a day in kyrgyzstan

If the light shinning through my window does not wake me up, I arise to the sound of a crackling whip. The cow parade has begun. Every morning at approximately 6:30, after milking, the cows are let loose from the barn to be herded to a grazing field. The entire scenario is reversed at approximately 7:00 PM when the cows come home to be milked and tethered to their stale for the night. It is quite an amazing feat to sit outside on the side of the road as cows surround you on all sides. Each cow walks to her own house and will “moo” incessantly until the gate is magically opened by one of the sons. It is a rural rush hour.
Despite the seemingly slower pace to life, it is easy to get lost in the weekly schedule of language school and training. The routine varies little each day. Even my host family forgets which day is which. However, like life anywhere else, the little things each day make the biggest differences. Today, another volunteer from my program went home. Needless to say, school was rather depressing. I came home to find that all the women had just come home from the market with enough fruit to feed a small army. We sat for a few hours plucking stems off the sweetest strawberries I have ever tasted. We cleaned plums, apricots and peaches. We cored and sliced apples. It looked like a Hallmark greeting card with 6 local ladies and 6 volunteers sitting on milking stools and tree stumps in a circle, knives in hand and buckets in the middle. The fruit was placed into clear jars filled with boiling water and sugar and then capped for storage until winter.
That is right. I help preserve fruit. My host aunt let me take a bowl full of apples to make a pie. I am pretty sure that this was partly to amuse me with something to do and to amuse her as the silly American girl cooked. In America, I cook pies all the time how hard could it be to throw one together in Kyrgyzstan… especially when they use a completely different measurement system. I can now say I accomplished making a pie by eyeballing the ingredients for the crust. AND it was edible too!
I keep getting emails asking what the people are like “over here.” They are just like people everywhere else. Meaning that, while the customs may be slightly different from America, they still love to laugh and interact with one another. I live with a Turkish family in a community of jokesters. There is never a dull moment with any member of my host family. One of the volunteers has compared my house to a college apartment because we always have so many people over. They love to dance and sing also. It is not uncommon for me to roll over at 1 AM and here music still playing outside.

In the news:
-My host brother is going to be getting married. There will be a “small wedding,” which I think roughly translates as an engagement party. The actual wedding will be held in October and I am supposed to come back if I live close enough by.
-This week we will be finding out our permanent assignments.
-The Trainee Culture Day was a successful event. All of the other villages came to my village and put on skits about different cultural traditions. We had a giant picnic with plov, melon and watermelon. We build a yurt! Then after lunch, along side the Turkish host mothers, I helped start a giant dance party. It was quite a blast.