Fly Files

This blog will be dedicated to flies. I feel comfortable discussing this with you all, now that it is winter and most of them are dead. The flies in Kyrgyzstan are freaks of nature. I kid you not, they are mini dragons sent from the gates of hell to torture us. You may think I am exaggerating, but I cannot stress enough how awful they are.

Not only are they HUGE, but also the loudest bugs I have ever heard in real life. During the summers, they at least have the decency to stay outside. However, we also eat outside. So during meal prep and eating, the flies fly around all fly like and touch your hands, face and food. Spreading diseases and bacteria, and giving every PCV diarrhea.  

During fall, as the outside becomes colder, they begin to invade your house! They come in and breed like crazy. I must say, living on a farm you see a lot of animal sex, but the grossest is fly sex. It's depressing and brief, and there is nothing you can do about it. You can only sit and watch it happen to you, and then later try to suppress the memory.

For two months, there was a upsetting consistency in my room. I constantly had a single fly in my room. Always one fly. I would wake up, find a few on my window, quickly kill them and then - like a taunting ghost - I would hear a faint buzz somewhere. The next morning I would find that fly and kill it. A few minutes later, the buzz would start again. I quickly felt like I was slowly going insane. I mean you would too if there was always a single fly in your room. Without fail, the fly was there.

So now that its winter, they are more or less dead. I finally have some peace.

Also, here are some pictures from the past few weeks:

Went to a Wedding! 

The Bride and Groom looking awkward 

For some reason this photo won't rotate. But this is my family!

THANKSGIVING HAPPENED!

I was pretty happy about the food.

These are the ladies. Remember their faces.

At the American Corner in Kant, they had a Thanksgiving celebration

Pin the Tail on the Donkey. You know, a classic Thanksgiving game.

My grandma tried to make me make her food - she doesn't quite realize I am not a kalyen - so my brother helped out. He's the best!

The mountains near my house. Pretty beautiful, huh?

Elections

As I'm sure most of you can assume, I am not the most thrilled about the election results recently. But, being in another country, I know they results do not directly affect me. And this blog post will be brief and will not be regard my concerns for the US, but instead, I think it's important to reflect on the rights and freedoms we have in America.

In Kyrgyzstan (the most democratic country in Central Asia) voting and elections are a right. It's incredibly important to the citizens here to have their political voice and accessibility to political movements. This might be the reason revolutions/protests happen so frequently. However, there is still a great deal of corruption and bribing in this country, which doesn't occur in the States. No matter your political views, we should all be appreciative and aware of our privileges. American may have its faults, but we should still be mindful of our liberties.

That's my two cents, I really have little to say in this blog. Life is about the same. Here are some pictures to prove it :)

My family has a horse (it has been in the mountains all summer) and we are in love! 

Karema watching WALL-E in my room 

1st snow! Winter is coming...

Dancing Kyrgyz style!

Simple pleasures

Updates!

Hello friends, family and onlookers!

The past month has been pretty uneventful in regards to the big important things but I have a lot of little updates. And since Those little things have now become my life, I will share them with you.

Work: I have finally settled in with my new counterpart, Aida. We work pretty well together, considering I have never sat and had tea with her or guested at her home. We don't really have a relationship outside of work, which is not really encouraged by Peace Corps, but it seems to be working for us. I'm just going to hope we get closer as we continue to work together. She is really busy, working with me and the secondary school, as well as the primary school. Plus she is a wife and mother and lives in a different village. So we just meet at school and work. She has been picking up my methodology of games and internation pretty quickly, which is lovely. And she's just a really nice lady all together.

Chinada still doesn't really need my help. Most of the time I feel like an assistant to her or a prop. I work less in her classes, which is far less fun. I have reduced my hours working with her by a lot. But all and all, this month has been pretty ok, work wise.


Home:

Our cow had a baby!! Her name is Betsy (that's right) and she's so stinkin cute! I didn't get to see the birth, which is a bummer. My new goal: see a cow or horse birth before I COS. I don't care to see a sheep birth...weird eyes, right?

