Salut,
Happy Leap Year!
I love the city of Bishkek, a place that often feels like a second home. I forget how far it is from me; my sister-in-law has never been before. A bustling and more modern city than I first expected and much colder than my home in the South.
We went to Bishkek for a training, PDM, or Project Design and Management. Over the next year until we finish our service, we are able to design projects and manage budgets to buy and supply our school with new things. Baktygul and I mostly want to work on buying new projectors, paper, laminating materials, books, etc. It was a three-day training running from February 28 to March 1.
Before PDM, the volunteers in Osh came to visit Jalal-Abad, and we got to show them around the city, though Osh is much bigger than Jalal-Abad. Alihan continues to be a nuisance and a little devil but the cutest little kid ever. I brought him and Adelya back a kaleidoscope as a gift from Bishkek and within a day he had broken it into pieces. Also, the baby KuzSaykal is currently standing up (not entirely walking per say), and that means she's hopping onto the table with her grubby hands and tipping over plates and cups of tea all over the tablecloth :( .
Also before PDM, my school celebrated Defender of the Fatherland Day (February 23)! It’s a sort of veterans/military day, but it also is referred to as men’s day. It is a national holiday, and at my school, the older male students held a (very long) concert/performance. It was a major throwback to my time in JROTC in high school. Their performance was mostly marching, fitness competitions/demonstrations (including arm wrestling, pushup and pull-up competitions, and backflip). It snowed that week, and I played in the snow with some of my students. A few days before, February 21st, there was National Language Day (it’s motherland tongue day I think), and the 5th-7th grade students held a short concert singing in Kyrgyz. Some of it was a Manas recitation, which I discussed in my last blog posts. For Men’s Day/Defender of the Fatherland, we chai eeched (for new readers, that means to eat food, literally drink tea, but it refers to eating food/a meal usually with family or friends/colleagues).
I’ve heard from Naryn volunteers that their taxi cars are prone to breaking down on the way to Bishkek because their drives are really long (8-10 hours). On our way to the airport, the other group of Jalal-Abad volunteers, their taxi driver’s car got stuck in a ditch, and there was a mad dash to fix it. Poor poor Iliyaz, the other group’s taxi driver. Ben sent us an audio message, “My driver has finally gotten his car unstuck from a ditch, so now we’re coming.” In the wintertime, it’s so common to see groups of men hand-pushing cars out of ditches on the way to Osh. Alex and Jacob tell me that they’ve had to push their own taxi a few times when it breaks down. Such is life, shrug*.
We arrived in Bishkek on the 27th and I left on the 3rd. For recurring readers, you might remember that the last time I was in Bishkek, our hotel burned down (not literally, there was just a large fire). So this time, on our first day, they made sure to do fire safety training, but all volunteers, we all agreed the new hotel, the Plaza, is worse than Jannat (the food sucked). Fellow southerner, Santi, and I went to several Asian food places during our time in Bishkek. On our first night, we went to Chinatown, a very bougie restaurant. Contrary to its name, there’s no Chinatown in the city, just the restaurant. Most of us didn’t eat in the hotel for dinner because of the terrible food. I will say that only in the hotels in Bishkek have I ever eaten fish in the country. Issyk Kul is the only real lake, there’s no place else to fish.
On the second night, a group of us all went to eat Indian food, which was amazing. We went with Santi and Sharaf, connoisseurs of Indian food, which made the experience all the more pleasant. On our third night, we went to eat Korean food at a restaurant called Chicken Star. Chicken Star is a popular franchise amongst PC volunteers, and we ran into the company owner. He is Korean and speaks Spanish after working in Argentina, and his English is also perfect. In my post about last summer in Bishkek, I mentioned the lore surrounding Sierra Cafe, where a former PCV sits on its board, and how that cafe has a long history of volunteers visiting the place.
Chicken Star also apparently has its own history, as the owner told us that Peace Corps volunteers have been coming and loving his restaurant for years and he’s known and seen many volunteers in the last several years. I continue to be surprised and awed by the history Peace Corps has here (last year was the 30th anniversary!) and the small ways in which others who are and have done what I’m doing find community in Bishkek. He even gave us tequila shots on the house!
