Brooke's Peaceful Perseverance

As for the good things that are going on here in Naryn Oblast… I am beginning to feel very comfortable to take public transportation around my village (alone). For those of you who know me well… know that I have a large fear of mass transportation. The greatest part of the transportation here is that everyone takes it because so few people have vehicles. When I tell people here that when I lived in America we had 4 vehicles at our house they are shocked. The best part about the transportation is that it is so cheap. It costs about $2 to go from my village to Naryn city by taxi which is about an hour away. I can also travel to Bishkek (about 6 hours) for roughly $12. The difficult part of it is that you never know when you are going to get anywhere. Taxis and marshrukas (mini busses) can break down, stop anytime they want for food, the bathroom... maybe even take a vodka shot or two… you just never know what you are going to get. But I guess that’s half the fun. Ha. Tomorrow I plan on going to Naryn City. I am going to go with some friends and check out everything in the big city. Yeah right… it’s one street and can barely be considered a city. But it is the best I can get, so I’ll take it.
I taught my first English Club today. Well I was supposed to start on Tuesday but the girls who kept calling me and making sure that I was going to remember to come didn’t even show up. A college girl who loves “Twilight” did come though and was very excited to find out that I worked at the restaurant that was in the prom scene. She knows English very well and we are going to have weekly meetings so she can practice her English. Her dream is to go to America. Today though, I had 6 girls in my class and we practiced greetings. It was a lot of fun to teach them American slang greetings. They showed a great interest and were very interactive. I started with two and then every 20 minutes two more students would come in. My counterpart told me that she told them that if they didn’t come that I would have to go back to America. I guess guilt works in this country, too. That’s not true at all, but oh well. They were engaged and wanted to learn.
I have gone to the local restaurant the past few days for lunch. It is pretty good. I went with some other volunteers and it was really great to be able to talk to the waiters. I was able to introduce myself and order food all in Kyrgyz. Lunch was pretty good. The other volunteers at my site usually meet there once a week (especially in the winter when all we eat at home is potatoes, carrots, onions and meat) just to get some variety. I look forward to school starting in September so I have a set schedule.
I hope all is well at home. Don’t worry about me here.