МЕНИН АТЫМ AИБЕК

The tile of the blog says my name is Ibek, there should just be a little accent mark above the backwards N!  This is my new Kyrgyz name, which translates literally to mean Moon King (my sister gave it to me).  This first week at our PST homestay site has been wonderful so far!  After the matching ceremony I rode silently in a taxi to my new home with Tulkani.  Upon Arriving I learned a great deal about my family.  For once I am now the oldest sibling!  I have 5 younger siblings, 4 girls and the youngest a boy!  Their names spelled to the best of my ability in English are I-yeeda, who is 18 and a University student studying to be a Doctor, Imeerda, who is 17 and in school, Gulzeena, who is 14 and also in school, Jianglaim who is 5 and not yet in school, and lastly Nurrek, who is 2 and turns 3 the day after my Birthday!  My Mother’s name is Tulkani, and my father’s name is Alkulbek.  My first night consisted of a lot of laughter, probably at me, lots of gestures, tea, bread, and looking at pictures of my family in the States and their family.  There is never a dull moment with the 2 younger ones running around, and we also have at least 2 family members in our village whose kids are also over very often.  Along with the people in my new family we also have 3 dogs, Rex a German Shepard, Tyson a black lab thing, and Baltic who is a really annoying little mutt.  We have 1 cat, lots of Chickens, at least 8 cows and 1 calf!  While this home life is entirely different from mine back in the USA I love it!  My family is super nice, I have my own room and common room separate from the main house!  I feel like I won the family lottery on this one!

4 of My siblings

The next day after arriving in site we jumped right in to learning Kyrgyz with a solid 6 hours the first day.  My head was pounding by the end of it.  Learning a new language is obviously difficult, but when it’s necessary it makes it even more difficult.  I don’t care about just getting a B so I can pass my class, I have to live here and communicate with people in order to be successful over the next 2 years!  My language instructor Aigul lives right across the street and her host mother is my aunt (I think).  In our class we have 4 of us so while small and personal, it is still a pain in the butt.  I thought I was slowly but surely making progress.  Then yesterday we started to talk about nouns, and they get conjugated, along with verbs!  I thought Spanish was bad enough with just conjugating verbs!!!  Every one promises it gets easier though, so my faith is in them, because it is not in me right now!

The signage on the way in to my Village

Most days of the week we stay in our village and work on Language, but other days we travel to the nearest large city to have Hub days.  These consist of technical training, and overall Peace Corps related trainings.  These are great because we get to see the other 30 people that don’t live in our village and share stories, there is Internet and I can post these blog posts, and we get to learn things in English!!!  In our session on health we got to travel around to a local hospital, which was interesting.  Picture an asylum from some 60’s horror movie, and this is what the building looked like inside.  There were lots of pastel tiles, and stainless steel.  When touring it is completely normal to walk into a Drs room while they have a patient so we can have a look around.  We walked into the sonograph (SP?) room to see feet sticking out from behind a curtain, No big deal!  I’m excited to learn more about health here!  Speaking of health my mother is also a nurse, but not our typical idea of a nurse.  People come over to house and receive injections.  There is a bottle of vodka that is used in the process, I can only hope just for sterilization purposes! 

My Room

So far I’m very happy with everything in Kyrgyzstan.  The scenery is beautiful, the people are amazing and the food isn’t terrible as long as you are okay with a very repetitive diet!  The one thing I’ve come to realize that I may miss the most is a washing machine!  I did my first batch of laundry today!  It is a long slow process.  It begins with starting a fire using a mix of sticks, cow dung, and trash to heat up some water, then adding detergent and scrubbing your clothes with a special soap made for laundry, and lastly rinsing.  It’s hard work and I’m not very good at it!!!  I’m sure after 2 years I’ll improve but attempt number 1 was wet and messy.  As long as my clothes smell good I’ll be happy.  On Sunday we have a free day, our first, hopefully we will be able to hang out with the other trainees in our village.  On Monday we are going into Bishkek to explore and learn where things are.  We’ve been kept in a little bubble so far so I’m excited to finally have a chance to break out of it a little bit! 

Heating up water for Laundry

Flooded With Emotions!

