So this month has been going by so fast! I feel like I’ve really settled into a rhythm here, which feels really good. School has been pretty uneventful. We’re really in the final stretch of the year by now. I only have three more full weeks of school, because May is so full of holidays. The last day of school is May 25, but with all of the holidays, we’re so close to being done. All of you still in school – you may not believe when people say that the teachers are as excited, if not more, for breaks, but it’s so true. I like my school and my kids and all, but I am very excited for summer break to start.
Last weekend was Orthodox Christian Easter. Susan, another volunteer here, is Orthodox, so she goes to church a lot. Saturday night, Anthony and I went to church with her. The service was supposed to start at 11 PM. It ended up starting around 11:30, and ending at 3:30 AM. The service itself was very different from any Christian service I’d been to before. There were two people standing behind a divider who chanted pretty much the whole time, plus a priest who also chanted. The congregation was pretty uninvolved, except for constantly crossing themselves. Early in the service, we all lit candles and walked outside around the church, then came back in. There are no seats in the church, so we all had to stand in a small, hot room full of incense the whole time. About half-way through, I started feeling really lightheaded, so I went outside to get some fresh air and to sit down. I then ended up making all sorts of friends. It was weird to be surrounded by so many Russians, since we don’t have that many here and they’re usually far outnumbered by the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. Since I don’t speak much Russian, it was interesting to try to talk to these guys. In the couple hours I spent outside, I had three guys tell me they love me. Two of them were standing with me at the same time and have set up a duel (like Puskin, the famous Russian writer), complete with pistols and all. Near the end of the service, two guys came up to me, one was in his mid-twenties, and one in his teens. The older one (Mischa) spoke some English, and the younger one (his brother) spoke Kyrgyz. So we had an interesting conversation, where Mischa would say stuff in English, and if he didn’t know something in English, he would say it in Russian to his brother, who would then say it in Kyrgyz to me. We did pretty well with this operation. Early on, they were asking me what I did here, and where I work. When I told them what school I teach at, Mischa looked at me and said “I teach there too!”. Turns out, he’s the “informatika” (computer, kind of) teacher. He was also taught by my counterpart and her former volunteer. He’s a really nice guy, and it’s nice to meet someone closer to my age. I may meet with him about once a week to help him with his English.
Otherwise, some of the most exciting things in my life recently have been food-related (isn’t that always true)? Two weeks ago, I found a flyer in my door handle advertising (in Russian) a new pizza delivery place. I’ve now ordered from them twice, and am very impressed. The first time, we got this: (yeah, I was so excited I had to take a picture).
We ordered “ground beef” pizza, and we got ground beef, olives, and pickles (actually a surprisingly pleasant addition to pizza. I’m a fan of it now!). The flyer advertized that it would be at my apartment in “29 minutes and 59 seconds”. It showed up around 32 minutes after we called, but I’m still very impressed.
I also found ice cream cake this week. We got one on Sunday for Susan for Easter (she had given up meat and dairy for Lent) and two pizzas (for 7 of us, not just the three). It was amazing. It felt like a real American birthday party.
I like that I’m finding the comforts that make life just that much more pleasant, plus becoming happier with whatever I can get here. It’s nice to have a life that seems to make more sense here now that I have such a rhythm I’m living through.
As for this summer, I have finally settled on a trip to take (the third try at a plan). In mid August, I’m heading to India to go to Mumbai and to lie on a beach with a bunch of hippie tourists in Goa. I’m very excited to be going back, and to see the ocean again.
Also, since I talk so much about how much I love my 5th form kids, here are some pictures of my 5 “A” class that I took last week.

These are four of my best students

Who knew Kyrgyzstan would make me like boys? These little boys are amazing. The one on the right is a good student too.

These girls are cuties too

Some of the ... quieter students.

