My dear readers,
It is with great sadness and frustration that I inform you that this will be my last post for the foreseeable future. My laptop was stolen, and it will be incredibly difficult to continue to present my adventures and photos to the world without it. I don't want to present you with anything that's half hearted - I'd rather present nothing to the world than something that isn't a quality I can look back on and approve of.
Right now, I am mostly hoping that I didn't lose too many photos and documents that were not backed up to cloud storage yet. My pride hurts. I'm determined not to let 1 bad memory ruin all of the good memories I've had here in Prague. However, I am now faced with the difficult decision of whether I can afford (and justify) replacing it. If so, how, and with what? Suggestions for what to get, and information on how to obtain an affordable replacement are very welcome.
If you feel so inclined, donations to help ease the pain in my wallet, and budget for continuing this adventure, will also be graciously accepted via PayPal. (Kmt04@my.fsu.edu)
I will need the support and encouragement of you, dear readers, more than ever now. I can't help but think that this is a sign to give up on this entire travel writer endeavor. I hope to turn that sign around and create something even more fantastic in spite of it, though.
In the meantime, I'll continue to post on other social media platforms, but just in case I do throw in the towel - I want to thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for reading. I hope I have been able to entertain you, as well as open your eyes and hearts to things you otherwise never would have considered.
And now, I present you with what I hope won't be my last post...
Bishkek Day 2: June 22, 2015
So far, adjusting seems a
little easier than it did last year. Maybe that’s because I can read most of
the signage around me. Kyrgyz is the national language, but Russian is the
official state language, so most signs are written in both, and at least it
resembles Russian a bit. Georgian is beautiful, but so completely different
from any other language that I know, that there was no hope for me to decipher anything. I
know if I stick it through, it should make me a better person, right? And if
any of you judge me for starting out feeling like all I want to do is get the
hell out of here, and then ending up loving it – why don’t you try to do
something like this? You’ll see just how hard it is. It’s a freaking emotional
roller-coaster, add on top of that (even more so than last year) the stress of
having nothing to come back to when it’s all over, you’d be ready to cry yourself
to sleep every night for a few weeks too.
It’s still hard to wrap my head around why anyone would want
to visit here, at least not for 2 months… and certainly not for their last
opportunity to go abroad for such an amount of time… but the view I finally got
to see when walking to the bus stop today… that may just be a factor in it.
When I finally looked up from the rough gravel road I was walking down with my
neighbor's daughter, and another student who was placed with the family next
door, I finally saw the mountain range ahead. Holy crap. They seem so massive.
It’s hot as balls around here right now, but still gets cool at night, and
those mountains are still covered in snow. I’m not talking about just the very
tops of them, a good hunk of those mountains are still white. After seeing
that, I’m beginning to think that some of our weekend excursions will finally
make me really appreciate this place.
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| The Tien Shien Mountain range as it appears from Street No. 5 in the Рухий Мурас (Roohee Mooras) neighborhood of Bishkek. |
Trying to get to school today was fun, for everyone
apparently. Some people were dropped off by their host families. It seems they
were able to place everyone in at least moderately well off families, and some
in much better off families too. Most of us are out in those suburbs, I’m not
sure if that’s supposed to make me feel safer or not… yes it’s harder to reach
them, and most of the families out here have to be fairly well off to be able to
afford to build a house out here, but the difficulty to get to & from
school, and the main areas of the city leave me a bit wary. The possibility of
going out one night does seem within reach at least. Cabs are cheap it
shouldn’t cost more than $5 to get home from just about anywhere in the city.
Speaking of how cheap things are here… I took out 4,800 SOM
today, that’s about $80USD… let’s see how far this goes… It’ll cost me 20 SOM
per day for my marshrutka rides to & from school, 120/week to keep my local
phone turned on, and lunch today, which I split with Masha, was a tasty dish called Pide (I think it’s Turkish) and 2
bottles of water, know how much that
cost? 300SOM… ya know how much that is in USD? Less than $5… I told my host mom
that today, and she said that was expensive, and suggested a cheaper place.
Holy crap - it gets cheaper than that!? I wanted to lose weight while here, but
I don’t know if I can resist such cheap tasty foods, because I know I can’t get
them in the states.
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| Our pide 3 ways, cheese, egg, and meat - basically Turkish pizza |
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| Tea, as my family poured it, red, as I like it. |
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| A fine example of taking your tea красный (red). |
I’m pretty sure I’ve got a much more traditional Kyrgyz
family than the students I’ve talked to today. Most of them had minimal
exposure to their families and their customs because they just got in this
morning at 5am, then had to be at school by 9am (for most of us it’s at least
25min to get to school) then we walked around the city… had I known we were
going to walk so much, I would have worn a much different outfit… Yeah… walking
around the city for hours on day 1 is one is pretty much one of my least
favorite things to do… do you know how many of the things I remember from it?
Umm… none. I remember where the nearest bank to get money is, and the shopping
mall near the school, which is where I need to get off my marshrutka… we’ll see
how well this goes tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll have the girls come with me for a
while before I need to figure it out on my own. I think I have a pretty good
handle on it, but I need to get used to keeping an eye out for my stop somehow, having
to ask to get off at a stop, and to flagging down the marshrutkas. In Moscow,
we got on and off at pretty standard stops, so they always stopped, whether
anyone was waiting or not.
