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 |
No comments:
Post a Comment