My family took me to a Toi (feast) for some relatives 75th birthday. I went, and was completely underdressed but tried to have fun anyway. I took some wine shots with some random Eje's (my family still thinks I don't really drink. They're too cute). Here are some pictures from that awkward event.

My mom and dad dancing (aw)

Some drunk baike's dancing to Gangnam 

The dreaded Besh Barmak!

The kids at my house have now found my computer's Photobooth and will take over my room every once and a while.

My cousin, showing off his Kyrgyz smile. (For some reason in the country, they don't really smile for pictures. Something I don't know if I will get used to)

PCV Life:...is pretty boring. I spend most of my time reading or watching movies when I'm not at work. My family always jokes that I'm always in my room, but when I try to spend time with them, they are just watching Russian tv (which isn't as interesting as it sounds). So I wanted to document the usual night for Sarah Daniels. Eating fried potatoes, bread and tea by candlelight whilst watching a 90s sitcom. Pretty stellar. 

In Bishkek this fall there was a honey festival, bring the best part of the oblasts to me! The honey being held below changed my life and how I perceive this country as a whole. My family and I ate it within the month.   

And lastly, I went on a very short hike with a few friends around my village. It's pretty awesome to be living in an area with so much beauty. I know it sounds cheesy, but come on. 

So that's about it. Coming up: Baking at a really nice apartment and Chui welcome weekend for Halloween!

First Bell! -And the like

Hello Again!
I really am trying to make this blog thing more frequent. It is becoming more and more difficult to call because I have started working and all I want to do is sleep when I get home. But there have been some major events in the past month...so here goes a doozy.

At the beginning of August, I moved back in with my PST family (in the same village) and started our last phase of training. This mainly focused on teaching in kyrgyzstan and language. One week before training was over, I received a visit from Chinada, who was the counterpart of the volunteer before me. She came to tell me my counterpart, Meerim, has suddenly gotten married and resigned her post at the school! Yikes. So the next day I talk to my Peace Corps Program Manager and she informs me that yes, Meerim got married. Though I don't know the specifics, I haven't been able to get ahold of Meerim since the beginning of August (still), I do suspect she was bride kidnapped.

Side bar: Bride kidnapping is a Kyrgyz tradition, and it's exactly what it sounds like. These weddings can be semi-planned or completed forced by strangers. And it is so grossly underreported that any statistics of bride kidnapping will be wrong. No one knows really the percentages of marriage occur from bride kidnapping, how many are successful and how many aren't. The government mostly stays away from it and the vast majority don't really see it as a major problem. That being said, this will most likely be my last mention of bride kidnaping (I hope) because it is the main tradition the world knows about Kyrgyzstan. This country has so much to offer and incredible beauty, I wouldn't want my family and friends to be left with only knowing of this horrifying tradition. To me it is awful, as I'm sure it is to all of you reading, but I refuse to let that be your only impression of this country. Ok.

Anyway, so my counterpart whom I worked with all summer is gone. I had one week to prepare to work with Chinada - who has worked with plenty of volunteers before, her teaching methodology is great and her english skill is high for a teacher - and Aida - whom I had never met before and previously only taught primary school, so her english level is quite low. But, that's why I'm here. So at this point, I'm just hanging on day by day; trying to find ways to improve with Chinada, and trying to communicate any point to Aida. It's going to be a trying school year.



Moving on. The First Bell Ceremony in this country is considered a national holiday. The Soviet Union made education a priority for all citizens, and that tradition has stayed true. Here are a few pictures to sum up the day:

Songs are sung

Speeches are said

Bells are rung

Flowers are given

But all in all, life in the villages is pretty slow moving and unchanging. A day in the life of Sarah is as follows:
7:00 wake up - or have my eyes open but stay in bed until I absolutely have to and won't be late
8:00 get dressed and eat breakfast - sometimes 2 eggs, but mostly bread and tea
8:45 walk to school and try to keep up with my awesome counterpart
2:00 go home - nap, get fed by my family a lot, hang out with the farm animals, play games with my family, shenanigans
9:00 get into bed - hope that I can do it all over again

My Village!

