4 Weeks down

Thursday, 22 September 2011

As you may notice the date up above does not correspond with the date that this was posted. That is because I did not have the money on my SIM card to be able to use the internet, or the money to take the Marchutras to some place with Wi-Fi, or the money to go to an internet place and use them.

My money seems to come in then go right back out again, I get a lot of money then it is gone in an instant to pay for my rides to school which is $8 a month since they don’t have bus passes, then I have to pay $27 a month for my Tennis lessons, and if I decided to take dance classes it will probably be about the same amount, so that would be over half of my total money because over two months I get $150 maybe, depending on the previous months went spending wise. Things are really cheap here, when you go to the bazaars but I have yet to find all the stuff I need at the Orto-Sai Bazaar which is the only one I have gone to so far. I have priced things at the store that I can walk to in 15 minutes from my school, and stuff is okay but I still need to go to the huge bazaar in town, but when I go I have to be super careful because it is full of pickpockets just looking for a tourist to pickpocket.

So as I sit here on the eve of my four week mark in Kyrgyzstan I can’t help to think to myself, “Self what have we don’t in this one month here compared to many of our colleagues around the world?” Which the answer to that is not really that much, I have barely left my host family’s house—mainly because I don’t have a key to the front gate or to the front door so I have to ask to be let out of the house, yet my host mother constantly tells me to get out of the house and go see the town—I’ve been invited to a few ‘parties’ and I use that world sparingly because those parties that I turned down each invite to where to one of my host brother’s friend’s drinking fest at their house—which normally a fight breaks out during them and I just broke my nose back in February so I don’t need it getting broken in a foreign country—I take tennis lessons for 27 bucks a month, eaten a lot of national delicacies, eaten street vendor food, saw the independence day parade (at least the small part I could see though the crowds before everyone decided to put their five year olds on their shoulders), went to one of the like eight local bazaars, tried salted and unsalted fermented mare’s milk—the salted tasted a lot better than the unsalted version—and watched every video on my iPod and iTunes at least 5 times. Oh also I have hand written almost 20 letters in two days, but I still haven’t figured out the mail system yet because I can’t even find the damn post office and I have to send out letters to 26 people across two continents, six countries, four states and 13 cities.

I currently am living off of the 25 USD I get from my host Rotary club a month plus whatever I have left over from the previous month, which is currently 122 som or 2.71 USD, I start getting the 25 USD a month starting at the end of this month, and I get about 50 USD a month from my family in the states but I can only pull every other month when I have somewhat over 100 USD. Also I spend almost 10 bucks a month just to take the Marshutras, or little van thingies that I have to walk 15 minutes to the bus stop than wait another 15 or so minutes for one to come by—and cram myself in it because they have seating for 10 an then standing room for as many as you can cram in—then I ride it for 30 minutes than get off and walk for 20 minutes, to get to school. So on a good day it can take almost an hour just to get to school. For a three hour lesson in Russian which my teacher can’t understand why I have trouble learning a third alphabet and writing cursive in a foreign language when I can barely read it in English, let alone write it.

National dishes are great, but after a while you do get tired of eating the same things every few days and since my host mother makes them in huge batches we are eating them for all our meals for two to three days. Also, I feel like she is stuffing me like a thanksgiving turkey at times and at others barely giving me anything, like when I have a bowl of soup at 830am for breakfast, then an apple or two for lunch, and don’t eat dinner till almost 7pm at night I am starving at that time, and she gives me another bowl of soup, I know that I am drinking like three bowls of tea and a few slices of bread with each meal but still I am a teenage boy. Don’t get me wrong my host mother is a great cook who when she is home seems to spend all her time either in the kitchen or telling me “computer bad for your eyes” most of the time when I get home from school about 330pm she is gone somewhere with her five year old son, that she babies him by letting him eat where he wants and she spoon feeds him while he plays with his toys and things.

My book is coming along fairly well it seems, one of my ginger mates Horse Whisperer read what I sent her in her long email that I sent her to convince her not to give up her year in Italy because she has been having doubts the entire time. I sent out an email to everyone from my outbound camp and at least five emails have come back saying they can’t be delivered for one reason or another. I don’t know if these people made these mail accounts and forgot to check them so they got close or what, but it makes it harder to get a multi-cultural perspective on it. The book is all about the ups and downs, celebrations and mishaps that Rotary exchange students go through and also what their parents had to deal with. I am hoping to actually get it published because I think it would be a great aid to future students of rotary and their parents as to let them know people have gone through the same thing or something similar and the stories can help them both deal with it and know that they are not alone in dealing with this or these issues that might arise on their year abroad.

I am having really bad downers right now, trying to adjust to a pay as you go phone, which I have never had in my life, and very limited and expensive internet. I get charged 1,90 to 2,80 som per megabyte and just running facebook takes a lot of megs I have found out, my mail when I don’t get to check it every day but like when I check on a Sunday and don’t get to check again until Wednesday it normally will take 10 megs to do because in an average day I get close to 40 emails most days I get closer to 60, that’s why I try to check often. Also, there are supposedly internet cafes but I haven’t found one and there is on connected to my school but I don’t know if that’s for students or for teachers because they don’t mark things here, as in they don’t label the teacher and student bathrooms differently. A less than one minute phone call costs me almost 2 som fro like a 22 second phone call that I make every day to ask for someone to come and open the gate to let me in after school or tennis.

I am still working on finding a scouting unit to join here but no one in my host family knows where I access is at. Atai is not home most of the time so I can’t ask him to call the people and talk to them for me because my Russian is horrible. I really want to see how Kyrgyzstan runs Boy Scouts compared the BSA. I am working on getting some council patches from the US to trade with the scouts here, and if they use different rank patches I may try to trade them those too.

Tomorrow at dinner I am going to ask my host parents if I may get a front gate and front door key, seeing as I have been here one month as of 4am on the 22^nd September. I plan on staying with them for a few more months but I would like to have a key so I don’t have to call and interrupt what people are doing so they can let me. I know that the grandfather is always home but I would still like to have my own keys to use that I would return when I switch host families in December since my Rotary counselor won’t be back from Dubai until early to mid-November and she still needs to inspect the possible second families for the other two rotary students and I. She is having some difficulty doing it right now since she is moving to Dubai in July since her husband decided to move there to start up his own business, and she is also a little over four months pregnant now and due in January.

Basically my first month is Kyrgyzstan has been mainly a downer there have been a few ups here and there like joining tennis helps me get over some things, and writing the letters has been helping me feel better as well as the book helping me deal with my culture shock. Seeing as I never had a honey moon phase while I am have been here. I had it on the plane ride here and once I got to passport control and got held up there for at least half an hour and had to pay like 100 bucks for a one month temporary visa really like crushed everything. Also, they put my luggage on the wrong flight so I didn’t have it for a day and stuff, which is not as bad as Josey whose stuff, got lost by British Air Ways for a week. Also, going shopping with her helped me feel better since I had someone to talk to about different things which I can’t really do with my host family or to many people via facebook or texting since everything is a pay as you go. My internet, phone calls and texting are all done through one SIM so it’s not like I can just load my internet SIM and use it when I need the internet and keep the one for my phone things separate. Seeing as how I spent like 1000 som over like 3 days, a few weeks ago, just by mainly checking my email and chatting with people via Skype and Facebook.