Mail Call!

Alright, folks, I have a permanent address!!  That means that if you’ve got some spare time and want to put together a package for me now is the time.  Well, now AND sporadically over the next two years.  :)  One of the current volunteers told us that friends and family start to forget we’re over here after the first year or so.  I am crossing my fingers that I don’t get a ton of packages in the next few months and then nadda for the next couple years. 

My friend, Catie, and I even discussed how we should set up a sign up sheet for our friends/family to pick a month they’d be willing to send a package.  That way it’d spread things out.  I’d hope that I have 24 people that’d be willing to take a month and spread the wealth (or even 12 people that’d take two months…).  I will feel this out and see if people would be interested or if I should just take packages as they come.  I am just excited for mail! 

Anything that you’re able to send would make me overjoyed, but a couple friends asked me to please make a list of items that I am craving.  Below is a quick list that I put together.  Again, I would happy with just about anything, but this may help give you an idea.  The dried fruit or any other healthy food is a BIG plus.  Eating sheep fat and fried food is really starting to wear on me.  I’d LOVE some good non fatty food.  But as I type that I realize that I did include Reese’s, soooooo, yeah…  :)

1.       Aloe Vera

2.       Colgate Toothpaste

3.       Reeses Peanut Butter Cups

4.       Dried Fruit

5.       Trail Mix

6.       Apple Sauce

7.       Rockstar (the yellow kind)

8.       Spices (cinnamon and vanilla extract come to mind)

9.       Sauce Packets

10.   Beef Jerky

11.   CDs of New Music

12.   Zumba DVDs

13.   Baby Wipes

14.   Cookies, Brownies, or any baked Goods

15.   Spiral Bound Notebooks

16.   Post It Notes

17.   Annie’s Brand Graham crackers

18.   Kraft Mac And Cheese

19.   Fruit Roll Ups

20.   Luna Bars

21.   Double Ply Toilet Paper

22.   Random things that will make me laugh

23.   Powder Drink Mix

24.   Doritos

25.   Tortilla Shells

26.   Face Wipes

27.   Opti-Free Contact Solution

28.   Seasons 4,5,6 of Grey’s Anatomy (or any TV show)

29.   USB Thumb Drive

30.   Alaskan Paraphernalia

And I figure I should probably include my address:

Kyrgyz Republic
Bishkek, 720010
304 Chokmorova St.
Megan Sweeney

BTW, I only have a mere 5 days left before I swear in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer.  It’s going to be a huge ceremony.  They have invited almost 600 people.  PC was trying to get the Krygyz Republic President to speak, but unfortunately she going to be out of the country.  Total bummer, but PC is working on getting the US Ambassador or someone equally as awesome.  No matter what, I am sure it’ll be intense swearing in with that many people watching.  I am sooooo excited! 

And my last big news is that today I took my language exam.  I passed!!!  I can officially speak an intermediate level of Kyrgyz now.  I can’t wait to see how much that’ll come into use after my service.  :)  Nah, really, it is a neat language and I think it’s pretty cool we learn it.  In fact yesterday a few volunteers and I were sitting at a café and a Russian woman came up to us and started talking.  When she figured out that we didn’t speak any Russian and were all Kyrgyz speakers she got mad at us!!  She poked my shoulder and with a disapproving look she told me to learn Russian.  We couldn’t believe it!!  In our best Kyrgyz, we spit back at her, THIS IS KYRGYZSTAN!  Maybe she should learn the native language of the country she lives in?  Just an idea.  I respect all the Kyrgyz people who are bilingual in both Kyrgyz and Russian.  And even more the ones who go above and beyond to learn English or another major world language.  The people here are incredible and I have so much respect for their language abilities.  It never ceases to amaze me when my family flip flops between all the different languages while we sit down and talk together.  It is pretty impressive. 

PST Host Family

There is a lot that I can tell about my last few days spent living in Bishkek with my future family, but for now I am going to fill you all in about how great my current living situation is.

First off, my host family in Kant has been awesome.  I really lucked out being placed with this family.  It’s actually sort of funny that before coming here I didn’t understand how host family dynamics worked.  I didn’t get why people started calling strangers Mom and Dad and saying how many brothers and sisters they had.  I couldn’t grasp it at all.  Well, two months in and I can understand it MUCH better now.  My Kant family is actually like family now.  I have become very close with my host mom and host sister and I LOVE my baby brother.  Spending the last few days away from them really made it sink in how accommodating they have been to me the last few months.  

