In sickness and embarrassment...

I suppose that spending so many hours in subzero temperatures last Wednesday was not exactly the best thing for my body, which was still in the process of adapting to strange K-stan germs. I didn’t feel to great Thursday morning, and by Friday I was feeling miserable with a full blown cold. Saturday I actually felt a lot better, just incredibly tired and weak. I made it to the nearest internet café (the slow one, as I didn’t have the energy to walk all the way to the “fast” one) and then meandered across the street to Ramstor to restock my fridge. I’m usually quite good at knowing how much money I have and making sure that the cost of my purchases does not add up to more than I have in my wallet. Unfortunately, the illness that left me feeling completely weak and drained also left me feeling a little spacey. At the checkout, my total came to 100som shy of what I actually had in my wallet. I apologized profusely to the cashier, and fished out 100som worth of things that I figured I didn’t really need. She said she’d have to call her manager to get approval to have those items removed from my transaction. Whoops. I continued to apologize and felt like an absolute ass for making such a mistake... then the guy in line asked me (in English, although he was obviously Kyrgyz – I guess he could tell I wasn’t a native speaker!) how much money I needed. I told him it was ok, that they were going to remove two of my purchases and then I’d have enough. Again he asked me how much I needed. I told him 100som, which he promptly handed to me and insisted I take. Perhaps he was just a really nice guy. Perhaps he didn’t want to have to wait for the manager to show up to void out my purchases. Or perhaps the average Kyrgyz who shops at expensive places such as Ramstor doesn’t stress over the loss of the equivalent of $3 to some random air-headed foreign chick who probably looked a bit ill.

Ripped from the Headlines

The above headlines all came from last week’s edition of The Times of Central Asia (free copies of it can be found at Fatboy’s, among other places), and seem to provide a little bit of background behind why we here in Bishkek suffered extensive blackouts nearly every day last week. Granted, this edition of the Times was published a good week before the Bishkek blackouts began, but obviously energy shortages – both gas and electric – are of big concern in the Stans these days.

We had all assumed that our Monday blackout was a fluke; however, by the end of the week we had all grown accustomed to teaching by candle light, and my students had (mostly) stopped laughing at the absurd sight of me, teaching in my LED headlamp. One of my older students told me that the city of Bishkek is shutting off power to different grids of the city at different times each day, because the electronic generators are overworked. Rolling blackouts, I suppose. Not really what you’d expect from capital city of an allegedly developed country, but I guess the Californians weren’t expecting it back in 2002 either.

While other Stans are suffering from shortages of natural gas – and from the fact that Uzbekistan, which exports natural gas to the rest of the Stans recently upped its prices dramatically – Bishkek at least doesn’t seem to be suffering from gas shortages as of yet. So heat, hot water and cooking-gas are still available in plenty. I’m getting quite accustomed to doing things by candle and LED light!

In my kitchen, by candlelight,
wearing a headlamp and holding a cat.

Wednesday Weirdness

(I’ve been incommunicado for the past few days on account of the combination of sickness and power outages... But here’s my story of what happened this past Wednesday. I’ll try to update on the rest of the week when I feel better.)

We don’t teach classes on Wednesdays, and while I’ve spent the previous two Wednesdays busily engaged in lesson planning, I decided to actually *do* something with my mid-week break this time around.

I awoke promptly at 9am, not thanks to my alarm or my brilliant internal clock, but to the annoying chiming of my doorbell which whines a synthetic Beethoven at an obnoxious volume. After persistent ringing, I stumbled out of bed and peered through the peephole to find Sharipa, the school’s cleaning lady, with my freshly laundered clothes. (This is a service we have to pay for, but in my opinion, it’s well worth the money.) After she left, I managed to convince myself to go ahead and get dressed. The lure of the internet will do that.

After spending some quality time (not to mention soms) at the internet café, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and go buy a cell phone. The whole process was remarkably easy, despite the fact that I conducted the whole transaction in Russian. Woohoo for me. (Additionally, I got to select my own number from a list of options. I ended up with 43-64-51 as my last six digits. Some people might note the significance of these numerical combinations, especially what with 6+4=10 and all. Yeah, old habits die hard.) It’s good to be vaguely wired again, even if it’s not via constant internet access.

A new teacher (he’s actually a student here on an internship, and will only be teaching for one month) arrived on Monday, so we decided to take him out for lunch to get to know him. We went to Fatboy’s (yes, I go there a lot, ok?) and hung out there for about an hour or so.

