I have officially been a Peace Corps volunteer for a week and a half now! No more trainee status!! This means we don’t have to deal with curfews, Hub Days, checking in on weekends, or Tech sessions. Unfortunately it also means that I don’t get to see all my friends on such a regular basis. But, the upside is that there was a conference that happened the past couple of days here in Bishkek, so quite a few of my friends who have moved to different oblasts were able to come back to Chui to attend. It was an AWESOME couple of days. I had a lot of fun seeing everyone and when they were in sessions I occupied myself with experiencing city life.
Let’s back up to Tuesday night. I got a call around 7pm from my friend, Steve, saying that I needed to get to Issyk Kol hotel pronto since everyone was in town. Issyk Kol hotel was the first place that we all stayed when we arrived in country a few months back. The place is classically Soviet looking and by no stretch of the imagination could it be called a swanky place, but I think any volunteer would agree that their hot running water that comes from an actual shower head makes staying there amazing. So, after I get the phone call, I decide that I can’t pass up the opportunity to see everyone, but enter the issue of language barriers. I had to explain to my new host family why I was leaving and what I was doing. It was a convoluted mess and at one point even called an English speaking family member to have them translate what my plan was and I why I was going to be spending the night somewhere else. The best part of all this was when I left the apartment I thought my HM (host mom) was just walking me to the marshrutka so she could make sure I got on one to the right place, but then she had me wait a couple minutes and out comes my HD (host dad) and they drove me like a mile down the road to the hotel. I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT! I live within walking distance of the hotel and had no idea. Thank heavens they drove me or else I am not confident I would have ever gotten to the hotel. I most likely would have gone all the way across town and looped back on three different marshrutkas since I have little idea of the city layout. This is just one example of how awesome my new family is. I am really starting to like them a lot. My HM is protective of me in a super motherly endearing way and it cracks me up that at 25 I have someone cooking my meals and checking in to make sure I get on the right “bus”.
The first night at the hotel was a blast. It may have only been a week since I hadn’t seen people on a daily basis, but it had seemed like forever since everyone had such funny stories of what they had been living at their new sites. It was awesome to catch up with ‘em. The only bummer of that first night was the fact that my cell phone wound up MIA. No one has ANY idea where it possibly could have gone. I never lost a phone back in America, but leave it to me to lose one here. Dang it. Thankfully, I was able to buy a new one a few days later and get my same old phone number back, so it wasn’t the end of the world. Though the mystery of where it could have gone rages on.
On Wednesday I woke up and headed to Kirkshelk Village. Kirkshelk Orphanage is where we had out Hub Days during PST. It is also where my friend, Eric, is placed for his permanent site. So, he had asked myself and our other friend, Brian, to come and help him with some renovations they are doing. I spent the afternoon painting and most likely inhaling copious amounts of asbestos. It was a blast though and again, it is the little things like that which make being here worth it. Hello, how many people can say they spent their afternoon painting orphanage walls in Kyrgyzstan? Not many, right? Exactly.
So, after we finished up painting, Eric and I headed back into Bishkek and had a few hours to waste before everyone back at the hotel was done with their sessions. We ended up heading back to my apartment so I could inform my family that I was staying at the hotel again. Without a cell phone I had no other way of getting a hold of them, so I related the information the best way I could to my 12 year old host brother and hoped for the best. Eric and I ended walking over to the hotel through the one of the fanciest neighborhoods I have seen in country. It was sort of strange to see buildings that easily could have been right out of an American magazine. HUGE houses with amazing views.
