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.  

Brownies

Last night's failed experiment with my host brother...

I am not a baker in America, and Kyrgyzstan is worse.  I thought I'd enlist my host brother to help me make brownies last night.  We used a recipe from the PC cookbook which called for a kilo (2.2 lbs) of sugar.  

We don't use our oven here, I'm not sure why.  The one time I asked my host mother she said that it was resting.  Actually though, I've never seen anyone use a built in over here.  They just have electric ones called duhovkas.  

My first mistake was putting it in too high causing the top to burn in just a couple minutes.  I scraped the burnt stuff off and tried again on a lower shelf and a lower temperature.  An hour later and it was burning again but it never did get fully cooked through.  I ate a huge bowl of burnt / raw brownie mush and felt a bit nauseous.

It was funny to see my neighbor and Kanat faced with this plate of super rich, chocolate mush.  My neighbor, trying to be nice, told me how good it was, as he moved it around on the plate with his spoon.  (On a side note, he also washed his plate afterwards, which he's never done before and I was really impressed as men here rarely do things like that.)

Kanat tried to spread the brownie goo on bread.  But a couple spoonfuls was enough.  I think brownies are going to be added to the list of weird American foods that they don't like (along with most of the things I've had them try: soy milk, curried lentils...)

Талды Суу

My host parents have tons of siblings, which is great because it means lots of interesting places to visit.  This week we went to visit my host mother's family in Taldi Su.  They live up in the mountains not to far from Tyup.

Their house is pretty far from anything else, their daughter said that she has to walk 2 miles to school every day, which would be a pain in the summer, but must be extra tough in the snow!

They have a sleigh!  

My host brother, Kanat

They have an amazing view overlooking the valley

My host family standing in front of my host father's new car.  They explained that since KR is joining the Customs Union with Russia in a few months and foreign items will become much more expensive many people are buying foreign cars now to avoid the extra fees.

Merim, a cousin from Bishkek

My First Package!

I got a package this week!  After 9 months in country and spending Christmas away from home a box full of delicious homemade goodies was such a treat!

I'd been pestering the women at the post office for the last few weeks, stopping in every couple days to inquire if my package had arrived.  The first time they seemed a bit confused, they asked me if I was Stephanie, another volunteer in my rayon who lives in a different village.  I gave them my name and number but wasn't confident that they would actually call me when it came, so I was surprised last Tuesday when I got a call from a woman speaking Russian.  She didn't hang up after I asked her 'what?' several times in Kyrgyz (which normally works with wrong numbers and telemarketers here), then I heard her say post office and package and I realized it had arrived!

I went right to the post office and was impressed to see that my package was sealed in it's own mail sack and the woman made big production of checking my ID and slicing the seal on the mail sack. 

I was impressed.  I had heard so many stories of packages being rifled through but mine was completely intact, and the cookies had even survived the trip without too much damage!

I have been enjoying my treats so much!  Thanks Nonnie! Everything was delicious.  And being as it was the end of the month and I had no money to buy any vegetables or good food it was so nice to have something delicious to eat to break up the monotony of buckwheat and canned winter salad.