valerie
October 20, 2025 - Taiwan is so controversial that this boba shop removed “Taiwan” from their decor. (To be fair, it’s not uncommon for Chinese people to come to Kyrgyzstan for work, and I assume most of those people are from the mainland, where Taiwan is known as ‘Taiwan province’)
October 19, 2025 - our first strudel attempt. The dough was too thick, but oh well. We’ll try again another time
October 18, 2025 - a street of houses on the way from our apartment building to a supermarket nearby
October 17, 2025 - intricate picture drawn by one of my students, but apparently not important enough to take home from school
October 16, 2025 - someone brought a shopping cart into our apartment building. I assume they were moving something, but it was kind of strange to see, considering there are very few supermarkets with shopping carts this big in Bishkek
October 14, 2025 - simple, satisfying meal for our Sunday night family dinner. My lovely fiancé did all of the hard work 😊
(a cafe near us offers discounted Sunday meals for ‘families’. We were told that day that we don’t qualify as a family bc we don’t have kids…hence my salty stress on family)
October 13, 2025 - even my Russian fiancé has no idea what these Snickers bars are referring to…must be about an event or group or joke that we are just out of the loop on?
October 11, 2025 - small stream of water near an end of the line bus stop, where we were waiting for a bus after eating Georgian food (which I didn’t take a picture of 😭 but it was so good)
October 9, 2025 - same cat I posted a picture of at the beginning of September, this time sleeping next to food that someone left it 😁
October 7, 2025 - was shocked to see Tampax brand tampons, which I have not seen in Kyrgyzstan before. Most of all, was shocked to see tampons with plastic applicators…all other tampons I’ve seen are without them
October 6, 2025 - cookies I made last week. They were very good, but almost too sickly sweet, because we didn’t have many plain oats left. I compromised by using two packets of instant oatmeal (with sugar) along with the original amount of sugar noted in the recipe ……
October 3, 2025 - my school treated teachers to dinner for Teacher’s Day. The sushi, soup, and dessert that we got were great. Unfortunately, I don’t like lasagna, even though a lot of people seem to. I texted my fiancé saying that I was bringing lasagna home…turns out he doesn’t like it either 😂😭
October 1, 2025 - another Cat of Bishkek that I saw last week. It also had a few friends that I didn’t get in the picture
September 30, 2025 - back to the 14k I ran last week. This was the start and finish line at Ala-Too Square (at least for the marathon, half marathon, and 14k. The 5k started in a different place but also finished here)
September 29, 2025 - new electric buses (that are not trolleybuses) slowly being rolled into Bishkek’s bus fleet
September 28, 2025 - a cat sitting outside of a pet store which refused treats that we bought from said pet store