Wow what a great way to start my first day in Kyrgyzstan….  I was just finishing my shower and when I went to push down the little pin on the faucet I pushed too hard and snap!  The whole faucet snapped off the wall of the shower and water began spraying everywhere uncontrollably.  S*#t!!!  After a quick examination revealed I could not fix it I quickly threw on some clothes, soaking wet, and rain down 5 flights of stairs as fast as I could.  I found the first English speaking hotel staff I could and they followed me up to the room only to run back down to call someone who could fix it.  Finally a plumber, or at least someone with the know-how showed up to save the day.  Water had filled up the bathroom floor and had began flowing out of the bathroom into the hall way…  I stood by and watched them clean up feeling like a complete doof!  We had to switch rooms along with the people in the room below us since the water dripped down into their room also.  I can only hope this is not a sign of this experience as a whole!  It was a big screw up, but quite comedic all at the same time, and all of my fellow trainees rightfully so poked fun at me when they found out. 

The next 2 days we had out crash courses in Kyrgyz culture, language, and our future job.  I feel like I am already in love with the Country from only be here a few days, especially after looking off of our 5^th floor balcony to have this as a surreal backdrop.  I almost wonder if it’s real and not some leftover Soviet backdrop! 

 During these first 2 days we also had the honor of hearing the US ambassador to the Kyrgyz Republic speak to us.  I don’t remember her name unfortunately and don’t have Internet at the time I’m writing this up.  She spoke about our job as volunteer’s in helping carry out the USA’s mission in the Kyrgyz republic.  The three main goals of the USA are fostering its young democracy, helping the Kyrgyz Republic develop economically, and strengthening the USA’s security.  

While at the hotel we were not allowed to go any further than across the street with out a Peace Corps staff accompanying us.  It was for the best as Bishkek is a large sprawling city and the people, while nice are not used to Americans.  There are only about 200 Americans, besides military forces in the Kyrgyz Republic.  During my time I hope to do my best to carry out the Peace Corps mission, which consists of

1. To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for

trained men and women.

2. To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part

of the peoples served.

3. To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the

part of all Americans.

After our first two days were up we were ready to head off to our training sites to meet our first host family.  During the matching ceremony each village we would be placed in performed some element of Kyrgyz culture, some sang, others danced, and other played traditional Kyrgyz instruments.  After their performance’s we were called up by our new villages.  My village was first…. The excitement was overwhelming.  Once all of the host mothers and trainees were on stage the music cued and we searched for our new host mother’s.  I found my new Kyrgyz mother (apa), my mother’s name is Tolkunai in English!  

The Long Way Home!

Upon arriving in Philadelphia after some sad goodbyes I struggled with my 4 bags from the luggage pick up towards ground transportation.  Thankfully Sean and 3 other new volunteers were there and he quickly jumped to help me and kept from looking like a fool!  After a short ride to the hotel we moved our belongings into our room and prepared for staging.  My roommate for staging and a couple of days in Bishkek would be David.  It was really neat to finally put faces and personalities on all of the people I’ve only seen on Facebook! Staging was pretty lackluster and in my opinion was a necessary but annoying Peace Crops propaganda session.  We did some overview of safety, what to expect, teamwork etc.…  For out last night in America we set out for a sports bar with all 38 of my fellow trainees.  I of course had to have a Philly Cheesesteak!  Afterwards some of the group headed back to get some sleep, but the rest of us headed over to a fun little Irish bar to have a few last American drinks!  Bonding with people who were mostly strangers, but knowing would be my new best friends and support group, sucked any awkwardness from meeting new people out of the room.  It was a great last night in America!!!  Unfortunately we lost one trainee during staging, for reasons unknown.  It was not her choice, and Peace Corps made her leave immediately, which is sad, and I only hope they will follow through with her with an explanation. 

The next morning we boarded the bus and headed to JFK in New York to catch our flight!  It amazes me how big New York City is when you are in it, but is just as breathtaking from afar.  We boarded our flight for Germany around 4 pm and took off shortly after.  Peace Corps is smart enough to book our seats in a block so we A) don’t drive others crazy and B) actually have people to talk to on our 15 hours of flights.  The flight to Germany went by quite quickly and I ended up sitting next to Britta and had a weird seat in the back of the plane, which even gave me extra legroom!!!  We had a 4-hour layover in Germany and it went by rather quickly.  The next 3-hour flight to Istanbul while shorter seemed more painful, due to exhaustion.  After Istanbul we finally got onto our last flight to Bishkek which lasted 5 hours, and I popped a couple of Benadryl and passed out for most of the flight!  It was the worst flight of them all!

We arrived in Bishkek around 3 am local time and after successfully getting our luggage we ventured outside to be greeted by a sleuth of current Peace Corps Volunteers and Peace Corps staff.  The exhaustion was overcome with pure excitement and adrenaline.  We boarded the buses and took a 30-minute bus ride to our hotel where we would stay for our first 2 nights in the Kyrgyz Republic.  I was thrilled to be at my new home!