July was not a disappointment by any means. A lot has happened and I’ll do my best to try
and remember some of it! It started off
with our trip to Bishkek for the 4th of July. We had some great food at the US embassy and
every night for 4 straight nights we went out and hit the town. One night we packed way too many of us into
an elevator and ended up getting stuck for about 15 or 20 minutes. The voice talking to us in Russia didn’t help
to calm some people’s nerves but I thought the whole occasion was quite
humorous. While Bishkek and the 4th
of July were a blast I was very ready to go home after 4 days of being
there. Once back in the village I was
busy integrating.
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| Stuck in an Elevator |
In one week I went guesting every day of the week, it was
wonderful and exhausting. I have sense
grown to dislike Besh Barmack. This is a
Kyrgyz national dish and every one here loves it and thinks it is the most
amazing thing. It is not. It is gross.
You start by killing a sheep, torching the head, and all of that
jazz. You then boil all the meat and
parts of the sheep all day until it all tastes like sheep… old, tough, gamey,
fatty, and organy are all descriptions that come to mind. When it is time for dinner you are handed a
cup of shorpo (the broth from the boiled sheep), which has all of the above
characteristics. After that you get a
chunk of bone and meat to work at for a while.
After a few minutes people have cut up the organs and scraped off the
meat from the bones and put it all in a big pot of noodles, mix it together and
add some shorpo to it. You then pass the
bowl around and using your hands (besh barmack means 5 fingers) scoop out your
share of the besh. It is not tasty and
often a challenge to eat a whole lot of it.
The worst part is after you have washed your hands 5 times they still
smell like the besh. I’ve even started
using besh barmack as a verb, it is a bit of a problem. During this week of intense guesting my buddy
David who lives in Karakol gave me a call because he was in my village. He was on his way to go guesting at his
relatives who happened to live about 20 minutes into the mountains from my
village. I ended up going with his and his family for the night. This was one of the more entertaining nights
so far in Kyrgyzstan. We went guesting
at two different houses, had besh barmack, played a bunch of Kyrgyz games,
which involved me singing I’m a little teapot at one point. That night the mushrutka we rode around the
village in, because Kyrgyz people don’t like walking, got stuck in the mud. We tried to push it out of the mud for about
30 minutes before David and I went back to where we were staying and went to
sleep. They eventually got it out. The next day we headed to the beach with a
convoy of 3 packed vehicles. It ended up being a cold stormy day and we even
got hailed on while at the beach. That
night when I got back home I ended up heading with my brothers out into a field
to make shashleck and drink a little bit.
One of their militsia friends had gotten a promotion and we had to
celebrate! The kyrgyz baike life is an interesting one.
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| Step 1 of making Besh Barmack |
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| Roasting the head over a fire |
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| All the bits and pieces in the pot together. |
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| Playing some guesting games |
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| Eating the Besh with a rib bone. |
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| Swimming in the lake |
After all of the craziness, things finally settled down for
a week. I worked on language, cleaned my
room, and worked on lesson plans for my camp I was working at, the upcoming
week and getting ready for my hike I was going on. My birthday was on July 18th and
was one of my favorite’s so far. To
start I went into work just for lunch.
My co-workers and counter part had collectively made me a delicious
cake, my counter part made me pizza and stacked it up in a gift box for me, and
they also gave me a bottle of shampoo.
All very practical things! They
are all incredibly sweet and caring people.
Later that day 3 other volunteers from Kochkor came to my village. We all went to the beach with my brother and
his friends for shashlek. After we
headed back to my house for more food then went to our billiards place and
played a little bit of billiards. It was
an awesome day. The next morning I
headed to Karakol for my camp. I’d be
away from site for 15 days. My camp went quite smoothly, it was a girls camp
with about 38 girls from my oblast. We
did lessons on life skills, goal setting, healthy relationships, and more! I even had the ‘fortune’ of one of the girls
asking me to do the waltz with her for the talent show at the end of the
camp. I’ll try and post the video
hopefully it works! After our camp I
spent 4 days getting some R and R in karakol.
Everyday we’d cook at another volunteer’s apartment; it was amazing to have
real homemade American style food for several days!
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| Sharing American culture |
After sitting around for several days doing pretty much
nothing it was time to leave for our hike!