It set in almost immediately when I met my future host family about how close I had become to my Kant family.  The new host family doesn’t understand my broken Kyrgyz language abilities and isn’t as good about speaking in slow sentences so I can pick out words that I know.  They didn’t seem to understand that when I say “Ооба” (yes) to almost everything and how it doesn’t just mean, yes, it means that I understood them and I don’t have the vocab yet to explain much more.  They didn’t laugh at how much I say please and thank you (it isn’t common in Kyrgyz to say it as much as we do in English and my Kant family is always amused at my silly American ways) and they didn’t cheer when I learned to create a full sentence.  Simple things, but it makes me feel really good when my Kant family supports me in this new foreign adventure.  

The day that I was sitting in my future office and my phone rang I was surprised to see that Aigul, my Kant host mom, was calling. It was the first time she had ever called me and I didn’t quite know what to expect. Back when I first got my cell phone we both joked about how horrible that call would go since my language skills are still developing.  In the last few weeks I have taken to texting her when I will be coming home and that is just about the only cellular interaction we have had.  So, I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up and Aigul spoke to me and I actually understood what she was saying!  She wanted to make sure that I was ok, that I would be coming home to Kant the next day, and that I was being fed.  All very important questions.  :)  *And skip forward to today when Aigul was telling me that she told my host father that she had called me.  She said he got a real kick out of the idea of us talking on the phone because there are not hand gestures to accompany the speaking and that she told him that I was a great Kyrgyz speaker and the call went great.  Small victories. 

On my way home from Bishkek, right before rounding the corner to my house, I quickly looked up the word for ‘missed’ and practiced repeatedly how to say “I missed you” before walking into our house.  As soon as I walked through the door and Aigul looked up at me, I smiled really big and in my best Kyrgyz accent I said my practiced words.  She was BEAMING!  She laughed and repeated my sentence back and we hugged.  Then she called my host sister in and Aidi came bounding into the kitchen house and ran up to me giving me a HUGE hug and kiss.  I repeated my sentence and she started laughing and hugged me again.  Danyel, my 7 month old baby brother even remembered me and got super giggly when I picked him up.  Aigul and Aidi got a real laugh out of that too, because Danyel didn’t stop smiling at me.  These people have genuinely accepted me into their home and I love being around them. 

 I know that it is normal to feel uneasy about moving to a new family, but I not only feel uneasy about it, but I am worried they are not going to live up to my current family standards.  I KNOW that I will miss these people so much when I have to move an hour up the road to Bishkek.  However, they’ve already told me that I will be visiting often and I am welcome anytime, so I will take some solace in that.  Heck, Aigul even asked me the other day when I would be getting married, because she wanted to start saving money so she could come to my wedding back in Alaska.  When I told her that it wasn't looking good for me to get married any time soon and I had no date in mind, she told me 2015 worked for her and she and the family would be coming.  I laughed and shook my head thinking she might not be kidding…  :)

What did I just get done doing you ask? Well, let me tell ya…

I just had one of those moments that I am starting to cherish.  The ones where I look around at what I just experienced and it hits me that I am no longer in Alaska, but in fact, I am living in Kyrgyz Republic serving in the Peace Corps.  Tonight’s experience happened while sitting in my host family’s kitchen house right after I finished helping my host mom and sister make Manta.  But let me back up.

I came home from “school” today and my mom told me that we were going to make Manta (internet search this amazing Kyrgyz food).  Tonight was the second time she has let me help do this and she even gave me big ol’ atta girl for being so much better this go round than the last.  Apparently my manta folding skills have improved.  :)  It is experiences like tonight where I am sitting in a kitchen folding rolled out dough filled with a mixture of raw sheep meat (yes, you read that right, sheep meat; a staple in the Kyrgyz diet, but more on that in a moment) potatoes, onion, black pepper and some salt that I really appreciate simple things in life.  Tonight I had a full conversation with my host family about Osama’s death, American music, and how to make pizza.  These may seem unrelated, but conversation can be pretty sporadic and it just adds to the awesomeness of being able to communicate with them.  

Another one of my favorite moments in tonight’s conversation was when Aidi (my little sister) opened the fridge and I asked if the big blob on the shelf was cheese.  Nope.  WRONG!  It was a chunk of sheep fat that they use for making a butter of sorts.  My host mom goes on to say how much she likes sheep meat.  I say I’ve never had it and I don’t know if I like it or not.  She laughs and tells me I have been eating it all along and that the mixture we just put in the manta was sheep.  I smile and think to myself how before coming here, I don’t think I would have ever eaten sheep without feeling noxious that the thought.  And tonight, I didn’t even think twice about it.  BTW, for anyone wondering, it isn’t bad at all.  In fact, I can’t really tell much of a difference between sheep and beef.  Obviously if I have been eating it for a month or so and had no idea, it isn’t that much different than other more “American” meats.

