Things Have Gotten Really Real Really Fast.

Saying bye to our Apa's

Three days ago I officially became a member of the 21st group of Peace
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?!

Parting ways with our PST village  :(

Since then things have improved.  My counterpart and her family are
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!

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!

I at least have this to play in during summer!

PST this is Madness

Pre-Service training has been going on for about a month and a half now and it will soon be ending, on June 10^th to be exact!  It has been an adventure!!! During PST we have an incredibly structured schedule, barely any free time, a curfew of 9 pm, and only have 1 day where we are semi-free.  Along with that we learn A LOT!, along with practicums, and other cultural events.  This part of PST I am more than ready to end.  I’m stoked to feel like a free person again!!!  At the same time I’m going to miss my village (Studenchaskaya) a lot, my current host family, and the trainees that are in my village.  We have grown incredibly close in a short amount of time and when we leave for our permanent site’s chances are we will not be in the same place.  One thing I’ve already learned about Peace Corps is they are really good about forcing you to build very close relationships then breaking them down, over and over again.  It’s tough!  I know I haven’t updated my blog in a while and that’s because I’ve been too busy riding the roller coaster of life and loving every high and low of it. 

A lot has gone on so I don’t even know where to try and start.  Within our village we have bonded with a lot of the kids and other host family siblings.  We’ve attended birthday parties, gone to talent show (kinda) graduation celebrations, a school disco, and the last bell ceremony (high school graduation).  These relationships are amazing and while I know new one’s will be made with my future community it will make leaving my current village difficult.  I’ve also gone on runs with the kids, played lots of volleyball, and just had a blast attempting to talk to them in my very broken Kyrgyz.  Language learning is a continuing struggle that will not be going away any time soon.  The Peace Corps training’s that we are required to do are a mix of important, repetitive, and a really big waste of time but because we technically work for the Gov. we’ve got to do it!  Yay bureaucracy.  I’m excited to learn more job specific and health related topics.  A few weeks ago we all did practice lessons first for our fellow health trainees then at are local school.  My friend Fornia and I worked together and put together a lesson on the differences between exercise and physical fitness.  The idea of exercise is practically non-existent in Kyrgyzstan!  It was a lot of work translating posters into Russian, trying to speak a little bit in Kyrgyz and preparing a lesson for approximately 15 students and then having about 30 show up!  It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it, but I realized how difficult lesson planning, and execution is, especially in a foreign language with very different cultural attitudes towards everything!!!

I plan on uploading all of my photos from PST as soon as I have enough internets to do so.  This will probably be mid June.  Here are some random photos from the past few weeks! 

I’m ready for PST to be over, but NOT ready to leave the village and the people I’ve grown so close to over the past month and a half.  I miss everyone back at home but am beyond ecstatic with my life here, the new adventures that happen everyday and all of the opportunities that await me.  For now I’m just going to hold on tight and enjoy this amazing ride! 

Hiking in a nearby village 

A normal lunch

Tori ballin' it up at kids day

Out for a run!

A picnic in the woods, yummm Plov!

Duck head any one?

Dinner with the family

Mine and Fornia's first lesson! 

School Graduation

The LCFs in our village

We've resorted to watching really dumb shows... already

My two youngest siblings

Ever Wanted to see Sheep Intestines Shaped like a Snake?!

Things are continuing to go great!!!  No sickness, I’m in high spirits, I’m even running every now and then.  Language is continuing on, struggles are amassing, but I feel like I’m starting to grasp some of the grammar and conjugating a little better.  This will be a continuing struggle, probably all throughout my two years.  In addition to that everything in my village is wonderful.  We have kids running amok everywhere, and we have 11 trainees in our village, so an American friend is never far away when I need a break.  Everyday we have language training in our village we will go guesting to another host family’s house.  My family had our group on the first day, and every time presents a new food, etiquette, and amount of Kyrgyz-iness.  My family seems to be a great mix of modern and traditional Kyrgyz life.  We do have a large family, we milk the cows twice a day, I’ve gotten to do it once now and it takes some skill, we follow many other traditional Kyrgyz values, but our food is pretty safe, they don’t force vodka down my throat, I don’t get shamed if I make a cultural faux pas, so overall my family rocks.  Another trainee in my village Fornia has a rocking host family.  They are very Kyrgyz!  By this I mean they eat all kinds of fun things, drink fun things, and you get shamed for fun things.  The other day I went over to her house expecting to help make some bread.  Instead we ate some sheep intestines, which were so aesthetically shaped like a snake!  Along with this I had the unpleasant pleasure of trying Kumez (Sp?), which is fermented Mares milk, it tastes worse than it, sounds and it made the intestines look and taste appealing.  Fornia’s stories from day to day are never dull.  She’s also eaten liver pretty regularly, taken part in a rare cultural phenomenon known as geopahgy (the ingestion of chalk, soil, mud and clay), the purpose of this is to get minerals that may not be present in their everyday foods, and today she had the honor of being given the sheep head at dinner.  It is an honor and I’m Jealous!  I feel so lucky with my new trainee friends, my family, all of the children and other families in Studenchaskaya (My village spelled roughly in English).