On our fourth day, I went with a group to eat brisket, my first time eating brisket, where I got to see the Fulbrighters again. If you’re a recurring reader, during my time in Bishkek in January I was able to see some Fulbrighters who live in Naryn and Bishkek. I was able to see them again, but they bounced early to go watch Dune 2.
On the last night of training, after eating brisket, we went to a watercolor workshop Tess was putting on. Tess is an artist and went to the Art Institute of Chicago. She had us paint beautiful nature landscapes; I’m a terrible artist, and both my sisters are artists, but Tess thought mine was “the bravest” out of all of them, as something in it spoke to her. To be honest, I think it was one of those “modern art vibes” she was getting, where the art doesn’t look aesthetically pleasing but the interpretation is what matters; either way, I think mine was subpar, as the bravery she mentioned didn’t translate into the sunset I was going for.
After the workshop, we all went out to celebrate Tahmin and Eli’s birthdays; their birthdays are both March 4, 1999 (yes, same day same year!). The Metro Pub is a large and tourist-friendly place. A huge group of us went and had a blast dancing until late into the night. I’ve hardly ever gone out in Bishkek, so this was a great first. The pub played lots of American pop 2010s nostalgic music with bouts of Russian music thrown in.
During PDM, I got the chance to meet all the eco-tourism volunteers. There are seven of them in cities across Kyrgyzstan, not villages, and they are professionals. Their cohort is smaller and also older than ours. There are two in Jalal Abad, Bogdan, and Adam, but PDM was the first chance to meet all of them in person. Unlike my project which is mostly on school supplies and new equipment, the projects they are developing are program-based, whether it be website development, internship programs, or new tourist attraction tours/trails. I think they probably got bored, as we outnumbered them, so a lot of the training was them listening to us talk about books and projectors.
One interesting story that’s been going around the mill is that of one Noah John Bratcher, a former PC volunteer from several years ago, who opened an organization/company called the Kalpak English Academy in the south of Kyrgyzstan. It’s a standard TOEFL prep course along with providing English classes, all basic stuff. Noah had come to our swearing-in ceremony and visited some of our schools to talk to our teachers about his classes and programs. However, where it gets salacious and interesting is that news broke a while ago that he was part of a major extortion case, where allegedly a partner of his (wife? Who knows) extorted him for over 2 million som (2 million som= ~22,500$) which he filed a police report in Osh. Not only that but he apparently brought the case to more national attention, which the Peace Corps in turn told us about. I’ve no idea what to make of any of that.
After the training was over, I went to see Dune 2, my first time seeing a film in theaters in Kyrgyzstan. I had wanted to see Barbie and Oppenheimer but English showings are few and far between and usually in the evenings. On my last night in Bishkek, I went to Dordoi Plaza, a sprawling and bougie mall, and saw Dune. Unlike the US, Kyrgyzstan doesn’t play any previews in front of movies, so quite ironically, movies start on time here. I made the mistake of arriving on the dot and found the entire top floor of the plaza swarmed with people. When I walked back to my hostel, the streets were bare as it was cold and dark, but when I passed by two theaters on my way, large crowds of people were about, all going to see, presumably, Dune. Simultaneously, with my showing, there was a Russian language IMAX showing. Here, international (ie Hollywood) films are all Russian dubbed (Kyrgyz and Uzbek are usually only used for local films to my knowledge) but apparently popular.
I stayed at a hostel in Bishkek, for the first time. Because it is February and March, it’s a slow traveling/tourist time, which meant the hostel was pretty empty. It had been cold all week but I thought all the snow was behind me, so I was so surprised when I woke up and left the hostel to see even more snow. I constantly keep wondering “Is this the last time it will snow until next winter?” only for it to constantly snow again. The snow when we left Bishkek was unusually heavy and our flight was delayed to defrost the plane.
