valerie
May 9, 2024 - the lilacs are in bloom, and some students have been bringing bunches of it to school. some of my students gave me these. (also, I didn’t know that these were lilacs at first…I only knew the Russian name ัะธัะตะฝั because of this song, and I had to translate it to English ๐)
May 8, 2024 - made it to a new and further landmark on my morning run. To be honest, I don’t know what exactly this building is or what it is/was used for. It’s very small. The inside is like the size of a small walk-in closet
May 6, 2024 - separator that my host mom uses to separate the fat from milk. The milk on the left will be used to make airan (milk-based drink) and suzmo (like milk solid kind of lumps used to make kurut). the yellowish cream on the right will be used to make sari mai (essentially Kyrgyz butter)
May 5, 2024 - when we went guesting to a family friend’s house a few days ago, the mother made this. I believe it is ะฑัะถั, like Kyrgyz sausage made with meat, rice, and sometimes some herbs or vegetables. If it was ะฑัะถั, I’m sad I didn’t get to try it, because I like it ๐
May 4, 2024 - yesterday evening worked with my host family in one of their fields, collecting dead plant stuff and trash. then we burned it. my family will plant potatoes here
May 3, 2024 - my host sister’s birthday was actually yesterday, but we didn’t get to celebrate until today because yesterday we went guesting to the family friends who live in the mountains
May 2, 2024 - my phone was unputdownable today as I had an opportunity to climb some small hills and had great views. not sure if anyone would recognize the mountains in the distance on the left, but I’ve shown those before in some of my morning walk/run photos
May 1, 2024 - left the bubble of my village boundaries and went on a walk towards a big rock/hill/small mountain I want to climb. this was taken on the way
April 30, 2024 - should have taken a hint from the fact that it seems to say “guacamole WITH avocado”, what else would it be with? tastes like weird mayonnaise with vague avocado flavor. still going to try my best to eat all of it considering how expensive it was. way better guacamole in my hometown
April 29, 2024 - was on a bridge over this canal with my host sister and her friend. The friend was wearing a pink hat, but a drift blew it off her head and into the water before she could catch it. the hat settled here for about a minute, then dropped and disappeared beneath the small waterfall
April 27, 2024 - we had a surprise emergency consolidation drill yesterday in which all volunteers in my country had to travel to their assigned consolidation point (usually their regional center). After a debriefing about how the drill went, we were able to relax. Here was my shared hotel room
April 26, 2024 - host family friend’s critter that I saw last weekend at their house. and they let me ride it. (I did not ask for that, I was more strongly urged to do it. But it was a nice and controlled stroll ๐ way less intimidating to me than riding a horse)
April 25, 2024 - this is Zoya. I asked why Zoya, and my host mom said, “because it is short and easy to say”. I accidentally let Zoya out of our yard last week. Luckily, some random guy on the street helped me get her back home. She’s almost 2 weeks old now. I assume she has a spine
April 23, 2024 - I love this picture, so I’m posting it for dreamy. house of my host family’s friends. We visited this past weekend, and I had such a large itch to climb all the hills around that I unfortunately didn’t get to scratch ๐ I wonder what it looks like here when it snows
April 21, 2024 - It’s hard to pick one picture for mountain since I live around them and take pictures of them almost daily. this one was from a recent morning run
April 19, 2024 - when in Bishkek, I bought a ping pong set for my host sister’s birthday (May). we don’t really have a table to play on…my hope is that she will still have some fun with it with her friends, and I’ll play with her as well. I plan to take it out of the plastic and put it in a gift bag
April 18, 2024 - was in a bit of a bad mood when I returned to school yesterday after only being out for 2 school days and found our chalk like this. the box of chalk under the yellow cloth was fairly new when I left. And my coteachers never buy colored chalk, it’s always me
April 17, 2024 - transcendence - my host mom’s cooking. she made these things for Ait. I don’t remember what she called it, something like sweet boorsok? She said it is Uzbek and she had never made them before, she just found the recipe on the internet and tried it. I love that energy