Our leash is slowly being extended everyday as training goes on.  Pretty soon we will even be able to go places on our own!!!  This past Monday we went on an adventure to Bishkek (the capital) with our language instructors.  While this day was meant to be instructional so we can find our way around in the future, all it really did was give us a work out with chasing our instructors around the bustling city.  The two useful things I learned were 1) where my bus stop is to go back to my village and 2) working for the Peace Corps in another country has its perks.  The Peace Corps office in Bishkek is the nicest and most secure building I’ve seen in country.  The doors to the guard area feel like they way a ton, we have 2 Russian security guards (one of which used to be a ranked boxer), a beautiful garden, and every modern amenity you could ever want.  If I’m ever in Bishkek I may swing by just to use their bathroom!

  

While all the culture and surroundings are great, I am here to do a job.  I’ll be doing health education in a country very set in its ways.  Traditional Kyrgyz culture has a lot of health myths, folklores, and an age hierarchy that determines a lot!  To mention a few of the myths or cultural beliefs some Kyrgyz have are: sitting on concrete will make a female sterile, drinking cold water will make you sick, open windows let “bad” wind in that will make you ill, Vodka fixes everything, and eating lots of fat makes you strong.  These are just a few and there is a lot more things that are considered Ooyat (shameful) especially surrounding naan (bread).  Bread is seen as very holy here, and therefore must be treated very well.  You may not set your bread upside down on the table, feed bread to dogs, brush crumbs on the floor, step over bread, or throw bread away.  The intricacies of Kyrgyz culture and abiding by them are a challenging learning experience.  Especially coming from America where we are about as insensitive as it comes to respecting things that may be strange, illogical, and abnormal to us.  We are quick to categorize and ostracize such beliefs and behaviors at home, so it’s very unique to be in a place where such behavior is not only acceptable but also supported strongly.  Everyday is a new adventure here, and they range from taking my first bite of innards, to accepting the culture of the Kyrgyz people that will be natural to working within the health education field. 

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!

We are Forty

Whoa, down to a month!  I received my flight and staging info on Friday the 15th, which made me really realize how close my departure really is.  I'll be flying to Philadelphia on the morning of April 16th for staging.  The next morning we will bus to JFK airport in New York to fly to Frankfurt, Germany, then to Istanbul, Turkey, and finally arriving in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan at 3 am on the morning of the 19th.  It will be quite a long day of traveling, but for going about 8,000 miles around the world it is not that bad!

When I first read my invitation to Kyrgyzstan I proceeded to google it since I, along with many others if not most people, had no real idea where this little Central Asian country was.  Since then I've began learning a bit about this country's history, culture, demographics, and language.  Kyrgyzstan is roughly the size of Nebraska and is about 80% mountainous covered by the Tian Shan mt. range.  The name Kyrgyzstan is thought to have to derived from the Turkic word for "40."  This is in reference to the 40 clans of Manas, a hero in Kyrgyzstan who is believed to have united the 40 clans to defeat the Uyghers.  Kyrgyz would literally be translated to mean "we are forty."  The state of Kyrgyzstan was first established in 1924, it became part of the USSR in 1936, and gained its independence from the Soviet Union on August 31, 1991.  Kyrgyzstan's estimated population is about 5.5 million with 70% of that population being ethnic Kyrgyz, 15% being Uzbek, 9% Russian, and the remaining a variety of different ethnicities.  The vast majority of the population speaks Krygyz, a Turkic based language that uses the Cyrillic, and about 10% of the population speaks Russian.  The part I'm most afraid/worried about is the food. I'm in no means a picky eater, but organs, eyes, heads etc... really do not appeal to me!  In our Facebook group someone  asked what the food is like and some of the responses from volunteers currently there include "honestly, the food is not very good," "If you don't mind eating sheep meat, fat, and potatoes then you'll survive just fine but having a well balanced diet in the village is a challenge," "Most days of the week food is soup with combinations of rice, cabbage, potatoes, noodles, sheep meat and fat and maybe some onions or garlic. Or, plov (all it is is rice with carrots, sheep meat and plenty of oil), or just cold sheep leg and bread. Now, that's probably what you'll be eating if you let your host family do all the cooking."  These descriptions don't sound that bad I'm just dreadfully excited for the day I'm the guest of honor since as tradition goes you are given the head of a sheep and expected to eat parts of it!  It is going to be a culinary adventure for sure!!!  

A Past Peace Corps Volunteer's Photo from Kyrgyzstan