Fire and Ice

Salut,

Here I thought I would have a very very normal In-Service Training conference in Bishkek. Alas, that was not the case. (In-Service Training/ IST is a week-long conference PC holds three months into service. It is a chance to discuss problems, work with local teachers to improve lessons and build upon skills, and discuss starting English clubs). 

The last week of November was a chaotic, hectic mess. A little bit of missing home as Thanksgiving slunk away. A little bit of a mess as I packed to go to Bishkek, and a little bit of an expected mess when the taxi to pick me up from the airport came early as usual while I was in the shower. 

Within a few days of leaving my site, I already began to miss Adelia and Alihan. I doubt they missed me, their days are ones of lying on the couches and watching Masha and the Bear on a loop. 

Last Sunday, the volunteers in the South of Kyrgyzstan all flew into Bishkek, including me. I should probably preface that all volunteers in Jalal Abad and Osh are part of the “South” of Kyrgyzstan (which has a slew of associations and stereotypes that come with it), but geographically, it also means we’re the furthest from the capital (the capital is where the PC office and staff are, where most departures from the country are, etc.). Using a taxi/car to get to Bishkek from Jalal Abad or Osh results in an 8-12 hour drive depending on the weather, as despite the country being the size of a Dakota, its mountains mean hazardous and winding roads. However, Osh is a simple 35-45 minute plane ride to Bishkek, and there are usually 1-5 flights a day to and from. Jalal Abad is not as lucky, it’s few and far between, which means we poor Jalal Abad volunteers have to take a long 2-3 hour drive to Osh and then a plane ride to get to Bishkek. Lots of other volunteers in the North have an equally long if not longer commute (most volunteers in the North live 2-8 hours away from the capital by taxi/marshrutka), but the mandatory airport visit is entirely southern (also a flight is more expensive than a marshrutka ride). As such, it is quickly becoming cumbersome to live in the South - particularly Jalal Abad- when it comes to traveling internationally which I learned the hard way and you get to read about now!

((Random side tangent: On the plane, one volunteer asked me to summarize Hamlet for them. It’s practically mandatory reading for high school seniors, and although I have no doubt most of my fellow volunteers had read it, my gap between high school and PC service was smaller than some others, so it was fresher in my memory. I went to see an operatic version of Hamlet with my family once; opera and Shakespeare are interesting. Regardless, that got us on the plane into talking about which Shakespeare play we all are. Zach is Twelfth Night, Tahmin is As You Like It, Zoe is Taming of the Shrew, Michaela and Tess are Midsummer Night’s Dream, Santi is MacBeth, and Ben is King Lear. This is all vibes, no explanation (Jacob is Antony and Cleopatra, Logan is Romeo and Juliet, Hoyt is Julius Caesar). During COVID, my family and I had Shakespeare book club, and I independently read/watched lots of historical plays for entertainment. Which Shakespeare play are you?))

So, we landed in Bishkek last Sunday, and lots of us had tickets to see Carmen, a famous opera at the Russian Opera House in Bishkek at 6 PM. Unfortunately for us, we ran into god-awful traffic, and we ended up missing the first act of the performance. Many of the Northern volunteers were already there and had gotten into Bishkek before us (sidenote: but I was really upset because Peace Corps would not let us Southerners arrive into the capital early before training, but they let the Northerners 😡). But we sat to watch a half-French, half-Russian opera about a Spanish singer in Kyrgyzstan, the vibe was there. The performance itself was okay; a few remarked how tiring operas are, and although they’re not really my style, I can enjoy them every once in a while. We ended the night at a Guinness bar, which served absurdly expensive beer (I despise beer).

To be honest, I don’t remember the first two days of the conference very well, it wasn’t all that exciting. Our first two nights we spent at our country director’s house and the US Ambassador’s house. Hoyt, the Country Director (CD), hosted us for a Thanksgiving dinner, as we had all missed ours. He remarked that being overseas, Thanksgiving is sometimes the hardest and loneliest time while being abroad, missing family and loved ones at home. In the days after, I sorely missed the Christmas music that always comes on. The trees and lights, I miss it all. No Mariah.