Before we left Fatboy’s, Ina showed up. She and I decided to make our way to the Osh Bazaar to see what we could find. The journey there, in and of itself, is quite an adventure. Transport in the city of Bishkek consists mainly of marshrutki, or mini-buses. They are somewhere in between a mini-van and a regular van in size, so they are not very big. Additionally, they don’t seem to have any capacity limit outside of how many bodies can be crammed inside. When going to a popular destination – such as the Osh Bazaar – one should be prepared for conditions that make a tinned sardine’s life seem spacious.

The weather was absolutely frigid, and after wandering about the food section of the market for a while, we decided to take refuge in the one large, fancy(ish) indoor part of the bazaar. (For people who’ve been to Vladimir, that section is like Dobryak was before they remodeled it and made it all fancy.) While inside, I managed to buy the most awesome woolen felt slippers ever for myself, as well as a pair of tiny slippers for Melissa and Alex’s soon-to-be-baby. The proprietor of the stall where I purchased the slippers threw in a felt-covered papier-mache yurt for free – probably feeling guilty that I’d simply accepted his price offers without bargaining. Ina and I also spent a long time chatting with a seller in one of the indoor stalls who used to be a Russian teacher. She invited us to come by on Sunday to meet her daughter, whom she claims speaks excellent English. I told her I would come, although as I am currently rather ill, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it.

(Melissa and Alex: I'll try and mail them soon, but given my hatred of post-Soviet post offices, I'm not sure how"soon" that will be!)

We left the cozy indoor part of the market and headed out to the clothing stalls. The people who run these places must be utterly miserable, spending all day outside in subzero temps with no heat whatsoever. While Ina didn’t find what she’d come to the bazaar in search of – a dull yet warm sweater – I managed to come away with a fabulous green and yellow prayer rug. I’d love to hang it on my wall, but as my walls are concrete, I’ve currently got it draped over the side of my wardrobe.

After spending way too much time wandering about the Osh market in the miserable chill, we decided that what we really needed was a nice cup of tea to warm us up. We found a café on the bazaar grounds – indoors and only *slightly* warmer than the great outdoors – and ordered our tea. The interior of the café was thick with cigarette smoke, and cold enough that we could see our breath.

Ina drinks tea.

Only two other tables in the joint were occupied: one, a man and three women, all exceedingly drunk; the other, a group of seven Kyrgyz men celebrating the birthday of one of their group.

Inevitably, the men began approaching us, one at a time to chat. One told us that he owned a nearby restaurant, gave us its name, and said he hoped we’d stop by. Another, the only young one in the group, shyly sat down and asked for my phone number (which I gave him – not sure if I’ll regret that or not). He told us that he lives in Almaty, in Kazakhstan, but that he often travels to Bishkek to work in the market. Then he returned to his friends.

When I’d taken my camera out to snap the photo of Ina drinking her tea, the group asked me to take their picture as well. One of the members of the group was a photographer (as in for a living), but didn’t have a digital camera. After I took their picture, he asked if he could take the memory card to print out the picture, promising to return in ten minutes or less. You know how I covet my electronic goods, and I was not too thrilled by the prospect of lending some strange man my 2GB memory card, but he was persuasive... not to mention that his friends seemed very much to want him to return with photos. He returned with copies of the photo for all of the men, into which for some reason he had photoshopped the Taj Mahal into the background! And, of course, he returned the card to me.

Ina and I were just beginning to contemplate getting on our merry way, when the waitress arrived at our table with three cups of coffee. At first we were quite confused, but then one of the men came over, said they were from him, and asked to join us. This was another creepy-old-dude of the mouth-of-gold-teeth variety. However, the warmth from our tea had worn off and the café was cold, so the coffee was welcome, even if the companionship was rather suspect. The photographer soon joined us. While Gold Teeth pumped Ina for information on how she managed to get from Norway to Kyrgyzstan, the photographer quizzed me about my camera, then offered to buy it. When I turned him down, he asked if he could just borrow it, because it was so much nicer than his. Again, I turned him down, although I doubt he had expected me to agree. Besides, I totally understand camera envy.

Then Gold Teeth suggested cognac. Now, I am fully aware that cognac is pretty much an open door to drunken catastrophe, but for some reason (mainly because he went to great length to express to us the purity and quality of Bishkek Cognac) we agreed to one shot, stressing that by one shot we meant just that: ONE. And of course, instead of bringing us each one shot, the waitress brought out an entire bottle. We insisted again that we would only have one shot, and they didn’t press us. However, after our first shot, Gold Teeth made a nearly successful attempt to kiss Ina, although she quite forcefully pushed him away just in time. He didn’t seem too offended, although he did try to defend himself by claiming a kiss after a first shot is Kyrgyz tradition. Um, bullshit. At that point, we decided it was probably time to leave, and despite their attempts to bribe us into sticking around with more shots of cognac, we refused and ventured back out into the cold.

