Salut and à Bientôt

Salut, Parts of this blog post will sound reminiscent of my blog post from this time last year. With a second year now in full swing, my blogposts will have to get creative lest it just be repetitions of holidays and ceremonies recurring readers have already read.      Anyway, I had my last first bell ceremony. For new readers, a bell ceremony is the first and last day of school in Kyrgyzstan, so named because the 1st graders and 11th graders ring a bell, signaling the beginning and end of their education. Unlike in the US where the vast majority of schools are separated into elementary, middle, and high schools, my school, like most others in Kyrgyzstan, has grades 0-11 (0 is like Kindergarten I’m told, it’s sort of real education) all in one building. So at my school, 1 1st grade boy, 1 1st grade girl,  1 11th grade girl, and 1 11th grade boy are chosen to ring the bell. The ceremony was much the same as last year. I love my students, but the ceremonies are...

Salut, Time had a way of getting away from me, and now the summer's over and school is back. The last three weeks proved to be slightly more eventful than I had planned or originally thought but so welcome.  My first-weekend trip after I went to Toktogul was to Osh. I haven’t been to Osh in some time, despite passing through it on numerous occasions. I visited Osh City on the weekend, and I signed up for a horse riding tour. I had heard from some Fulbright ETAs a while back about their excursions in Osh, and one recommended Horse Riding Osh, a private tour company, to me. The tour was around 4 hours and cost about 25$, which included transportation to Alay. Alay is a gorgeous part of Osh, and the Alay mountains are a must-see. Santi, a volunteer, lives around Alay, and the tour guide I met knew him.   After the halfway mark of our tour, we stopped and leashed the horses with a family up in the mountain and ate with them. Atop the hills, we looked over, and sometimes my horse g...