silent donkey

31 August 2009

It’s back to school time in Kyrgyzstan. Today is independence day for the Kyrgyz Republic so school starts on the first of September. The timing is right. I’ve finished all the TV shows I currently have on my hard drive. Goodbye summer, hello school. Only this time I'm teaching it.

A couple weeks ago I went to Osh for a journalism conference with students from the university and other interested peoples. They comprise the staff of their own English language newspaper. My session got pushed back to the last, and I missed it for a solar water project in Bishkek, but I helped out by supporting other sessions and being a resident photographer. It was like yearbook day camp all over again.

In Bishkek I built a solar water heater with an NGO on a UN project. They’re somewhat simply designed to more efficiently use the sun to heat water within a tank. We completed the barrels, and mine will be delivered sometime this month for me to test it out.

I haven’t completed any books in the last couple weeks, which is somewhat unusual these days, but I am in the middle of two presently and half-heartedly in a third. Inspired to read up on American history, I’ve been listening to The Teaching Company lectures on the subject, and supplementing it with Don’t Know Much About History by Kenneth Davis. I’m ending the Revolutionary War in both and keeping up on my other project A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I’m halfway through it right now and suggest it to be read by anyone who has lived in New Orleans or been annoyed by a fat guy.

The days of wearing shorts and flips are at an end, as a more respectable dress is expected at work, while the age of ramen may be ushered in shortly in the fact that I have found a new residence down the street from the school. My required time to live with a host family is ending, and though they are nice people, I’m eager to express my American independence in the form of my own living arrangements.

In other news-- internet is now available in the city at a per hour rate as opposed to the standard per megabyte rate. Crowds go wild. Pictures may soon become a reality.

Donkeys make terrible nosies. There’s nothing else really bad about them, but I think the world would be better off with silent donkeys. It’s not like they’re guard donkeys attacking and frightening away intruders during home invasions. They carry things, they eat things, and they pull things, but that sound. It burns.

Also, I can’t believe I have to set an alarm for tomorrow and go to work.

9 August 2009

Camp Sunflowers

I spent the last week at a summer camp in Issyk-Kul. I was signed up for another camp, but the plans for that one fell through. Three days before I left to go the camp, I found out about its existence. I spent Friday night in the city and left the next morning with two other volunteers from Osh.

The trip from south to north is an interesting one. It’s fairly expensive on a volunteer salary, but the taxi ride is much cheaper than a flight. We got in the taxi after some negotiation, picked up another passenger, and headed north. The scenery on the ride up is amazing and diverse; snow, green hills, bodies of water, desert, it’s all there. Eight hours later, if you’re lucky, the taxi pulls into Bishkek. We stayed at a hotel with a real shower (showers are newsworthy here).

Sunday we stopped by the Peace Corps office and then to bus station. We grabbed a marshrutka right as it was about to leave, but our luck of time ran out then. The ride to Karakol took nearly as long as our taxi to the north, but we made it.

Monday morning began Camp Sunflowers. For the next days we stayed at a complex on the beach outside of Karakol with about 30 kids aged seven to about 15. We played ultimate frisbee, kickball, Uno, duck-duck-goose, hung out on the beach, and even threw in some English lessons. At night we had a couple discoteques complete with the most popular music in Kyrgyzstan.

I left on Friday and headed to Balikchy to see one of my PST village friends. It was like a mini reunion as there were quite a few of us there. I headed off the next morning with one thing on my mind: home. I made it all the way back to Jalalabad in one long day involving sitting, unsuccessfully trying to sleep, fighting for my occupied leg space, and sitting. I was home though as of yesterday evening, and I made it back to my village today. I have one week here, and then I go to Osh for a week to participate in a journalism camp. One week after I come home from that camp, school starts, and the real story begins.