By this time, the sun had set and it was definitely well below 0F (and I mean 0F, not 0C) outside. Just walking from the café to the nearest place to find a marshrutka van left us cold to the point of pain in our extremities. The marshrutka we took back to the city center was not crowded in the least. Unfortunately, the ones I needed to cart me from the center back to my apartment were all packed to the gills. I squished into one, but only made it about halfway home before desperately needing to get back my personal space and tumbling back out into the freezing night air.

When I finally approached my block, I noticed something eerily familiar: darkness. Yep, the power in my block was out again. Luckily, after Monday’s adventure, I managed to locate my superfabulous LED headlamp, so the next three and a half hours I spent at home were not spent in darkness. Additionally, the state-provided heat and hot water was not out, so my apartment was dark, but not cold – which was excellent, as I was in desperate need of a thaw. The power surged back into life at around 10:15, only to blink off a mere 45 minutes later. Sigh. But I’ll write more about out frequent power outages when I’m feeling a little better.

Twik?

(Monday)
Student: Today you is very... twik.
Me: Excuse me?
Student: Twik.
Me: Quick? Быстро?
Student: No, no. Twik.
Me: [puzzled look]
Student: Maybe I mistake. I at home see in dictionary.

(Tuesday)
Student: Yesterday I not mistake. I see in dictionary. Yesterday I say you twik.
Me: What? Quick?
Student: No. Twik. T-W-I-K.
Me: T-W-I-K? Twik? No, that’s not a word.
Student: Yes it is! I see in dictionary! You twik!
Me: Ummm... как по-русский?
Student: наблюдать.
Me: [I look up наблюдать. It means to observe, to watch, to look after, to supervise. I show this to my student.]
Student: [shakes his head] No, no. [Takes dictionary and tries in vain to locate twik.] This dictionary, bad. My dictionary... twik. Thursday I take dictionary. You see, you twik.

Luckily, whatever the hell twik is, he seems to mean it as a compliment.

Just another manic Monday....

Monday was... interesting. Actually, the bulk of the day was fairly normal for a Monday. Then, at exactly 7:00pm – right as my final class of the day was beginning – the power went out. Not just to The London School, but to the entire city block in which the school is located. All the teachers wandered downstairs, wondering what the protocol might be for such a situation, only to be handed candles inside little plastic cups, and sent back to class. As you know, all of my classes are fairly low-level, and this class was Elementary 4. We’re currently studying the present perfect. After asking as many “Have you ever...” questions I could think of, I then began asking every low-level question I could think of. (We couldn’t really hold class by the dim light of a candle, and I couldn’t find my stellar headlamp flashlight.) Eighty minutes of basic questions was a bit much, but luckily my last class of the day is filled with hilarious, good natured people. It might not have been the best lesson, but at least we laughed a lot. Well, except for the point when I may have begun shouting profanity as my candle caught my plastic cup on fire and melted plastic dripped onto my finger. Yeah. I’ve got quite a pleasant battle scar from that.

Ouch!
Also, yes, I DO have a huge writing callus on my finger.

After class ended, the power was still out in the entire block, which included our apartment building. So, some of the other teachers and I decided to go out for dinner. Jess, who has taught in Korea, had mentioned a Korean restaurant earlier, although when she suggested we dine at a place called Santa Maria, I certainly didn’t connect the two. Yes, we went to a Korean restaurant with the odd name of Santa Maria. I have seriously mixed feelings about this place. I had utterly delicious bibimbap and kimchi which tasted *exactly* like it does in Korea. Nick had scrumptious smelling samgyopsal, which the manager not only cooked, but wrapped up in little lettuce/rice/garlic/gochujang bowls for him as well.

The problems came with the bill. For starters, I had ordered a Baltica 3 (a type of light beer) to go with my meal. I’ve been drinking Baltica 3 pretty regularly since 1999, and I’ve never had trouble ordering it. (Baltica comes in options 1-9, by the way.) However, the waiter somehow was under the mistaken impression that what I wanted was 3 Balticas of some indiscernible number. While I managed to convey that I only wanted ONE beer, when the bill came, I was charged for three. (At least this we managed to get them to remove from the check.) Katie was overcharged for tea, Jess and I were charged for the extra gochujang we’d requested for our bibimbap (not to mention we’d had to pay for kimchi!), and Nick was charged for the extra lettuce he’d asked for. Boo! Additionally, the meal didn’t exactly, shall we say, digest well. And we all know my stomach is pretty well adapted to Korean cuisine by now!