I did love seeing Hoyt’s house. He and the Ambassador live inside the city in well-guarded sections where all the diplomats live. His wife was lovely. Much to Hoyt’s amusement, there weren’t enough seats to fit at the large table for everyone, so instead, he made a separate “kids” table for six people to sit at. To ensure everyone got to mingle with everyone, after every course, he said people would swap and move around, taking their plates with them. It was ambitious of him, but it meant I got to talk at length with his wife. Yelen(a) used to work at the Parliament in Montenegro, before she met Hoyt while he was a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) in the embassy. Yes, he did what lots of FSO men do; they go to foreign countries (usually Latin America or Eastern Europe) and come back with wives. Haha. The Ambassador’s house was lively as well, but this time there was wine. He wasn’t as ambitious as Hoyt, so we just had regular seating, and according to Hoyt, he’s very quiet and shy, interesting traits for an Ambassador. 

All of our counterparts (counterpart (CP) is a local person every volunteer works with, in Kyrgyzstan and in the Education sector, it is a local English teacher who works in our villages) arrived in Bishkek last Tuesday, two days after we did. Wednesday morning was their first day back in the city, and I admit IST is a great perk for us and them. Paid travel to the capital, paid meals, and free lodging at a luxury hotel. 

So, it’s Wednesday, early in the morning, and I and several other volunteers are all eating breakfast. My roommate, Vanessa, was fast asleep upstairs. Twenty minutes into my breakfast, several of my friends come downstairs, telling me that a small fire has broken out in a different dining room downstairs we’d eaten in before. They said it looked contained but smoke was emanating from the room. We continued eating - which in hindsight made sense but was a bit perplexing. Perhaps ten minutes after we kept eating, we could smell the burning smoke on the second floor, and the hotel staff still seemed relatively unconcerned. Lots of the volunteers left, while I continued to finish my juice with Jacob and Jack. The fire alarm finally goes off, and we urge our counterparts to come with us and evacuate the building. They seemed entirely too content to keep eating their breakfast as grey smoke filled the room.

We ran down the smoke-filled stairs and evacuated and soon outside learned that a volunteer had finally pulled the fire alarm, not the hotel staff. Outside you could see traces of smoke on the third floor, and a few PC staff outside running around in a chaotic fashion. Our safety and security manager was particularly on his toes- another staff member told us he loves emergencies. Vanessa later told me she didn’t hear the fire alarm going off, but she could smell the smoke. I was particularly worried as the alarm had gone off, but it seemed to be only us and hotel staff and very few actual other hotel residents. 

The Peace Corps office in Bishkek summoned all its drivers and sent us to Hoyt’s house (Hoyt- Country Director, essentially president of Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan). The hotel did damage control by giving us blankets for being out in the cold. Frank’s counterpart was sweet and lent me his jacket, as I had run out of the hotel without a big jacket. With a lot of fanfare, like 60+ people swarmed Hoyt’s house. 

My mother and I have been planning for several weeks to meet in Almaty. She got a new job around the summertime traveling around the world (on Business class!) on occasion to teach for Chevron on-site. So basically, she does decision analysis- which I don’t understand and never have, but it pays the bills, and now she’s so senior she teaches people how to do it, and she does it on location of other Chevron sites/offices. She’s been to Edinburgh and Bangkok already, and she came to Atyrau, which is a small-ish city in Kazakhstan. She intentionally volunteered to go to Kazakhstan for me in the hopes that we could meet. The weeks she was in Atyrau happened to line up with my schedule when I was in Bishkek. Unfortunately for me, I’m far from the capital, but fortunately, I happened to be there, and Bishkek-Almaty is only an hour's flight. The stars aligned, and I got permission from Peace Corps to depart from our conference right after and go. According to Peace Corps, for the first three months of your service (training doesn’t count), you’re not allowed to leave your oblast (region, like leaving your US state) or the country, as they want you to settle into your community and not go traipsing around. The last day of those three months was like November 25/26 or so. 

