1 Year Later

Wow it's so hard to imagine that it has already been a year since I left the beautiful and mysterious country of Kyrgyzstan. I was so privileged to have studied in Kyrgyzstan and learn the beautiful and mysterious language that is Russian. So much has happened my Russian has been gradually slipping but all it needs is some nice practice to brush the dust off of the old books stored in there. I just need to find some people to talk with me and dust those books off and fill them up.

So much has happened in just one year. It's been a rough year, came out as gay to my friends and immediate family. Family is still coming to terms with it all, thankfully I've got a good number of friends that are supportive of me :). I'm just about to graduate from my High School (May 25) so just a few more days till it's time to grab a bunch of tissues and cuddle up with your friends and cry about how you're gonna miss each other.

Next year I'm going to be studying Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management up in the Great Lakes area. Gonna go learn tons of stuff and have a blast doing it :D, but also go and freeze my butt off up there haha XD.

I'm hoping that in the coming years I get the opportunity to travel abroad again during university.

Till next time,

MAY THE ODDS ALWAYS BE IN YOUR FAVOUR!!

Day 202ish

Wow it has been a long timeish since I last updated, but there has not been really anything super exciting or worthwhile to Blog about. As you can tell I have now been in Kyrgyzstan for 202 days and I go home in two and a half months. I a saddened yet somewhat pleased at the same time by this fact. I have enjoyed my past few months and hope to find something really exciting and interesting to do in my last few months hiding in the corner of Central Asia. This may sound strange but I shall admit it, I have started to sell Avon cosmetics, only on-line for the time being until I can get back home and do brochure sales as well. Also, which is hard for people who really know me to believe, I have decided to give up Facebook for at least a month, for personal reasons. So if you feel like getting a hold of me you need to find me wherever I may be hiding.

I am saddened because I will miss my few friends that I have made here, I will miss my crazy and exciting work/school. While at the same time I am glad to leave a place where it's horrible to go outside when it rains and after it rains because when it rains in Bishkek all the dirt from every nook and crany comes out and you basically are walking through mud and you have to wash half of the stuff you are wearing when you get home unless you wish to look like you were mud wrestling.and lost. I have always loved the rain, even when I had to walk a far distance home from school with my book bag and school uniform getting completely and terribly soaked. The snow here in Kyrgyzstan is almost gone, it just seems like Mother Nature is PMSing because she can not decide if she wants to have snow, rain, sleet or sun. A few weeks back we had all four seasons in one day.

Also, I have been recovering form semi-severe to severe congestion, infection and inflammation of my upper air-ways to my lungs as well as the back of my neck, that part where all the stuff you swallow goes I just can't remember for the life of me how to spell it right now, but in Russian it's Горло. I am still recovering from all of that and stuff I had a four day weekend because last week on Thursday was International Women's Day, and Kyrgyzstan takes that as a Nationally Recognized Holiday, then I texted in sick on Friday and Saturday I guess I didn't have work since Friday I had been ill so by that fact nobody would have turned up to Video Club before the 20 minute rule. For a little over a week I have been staying with some really nice students from AUCA (The American University of Central Asia) and maybe sometime this week I will change to my third host family. I sort of wish I could just stay with these students they all know Russian and English and are really nice and I help them cook and clean.

I just started back up my Rosetta Stone Russian program on my laptop today and the first like 20 or so minutes was all my Adaptive Recalls I missed since I haven't done RS since like October or even maybe before then. It has some interesting sentences that my colleague and I get a kick out of. For Example it will have a picture of a panda eating some leaves and have me match a sentence with it and the sentence is this "это животное из Китая. Оно не говорит по-китаиски." When you translate that to English it reads "This animal is from China. It doesn't speak Chinese." My Russian though is coming along, I am sort of relearning a lot of Grammar I learned but never had explained or reinforced. I am hoping that when I go back to the states I can find a way to keep up my Russian and then to keep it up during the school year that I have left in High School.

I went to the book store near my work yesterday and bought four books that all seem quite random, but they are all in Russian. The first three books are all cook book style ones: one about bread, one on Italian food and stuff, and the third is like pamphlet sizeish one about some deserts and things. The fourth book I bought was a French to Russian/Russian to French Dictionary, I still haven't fully figure that one out yet, but hey I bought all of them together for under ten bucks so, hey why not. :) I still need to go back and find their sort of business management and self-help sort of books since that's what I read in the states since I have yet to find a fiction book that I enjoy, the only book so far has been The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Well this post is starting to get long so I will just stop the train of though here. Until next time best wishes for all your hopes and dreams.

