valerie

May 12, 2024 - I’m not a hat person, but oh my god, sunny, 20°C/68°F+ weather at 1,900 m/6233 ft elevation doesn’t feel great! So I went hat shopping in Bishkek and saw this. I was very tempted to buy it.. 😂

white cap with black embroidered cursive text that reads, "Great! but not good enough"

May 11, 2024 - a few days ago, my grandma made чөбөгө, a kind of spread made from butter

Milk fat frying in oil in a large, gray wok-like pot

May 10, 2024 - recent morning run 😊

snow-capped mountains with pink morning light reflecting off the tops

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 сирень because of this song, and I had to translate it to English 🙃)

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

small ancient-looking building made of brown stone/clay(?) with a small domed roof and, a slightly higher wall in front with columns on the right and left sides. wall of a small enclosure made of the same material visible behind, and snow-capped mountains behind that

May 7, 2024 - find the car!

view from high on a big hill/small mountain, looking across at other big hills/small mountains and the valley below, with a dirt road and white car on it

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)

plastic blue and white separator, with milk coming out and going into a separate blue bucket on the left side, and yellowish cream coming out and going into a pot on the right

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 быжы, like Kyrgyz sausage made with meat, rice, and sometimes some herbs or vegetables. If it was быжы, I’m sad I didn’t get to try it, because I like it 😂

sliced cucumbers and tomatoes around two stacked 'balls' of sausage, with a carrot protruding from the top ball so that the whole thing looks like a duck

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

a small pile of brush, with half of it on fire

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

decorated red and white cake on a plastic, black platter with two gold 1 candles on top

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

mountains in the background, bridge in the foreground over a dry riverbed. a red car parked to the right, off of but next to the bridge

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

small jar of light green guacamole with an orange price sticker reading 388

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

walled canal. grate over a small waterfall with some sticks, trash and a pink hat on this grate

April 28, 2024 - road back to my community/village during a recent morning walk

road leading to a village with mountains in the background

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

hotel room with two twin beds, a window on the wall at the back of the room between the beds, a wardrobe to the left, and a desk and chair on the right

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 😁 way less intimidating to me than riding a horse)

donkey with a saddle standing next to a fence, all in front of small, brown hills

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

brown calf standing in a yard on the right side of the photo looking at the camera

April 24, 2024 - today’s morning light as seen from a street in my village

orange sunrise on the horizon and a couple dark blue/purple clouds mostly covering a pale blue sky. dirt road in the foreground with houses on both sides

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 😔 I wonder what it looks like here when it snows

house at the base of 6 brown hills, snow-capped mountains visible in the distance

April 22, 2024 - blossoms and a bee against a blue sky

pink blossoms on thin branches in the top half of the picture, over a blue sky

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

snow-capped mountains at dawn with a gray cloud separating the peaks from the sky

April 20, 2024 - small ice skating rink in Almaty in early January

skating on a small ice skating rink next to a shopping mall

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

ping pong set in a plastic case including a net, two paddles and three orange balls

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

broken pieces of colored chalk haphazardly strewn about a narrow, white counter top