Culinary Catastrophe

I should’ve paid more attention back when I was hanging around Nina Mikhailovna’s kitchen every day. Something she used to make me quite frequently was fried tvorog, which I would eat topped with either jam or honey. Now, perhaps someone who knows what tvorog is can help me explain. I’ve seen it translated as cottage cheese, but it is very much NOT cottage cheese. However, I would say that tvorog has as much in common with normal cheese as does cottage cheese, if that makes sense. Anyway, it’s in the cheese family. A cousin, perhaps. I found a wide selection of tvorog in Ramstor the other day and decided to try my hand at frying some up. (I’m not a big fan of uncooked tvorog.) As far as I remember, Nina M simply used to pour some oil in a pan, drop in the tvorog, and a few minutes later there would be some tasty fried tvorog patties, ready to be smeared with jam or honey.

So, I bought my tvorog...

and my honey...

and tried my best to repeat the process...

Unfortunately, what I got was this:

I smothered it with honey and ate it anyway,
but it was thoroughly unappetizing. Yuck.

Friday and Saturday

Friday night, after a long week of work – and getting paid – we decided to go out for a night on the town. The school’s former students who made us plov last weekend play in a cover band called Cadillac, and one of their frequent venues is a café/bar called Sweet 60s. Sweet 60s is a really nice café, with many choices of Russian, Kyrgyz and Western foods, plenty of booze and a good staff. Cadillac are excellent. They played a lot of classic rock covers mixed in with Red Hot Chili Peppers covers and they covered a few Russian songs too. After a fun evening of yummy food, beer and dancing, I headed home (opting out of the trip to the group’s next destination, a hip hop club – boo).

This is a shot of people dancing. Really.

Saturday morning I got up early (despite my late night the evening before) in order to wander down to the internet café to check my email and make sure my plans for the day were still on. See, back when my AH friends and I went to Siberia, we met this super fabulous girl from Norway named Ina. She is currently in the middle of a two year trek around the globe, and flew into Central Asia just last week, and has been in Bishkek for less than a week. We had planned to meet downtown at noon, do some exploring of the city, and have some dinner and booze. Unfortunately, Saturday was the coldest it had been since my arrival in K-stan. After my short trek to the internet café, I scurried home to double up on my layers. I’d neglected to check weather.com, so I don’t know how cold it was, exactly, but I’d estimate in the -20s C. That’s snotsicle forming territory, and not exactly stellar weather for outdoor adventuring.

Saturday, in addition to the utter chill, found the city of Bishkek covered in a glittering frost. I decided that with my extra layers, it would be fine to walk downtown (despite the fact that this is a thirty minute walk and all...), and as a result, by the time I met up with Ina, I was already pretty damn cold. She had walked in from her hotel, and wasn’t feeling all that warm either. Nonetheless, we set off on a walk around the city. It didn’t last long. It was simply not the weather for aimless wandering without any specific destination in mind. We ended up spending about two hours in Fatboy’s, thawing out, catching up on what we (and our mutual friends) had been up to in the past few years since our first meeting, and chatting about traveling in the Stans. Eventually we decided that it seemed like a good afternoon to return to our respective residences and crawl under the covers. (Even Fatboy’s was feeling a bit of a chill inside.) I took a sardine-packed marshrutka (minivan-taxi) home and immediately snuggled down under my blankets and cats for a four hour nap. (Yes, I know. That’s a bit much, even for me.)

(Today, according to weather.com, is 3F, or -16C, and it feels slightly warmer than yesterday! Hmmm...)

And now for your daily (blah) dose of the utterly random...

This, as should be obvious, is a packet of moist cat food. What might not be obvious to non-Russian speakers is that it is RABBIT flavored. Now, I don’t suppose there is anything wrong with that; after all, rabbits are a perfectly acceptable prey for kitties world wide. However, after watching Vinni Pookh way too many times, the word кролик (rabbit) is, for me, synonymous with Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh. It seems wrong somehow to be feeding кролик to my kitties! They, on the other hand, love it.