It's Valentine's Day and I still have snow

Okay, so for those whom don;t know I have had snow and ice, since the end of October. I'm getting really tired of the snow and stuff as well as the negative Celsius numbers anywhere from single digit negative down to the negative twenties, sometimes that would happen in a single day. I know this amount of snow might make people jealous whom have not had any snow, and they are welcome to come over here and take it away because I really don't want it. It's been a little over a month now maybe more since my last post, and everything is getting better including my Russian.
At my work we have gained two new people. We gained one man from the UK named Rick and a women from the Ukraine named Alia. I've been teaching at my work for a little over 3 months now, which is hard for me to believe. I'm enjoying my Pre-Intermediate group they are half-way through their second month, and they just took their Unit 1-4 Progress Test yesterday. Some did better than others, but I think it's they are still showing progress and working hard and that is all that I can ask form them. I still have my morning guy that has been nicknamed 'The Hepless one' because sometimes he is good, and sometimes it's like give me a gun, or why did I get up so early just for this. I teach him Monday through Friday at 8am but only for an hour, a normal class lesson here is one hour twenty minutes. My group is four times a week at an hour twenty, and my individual is five times a week at an hour.
Next Friday is my birthday I turn 18, still haven't made any plans yet. I'm not really sure what to do. Should I go to a club with friends for the first time? Ask my host mom if I can have friends come round for a dinner or something? Go to a restaurant with my friends? So many different options and no clue what to do yet.
Well today around the world is Valentine's Day, because of that after the usually quote I think I shall post in three languages who to say "Happy Valentine's Day!" On this day everybody single or taken must remember the power of love, it out weighs everything and beats everything. This emotion can form and destroy anything it touches depending oh the situation.

Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end. ~Author Unknown

Happy Valentine's Day! - English
С Днём Святого Валентина - по-русски
bonne St Valentin -Français
Улуу Валентин кунунор менен -кыргызча

Валентин кунунор кут болсун -кыргызча
バレンタインデー - これは日本語です。
情人節快樂

Day 120

It is so hard to believe I have now been over in Kyrgyzstan for four moths now, and I feel like the cogs are finally turning on my Russian, and I am so glad that I am teaching English because I was feeling like I had been loosing my English gradually from speaking really broken simple English. Also, I know that today is Christmas Eve Eve for the Western part of the world and every thing, but maybe not for the South-Western places like Brazil, Chile and many of those other South American and South of the Equator countries that are on their summer holidays right now. I am still not sure as to what I will be doing on Christmas, it falls on a Sunday and I am in a country that does not celebrate Christmas until the 7th of January, if they celebrate it at all. I am told though that New Years are huge here.

So that enough for the intro and random thought portion for now. So let us recap was has happened in the twenty days since I last posted here. I think quite a lot of things have happened and things have been going up hill quite quickly. Here are the high lights that I will go into depth with: I stayed with my YEO (Youth Exchange Officer, sort of my program director for the youth) for a week, I went to an awesome Rotary Club of Bishkek Winter Ball, I switched families, I started teaching The Queen’s English, my friend from the Ukraine is back in the Ukraine until March and I’m just about to go on my two week Winter Holidays from school.

Okay so first off, I spent a week at my YEO’s apartment for a week, while I was in transit form my first family to my second family. It wasn’t to bad it gave me internet everyday while I was there and I chatted on Skype with various people over the week and stuff, and spent most of the week staying up till mid-night or later so that I could talk to my friends and family back home a little better at times. I met his really nice mother-in-law, who is a sweet old Russian lady, and the mother of his wife. While there I had my first pieces of toast and bowls of cereal since I had arrived in Kyrgyzstan ninety something days before that time. We would eat dinner at his mother’s apartment two doors down, and she had a lot nicer of an apartment than him, I don’t know if it’s because of the way she decorated it or just that it was slightly bigger.

