VIDEOS!

In my excess of free time I've put together some videos from Kyrgyzstan!
The first is a slide show with some rockin' Kyrgyz tunes in the background from my group's swearing in ceremony.  The pictures are from our pre-service training.

This next video is from my pst training group's culture day performance.  During PST each village had several weeks to perform a skit.  Our skit starts off with a game called ak-ku-ya (sp?) where young children come together and tease each other with clever jokes.  I wanted to get translations for these, and I still may but that is a lot of work!  Next Monica does a Manas reciting, Manas is a very popular and old epic poem.  Normally Manasche's (someone who recites manas) practice and learn for years and can recites up to 30 minutes or more of the Manas epic from memory. Lastly our group does a semi-traditional Kyrgyz dance.

The next video is from a camp I worked at with 38 Kyrgyz girls from ages 14-17. At the camp we covered things ranging from goal setting, healthy relationships, nutrition and reproductive health.  At the end of the camp we had a talent show and one girl asked if I would do the waltz with her, she was 14, it was a little weird but she was super happy that I danced with her. I practiced for about 40 minutes with no prior experience.  So don't judge too hard.

This video is also from a different camp that I worked at.  For this camp we had 40ish people from Naryn and all of the volunteer's helping were from Naryn except for myself.  I was asked to go help because I am one of the 3 male health volunteers in Kyrgyzstan and the only one close to the area where the camp was held.  I got to do all the reproductive health and HIV/AIDS sessions.  I learned a lot about Kyrgyz beliefs, and culture from this.  The video is from a stop motion I made from another volunteer's session on teamwork and planning.  There task was to build a bridge using a limited amount of resources.  I added some fun komuz music from an event I went to. 

This last video of my friend Sean.  During the camp with all the girls we had a lot of free time since we could not go to half of the sessions so we hung out at the lake a lot.  Sean took it upon himself to dive into the lake 30 something times just because.  For one of them I had him hold my gopro and this is it slowed down with some tunes.