Big news, everyone! Yesterday I bought a kitten! She is the best 100 som ($2.50) I've ever spent! She's three weeks old and beyond adorable. I'm still working on names, but right now I'm thinking "Peri", which means fairy in Kyrgyz (it comes from Persian folktales -- "Peris are descended from fallen angels who have been denied paradise until they have done penance. In earlier sources they are described as agents of evil; later, they are benevolent. They are exquisite, winged, fairy-like creatures ranking between angels and evil spirits. They sometimes visit the realm of mortals" -- thanks wikipedia).

In other, non-cat-related news, we have the new set of volunteers coming for a visit this week! They get here tomorrow. We're all very excited to meet our new best friends. Also, it's the last week of school here, so summer is upon us! I'm excited for school to be out and my summer adventures to begin.

So, the year is definitely winding down, as the temperatures go up... I'm not quite sure how many more weeks of school I have left (my counterpart also doesn't know...), but it could be between two and four. I'm betting on two, but don't hold me to that. As the days have become increasingly gorgeous, I've been finally motivating myself to spend more and more time outside. My school is pretty much in the opposite corner of the city from my apartment, so I always assumed it would take hours to walk to school. Then, one day a few weeks ago, I decided to experiment. It turns out it only takes about 30 minutes to walk from the center, and about 45 from my apartment. I have started walking to and from school as much as possible, which I'm really enjoying. I walk down some railroad tracks most of the way, so I don't have to worry about traffic or even many people, except for the occasional train, which is more exciting than anything else. It's a great way to take up some of that free time I talk about so much, save some money (12 som a day for marshrutkas! That's... 30 cents...), and get to actually move a little. I've also been going for more walks in the hills behind my apartment, which is really relaxing. I love how quickly I can get out of the city and into what feels like the middle of nowhere. Once I turn off onto the dirt road that leads up the hills, the only people I ever see are the shepards and plenty of sheep. When I went up this week, however, I came across a freshly dug coffin-sized hole in the middle of the field, which is a little disconcerting...
This week was full of Kyrgyz holidays, so I haven't had much school recently. On Tuesday, Ginger's counterpart, who I've met a few times before, invited me and Fritz and Ginger to her apartment (in a "microrayon" (a city within a city) called Spudnik) to go "guesting". It was such a pleasant experience! We met her young kids and her husband, who was really nice. She made a full spread of Kyrgyz food and salads which was really delicious. I also had my first (and probably last) sip of komus (fermented mare's milk). Gulbara's husband poured us each a large bowl full of the carbonated milky liquid with brown chunks floating in it out of a dirctly recycled soda bottle. The three of us looked at eachother, and decided that there was no time like the present, so we all took a sip at the same time. The taste was ... unusual. It's much smokier than I anicipated. It tasted a lot like hickory, as Fritz pointed out. As we all sat there, we metally checked on our throats, hoping we wouldn't have a horrible allergic reaction (some people are deathly allergic to horse products, which you don't quite figure out until you comet to Krygyzstan...), but luckily none came. Fritz drank a few more sips to be polite, but I couldn't force more than that first one down without gagging, so I left it. Besides the komus, we had a great time and even walked away from the day with presents and food in hand!
And in exciting news, last night a bunch of us went to Sarah's apartment to celebrate her birthday (by eating tacos!). While we were sitting around before dinner, Ginger suddenly screamed something. We looked down and saw that she had just been stung by a scorpion! Her foot got really swollen and red and obviously hurt a lot, but the doctors said she should be fine in a few days. She and Fritz are heading to Bishkek today, and then they're flying home to America (this trip was already planned) for their son's graduation.
Good luck with the end of the semester, to those of whom are affected by it. I'm off to walk to work!

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!

So, the past few weeks have been full of drama. I had a normal, full week of classes and everything, but it was all done in a sort of daze, since I kept being constantly updated about drama going on within Peace Corps. Though it doesn't directly effect me, it has effected some of my good friends and my confidence in my position and security here has taken a huge hit. I can't say what happened (security measures...), but needless to say, four (five actually, but one is from an unrelated incident) volunteers are leaving on Friday to go back home, because they're getting kicked out of Peace Corps. The frustrating part for me is the futility of the whole thing -- three of the four getting sent home were not at all in the wrong for anything that happened. One of them was my good friend and Oblast-mate, so it's going to be hard with him gone. He came into town yesterday to say his final goodbyes, and we saw him off this morning. The political situation here is on shaky ground, and we're all just hoping that the political problems don't mean more problems for us and our service here.
In better news, I'm on spring break here, and getting excited for a joint 3 person birthday party (Mexican dinner/"NOW... That's What I Call Music"/Enrique themed...) this weekend. So, I'm pretty much floating at the moment, but hopefully this will pass and everything should be more secure soon.