While I was staying with him on my last full day at his place, which was also supposed to be the first time I was supposed to do a video club at my work, but it didn’t happen because only one person showed up. Anyway, it was such a nice ball with so much good food. It was quite a long night and I have posted pictures online and as soon as I can get Picasso online to work with my blog I will try to get them going on my blog too. They had tons of different salads on the tables at first, and than later they brought out the first course which was a really nice butter fish I believe. It was the best fish I had eaten the entire time I had been in Kyrgyzstan, since it’s hard to get fresh fish here, with no real lakes or rivers that have fish. Many a times at the market you will see people selling rotten fish that they didn’t keep on ice, which is why it is rotten or at least rotten smelling. I try to avoid the bazaars at all cost, because they are just so dirty, and a huge maze, not to mention full of pick-pockets.

The next day I switched families, while my YEO, Counsellor and Rotaract President all had a chat about what I found out a few days later when we all meet was it was about an incident that happened with the other two RYE Students in town. They went on a fun night and got caught and had a lecturing or something I don’t know they won’t even tell me some of the stories that they have form that night, which just by the titles of what they call the stories they sound quite entertaining to say the least. My new family is so nice, I have again have both parents and three host siblings, all younger than me, but this family is just over all so much better than my first, they seem more caring and even called me their oldest son when we went to one of their friend’s house last week. The food is also so much less like greasy than with my first family. The parents even take me to work on the weekdays since I work just a few blocks past where the father works.

For those who know me, they know I don’t always have the best English in the world and I have trouble spelling in English and many other languages that I have learned over my life so far. So this is going to be like where is the apocalypse that is going to destroy the world because I am teaching English, but it’s the Queen’s English which I am better at than American English or the President’s English. I may not make much but it is just a blast to work at, the people are so much fun to work with. My students are great they may not understand everything but they are still good kids and students, since I have a wide variety of students one group that ages from 15-19 and one group that is two university student girls, that are quite intelligent for only being on their second month of being Elementary. I still do video and talking club and am getting my Friday classes getting switched to Tuesdays in the New Year, to give me last minute planning time if needed.

Going along with work I made a friend there named Anna who is from the Ukraine and she was like our little ball of sun shine at work. It is sad that on this past Wednesday she had to go back to the Ukraine because her contract had expired. We are all looking forward to March when she comes back, and hopefully she will have a spot since I took over her classes.

When I first started typing this on December 20th, I was just a few days away from my two week break from school. Now on the 26th I am on my two week break until January 9th. The only real down side is the teacher assigned us like three huge homework assignments to do and a small one. I have finished the small one and I really do not want to do the big ones. So far Kyrgyzstan has become the only country that has made me not want to go to school. Now all I really have to look forward to Monday through Friday is going to work after school. Even on my words days of changing schools I have always wanted to go as to see my friends and talk with them.

Don’t waste a minute not being happy. If one window closes, run to the next window — or break down a door.