Introducing the Som

The som is the unit of currency used here in Kyrgyzstan. The exchange rate varies, but currently 35soms is roughly one dollar. Coins are rarely used at all. I guess they’re in the final stages of being phased out. I have heard that they exist, but that people are usually surprised when they receive coins as change. Paper soms exist in denomination from 500soms, down to half a som. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this. Somewhere along the way, in a handful of change received at the grocery store or somewhere, I received a bill labeled 50. Not having remembered where I got it, or how much money I was owed when I received it, I simply assumed it was a 50som bill. After all, there ARE 50som bills. What was interesting about this bill, was that it was about half the size of the other bills in my wallet:

If I’d paid closer attention, I might’ve noticed that while the 100som bill spells out жуз сом (one-hundred som), the smaller bills read элуу тыйын, which turns out to mean, essentially, fifty kopeks. There are 100 тыйын per som, apparently. Guess how I came to this stunning realization? Not by intelligently wondering why the wording was different on the different bills and checking my Kyrgyz dictionary, no. Instead, I was leaving the internet café. My bill came to 35soms, and I tried to pay for it with what turned out to be the 50 kopek bill. The woman running the internet café simply gave me a look which conveyed her thought, as clearly as if she had spoken: Are you a complete and total dumbass? I immediately realized that I’d done something wrong, and tried to cover it up by acting as though I’d simply grabbed the wrong bill out of my wallet. I took my 50тыйын bill back and exchanged it for a 100som bill. My change from it contained a legitimate 50som bill, which was the same size as the rest of the bills in my wallet. I went home and immediately rummaged through my Kyrgyz dictionary to confirm what exactly had just happened... sigh.

Here’s a shot of the 500som bill:

And this is a close-up of the mountains which appear on the back of the 100som.
Is it just me, or is that a face? Seriously, I find it a little frightening.

Oh, the "logic"

Every culture has its own logic (or in some cases, "logic"), which often differs greatly from the logic of one's homeland. There are two internet cafes near my apartment. One is about a 3 minute walk away. The other is nicer (and faster!) but it's about a 10 minute walk away. Now, I have a 4 hour break between my morning class and my afternoon classes, so you'd think this time difference wouldn't matter. However, (and this is Jane-logic here) as I prefer to use my 4 hours to check email, eat and (most importantly) nap, I usually opt to head for the closer one.

I arrived there today and was assigned a computer, as usual. I sat down and tried over and over again to get yahoo mail (and then several other sites) to load, but with no success. I realized that other patrons were having similar troubles. Two women who had arrived shortly after me got up and attempted to leave without paying. Their argument was that they came to use the internet, and it wasn't working, why should they pay? (I agreed, although I did so silently.) The fellow manning the place retorted that he had turned on the computer for them, and they had sat in front of it for two minutes - they needed to pay for those two minutes. It wasn't his fault that the internet wasn't working. Eventually they threw down their money in disgust. I left then, too, meekly paying my 3 soms (whatever pittance that amounts to) before trudging 10 minutes to the *other* internet cafe.

What the bloody sodding hell is a jumper anyway?

Here at The London School, not surprisingly, most (probably all, but I don’t know) of our textbooks teach British English. Now in general, I do a LOT of reading, and many of my favorite authors are British. As such, I haven’t had too much trouble assimilating to phrases like “Have you got any biscuits?” (or even “Have you any biscuits?”) instead of “Do you have any cookies?” (although every time a student says “biscuits” I inevitably think the fluffy buttermilk kind), talking about what people do “at the weekend” as opposed to “on the weekend” (or simply “this/last weekend” as we usually say in the American south), and saying sport instead of sports and maths instead of math... but can someone please tell me what the hell a jumper is? See, when I was a kid, a “jumper” was like a dress, but I needed to wear a shirt under it. My childhood jumpers often had tops similar to the top part of overalls, and would’ve been indecent had I not worn a shirt underneath. However, as far as I can tell from our grainy photocopied textbooks, that is very much NOT what the British consider to be a jumper. The British jumper might be a sweater. Or possibly a generic shirt or pullover. All I can tell is that it is some kind of unisex top. I think. I checked my Russian dictionary to see if perhaps it might provide me with a Russian word I recognized, but all I found was джемпер, a simple transliteration of jumper into Russian. My students didn’t know what a джемпер could possibly be either. Bah. So if you know, please feel free to enlighten me.

