Fish babies?

I am alive. There has been a lot of problems with promise of internet and then being let down. It wasn’t working last week and this week there were too many people on it and it wouldn’t work for anyone. So, here’s hoping that it works this week!
I can feel the effects of massive amounts of nan (bread), sugar in all forms and my (fat… butter, sheep’s fat, etc) forced on me at all times of the day. I do my best to refuse it, but it is always around and my family, well every family at that, want you to eat, eat, eat. As I sit here my stomach is hurting because it is not used to the food. For those of you who know me well know that this is a common occurrence, but there is something that makes it worse being in a foreign land and being worried about possibly passing gas at awkward times. What do I say if I do and it’s loud? What if it stinks? These are questions I have running through my head. I can’t convey to them why my stomach hurts and they won’t really understand why the food is doing it to me. At least I’m not having other problems that some other trainees have had… worrying about making it to the toilet in time. Here’s to hoping that my digestive track with return to normal and I will learn to eat in a manner that my body will be able to adjust to. (I bet many of you were wondering when the BM jokes and stories would start coming… nothing too crazy yet…)
For the good news. Our cat just had kittens a few days ago and they are so cute. Three little ones that are just so tiny. I want them to get big so I can play with them. Chicks are starting to hatch too. I got to hold a yellow one the other day. So exciting. Very very cute.
Tomorrow we are going to an orphanage (our HUB site where all the volunteers meet once a week) and we get to play with the kids and help build things and paint. I am very excited to play Ultimate Frisbee with the kids! It will be a nice break from language training. My head has been spinning and it doesn’t help that today some friends came over before we went for a walk and after I came back my host mom said that one of my friends speaks much better Kyrgyz than I do and that I need to speak more. I try to speak more, but everything I know we have already talked about. Oh well, I just keep saying to myself… “One day this will all make sense.”
So I am keeping a list of the worst things I have eaten in country. Tonight took the cake on the worst food. This is the second time I have had it and I’m a little afraid that this is going to be a common occurrence because they don’t usually repeat foods. The other night I looked at my plate and it looked like fried tongues. They were about the size of a small dog’s tongue. Well my host mom asked me if I knew what they were and of course I didn’t. So she told me in half Kyrgyz have English… saying “Balak babies.” Balak is fish… and babies well we all know what those are. Well it turns out that it was fried fish eggs. They taste like very fishy and salty sand that is slightly crunchy because it’s fried. It disintegrates in your mouth as you bite into it. That did not do well with my bloated belly.
That’s all for now. I’ll return soon with new interesting stories to share.