Day 100

I know it has only been 10 days since my last post and that is strange for me but I feel like day 100 should be a mile-stone in my journey to learn new things and fulfil “The Seven Bes” that we where given at my home districts last youth training/get-together that we had a few months before everyone started to leave. But to me it is hard to fulfil these when you get lied to, like me host brother told me on the my first day of school that Kyrgyzstan doesn't have annual or monthly bus pass like things, which I have now come to find out are available at the Central Post Office. I still have yet to buy one but I am going to ask one of my friends who speaks English and Russian to help me buy one for December, so even though I have a two week break from school in December for the new year I may want to go somewhere and then I can get my moneys worth out of it.
Also, I haven’t really felt very welcome by my first host family I felt welcome the first few weeks when I was still in the ‘guest phase’ where I was thought of as just a guest and not someone in the family. I am still now allowed to wash my own dishes but my host brothers can wash their dishes and other peoples’ dishes, but when I try my host mother tells me to stop, the only time I get to wash my own dishes is when I am eating by myself and nobody else is in the Kitchen when I finish eating. Sometimes, when I finish it’s like someone just walked in and tells me to stop doing the dishes, I don’t know why I can’t but I still wash my dishes the American way, always with soap here soap is rarely used to clean anything but pots and pans. They wash by just running a rag over the things or just using their hand and swishing the water around on it and then just put it on the drying rack.
Another things about my first host family is I think they randomly on the weekends shut off power to parts of the house and during the weekdays. I think this because parts of the house especially the upstairs loose power way to often to be power outages even if they have  crappy power grid in the area. I especially hate it on the weekends because I don’t have power to watch tele to pass the time or if I want to do something on my comp I am limited by how much battery I have left. Now, when it goes out I turn on the lights in my room and when they actually come on I know that power is back and can go back to do things on my computer and iPod.
I am still continuing my search of colleges in the UK and the inquiry of my eligibility for a Dual Citizenship. I still haven’t looked at the test website but I did shout the UK Border Agency of the Home Office and e-mail inquiring about it listing as much information about where we lived and where I went to school at while I was in England with my family. I did not get a chance to talk with my mate in England to ask her if she had found anything and give her the information I had found in the British Citizenship Act 1981 Ch. 61. I still need to see if there is anything in International Law that could help me, for that I need of either get a hold of my uncle who works in International Law or use Google or both.
One thing I forgot to include in my last post is I am sort of starting to feel like a journalist, because all I do is watch the news program ‘Russia Today’ because it is on 24/7 and they have had some interesting documentaries and things. The documentaries they show vary from one about the Los Angeles Fire Department and Health Care System to following the journey of a Buddhist monk on his journey from his home land to the largest Buddhist temple in the world located about 3-4 days walk across a harsh prairie land area in southern Russia and to an old mining town in the Oklahoma that is gradually killing the people who live there because of all of the things left from its former mining days. In order the names of those are called: Firestorm; Kalmikaya: the monks’ white path (sp?); and Tar Creek. If you want you could probably find them on freevideos.rt.com or www.rt.com. The reason I feel like a journalist is because of the news if it talks about something going on in an area I have a friend in it gets me thinking of questions and I type those in a note and then the next time I get on the internet I post them on their Facebook walls’. The biggest things lately has been questions about how they think the EU will handle all the countries that in getting in debit such as Germany, Portugal, Italy, and Greece. Also, about how the Netherlands is talking about how the Euro Zone should be thinned out to be just a few countries, such as itself Germany, France and Italy and the rest of the Euro Zone should just find something else to do.
I think I will never get tired of drinking tea or чай, but I think by the end of the year I will be tired of soups. So far, with my first host family, I have had like 5 different types of soups—don’t get me wrong they are all really good—sometimes though I will be given the same soup for all my meals for two days. Also, I will have eaten in one year about the amount of meat that I have eaten before I came here because they have meat here with every meal and everyday. I am not a vegetarian but I am also not a huge meat fan and I love my fish but here the fish all stinks because its not been kept cold the entire time—I think that they are partially rotten when people buy them. Also, they only have like a man made lake about 5 hours drive from the capital and I don’t think there are fish in it so all the fish I think travels a while and things and is not kept chilled in transit. Another thing that bugs me—I don’t know if it because I know the basic rules of proper kitchen procedure—is that they will cut meats and vegetables on the same cutting board right after each other and then when they wash it after cutting raw meat on it they just rinse it under tempered water.
For those who don’t know what tempered it’s that type of water that is neither hot nor cold. If you get sunburned you can take that type of water and fill a tub with it and some Baking Soda and it will take away the pain. I personally know that it works being the ginger that I am when I do go outside—the rarity that it is—I don’t always have sunscreen on so I get burned. Over the years of getting burned I have searched the web for different remedies then the sticky Aloe Vera gel and I actually do test them out to wake sure they work. One good one I have found is brew a cup of peppermint tea and let it cool down to not super hot and then just dip a sheet of Bounty© Paper Towels and gently dap it, this method is great if it’s on your shoulders or face, if on your shoulders you can even just lightly set the towel there and it relieves the burn and reduces the redness of the burn. Another good method is the one above of the tempered water filled bath tub mixed with about 1/2-1 cup of Baking Soda and just soak and relax in it for about 30ish minutes and then gently dab dry with a clean and soft towel be careful of the burn—I personally recommend not drying off the part where your burn is and just letting it air dry this will let the Baking Soda soak into your skin and help keep the pain down.
