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.