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.