This last week, more holidays abound. We’re not out of the woods yet in regards to holidays; Ramadan is starting soon. Something less mentioned but the national hat in Kyrgyzstan is a kalpak- but less mentioned by me because only men wear it. Anyway, there’s something called Kalpak Day, which is exactly what it sounds like. Boys and men wear kalpaks and at school, they march around and wave Kyrgyz flags. I asked when the secondary students were going to have their celebration/performance, and they gave me a time. I showed up, only for them to tell me the celebration was over and had happened like an hour earlier. Imagine my complete and utter shock when something here actually happens much earlier! Anyway, I was salty about that, but my little 5th graders had their own march in the afternoon.
To close out the holidays, for now, we celebrated Women’s Day. International Women’s Day is March 8, which is not something I’ve ever really celebrated. Here in Kyrgyzstan, to my surprise, it’s also a huge holiday, and within school circles, it feels much bigger than men’s day, mostly because the vast majority of teachers here are women. Sidenote, but whenever there are holidays, the schedule gets thrown off, classes are canceled, moved around, students don’t come because they prepare/practice their performances, etc. As you can imagine, the last whole month has been completely inconsistent with lessons. As a planner, it’s made my English teaching chaotic and messy, as I teach a few grades the same lessons, but some days, I’ll only teach 7th grade a lesson but not 8th grade because the 8th-grade lesson will be canceled, etc. It’s one of those things that could become extremely frustrating or anxiety-inducing, but I’ve learned to roll with it and just embrace the fact that I don’t really know what I’m doing or what I’m going to teach when and on what day.
This week, I also went to American Corner again and practiced with one of the classes. The students vary in age, and honestly, the college and university systems here still confuse me. My basic understanding is that before high school, students here have the option to skip high school and go to “college” which runs from around ages 14/15-18. I interpret “college” as advanced high school or for students who intend to go to university and need the necessary specializations. Then university is what you think it is. Students who don’t opt to go to “college” before high school but still want to attend university usually take additional years in university (I’ve heard lots of programs in universities here run for 5-6 years). I hope I explained that well, but know this could be completely wrong shrug*. The students’ English was quite good, even if they were quiet and prone to translating off their phones.
For Women’s Day, the girls prepared a concert. Unsurprisingly, the men’s performance consisted of fitness tests and drill marching, and the women’s? Lots of cooking demonstrations and a fashion show. Yes, they had the 10th-grade girls cook food for the teachers as a part of the performance while young girls sang in the background. Also, one of the performances included some cross-dressing? Some of the girls dressed in boys’ clothing for their performance. Their performance/contests also went on for a very long time (it was running over 2.5 hours).
All the teachers and I went to our village cafe after the celebrations to have a large dinner. Baktygul didn’t join us because her mother-in-law was sick.
The power has been going out repeatedly, apparently a local government ordinance to conserve energy (but it’s also happening to most other volunteers but sporadically or at different times of the day). So we had a huge dinner in the dark, and a baike (an older man) who I think was a teacher/random village elder came and sang on the accordion. Typical teacher dance party after!
On actual women’s day, March 8, I went to visit Baktygul as March 8 is also her birthday! Her children are older than my host siblings so easier to talk to, but evidently, they also get bored easily.
Baktygul’s sister-in-law and her children came to visit; they’re teenagers who attend a private school and I practiced English with them. Their dad is strict and has high hopes for their education and job prospects. I found it interesting to see Baktygul and her in-laws and their family and the way that English impacts their hopes and dreams (Baktygul obviously is pretty fluent).
The weather forecast says it might snow once or twice more, but as it’s March now, spring is swinging in. I already miss winter, I got used to it. I don’t look forward to blistering heat (also Pre-Service Training for Peace Corps will not be in Chuy/Bishkek for the next cohort this summer, I’ve been told, they’re going to Naryn to escape the heat). I’ll miss the snow. Yet with the winter melting away, it will give way to spring and the flowers will bloom again. More volleyball, more rain, no more winter boots. The winter has been a dream, but it’ll come back around next time.
À Bientôt,
Grace
Music
- Dance Alone- Sia and Kylie Minogue
- Bad News- Sam Tinnesz
- Training Season- Dua Lipa
- Can’t Tame Her- Zara Larsson
- Unrecognizable- Saysh
- Boston- Owl City
- Teardrops- Liam Payne
- Eternal Sunshine- Ariana Grande
- Car Trouble- Owl City
- 16 Carriages- Beyonce
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