So, we've invented a word that often summerizes our lives here. The word is CAWA (pronounced kah wah). It stands for "central asia wins again". It's part of the "embrace the chaos" theory that is the only way to survive and thrive in this country sometimes.
This week is PDM (project design and managment), a PC training in Bishkek. It's the last time our whole group will be together until COS (close of service) conference in May 2010. Or, that is, it's supposed to be a group thing. Yesterday was the travel day to get to Bishkek, so Sarah, Ariel and I left Sarah's house at 7 AM to drive to Bishkek. The Jalalabad airport only flys on Wednesday and Sunday, so to fly, we would have had to drive to Osh and take a flight from there. In all, it would have taken longer and cost a lot more to fly than it would have to drive, and the drive is beautiful. It's supposed to be a great way to see the mountains. Sarah did the drive to and back within the last month, and said it was great.
We had driven over half-way there, admiring the mountains, the gorgeous teal water of the Naryn river, and just the spectacular scenery, when we stopped at a random stop thingy about 150 kilometers from Bishkek. We sat there for about an hour, when our driver finally told us that there had been an avalanche (in which seven people had died) so we wouldn't be able to get through for 3-5 days. We talked with the police there, some Peace Corps people, and the driver, until we finally decided that our only option was to turn around and drive all the way to Osh. We were speeding down the windy mountian roads, coming in and out of cell phone reception, obviously, trying to organize our flight. Bryan, another volunteer, was in Osh trying to find flights for all of us (there were 8 volunteers and 5 counterparts all driving at the same time). Somehow, all of the flights were full until Thursday, so we finally realized that we are literally stuck in the South. After finishing rewatching the fourth season of LOST, I have strong theories that we're not meant to leave the South. There are strong forces at work here.
So now, I'm back in Jalalabad, about to head to Osh. On Thursday, the people who are wardens are flying out for warden training, and I'll head back home. We're not sure what's really going to happen, but PC claims they're going to probably have a mini PDM down here for the 8 of us and our counterparts to take part in since we need the training.
Now we have an unexpectedly free week, so we're going to discuss grants and projects in Osh, in an attempt to put on our own PDM without Peace Corps's help. CAWA is all I can say. Just CAWA.

So I'm getting comfortable in my apartment now. Decorations-wise, it's still a work in progress (Martha stole the only hammer we own, so I'm at a standstill now), but here are preliminary pictures, to give you a little idea how I'm living now.



so, again, I have a lot of free time. Here's the layout of my apartment



























The stairway leading to my apartment. Kind of scary and dark at night. Thanks for the flashlight keychain, Mom. You've saved my ankles.


















The view from the front door, into the bedroom
















The living room (I have big plans for this room's decor)















Books and stuff
















So, in moving my couch, other volunteers found that it could be split into two parts. So now the couch top sits on the floor, and the legs are propped up on their side, covered in fabric, and splitting the otherwise oppressively large room into two. This section is the "Turkish lounge".









These are the couch legs. Lovely, right?















Ugly, uncomfortable chairs and two greats of Russian literature. This is the unused half of the living room.











The "sun porch". I'm very excited for spring out here.




















Lots of windows














The view from the sun porch















My dumpster is over there, and more apartments

























The kitchen



















































View into the kitchen from the hall.


























Pots, pans, dishes...

The stove (it works surprisingly well)

My bedroom. You can't see it,but when my sleeping bag (thanks Mom!) is spread out, I think it looks like a flying squirrel

My bedroom wall

My closet/dresser. Plus, my bedroom doubles as the Jalalabad library.

Books. Lots of them.

THe view from my bedroom balcony.

My window box. I may try to actually do something with this.

The view

The toilet room. Admittingly, not the loveliest part. Don't mind the things growing around the pipes.

The shower. It's been over a week since I last had poop coming out of the drain, so that's a big improvement. It also explains the bucket in the tub.

The shower room

Also, I got the fence project from my old village finalized.

The much-hated fence

Oh, and I went to Osh last weekend. We climbed Sulayman mountain again.

Prayer flags tied to the trees