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| Saying bye to our Apa's |
Corps volunteers in The Kyrgyz Republic! What this means is we are
now on our own to learn the language, come up with work plans, be
isolated from other Americans, and have the real Peace Corps
experience! So far it’s been very difficult and very rewarding. Saying bye
to my PST family was difficult, they have been so amazing and I wish I
could spend my 2 years with them, but that is not an option. After
swearing in we all said our good byes and loaded up into our
respective means of transportation. Some lucky folks got to travel in
groups on lager buses and others like myself were on their own with
their new host mother and counterpart. We loaded up into out taxi and
after negotiating prices and deciding it was too expensive we had him
drive us to get another taxi. Along the way we stopped at the bazar
so my Mom and Counterpart could so some shopping while I waited in the
sweltering heat with the taxi driver. Speaking Kyrgyz while awake and
alert is hard enough, but trying to speak while tired, hot, and hungry
is just a pain. The taxi driver kept trying to make conversation but
I was just not feeling it! After about 20 minutes they arrived and we
finally made our way to our taxi that would take us to Kara-Koo,
Issyk-Kul. The taxi driver’s 7-year-old daughter was also riding with
us. The first thing I did was pass out! A few hours later I woke up
to a beautiful mountain seen and it was raining and had finally cooled
off. I stayed awake and tried to talk with the Taxi driver’s daughter
the rest of the time. When we got to my new home we all came inside
to Chai eech (drink tea and eat bread). The taxi driver’s daughter
had gotten some motion sickness and out of nowhere threw up all over
the table just barely missing my lap too. At this point I was over it
and went into my new room threw myself into my bed and thought what
have I just gotten myself into?!
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| Parting ways with our PST village :( |
amazing, smart and very involved members of the community. Her
husband is the director of the hospital where I’ll be working and she
is one of the head doctors. Their oldest son is studying history at a
University in Bishkek, their other son is starting university next
year to become a doctor and they also have a 14-year-old daughter. My
new family is very nice but so different from my PST family. My mom
is about 60 and we live with her son and his wife who is about 2 weeks
due with a baby girl, and their 4-year-old son who is a little terror.
My new village is beautiful; I’m in a valley surrounded by smaller
mountains that separate me from the lake and to the South a much
larger mountain range. There are lots of trees and green that my old
village was greatly lacking in. Everyone I have met in the village
has been very nice, and my brother takes me to hang out with all of
his friends for better or for worse. I have a feeling lots of fun
stories will come from that group of people. Today they brought me
along for my first public bathing experience in Kyrgyzstan. It was at
a banya (a Kyrgyz bath house) right on the shore of Issyk-Kul (the large
lake which I live next to) that is fed by a geo-thermal spring. While
most of everything in my new village is great it is very lonely. I’ve
got to work more on language and getting outside talking with the
locals more because sitting in my room by myself will drive me crazy.
I believe on Sunday I’ll be going to a picnic somewhere with my
counterpart and co-workers. I usually don’t know exactly what is
going on because of the language barrier, but have learned to just go
with and expect the unexpected!
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| Our Swearing in Ceremony |
I’ve begun to realize very quickly how much more difficult this
experience will be than I expected. Pre-Service training made me way
to comfortable with slacking off on language, and being used to always
having people at my side when I was having a rough day. Now it’s time
to survive on my own!
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| I at least have this to play in during summer! |
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