After I took these pictures, the kids started talking (in Russian) about why I was taking pictures of them. One of them guessed that maybe I was leaving, and another said "no! She's staying for three more years with us!". I don't want to break his heart with the truth, but they'll be surprised to see me this week

And now to add to the “things I will never hope to understand” / “reasons I’m sure this is all just an extremely elaborate episode of ‘Punkd’ (if Ashton Kutcher were to jump out of the bushes one day, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest)”: Yesterday, I had a few hours between classes, so I went to the closest café to get a pot of tea and read for a while. As I was sitting there, an old woman came in, sat down, and started doing something with her socks. A woman who works at the café went over and was talking to her. They both stood up and walked to a very specific place in the café (which happened to be about two feet away from me). The younger woman squatted down, and the older one muttered something (I’m assuming some sort of prayer), and they both “omeened” their hands (holding them in front of them like a book, then rubbing them over their faces – it’s done at the end of every meal and often during religious ceremonies). The older woman then took her right shoe off and pressed her foot forcefully into the younger woman’s neck. The younger woman grunted. They repeated that again. Then, the older woman put her shoe back on, turned to the younger woman, and wacked her on the back a few times. The younger woman then stood up and went to work in the back. The older woman washed her hands at the sink and left the café.
Another oddity, and one that I understand even less, has to do with my landlady. She’s Russian, and Christian, which is why I’m so surprised by it, because there’s less of an excuse to not understand. The last two times I have gone to her apartment to pay her for the month ($75 for rent and $5 for water, trash, electricity, and gas – hard to beat), there have been men at her door. They ring the bell, and she opens the door, spears a few pieces of food (the first time it was apple, last time it was bread) on a fork, and feeds it to them. She then gives them a few sips of water, and they give her some money. They then turn to leave, and she closes the door and turns to me like nothing happened. Needless to say, I’m very confused, but my Russian is definitely not strong enough to ask (the closest I can think is “what apple water man”. I don’t think I would understand her response even if she did understand me).
My landlady and I do have an interesting relationship, though. Since we really can’t talk to each other, we’ve bonded over the few words of Russian I know and the few of Kyrgyz she knows. Other than that, it’s a lot of pantomiming (this month, she was asking if there was any leaking like there used to be. That meant she said “vada (water)” and pointed to the ceiling, and made rain-like hand motions. I understood, and answered in Russian, she gave me a pat on the back and a cookie. I like the way this is going.
Last week was spring break for me, which was nice. I pretty much just relaxed around here, besides one small trip down to Uzgen, a town about an hour south of me, to see the silk road ruins and the pretty bazaar and have lunch with the only other volunteer in the area on spring break. It was nice to have time to relax here, though. School started again this Wednesday, and we’re now on the “summer schedule”, meaning we start at 7:30. That means that two days a week, I have to get up at 6:00 in order to eat some breakfast and get to school on time. It’s a bit rough, but at least it’s only two days of the week… I agreed, along with Fritz and Martha, to do a club for Ginger’s counterpart who teaches at the Uzbek university’s lyceum (grades 1-11) on Wednesdays. It should be a lot of fun – they picked the best students from 6th-9th grades (with one university student and a few teachers as well), and asked us to talk about American culture. I’m excited, because the kids are super cute, and you’ve probably all noticed that I have a great love of Uzbeks, so the room full of adorable Uzbek children is very exciting for me.
School’s gone well this week too. Just to give you a taste of what we do, here’s yesterday’s 5th form lesson:
We started by singing “the ants go marching”, which they loved. This country is turning me into someone who actually sings in front of people. We then went over the vocabulary they didn’t know from the song, and quizzed them on it via miming. Then we taught them “need” “want” “need to” and “want to”. We asked them each what they wanted, needed, wanted to do, and needed to do, to get them to practice. The week before spring break, we’d given them a story to read and translate, so I then read it to them, and they followed along on their sheets. We then asked them comprehension questions about the story. For homework, we told them to write about what their family does in the evenings (related to the story we read).
So that’s a pretty typical class for me, for the 5th form, that is. They’re a lot of fun to play with because they’re all so cute and excited about everything. As long as I never get upset that they never do their homework, they’re amazing…
This weekend, I’m going to my old village on Saturday to watch my family make sumolok (a Nooruz tradition, it’s a wheaty thing they boil down for hours – I’ll write more after this weekend). Then Saturday night is the big birthday party, finally. I’m sure I’ll have more to report later.
Happy spring to everyone!