Due to the hectic fire, we actually ended up staying in Jannat Resort. The original Jannat hotel in south Bishkek was about 1.5 hours from the airport, depending on traffic, but still relatively close to the city center. The Jannat Resort they sent us to was over 2 hours, as the resort was in the middle of the mountains. I got special permission to leave the conference early as if I hadn’t, I would have missed my flight due to traffic jams. The rest of our time at the conference was relatively uneventful. Very helpful for getting new ideas for games and for our English clubs. Because Baktygul and I are just a few of the English teachers at my school, our students practically missed a week. We spent the other nights in the hotel gym and pool. It was upsetting to be so far from the city, as lots of us wanted to walk around the town and eat out. I missed the restaurants we ate at during training. 

I made it safely to Almaty, me being, I think one of the first, if not the first of my cohort to leave the country and to see my family. I arrived late, around 10/11 o’clock at night. I would have been fine staying at any nice hotel, but my mom got a deal or some discount through work, so she booked us at the Ritz.

I would like to make note of the fact that my family cannot usually or ever afford to stay at the Ritz Carlton, we are NOT that high class thank you very much. So I arrived at the Ritz and immediately had a little minion (sorry, concierge) follow me around, as I didn’t know this, but at the Ritz, you check in on like the 30th floor, not the ground floor. I felt like a peasant. Also, the Ritz is NOT close to the city center, which wasn’t my favorite either. My mom arrived at night, around 2 AM. We ate at a very fancy breakfast bar, again exuding fish-out-of-water energy to staff who looked at us funny. 

My mom and I visited Zektnov’s Cathedral, a large Orthodox cathedral near the city center. We visited the Independence Monument, and we took a drive to Shumbulak, a ski resort with gondolas. The gondola ride itself was cheap, I think like 12$ or something. It had three levels and we were surrounded by skiers and snowboarders. The ride was breathtakingly beautiful! We had no intention of skiing, but we reached the top and we ate ash/plov inside a yurt at the top. It was a nice introduction for my mom to a bit of Central Asian culture. We almost got hit by some snowboarders. To get to the yurt, you have to cross the snowboarders’ launching-off point, which isn’t the wisest, so we pissed off some Russian dudes. Then, at the bottom, one nearly crashed into me because he didn’t stop correctly. Yikes. 

Throughout our time in Kazakhstan, I did most of the talking, as my mom hasn’t learned how to TEFL talk (TEFL talk- speaking slowly, clearly, directly, and using simple words with non-native English speakers, or using simple words for people who barely speak any English. This usually means omitting excess words and getting to the point). Also, I had dubious claims about to what degree I would be understood speaking Kyrgyz, and my answer is a little bit! Kyrgyz and Kazakh are very similar languages, but in Kazakhstan, more so than even in Kyrgyzstan, people default to Russian. All signage everywhere is in Kazakh, Russian, and English. I know very little Russian- as I hadn’t prepped well beforehand, my bad, but I was able to successfully order food. 

Next to the Ritz is a large bougie mall, and we ate at an Italian restaurant there. I got my mom to play Uno with me in our hotel room while drinking wine. We floundered opening the bottle, but that’s okay, we didn’t tell anyone. 

She returned home just recently after getting very sick during and after our time in Almaty. While waiting for my flight back to Bishkek, I ran into two Peace Corps staff from Cambodia and Thailand on the same flight. After our training conference, Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan was hosting a social media conference for Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Asia PC countries. It was interesting and nice to compare notes on situations, for example, Cambodia and Thailand don’t have two host families for training and service like Kyrgyzstan does. They were very kind, but I think this is a reminder to me that Peace Corps service looks very different in all places; they were complaining to me about the cold as they come from the tropics. It’s easy to feel insulated to just what I’m up to and what I’m doing, but there are people in places all around the world all under the Peace Corps umbrella. 