This ended up being one of the most amazing and challenging hike’s I’ve
done in my life. It was 4 days and 3
nights total, and about 50 km, getting up to about 13,000 ft in elevation. The second day of the hike was only 6ish
kilometers, but up hill for 90% of the time with some brutally steep
sections. The lake at the top was
amazing and worth it! See the
pictures. That night we slept right on
the edge of the lake, and that night we had some of the most amazing stars I’ve
ever seen. The next morning was also a
brutal uphill out of the bowl that the lake was in and once on the ridge we
were met with a steep snow slope that was had to descend. We ended up sliding down trying to not lose
control. It was cold, slightly painful on the hands, and quite the adrenaline
rush. From there we continued on to the
Altyn Arashan valley, along the way crossing a numbingly cold river crossing
and walking downhill for what seemed liked forever. Once we reached the hot springs at Altyn
Arashan we bought some beers and soaked in the scorching hot pool for a
while. It was nice, but my ankles were
rubbed raw from the hike and the broken skin and hot water were not a pleasant
mix! The next day we hiked down a long
bumpy road and headed to Choponata (a resort town on the north shore of the
lake) for a weekend at the beach. I was
very happy to get back home to the peace and quiet of the village after being
gone for 15 days.
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| Our group at Ala Kul |
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| Sliding down the snow! |
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| Our campsite on the edge of the lake |
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| Panorama of Ala Kul |
I was planning to spend a good bit of time in the village
after being gone for so long, but I was invited to help out with another camp
starting on August 15th that lasts until the 20th. My counterpart also told me she would be on
vacation the week before my camp started, so I really had no reason to sit in
the village. Another volunteer’s
organization was hosting a berry and fruit festival in a nearby town, so a lot
of volunteers happened to be over on my part of the lake for once! Two volunteers from Choponata stayed at my
house and we then continued on exploring along the south shore for several
days. Along the way we went to the slat
lake, a dead sea type lake with a high salinity content so any one can float
around with no hassle. There is also a
mud area of the lake where everyone covers himself or herself in the mud and
allows it to dry. We had to partake in
the shenanigans. I have no idea if I
felt exfoliated or not but it was an entertaining experience to say the
least!
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| Some Kyrgyz guys covered in mud |
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| Getting our own share of mud |
That night we stayed at a yurt
camp, and the next day we headed to fairy tale canyon.
This is a canyon with bizarre sandstone
formations reminiscent of the Moab area in Utah.
We hiked around there for a while and after
headed to Barskoon and hiked up to a waterfall.
The weather then turned on us and we ended up hiding from the rain and
hail under a tree with a bunch of Kyrgyz guys who of course had a bottle of
vodka with them.
For the rest of the day
the rain did not let up and it dropped down into the low 40’s.
We were wet and cold so we ended up sitting
around in the yurt where we were staying all day and night!
Later that night a bunch of army guys came up
in their giant trucks for dinner.
They
told us the worked at something involving a word that sounded reminiscent of
‘granite.’
We knew there was a mine
farther down the road so we just assumed they worked at some granite mine.
While talking with them later on I realized
they did not work at a granite mine, but were actually border guards at the
Chinese border a couple hundred kilometers away.
The Russian word for border is граница
(granitsa) so we failed in our assumed translation.
Either way they ended up sharing their vodka and
joking how they would steal one of the volunteer’s away on a horse to be their
wife.
They even offered to take us with
them to the border the next day, but Peace Corps would not approve of that one…
That night we slept in the yurt with the
owner of the yurt, her son, and one of the army guys.
This was no guesthouse, just a lady that
decided to let 3 Americans stay in their yurt for the night, which made for a
memorable night.
The next day we headed
up to the other waterfalls, then caught a ride to karakol.
Now I’m catching up on this blog, and getting
ready to go work at my camp that starts tomorrow!
I’ll be back home on the 20
th and
in site for the next 10 days before heading to Bishkek for our last round of
training.
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| Fairy Tale Canyon |
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| Fairy Tale Canyon |
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| Yuri Gagarin the first man in space! |
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| The Barskoon Waterfall |
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| Hanging out with some border guards |
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| Hanging out with some border guards |
I’m feeling very well
integrated into my community, family, and Kyrgyzstan in general. I’ve been very happy with everything, my
health has been great, and I’ve been able to travel and see a lot of amazing
things in the last month and a half.
After our next phase of training I will hopefully begin doing real work,
because I’ve yet to do any real work in my village.
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I think I hit on all the big highlights from the past month
and half.
Winter is coming, it’s been
cold and rainy and hopefully work is coming too!
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| The village over from mine |
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