30AM.

New Years Day brunch with the neighbors

I’m back in Tyup now but the partying hasn’t ended.  We’ve had guests at the house ever since I returned.  The holiday season is supposed to last until Wednesday.