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| One of the few marshrutkas in my area. |
Oh, I guess I should explain what a marshrutka is, since
most American cities don’t have them, though I hear NYC has a few underground
ones. A marshrutka is a minibus/van that only goes along a fixed route. It
costs a little bit more than riding a traditional bus, and is way more crowded, but
they often stop closer to where you want to get on and off. There’s no A/C, and
the driver breaks harder than I do… at least the one on the way home today did…
needless to say, this is a place where I will be showering at night to get the
nasty of the day off… and maybe taking some whorebaths with wetwipes during the day. I managed
to find toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, Nivea hand cream, and
bodywash today for about $17 total, but normal body lotion seems to be elusive,
maybe it’s just the store we were in… and I forgot to look for hand sanitizer…
I need that, my hands feel dirty all the time.
Just like Russia and Batumi, A/C doesn’t exist in these
houses, but heating is provided by the city… too bad it’s not cold out… The
room I was in for testing today had a small A/C unit, but it was too little too
late. It was so stuffy and warm in that room that I started to fall asleep
DURING my placement test… so… hopefully my results still place me in the proper
level.
Also, as I’m typing this, the wee little hellion is pant-less,
playing hide and seek with his big sister. Not gonna lie… I envy him a little. I already miss living alone. His happy noises are hard to differentiate from
his upset noises too, unless he’s legitimately crying.
So, what makes a Kyrgyz family so different from other
families? Well, in Batumi, my family’s flat was perfectly normal, actually I
really loved it. Small, but cozy, well decorated, and that balcony… you
couldn’t beat an evening sitting out there, watching the families of the
neighborhood head out for evening walks, eating perfectly ripe watermelon as
that cool sea breeze rolled down the streets. Here, well yes it’s different
because we’re in the suburbs, but everyone’s house out here feels a lot like a
compound. There’s high cement walls with gates around all of them. There’s a
carport for the Mercedes my family owns (yeah, their car costs about as much as
the student loan debt I’ve got now) and when you go inside, you immediately
take your shoes off, if you didn't already do it outside. In Batumi, it didn’t seem super necessary that I take them
off right away, I’d walk into my room and take them off there, but my host mom
would always get on to me for not putting on a pair of slippers/flipflops for
walking around the flat. Well, she kept it so clean, I really didn’t see a need
to do such a thing. Anyway, here it’s fine to walk around inside the house
without shoes or slippers on, which I prefer anyway. I know I can leave them by
the door, but I don’t want to crowd things too much, so I’ve been carrying them
up to my room. Also, you need a pair of sandals/flipflops for walking around
outside. THIS seems to be what makes my family different from other families…
there’s a table to eat at outside under the carport, and a garden behind the
house, between 2 sheds, a separate kitchen for cooking in when it’s hot out
(there is one inside the house), and a table in the room next to it for meals
when it’s hot out, as well as another stove of sorts in there too. I think for bigger meals. To me, it looks like it’s meant specifically for making dishes like plov, or
beshbarmak, but I’m betting that’s not the case. I'll give you a better tour in a later post.
Not having internet at home is still kinda rough. Last year
that was a good hunk of what kept me from getting homesick. I really pride
myself on being a bit of a nomad and able to just go anywhere without missing
“home”. Yesterday, I wasn’t missing “home” because, well… I don’t have one
anymore… instead, I was missing Istanbul, where in a matter of days, I felt at
home. It helped that I had a sweet flat with wifi, and my cell phone still got
free data and texts though. Here, like in Georgia, it’s $0.50/text and $5.99/MB
of data, so… needless to say, I’ll be shelling out the cash soon to buy myself
a 4G data plan and mobile wireless router with one of the companies around here. It’s a 10 hour time
difference, so the only convenient times to have any hope of getting in touch
with anyone back in US is late at night when I’m relaxing before bed, and
early in the morning when I’m getting ready to go to school. Which is about 1pm
or 9pm for most of y’all. If I just sit at wifi cafes after class I’m really
going to be missing out on a lot of the socializing, which is really one of
the most important parts of this program. (The friends I’ve gotten to hold on
to from these programs are some of the most fierce friends I could ask for)
Besides, at 2pm when class gets out, it’s still only 4am on the East coast.
Speaking of relaxing
before bed, I’ve got just a little bit of mental energy left in me to work on
some draft messages (since I can’t send any until I get to school in the
morning). I really should work on getting to bed earlier. But at least my hair
has a familiar and comforting scent to it now that I’ve been reunited with my favorite shampoo and conditioner scents, which aren't sold stateside for some
stupid reason. Oh, and my family put TP in the bathroom- WOOT! (It’s the little
things, right? Lol)
Side note… the call to prayer here sounds very different
from what I heard in Turkey, I’ll have to make recordings and post them as well for
you to compare. Maybe it’s because I’m further away from the source, and there aren’t
competing calls, but it sounds very different to me.
End of Bishkek Day 2.
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| Is this home? |
