July 9's post

6'Today marks the end of the first week with my host family. Everything has been going really well. I got a little sick (as expected) for a few days, but I’m feeling much better today. My family is incredible. I have a mother, a father, three sisters (aged 10, 16, and 23). There’s also a 22 year-old boy, but he lives away from here on work. Supposedly, he asks about me every day on the phone. The girls are great. The 23 year-old is a high school chemistry and biology teacher in Bishkek, and is in and out of the house for the summer. The other two are so cute. The 10 year old (Benazeer) informed me yesterday (with the help of a Russian/English dictionary), that her future profession was to be a clown and practiced for me. The 16 year-old is really sweet and has impressive English, so she’s my resident translator. My mother and father are also great. They’re both really patient with my language and everything. On my second day here, my mother was going over all the names of the family, and my father kept pointing at himself, smiling really big, and saying “Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton”. We later had a “conversation” where he said “George Bish, Condaleeza Rice” and gave a thumbs down and made a bad face. Then he smiled and switched to a thumbs up and said “Bill Clinton. Albert Gore. Barack Obama”. He has an impressive knowledge of US politics…
I showed everyone pictures I brought from home recently. The comments were: whenever she saw a picture of Ashley, she would ask if that was my sister. She asked how old Mom and Dad were, and then asked what kind of exercise they do to stay so young. Whenever a picture of Dad would come up, she would smile and say “Jackshay!” (Good!) They also asked if Derek was a movie star.
Communication here is an adventure. There is a lot of smiling and nodding, with constant gesturing. I’m going to rock charades when I get home.
The house here is really nice. Most of the houses in my village are very similar. Apparently they were built by Germans… In the complex of my house, there is a main house with bedrooms and a living room. Next to this building is another building with a “summer kitchen”, where we usually eat, a kitchen, a storage room, and a “banya”. The banya is where they bathe, once a week. It’s a small room that they heat up like a sauna and sit in and bathe. Some people can last in the banya for 3 hours. Next to that building is a stable with sheep and a cow, then an outhouse and a sink. I like to show off that my outhouse is nice because it’s tiled, which is a point of pride in these parts. Behind the house, there’s a big garden, where they have apple trees, tomatoes, and other vegetables and flowers.
The Peace Corps split us all up into groups of about five (mine is down to four, because one girl is leaving tomorrow to go home). There are two groups in my village. We all meet together to eat lunch every day at people’s houses, which is a lot of fun. All of the mothers compete to outdo eachother every week, which makes the food amazing every day. The one that should be had to beat should be Chris’s. His family butchered a sheep in the morning before class, then served it to us for lunch. We also ate it in the yurt in his backyard.
The food here has been incredible. It’s all so fresh, which is new after living in America. My mother bakes bread every day, and most of the vegetables come from our garden. I’m assuming that the meat is also fresh, judging from Chris’s family. There’s also the best melon I have ever had. After putting out a strong, but unsuccessful attempt to like tomatoes in the US, Kyrgyzstan has finally won me over. Every day, I get a “salad” of tomatoes, cucumbers, and dill that is amazing. My mother decided that I don’t eat much (for Kyrgyz guest standards) because I’m a dancer. She tells everyone that when they try to force more food on me, which is great.
The host families are all really well trained by the Peace Corps to make us comfortable and safe. With all of the rules in place by the Peace Corps, I feel kind of like I’m 6 years old again, but it’s really safe. The Peace Corps takes great care of us. They gave us each a nice water purifier, so I have a gallon of clean water every day. If anything goes wrong with us, medically or safety-wise, there are great people to call who can fix anything. I also feel really safe in this community, which helps with the adjustment a lot.
The language is coming along. It’s getting confusing, with more endings added to the verbs and everything. I’m starting to feel like I can form more complex sentances now and everything. I can even pick up various words in people’s conversations, which is always a fun feeling.
The American culture here is funny. They show American TV and movies on TV, all dubbed into Russian. I fall asleep to 50 Cent, Jay Z, or other similar artists playing in the next room. My sister also really likes Hillary Duff. When I first got to my house, my sister was watching Scrubs.
The other volunteers are great. I really like my language group and my village, which is very important.
Just so no one worries: I haven’t gotten bride kidnapped, bitten by any animals, pickpocketed, forced vodka, or any serious illness.
I hope everyone is doing well on the home front. If anything important happens in the world or in your lives, call me (when I finally have a cell phone), text me, email me, write me, or any way you want. I’m pretty much as out of touch as you can get here from Thursday through Tuesday.
Village life seems to revolve around animals, so here’s an appropriate ending: an animal story.
Most families here have dogs. Mine is tied up and locked behind a fence. He growls and barks whenever I come in and doesn’t seem very nice. Chris, on the other hand, has two dogs who are both very skittish but nice. After just a few days at his house, he discovered that the dogs follow him wherever he goes. He calls them his bodyguards, since they protect him from the other dogs in the neighborhood. One day, he and his mom came to visit at my house, and they kept sneaking in the gate when we were standing outside. Chris and I thought it was funny, but my whole family kept chasing them out. Wherever Chris goes, he has these two dogs following directly behind him.
I’ll update this whenever I can.
Love to all!

Leslie