So my last post was far too negative and I think it's time to give you a tour of my village.

International is in the Chui Oblast, only an hour outside of Bishkek. It was founded by Germans after the war, which is where it's name comes from. The village is pretty modern, it has several small shops, a clinic, a war monument and, of course, a school. Village life is pretty slow, I usually spend the day studying and then take a break with my family and we go get ice cream (in Kyrgyz its call "Cold Honey"). The village has about 3000 people in it, one of the larger villages in the area. Everyone is really nice, the kids will always yell "Hello! How are you?" to me no matter where I am coming from or going. I have been able to teach them "bye-bye", however now they just start saying that to me as a greeting. I might be approaching this whole teaching this wrong. 

Ak Telek (my school)

War Monument

My Home!

^ This what what guesting looks like ^

Arlen, my brother

Kalema, my niece

One of our Cows

Cezam, our dog (he is very old and riddled with fleas, but I love him!)

One of our chickens had chicks!

Beshbarmak

Guesting is a very important Kyrgyz tradition. In a nutshell, it’s having people over for dinner. Out of a nutshell, it’s so much more than that. It’s a sign of hospitality and is a production within itself, sometimes lasting 4-5 hours. Guesting usually is short notice and sometimes very far away. We travel to distant relatives homes (we being my Ata, Apa, the 5 year old and I) and proceed to guest.

The custom came about because the Kyrgyz were originally nomadic tribes and hospitality was greatly appreciated and sometimes (I assume) a necessity for survival.  The Kyrgyz still hold their hospitality to the highest standard. I have been in situations where I go to a community member’s home to ask one question, and I am no longer allowed to leave until I чай ич (drink tea) with them. This can be anywhere from one cup of tea and some bread to a full meal. And there is no way out of it, that much is true.

I am also pretty sure that I could feed myself very well for my entire service by visiting my community members every day. It would be a pretty great way to become assessable and visible, I have to say. But I digress…

This blog post is dedicated to the king of all guesting dishes. Beshbarmak.

Beshbarmak is a Kyrgyz national dish and its main ingredients (by which I mean only ingredients) are ramen noodles, onions and sheep bits. And as a palette cleanser we get the broth of the sheep to drink. But I have experienced several variations of this dish in the times I have been guesting. One is the dish alone. Another is the dish with a big piece of sheep bone on top for you to lick clean only to be accompanied by a filet of fat. The last, and most authentic, is the dish, the bone and every other piece of the sheep presented on the table. The men at the table shave off the meat on the head with a knife, the hooves act as a centerpiece, the organs are left in a bowl, and the innards are filled with sheep fat, served as an appetizer.

Now I don't want to seem culturally insensitive, in the blog or in person. Most Kyrgyz food is delicious and I want to bring it back to America in two years. It’s just unfortunate that the one food mostly served during guesting is the one that makes me retch.

So let’s raise a glass to Beshbarmak, I'll be seeing it a lot in the next two years!

  

How My Life Has Changed (part 1)

Outhouses

Milking cows

“Is this is Russian or Kyrgyz?”

Eating more cabbage than I ever have in my life

“No Water” or “No Lights” are weekly occurrences

Hitchhiking is now an acceptable form of transportation

Ice is a luxury I never knew I needed

I have a 5-year-old friend

Being woken up by roosters

Navigating through a stampede of cows everyday

...To Be Continued...

It's the End of the Beginning

It has been quite the week. I have officially been sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer (hold the applause)

Though now the work has begun! I'm lucky that I get to stay in the same village because the community already knows who I am, and most of the host mothers from PST work at my school. Now this summer it is all about building trust in my community, working with students and creating a relationship with my counterpart, Meerim.

To Sum Up:

Culture Day

Taxi Cabs in Kyrgyzstan

My Apa at Swearing In

Peace Corps Volunteer!

US Ambassador for Kyrgyzstan

Studying Away

Keeping the Silly faces going!