But back to my AHA moment.  After we put the manta on the stove to steam, my host mom threw some dough into the toaster oven (it is the only oven my family has and we use it to bake EVERYTHING) and the smell of fresh bread overtook the kitchen house.  She left me in charge of watching to make sure it didn’t burn and headed off to our sleeping house (I will try to post some picture of the different between these two houses.  It isn’t that our compound is big by ANY means, it is actually relatively small, we just have two houses for eating and sleeping) So anyways, this left me sitting in our kitchen house smelling the AMAZING smell of baking bread while staring out the window watching my host father clean out the barn with our bright green outhouse in the background.  I just sat back and actually laughed out loud because life is amazing here. Simple everyday tasks take a lot longer here, but there is something about it that I thoroughly enjoy.  Not to say there aren’t days when I wish that I could just go to the store and buy some bread, but the idea of making fresh bread every three days with my family is oddly comforting.  It may be sort of unexplainable why I find comfort in these things.  But I do and that is all that matters.

And not all of these moments are food related.  I have them every once in awhile.  Like when I am walking to “school” and have to cross over the sketchy bridge where I have to balance my weight on small metal rungs that stretch over a canal.  Or when I am walking down the street at the bazaar and I actually catch part of a conversation and UNDERSTAND what they are saying in Kyrgyz.  Moments like that make being away from friends and family worth it.

So, to say the least, I am really enjoying myself here.  And tomorrow I find out my permanent site placement.  For the first few months in country we are considered PC Trainees and live in a central area where we learn Peace Corps essentials and then on June 1st we will swear in as PC Volunteers and head to our permanent sites.  There is a lot of curiosity leading up to site placement announcements, because where you get placed will influence your job, which language you will be using the most, who you will be closest to for the next two years and a number of other crucial elements.   Tomorrow morning will be sort of like Christmas Day since it is so filled with excitement.  I can’t wait!  I am actually scared that I won’t be able to fall asleep tonight in anticipation.  But with my belly full of issyk non (hot bread) and manta I shouldn’t have too much of a problem.  

I’ll keep you all posted on where I will be spending my next two years as soon as I can!  Wish me luck!!

TAMAK!!

Alright, so it has been pointed out to me that I really need ‘ta get my stuff together and update you all on what the heck I’ve been doing over here the last couple weeks.  But since there has been SO much that I could potentially tell ya about, I am going to just break it down and tell about one of my food experiences.  I will try to post again in the next few days.  Life has just been a bit crazy busy for me lately...

A staple to any culture is food, yes?  Kyrgyz is no different.  Eating and drinking together is a huge part of how they bond here.  My host mom wakes up every morning to make me breakfast and then has dinner ready for me every night when I come home.  The funniest thing is how every day we trade off whose house we go to for lunch (between the 5 others in our language group it is set up so each host mom cooks for us once a week) and when I get home after ‘school’ one of the first questions my HM (host mom) asks is where we ate and what they made.  It is an unofficial competition between the moms to see who can feed us the best meal.  No complaints from us though, because the food is AWESOME!  

Story time: Earlier this month, Aidi (my little host sister) showed me that they bought a sheep and it was out in the barn.  My first thought was, oh no!  That is going to be dinner in a few days, eek!  Well, I got home from school a couple days later and we were outback planting some vegetables when I noticed that the sheep was gone.  I was like hm, yeap, they must have slaughtered it today.  And then Aigul (my host mom) and I went into the kitchen house and it smelled ‘interesting’.  As many of my food stories begin, it starts with walking into the kitchen house and noticing something smells a little… off.  Like something is being cooked up that maaaaaaay not fit into my regular dietary regime.  Thankfully there wasn’t just a giant sheep carcass laying there or anything, BUT she was boiling the intestines…  I was DREADING dinner time.  I couldn’t have been more relieved when like 20 minutes later I sat down to dinner and saw that she had potatoes on plates.  Whew! Crisis averted!!  Or not… I looked over and saw that she had used the intestine water to boil them AND she was putting the noodles into the same water.  Yeah, dinner that night was just potatoes and noodles boiled in sheep intestine water.  I got through most of the potatoes and almost threw up when I choked down three bites of the noodles.  There were bits of intestine in there and it tasted like animal product.  Aigul is a pretty perceptive lady and was asking me if I was ok.  I was like yeah, I am fine!  I kept eating until I honestly thought I was going to vomit when I saw a chunk in my noodles.  I then told her I was “toydum” (full) from an ice-cream cone I bought earlier at the bazaar.  That seemed to make sense to her and she was OK with me not finishing.  (Come to find out a week or so later, eating icecream before dinner is not that uncommon here, so perhaps that is why this worked out to my benefit)  I was proud of myself for getting that far into the meal.  I kept my composure a lot better than I would have guessed.  I think she only noticed, because normally I gobble down whatever she makes.  It is always SOOO good!  Possibly one of the highlights of this happening was when I was sitting at the table looking at my HM in the kitchen and I asked “where did the sheep go?” and her response was to laugh REALLY hard and say “Megan, it is off guesting at a friend’s…” She is a great lady with an awesome sense of humor.

