Dog Daze

O man. Time to catch up again! 

Host fam siblings

Here you can buy the famed fermented mare's milk, kymys.

Oh hi, Lenin.

The master plan itself

August:

-Consult a thermometer and confirm that the temperature inside your body is exactly four degrees cooler than the ambient temperature outside.

-Swim around in your own pool of sweat.

-In a conservative village where most women are married by 19, meet a tattooed, unmarried 25-year-old woman with a penchant for chess, jogging and talking about cannibalism. Fast friends.

-Discover where to buy lava lamps, legos, tie-dye, dildos and other gift items in Bishkek.

-Bed bugs? Check.

-Giardiasis? Check.

-Get a never-ending tour of the city because all of the buses travel in concentric circles around the place you actually want to go.

-Finally find out that the reason you see four shops on the same corner selling the same products is that, according to your host mom, people are just too impatient to wait in line.

-Flag down men in white vans every day. Take their candy. Feel normal about this.

-Summer camp! Props to Kyle for giving local university students the skills and initiative to head up workshops, with volunteers as auxiliary support. Get stoked when students bring up transgender and LGB folks in positive light, unprompted, during a workshop on gender.

-Come down with severe joint pain, vomiting and other unpleasantries. Then get pelted with rocks by children armed with slingshots.

-Disco with drag queens.

-Watch the red lines spread from your infections.

-Punch three new holes in your belt.

-Find all-natural peanut butter for a mere 60 som. Woohoo!

September

-Start a yoga group

-First bell! First day of school. First schedule – a.k.a. that piece of notebook paper tacked to the wall with so many eraser marks you can't read it. Schedule subject to daily change. One teacher doesn't know what subject she'll be teaching from one day to the next. Welcome to the post-Soviet system.

-Ignore red flags, as your counterpart – assigned to be your cultural guide, interpreter and link to your new community - seldom looks at you or speaks to you, much less teams up with you.

-People inform you constantly that a good Kyrgyz husband will kidnap you.

-Get catcalled incessantly by students ten years younger and two feet taller than you. Saying anything in English evokes hysterical laughter, and you have the Kyrgyz language skills of a 5 year old.

-Be dragged into a room full of Russian-speaking students (you learned Kyrgyz, not Russian) because the teacher of that subject is on a day-long tea break, leaving you to play charades for 45 minutes.

-Toss and turn in the night, try not to let the bedbugs bite.

-See funds donated to the school for renovations disappear into thin air.

-Step in vomit.

-Step in dead puppy.

September kicks off a series of months during which I question my purpose here and stretch my capacity for bullshit. I spend New Year's in the hospital, and get a new counterpart and new assignment. I get a fresh perspective, and I'm still here. Stay tuned, folks.