These are my beautiful At Bashy mountains that I get to see everyday. I am so lucky to enjoy such natural beauty! This is the At Bashy River... I come here to relax and think!


The sunsets here are amazing!


I was on my way to take pictures by the river and these girls wanted me to take their picture. They were so cute! I had to post it!

Pictures...

Preparing the food for canning. Working on knife skills!


Tav and Heather sterilizing the jars.


My host mom makes these rugs and is going to teach me how to make them! :)

ugh... drunk men!

I am exhausted. I have been going nonstop for two weeks now. I started with a TEFL (my teaching English program) workshop where we started to plan a one year curriculum for the 8th grade. Then at the same hotel on the beach we had language and cultural training for a week. It was beautiful on the lake and the hotel was an amazing. There were many parts of it that were nicer that most hotels that I would stay at in America. While there I tried to get an updated antivirus on my computer and it deleted its ability to get on the internet. Luckily it happened when I was with someone who knew a lot about computers and was able to reinstall my operating system. Now my computer works better than ever and the battery life is so much longer.
After we finished all our training and planning and whatnot I needed to go to Bishkek to pick up money for a grant. It was passed down to me by a volunteer who has now left. While in Bishkek I took advantage of everything that is there. We went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant. The food was amazing. We had sweet and sour chicken, a spicy tofu dish, something with beef in it… but I’m pretty sure it was intestines and a crispy chicken. It was so nice to not eat sheep and sheep fat. The best part was we ordered family style and split the bill and it only cost me a little over $3. I was also able to find a camera in Bishkek, which is so exciting because I have been living without one for over a month and that has been painful! I was also able to buy beans, dried peas, Pringles, and canned peppers. I am a happy girl.
The morning before I went home I went to the Peace Corps office. That was my first time there and I was amazed by how nice it is there. Free internet, fresh clean water to fill up my water bottle and not have to pay for, a shower if I need it… awesome! I got to the taxi station and got a taxi to go home and my taxi driver told me that he had a full car and that we were leaving right then. NO… I was the only passenger that he had and I had to wait for an hour for more people to come (an hour really isn’t that long, but I was meeting a friend and I just wanted to get home!). The worst part about being the first person to get into a taxi isn’t the waiting part is the not knowing who else is going to ride with you. This time it ended up being pretty bad because there was a guy sitting behind me who got into the car drunk and then proceeded to drink more on the five hour trip home. From what I saw in the car he drank at least 4.5 liters of beer. He proposed to me, offered me to drink with him, kept hitting my arm the whole way to get me to talk to him, he rambled off in Russian every time even though I kept telling him that I didn’t understand him. I really wish that other people in the car would have helped me out. They mostly just laughed at him. Very frustrating.
I finally got home and away from the crazy drunk man. I really missed my family because I hadn’t seen them in over a week and a half. The best part was though… I showed up with 18 large canning jars (about 2 liters each) and massive amounts of vegetables to can the next day oh and a friend. They had no idea… I just said, “maybe tomorrow we can can?” (in Kyrgyz) and that was that. Ha. That is one of the bet parts of Kyrgyzstan… you can just show up with people who need a place to stay and maybe even a project that will take all day and it doesn’t even phase them. It’s normal.
The next day we canned eight jars of tomato sauce, four jars of pickles, four jars of a pickled vegetable mix that we made up (carrots, cabbage, onion, garlic, green and red peppers, eggplant, and really hot tiny red peppers), and one jar of pickled beets and eggs (one lid got messed up and we didn’t put anything in that jar). It took 14 hours to can everything and we didn’t get to bed until 1am, but it was worth it. Now I’ll have some food for the winter. There is so much garlic in everything. I just hope that we were able to get the lids on correctly and that they sealed the way they should. Their lids here are very different. I guess we’ll see. I am so tired now and I’m going to sleep all day!

My students are published authors!

I just finished the greatest week to date in Kyrgyzstan. Along with a group of seven other volunteers we pulled off a journalism camp where the kids learned about lifeskills and journalism, researched a topic area and produced a story that has been published. The website where the articles were posted is www.gcekyrgyzstan.ning.com. They aren’t posted yet, but will be within the next 48 hours. Please comment on them because we are trying to show the importance of the internet and how they can be connected to people all over the world. We had 19 Kyrgyz high school aged students interview and research in the areas of Diversity, Women and Gender, Health, and Environment. The camp was an overnight camp that was six days long. One of the days we headed out to the city and one of the volunteers set up interviews for each of the groups to conduct. It was absolutely incredible what these students we able to accomplish. They all helped write an article in English. The thought, effort, and creativity that went into the entire week was astounding! I am so exhausted now and want to sleep forever, but knowing that we were able to pull this off with only being volunteers for two months is really encouraging for what we will be able to do in the next two years. Only one of the volunteers who was part of this has been here for a year, the rest of us all swore in as volunteers this past June.
Enough gloating…more about food… On our way home we had our driver stop on the side of the road to buy some honey. Everyone has been telling me that Kyrgyzstan has some of the best honey in the world. Every time I have tasted it, it really wasn’t anything special. The only honey that I ever saw in country was very different than any honey in America. It was crystallized and I really didn’t like the taste. I love honey so it really made me sad. But one day I was at a friend’s house we were having tea and bread and they pulled out a honey that looked a little more familiar. It was incredible. It tasted like wild flowers and was the best honey that I have ever tasted… I was eating it by the spoonful. We couldn’t really figure out where it came from because I felt like every time I asked, I got a different answer. All I know was it is delicious. Well while on my way to this camp we passed by several stands that were selling honey. I decided to take a chance because they had the non crystallized honey. Oh man, it was one of the best purchases I have made to date. I was a lot of money for one jar… $7.33 (more that I get paid in one day) but well worth it! I can’t wait to eat it with bread and butter… or make granola, or make… So many options.
This past week our camp was on the lake, so I got to experience what life is like in touristy Kyrgyzstan. Because of the recent events that have occurred over the past four months there are many less tourist than usual, but it was interesting to see how different the volunteers’ lives are who live in a place where they have more amenities. I found myself saying several times… “What you have that? I’m so jealous” but that more I thought about it I’m really not jealous at all because that’s not why I joined the Peace Corps. I joined the Peace Corps to experience a remote life, to understand what life is like in a developing country and to help as much as I can. I can see so much potential where I am and I am grateful that there isn’t a grocery store anywhere near where I live. There isn’t even one in my entire oblast. I love going to the bazaar and buying produce and fresh bread. And walking down the street and having people say “Hi” to me not because I’m a foreigner, but because they actually know me. I’m not just a white girl where I live; I’m the white girl who teaches English.
This past week was such a great experience for me. I already listed many of the accomplishments that we did as a group and how were able to encourage and teach the student. But one of the greatest things I believe that happened over the week was my connection with the local youth. There were students going up to other volunteers telling them that they really liked me because they thought I was funny and they don’t really see adult women act the way I do. I was a little nervous coming to a more conservative country because I am loud and very different than what they expect people to be. The nice part is that most people understand that I am American and don’t expect me to conform everything (I am still respectful, but I can’t lose myself). I am so happy to show the youth here that you can be yourself and that’s ok. We had a lot of fun dancing, singing, learning, and creating over this past week and it really pumps me up for more to come. I know that there will be hard times, but I will be able to look back on this and remember why we are here and what we are able to accomplish.



I am teaching nutrition and health to Kyrgyz students



I got to teach a group of girls how to make cinnamon rolls. They loved it. It was really different teaching them because they have been making bread most of their lives. I just had to tell them what to do and they did it. The cinnamon rolls turned out great!



Couldn't avoid playing on the beach!