And honestly, that was my first time NOT being able to eat whatever I have been served.  Overall the food has been AMAZING.  And with the language barrier that I am working with I normally have ZERO idea what type of meat or other product I am consuming, so I just go with the flow.  In Krygyz they call all meat, MEAT.  They don’t differentiate which type of meat it is, they have one word for meat and that is what they call everything.  So, if I don’t ask more about it, they don’t say.  It works out great for me so I don’t have to think about what I am ingesting.  I can down anything if it is shelled in a delicious homemade noodle.  Well, as long as it wasn’t boiled in intestine water.  :)

I am alive!!

Alright, so where to begin?  I left Alaska the night of the 23^rd and what an emotional rollercoaster that was.  Saying “see ya later” to everyone was just as hard as I imagined plus some.   Thankfully I was able to see most everyone (there were a few I missed and I am super sorry that the timeline didn’t work out for that) and we even had a taco night at my parent’s house for the final round of goodbye’s.  After the tears were shed and I was on my way to the airport things started to sink in the wow, I was really getting ready to leave Alaska…  That is when the freak out of packing began.  Thank heavens for Timothy’s patience as I sat on his living room floor and flung things out of my bag and packed and re-packed things into different ways.   But everything worked out and I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. 

Next came the 10 hours of flying to get to staging in Philadelphia.  There was another PC Trainee who was on my Phoenix to Philly flight and that was a blessing.  Since neither of us knew what exactly we should do with our 2+ years of baggage and a hotel that was 20 minutes away.  Our minds combined got us there and so began the staging portion of my PC adventure.  After we checked in Matt (from Flagstaff, Arizona) and I went to dinner and did some last minute shopping before passing out for the night.  I woke up in the morning to my roommate showing up from Montana.  Kimi is awesome and I totally lucked out having her as my roomie for the next week. 

That afternoon was the staging event.  I won’t bore with details of how that was.  It was a lot of “this is your future” and “you need to know this information before we let you leave America on our dime” sort of stuff. 

And I am just going to jump forward since I am running low on time.  Kyrgyzstan is amazingly beautiful and I am having a great time here.  The other trainee’s are awesome.  My language group (ie the people I spend a majority of everyday with) are bomb.  Couldn’t ask for a better group.  I have a great teacher too, so the language is coming along.  Sometimes it is still frustrating, but we keep reminding each other that we have only been in the country for a week and half.  It is HARD, but it is starting to make more sense to me.  Thank goodness, because living in a house with my host family not being able to speak more than like 5 words was getting old.  Language lessons have been intense, but VERY helpful.  We go to school full days 5 days a week and half day on Saturday.  8:30 – 5pm.  But we have 2 tea breaks for 30 minutes each and also an hour long lunch.  Food and drink are SUPER important here.  No wonder they tell us we will gain weight.  It is delicious and they force it on you.  Fresh made non (bread) every two days at my house.  YUM! 

Thankfully, I am starting to be able to form sentences though.  And while I still depend on hand gestures and my English-Kyrgyz dictionary A LOT it is getting better and easier to communicate at my home-stay.  Speaking of which: My family is awesome.  Men Ata (my dad), Ruslan, is an upper something or other in the militsia (their police) and men Apa (my mom), Aigul, stays at home to care for the 6 month old baby, Daniel.  There is also 15 year old boy, Asamat and a 12 year old girl, Aidi.  Both are super cool kids and they help me with Kyrgyz and I help them with English.  Great teaching relationships.  They treat me so well.  It is pretty nice.  I get along with them well.  Thank heavens. 

I don’t know much more about my job yet.  We won’t know where we are going until May 4^th.  At that point I can give you more info on how the next two years will be for me.  We will just have to wait and see.  We have interviews in the next week or two about where we would like to be placed.  I am pretty open to all the different options.  More on that later when things start to get figured out. 

I am going to get going now since I am writing this at night and I am uber tired.  They told us to expect to sleep between 10 and 12 hours a night during the first few months, but I didn’t believe them.  Holy hells were they telling the truth.  Learning a new language and being constantly on mental awareness trying to figure out what is going on really takes it out of ya. 

I will update more later.  It looks like I will only have internet access every few days.  It may only be once a week.  So if you are sending me emails, I am not ignoring you.  I promise.