I don’t know if I ever told you this story, but it reminded me of this time back during my study abroad in Italy in the summer of 2022. I had taken a day trip to Assisi by myself; it’s a gorgeous small city on top of a hill in north-ish Italy. It’s a famous religious pilgrimage site; I’m not Catholic but scores of other pilgrims were there for St.Francis. It has a gorgeous cathedral in the center, but its roads are stairs. Seriously, Google Maps would direct me to roads and they’d be staircases. Ugh. It was gorgeous but very hot. I ran into some American girls on my way up to the top of the hill/mountain and also a retired American living there. Anywayyyy, I tell you this story because while I was waiting for the bus (the train stop is different from the city, you have to take a separate bus up and down the hill), I ran into these Carribeanean archbishops and priests. One recognized me; he’d seen me by myself around Rome, where he’d been staying, and we’d both had plans to be in Assisi. He was incredibly kind and sweet, and he was with his ragtag group of bishops from various small Caribbean islands for a Catholic World Forum in Rome. He was from Antigua; anyway, that story reminded me of meeting the two women in Almaty. There’s always something beautiful and fun about finding connections with random strangers. 

I found myself finding lots of comfort in Kyrgyzstan and missing it when I went to Kazakhstan. I was constantly like “I can’t wait to go back where I can talk to people!” On my way back to my site, I made friends with at least five taxi drivers. Besides being a good way to practice my language skills and impress locals, it’s also a means of safety, particularly when traveling by yourself. Telling people in Bishkek that I do in fact live and work here, that I live with a Kyrgyz family and have learned Kyrgyz for six months, helps dodge sketchy people and avoid scams. 

Saturday was the first snow in Jalal Abad. I’ve looked longingly at the snow sitting atop the mountains in the distance from my house, the sun silhouetting their shadow. During the night, I heard huge clumps of it falling off the roof onto the ground. Sure enough, in the early hours of the morning, the heavy rainfall the night before had resulted in the open field right outside my house covered in white. That’s made my trek to my school interesting. Luckily, my mom brought my snow/rain boots for me. 

You know the saying when snow hits, it’s time for volleyball? No? Okay, well, anyway, on the first day of snow, all the school teachers in the village got together to play volleyball. I’m god awful at volleyball, I’m bad at most court sports (tennis, badminton, volleyball, etc.), but I did end up participating a little bit. The teachers were so good, I’ve seen students play volleyball in the gym, and I got invited to play a bit with them earlier in the week, but this was the first interscholastic event. It was mostly all the female teachers, as all the guys were refereeing or playing table tennis in the back. Our school got second place, I think??

Today is my host brother, Daniel’s, birthday, I think he turned 18? The snow already has begun to melt. Some of the other volunteers are at much higher elevations (I checked and I’m about 3000 ft, others are 5000-6000 ft) and the ground is much colder where they are, so the snow will stick around with them for a while longer.

I love the snow. On Saturday and Sunday, despite my host siblings avoiding going outside, I enjoy standing in the stillness and seeing my breath visible in the air. The darkness cloaks our village earlier and earlier every day, and I look forward with eagerness to my daily walks across the field to my school in thick snow boots, and thick sheets of ice underneath me. Wrapped in warm coats, many layers, a beanie, and my Slytherin green-silver scarf. Unlike Austin or Houston where snow means the electrical grid failure, out here the snow is an old friend. Not all PC countries get to experience winter; a lot are near the equator and tropical, but winter does come with its own challenges. The good news is that Adelya and Alihan are staying until January, so I’ll spend it chasing Alihan around the house and spinning Adelya in circles until the snow disappears and spring comes. 

À Bientôt,

Grace

PS. Music (winter vibes)

1. Skyfall- Adele, I got my sister-in-law into this song, she likes it a lot

2. Fireflies- Owl City

3. Show Yourself- Idina Menzel

4. December- Ariana Grande

5. Feeling Good- Michael Buble

6. Celestial- Ed Sheeran

7. Halo- Beyonce

8. What I Would Say- Lloyiso

9. Snow White- Christina Grimmie

10. Butter- BTS, Holiday Remix