Gold Toothed Leer

Bektour was a little late meeting me on Sunday, as the snow had rather slowed down transport city-wide. I waited out on the sidewalk before deciding that it was cold and since he knew where I lived, I might as well wait inside. However, before common sense led me to that stellar decision, I had a rather interesting experience. When I emerged onto the snow-covered sidewalk, I saw a middle-aged man who appeared to be waiting either for a bus or for someone. Now lest anyone suggest otherwise, I did not so much as make eye contact with this fellow, and I most certainly didn’t smile at him. In fact, I’d taken very little notice of him until he began crossing the street, headed directly for me. At first I thought that he was simply crossing the street, but no. He grew nearer and nearer, and I steadfastly gazed down the street, as if scanning the bus numbers. Finally, there was no avoiding the man; he was totally up in my personal space. I bit back a rather rude чего? (kind of like rudely saying what the?) and instead gave him a look which I hoped conveyed that thought without me having to open my mouth and possibly expose that I was not a native of Bishkek. Instead of taking the hint and walking away (alas, they never do), he comically imitated my expression, leaned in and leered at me, showing a full set of gold teeth, and covering me with the stale stench of beer. I simply stared back. He then asked me where I was going. I told him firmly and in as best an angry devushka voice as I could muster, Я жду друга. (Now first off, I can’t for the life of me remember if one says жду друга or жду другу, but I suspect that’s somewhat beside the point.) See друг (droog) means a male friend; however, it can also be used to mean boyfriend. I hoped very much that my manner and tone of voice would convey to this man that I was indeed awaiting my boyfriend; he wouldn’t need to know any different. Luckily for me, he took it to mean just that, and with a shrug he stumbled off down the street. Shortly thereafter I decided to wait indoors. Seriously, I’m like catnip for crazy old dudes.

Random photos for your enjoyment

The Ala-Too Mountains, as seen from my classroom window

Ramstor might be evil in its expensiveness, but they sell salsa! Only mild and medium, sadly, but still! It's real salsa! I bought some lavash (the closest thing in Central Asia to a tortilla... very close, actually) and some Kyrgyz cheese and made myself a very authentic quesadilla. Yum!

Bagira has discovered my suitcase atop my wardrobe.

Lucy's a cutie!

Kitty pile!

The worst thing to ever come out of the former Soviet Union

Sure, many negative things emerged from the Soviet Union: abysmal customer service, frightening post offices, hideous architecture from the 1960s onwards... but I remain convinced that the worst holdover from the Soviet Union is the cat pee box. While in the West we developed litter boxes filled with a variety of clumping, odor controlling cat litter, covered litter boxes and even self-flushing litter boxes, the former Soviet Union gives you this horrid contraption:

Pleasant, huh? And I bet you can guess how wonderful this contraption is at odor control. Now there *is* kitty litter to be found here; however, thus far I have only located it in one store at an outrageous price – something like $21 for a mere couple of pounds! I have three cats; at that price, I’d be spending my entire salary on litter. Instead I’ve opted for the following method of odor control:

Ok, so perhaps this isn’t the best solution, but it improves the air quality of my apartment quite substantially. You know, as opposed to raw, uncovered cat pee. Then of course, there is the problem that the cats don’t like to use the box if it has recently been used. They prefer to go outdoors, but I'm not exactly skilled at waking up to let them out in the middle of the night. After several mornings of awakening to a puddle near my front door, I have resorted to this as well:

I really must find some affordable kitty litter, if at all possible. Of course, it it’s anything like the litter I found in Russia, it might very well mix with cat pee to form a cement so solid that it cannot be cleaned out of the box. (Obviously, I have given up on the idea of pretending I don't have cats by keeping the litter box outside. This came about the morning I awoke to discover that my brand new, superfantastic Payless boots sprawled in a puddle of piss. I'm still trying to get the smell out. If anyone wishes to send me a bottle of Out! Pet Stain and Odor Remover, I'd love you forever. Really.)

A nice walk in the snow

It snowed steadily all day Sunday, and was extra chilly and windy to boot. Not exactly the day for a good two hour stroll around the city... and yet that was exactly what I ended up doing. I met up with Bektour and we took a marshrutka (mini-bus) to the western part of the city center to walk around. Unfortunately, like last time, we got together in the early evening, so it wasn’t exactly good lighting for photographs. As such, I didn’t take any, but I now know of even more places where I’ll have to return when it’s sunny. And when the weather’s warm enough for my fingers to manipulate my camera! We walked around the Philharmonic, through a couple of parks, and past several allegedly corrupt universities where one may as well pay a bribe and purchase your degree because you wouldn’t learn anything by studying there anyway. We also found our way to the ghost train of Bishkek – a short spur of abandoned railroad that crosses one of the city’s main thoroughfares on a rather fancy bridge, connecting two now-defunct Soviet era factories. We tried to visit what is now a rather large botanical garden (supposedly it has plants from all countries and regions of the former Soviet Union), which covers what was once an unbelievably huge mass grave from the 1930s. (A famine? A purge? Hard to know.) Despite the rather craptacular weather, it was really a good walk. And now I have all sorts of places I must return to for photographs!

snegariffic!

