valerie
January 17, 2025 - don’t tell the birds I know where their rendezvous point is (the other one is the school roof)
January 15, 2025 - when I was in Bishkek during my winter break, my (now) fiancé requested that I try sprats 🙃 reminded me of smoked salmon
January 14, 2025 - picture from last Thursday. You can see how it snowed in the valley north of my village. (There is another village there that I have not been to, but want to go to)
January 12, 2025 - my host sister made cinnamon rolls yesterday 🙂 they’re different from American style, of course, but they’re not bad! My only concern is how she made the cream on top, so I only ate half of one yesterday…(because I’m lactose intolerant 🙃)
January 11, 2025 - I finally bought traditional Kyrgyz clothes! There are two pieces here, a vest (чыптама) that you wear with a shirt underneath (usually white), and a wrap-around skirt (белдемчи). Looking forward to the next holiday when people usually wear these clothes! (probably Nooruz)
January 10, 2025 - hosted a reflection session for local English teachers. I gave 3 questions about 2025, asked them to choose one question to write an answer to and put their answer on the board. The questions came from Year Compass, and I also gave them the website (it’s available in Kyrgyz, too!)
January 9, 2025 - some huge clouds passed through my village yesterday. However, unlike Bishkek, there was no snow
January 8, 2025 - horses grazing in the morning. My first run of 2025! My goal is to run at least once a week. I know that’s not very consistent for running, but my hope is that it will be more consistent than last year
January 7, 2025 - yesterday’s strange cloud cover. The forecast showed a chance of snow, but alas, it did not. There’s another chance tonight, but I’m not convinced that we will see any
January 6, 2025 - dough was too thick, but otherwise our pizza yesterday turned out not bad, especially for Kyrgyz style pizza. The peace sign covering part of the pizza is my host sister
January 5, 2025 - relatively new sculpture in Kochkor’s small central park, located in front of the cinema, honoring a Kyrgyz film director who worked during the Soviet Union named Gennedy Bazarov
January 3, 2025 - leftovers from a Chinese fast food restaurant. things like this are part of what make Kyrgyzstan so funny to me. As I’ve heard other volunteers say, “copyright law basically doesn’t exist here”
December 30, 2024 - some ‘bitter manhole’ for sale at Osh Bazaar. Горькая literally translates from Russian as ‘bitter’, so I understand why that word is in the English translation, but I’m not sure how ‘manhole’ got there
December 29, 2024 - a little produce shop in Bishkek. I thought it was funny how the shelves have been labeled with different prices over time
December 27, 2024 - road from Naryn City to Kochkor again, this time closer to Naryn City (yes, this was taken from inside a car 😅)
December 26, 2024 - I finished the 2nd grade Kyrgyz music textbook, so I started the 2nd grade Kyrgyz language textbook. Makes me wonder if I’m stupid when I read a text like this and feel like I got nothing at the end of it! But it’s okay, my Kyrgyz teacher will help me understand it