The next morning I woke up and headed to work since I thought I had a meeting with my Counterpart to discuss a Talking Club that we are starting up for teachers at my University. However, when I arrived I found out that she wasn’t able to make it since her Uncle had passed away and was in her village for the three day funeral. It was no problem though since before she left she set up a chance for me to meet with one of my future students. This student who I will now be calling “Dream Swan” just got her certification in Bishkek tour guiding and did and AWESOME job. She agreed to let Eric tag along since we are both in need of learning the city better. The three of us ended up having so much fun that our one hour tour turned into almost three. Her English was fantastic and she humored us when we spoke in Kyrgyz. She was even keeping score for a friendly competition between Eric and I about who had better language skills. I believe I won, but that may have been since she knew she was going to be seeing a lot more of me. :) One of the funniest moments from our tour was when we were walking across the street and she tells us we need to raise our hands over our heads. Imagine two American’s goofily walking across a busy intersection with both hands raised to the sky looking around confused. We ask her what the benefit of this is thinking maybe it helps to be more visible and limit the chances of being hit by a car. NOPE! WRONG! She starts laughing and says “well, when you get hit by a car and the ambulance comes to get you it makes it easier to take your clothes off”. To say the least she was really funny. Oh, and to explain why we call her Dream Swan is that almost everything with Kyrgyz culture has some meaning behind it. So, when she was explaining what looked to me just like a fancy design on her purse, it turned out that they were actually symbols that represented the words for Dreaming and Swan. Hence her new name… And I have to admit that it may have been for my benefit also, since Kyrgyz names are often hard for me to pronounce and her’s, Izeeza (spelled phonetically of course) is no different. Btw, her real name means something very close to “leaves no footprint in the sand”. All Kyrgyz names have meaning behind them, just like most everything. It fascinates me to hear the meaning behind everything. But honestly, Dream Swan is a pretty BA nickname in my opinion. :)
Oh, also, before we went on the tour, Eric and I braved the language barrier and set up a post office box. SUCCESS! The lady may have thought we were crazy, but we secured a mailbox for ourselves. I KNOW that it looks strange, but really, this is how the address reads:
Kyrgyzstan
720000, Bishkek
Post Office Box 1857
Megan Sweeney
720000, Bishkek
Post Office Box 1857
Megan Sweeney
SO, that means get those packages in the mail. And letters too. :) I am sharing the box with two other volunteers, so I am prompting you all to jump on the ball and send things before their friends do. I can’t wait to finally get my first package in the post office. I am going to be like a kid in the candy store. And the Bishkek post office is pretty good, so you don’t need to be scared about them stealing, but it is still good practice to tape up ALL the openings, preferably with colored tape that the postal workers wouldn’t have access to here. Or, you may also write over openings to make it more difficult to cover up the box having been opened. If you send anything that would be deemed “valuable” put it toward the bottom of the box and wrap it within something else. I have heard of people putting things into tampon boxes for cover. Genius, really. What male postal worker wants to get caught digging through a tampon box?
After our adventure in the city, back to the hotel we went. But only after an awesome encounter with a local. We were headed in the wrong direction and asked a random passerby which way we needed to go and he ended up speaking a little English. The man told us he was going to the same place we were and we walked with him for the 20 or so minutes to get the store we were headed to. Once we arrived we thanked him and started to walk off. As we turned to head into the store we saw that he was headed back in the direction we had just come from. Most likely he didn’t need to go where we were at all, but he just wanted to make sure we arrived safely. Another example of how nice people here are. It never ceases to amaze me.
So, once we were done in town we met up with some other volunteers and headed back to the hotel. There is a long story that goes along with the nearly 2 hours it took for a group of 7 of us to wind up back at the hotel, but I will just shorten it to: walked nearly 45 minutes across town, waited in the wrong spot for a bus that never came for another 45 minutes, had a helpful stranger flag down a taxi, then paid a butt load of money to get back to the other side of town we had walked from in order to get to the hotel. To say the least, it is one of the lower points of learning to live in the city… But, it was worth it since night number 3 was the final day of the conference for everyone that was in town. Randomly it turned into half the people there wearing togas. I am still not sure how that happened, but every once in awhile a new person would come into the living room draped in a sheet they found. It was hilarious to see the progression of participants through the night. Good times yet again.
The next day I ended up going and buying a new cell phone with the help of a K17 volunteer, Ryan. She was a HUGE help. Especially since the man who we bought my phone from spoke no Kyrgyz and I speak no Russian. Again, language barriers can be a bit annoying, but thankfully she pulled out some Russian and I was able to buy the phone. After that, I headed to one of the local coffee shops to chill for the afternoon on what we have endearingly deemed ‘Crack Corner’. Not to scare anyone, because HONESTLY it sounds worse than it really is, but during our previous days adventure, Eric and I witnessed a street bum shooting up on the street corner. Just like in big cities in America, drugs are a problem here too. So, while sitting at the café it was no surprise that we saw one of the homeless people make a scene. It was ridiculously hilarious. She was ranting and raving screaming at the top of her lungs about one thing or another. Obviously I have no clue what she was saying, but it must have been good since everyone that walked by was laughing and even the employees of the café came out to laugh at the babble she was spitting out. But the randomness doesn’t stop there. Once one of the male employees shoo’ed her away, we watched as she walked across the street and did what can only be described as high-kicking a random passerby. Again, it SOUNDS scary, but HONESTLY, it was hilarious. As the homeless woman was staggering around the woman that she randomly kicked exchanged some words and kept chuggin’ along. It was like nothing happened at all. I couldn’t stop laughing and neither could anyone else that was witnessing all this happen.
Ah, man, it was a good week. And it was even better when I came home and my family was really excited to see me. We talked for awhile and then asked if I would like to come guest with them at my HM’s little brother’s house. I obviously agreed and we headed over. I was able to meet some extended family to include my HM’s mother. Awesome old woman. I love talking with old Kyrgyz woman, because they are always SO excited that I can speak their language.
Again, it is the little things that make it great here.