Sneg means snow, and today it's snowing away. I should be planning my lessons for tomorrow, but instead I've braved the elements to come to the internet cafe in order to share the miscellany of my past week with you.

On Wednesday, I got to pick up my official certificate of AIDS-lessness

I decided to rearrange my bedroom in an attempt to make it more homey.
Not sure that I succeeded.

I removed the rather gross rug from my living room/kitchen floor. This picture was taken after I'd swept THREE times. I kid you not. It was filthy under there.

So filthy, in fact, that I had to get on my hands and knees and attack the floor with cleaner.

On Saturday, some of Katie's friends (Katie is a fellow teacher at TLS) made plov. They're from the city of Osh in southern K-stan, and claim that therefore they make the best plov.


Plov. Yum.

Our plov-eating party

My favorite Russian chocolate ever... readily available in Bishkek!

I caught Bagira mid-yawn. Don't let her scary teeth fool you... she's a sweety.

In Memory of Misty

One of my mom's cats, Misty, died this weekend.
Rest in peace, cutie.

I have my suitcase! (And other news)

This past Saturday, I spent nearly the entire day working on my lesson plans for Monday. Luckily, the levels of the classes I teach go in order (Elementary 2,3,4, Pre-Intermediate 1), so next month when everyone moves up a level, I’ll only have to plan lessons for Pre-Intermediate 2; I’ll be able to recycle the lesson plans from the previous groups. Of course, this means that this month – in addition to having a morning class – I am spending an absurd amount of time planning lessons. I can only imagine how exhausted I will be by the end of the month!

Sunday I finally made it to downtown Bishkek. I was meeting someone in a café downtown, and at that point didn’t know how long it would take me to make it down there... as such, I left very early. As it turns out, downtown Bishkek is approximately a 30 minute walk from my apartment. As I made it to my destination with about an hour to spare, I decided to walk about for a bit and take some pictures. All of the information I’m providing below regarding the pictures is based on information in Lonely Planet, so if it turns out any of my facts are incorrect, blame this guy: http://www.deanstarnes.co.nz/ as he wrote the section in my guidebook on Kyrgyzstan.

The first thing of note that I came to when I reached downtown Bishkek was a large square with a statue honoring martyrs of the revolution. One assumes they mean Ye Olde Soviet Revolution, back in the day.

Continuing west down Chui Prospekt, I came to a park in which this thing stood. Lonely Planet claims that it’s Pushkin, but it is most definitely NOT Pushkin, so I don’t know what to tell you.

Not Pushkin.

While pondering non-Pushkin, a man thundered past me on a pony which looked way too small to be racing around bearing someone of his stature. Mom, this shot’s for you:

After leaving the area of non-Puskin behind, I made it to Ala Too Square, which used to be dominated (as were all central squares back in Soviet times) by a gigantic statue of Lenin. He’s been replaced by what my book labels as the Erkindik (Freedom) Statue. It’s really too bad that the sky was so hazy. On a clear day, one can see the mountains from the square (I’ve seen pictures...), although I could barely make them out. You can’t see them at all in my photos.

In addition to the Erkindik Statue, Ala Too Square is also home to the Kyrgyz Flag, which remains under armed ceremonial guard. I personally found it odd that a flag warranting two armed guards would be so small.

Located directly behind the Erkindik Statue is a historical museum. To its right sits a group of large stones, most of which look like nothing more than, well, large stones. However, on some, one can see that they have weathered carvings, giving them features. These stones are balbals, which Lonely Planet defines as centuries old “Turkic, totem-like stone markers.”

Not far from the balbal garden is the statue of Lenin, who was relocated to a less prominent position after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I didn’t actually make it over to Lenin, as at that point I realized I needed to be heading back if I was going to make it to my destination of the evening on time. (Turns out I needn’t have worried; I got there with several minutes to spare.)

My destination was a restaurant with the unlikely name of Fatboy’s, located in central Bishkek. There I met up with Bektour Iskender, who blogs here, in addition to running this site (sadly, both sites are currently down - oh, internet reliability in K-stan) and a variety of other fabulous things, and who is completely awesome. We had Turkish plov and... burritos! I have no idea how this is possible, but the burritos at Fatboy’s tasted like real burritos. This seems to never happen outside of the US and Mexico... and yet somehow I found myself eating a genuine burrito out here in Central Asia of all places.

After dinner we did quite a lot of walking around Bishkek, looking at architecture and prostitutes and whatnot. There were definitely some interesting places that I must go back and photograph in the daytime. (No, not the hookers, the architecture. Jeez.)

On Monday I had my first classes of the year, and I must say that it was quite nice to get back into teaching. It’s amazing how much I actually enjoy doing it, and my classes here are fantastic. Unfortunately, after six hours on my feet I am exhausted, and want nothing more than to collapse into my bed. (Melissa - are your feet swollen? Because by the end of the day, mine are, and I rather suspect it’s your fault. And I used a picture of you to help teach, “She’s pregnant. She’s going to have a baby.”) Thus far the most amusing answer to a question that I’ve received was to the question of “How long is our class?” I was going for either 80 minutes or one hour and twenty minutes, but received the answer of “About five meters.” I have several ethnically Korean student and one Korean citizen student. He’s in probably 9th grade, and currently lives here with his uncle and cousin, but spent last year in Daejeon with his family. I spoke a little Korean to him and he broke out into the biggest grin. Awesome. I do wonder why exactly he got sent off to K-stan to live with his uncle, though. For Gwen and Diana: I have a student who is EXACTLY like Scott! Not only does he look just like him (despite the fact that he doesn’t have a Korean surname), but he acts just like him and they have the same insane sense of humor. He’s about two or three years younger than Scott, but if he were in Korea I’d bet money that they were related.

Tuesday, in between morning and afternoon classes, several of the other teachers and I got to go to the national AIDS center to be tested. Apparently, one must have proof of being HIV-negative in order to register, and Kyrgyzstan only accepts tests done here in K-stan. The AIDS center was one of the most depressing places I have ever been – miserably cold (where was their state-provided heat?), dark and prison-like. The blood-drawing itself was quite sanitary... although then my syringe-full of blood was squeezed into an open test-tube on a rack next to several dozen other un-corked test tubes full of blood. That was rather disconcerting, and I would’ve loved to get a picture; however, I suspect that would’ve caused numerous problems.

After leaving the AIDS center, I went to the Turkish Airlines office, which was FINALLY open again after the winter holidays. Inside there was a New Year’s Tree (like a Christmas tree, only without the Christ part), and underneath it a huge pile of suitcases – and my giant red backpack was among them. Yay! I have finally been reunited with the rest of my things. Life is wonderful.

Other randomness - Nursing Cats:

Bagira is always “nursing” on Grey Cat, despite the fact that not only is GC not Bagira’s mother, but Bagira is the bigger of the two cats. In some ways it’s really quite endearing. However, sometimes Bagira just starts slurping away so loudly and enthusiastically that it’s rather disconcerting!

I got an explanation for why my apartment is so freakin’ weird and un-apartment-like: it used to be two of the classrooms for the school! This thing is in my living room / kitchen:

Shkaf enough for ya, Mandy? Ok, so it’s not wall encompassing or anything but... You might notice from my reflection how I am not wearing my fabulous warm and fuzzy leopard print pajamas mom got for me before I left. Instead, I’m wearing a tank top and shorts; it’s damn hot inside. Kyrgyzstan suffers from that same oddity of Soviet-era engineering that plagues Russia: state provided heat. This means that it is inevitably turned on several weeks too late, way too hot (and un-adjustable) throughout the winter, and will undoubtedly be shut off several weeks before the weather warms up. So for now, in the dead of winter, I’m lounging around my apartment in my summer jammies.

I have yet to have any Kyrgyz food. Instead I keep finding Russian foods that please me to no end. Like the chocolate – Russian chocolate is here! Oh, happiness. And in addition, look what else we’ve got:

On the left we have the Kyrgyz take on Korean Cabbage. While it’s slightly different from its Russian counterpart (more herbs and peppers), it is nothing at all like kimchi. On the right we have carrot salad, which is *exactly* the same as it was in Russia. Yum.

Look what this isn’t. It looks like doshirak, it tastes like doshirak, but it ain’t doshirak. At first I thought that perhaps the doshirak people decided to give their product a Russian name (doshirak means lunchbox in Korean; lapsha means ramen in Russian), but upon closer examination, this stuff is produced in Moscow, not Korea. Boo.

An extra large sirok with sgushonka! Need I say more?