I can now say that I have downloaded free music, but this is perfectly legal in Kyrgyzstan they advertise about it and everybody knows about. I have so far only gotten four songs as of 26 November, I got Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO; Stereo Hearts Feat. Adam Levine by Gym Class Heroes; In the Dark by Dev; and Can’t Fight the Moonlight by Leann Rimes. I have a list going and every week when I go and sit in my favourite little cafe that has free Wi-Fi I will get a few more songs. The list starts to get clear then fills again as I hear a good song on the radio because I listen to the radio on my way to and from school, because I haven’t been able to pick up my package from my parents that has new head phones that I can use on my iPod but I still need to clean the ports. I have yet to find rubbing alcohol so I think I might just buy a cheapo bottle of vodka and use that, they have about the same % of alcohol. I am also thinking of buying a new cover for my iPod they sell a bunch of cell phone covers here that are some sort of flip to shut the front cover to protect it.
Technology and housing observation: I have noticed that when people live inside of the city and things they actually have internet at their homes and things and sometimes it is really slow. One of my school friends place World of Warcraft and it took his computer like 2 weeks to do a few hundred Megabyte update for it. His flat that he lives in with his friend they pay together a total of like $400 USD a month for like a run down apartment that has all old furniture the toilet is horrible and its a small flat with a kitchen, living room, one bedroom, a water closet and a shower room. The walls are also in bad shape and look horrible with cracks all over. Another friend has a lot nicer of a place and only pays $500 some of his stuff is old but its a lot nice of a place same number of rooms and he has a faster internet. Than the people who live outside of the city area, like I do, don’t have internet in their houses and use satellite TV and things. Also, for some reason my first host family keeps what looks like the bottom half of a bottle over the receiver which I think it why sometimes especially on cloudy days and when there is snow on the dish they can hardly get anything to come through.
I still am working on figuring out the cost of all of what I would need to buy all the ingredients for cooking dinner for my school friends here. Here is my planned menu I want to make a fresh salad (local style), fresh made bread, a French onion soup, and a lemon meringue pie. I have one friend who has a huge apartment or flat—I am not sure what to call it but it is huge an really nice with a five burner gas stove and a double oven—all I need to do is see what type of pots and pans she ahs I know she has a wok because her friends made Chinese food in it when I first went to her place with some of my friends after we went out to eat at this good cafe and bar.
Thinking about the cafe and what’s in it and the name of it gave me a great idea about it. The name is Obama’s bar and grill and when you walk in there is a cardboard cut out of President Obama and I am going to talk with my school friends and see if we all can go there together and then as we all go in we take a photo of each one of us with Obama and then ask the wait-staff if they can take a picture of all of us with him and then I will post them on Facebook in an album called “Chilin’ with Prez and me mates”. I think it would be hilarious it would be my group and my friend with he big apartment’s group and we would all have so much fun. I think I would tell them that if do it the cost per person will be about 500-700 som or so and ask for them to pay me and I would cover the cost of everything with that money. I think that would be good amount seeing as last time I went we ha a total of four people and the cost was a little bit over 1,900 som and was close to 2,000 som and we had two salads, two French presses of tea, two bowels of fresh hand-made pasta and a freshly made pizza as well as two of them had between them 3 beers but they are both in their thirties.
I got to say a really big ‘Gratias Maximas’ to Magistra Beman for teaching me Latin, because of my years of Latin I got a part-time job teaching English at the Official Representation of the Oxford Press in Kyrgyzstan. I may only be doing talking club and observations to watch how some of the other teachers teach, because the director likes that I am young, know a lot of English grammar and I know the methodologies of teaching a foreign language. She is starting me on talking club especially since they have wanted a native speaker and their current person is a like 50 year old man and she is constantly hearing complaints about him. The administrative person at the place also brought up video club, but the director has not informed me about it yet. I don’t know how much I am going to get paid, but I get to keep my English up and I can talk to a lady from southern England, two hours from London. Hopefully though I can start teaching by January since the last week in May I might be out of country going to the District Conference in Turkey and I want to be able to put on my résumé that I worked for Oxford Language School for 6 months.
Okay so Thursday I meet with D, Mr Arne and Joe and Josette at this Aroma Pizza place, and I was using my iPod there, and I don’t know if I left it there and someone took over the two  hour period that I was away after we finished and it feel out in one of the rooms in AUCA when we were changing from one room to another. I went back and talked with the Manager in Ruslish—Russian and English merged together—she looked at the videos and never saw it stay on the table or in the area, I went there twice because I only asked her to look at three and four o’clock. so, I went back because I wasn’t sure if she looked at five o’clock she said she did I thanked her and apologized. her, two of the servers and I also went through the couch that we all sat on. So I am hoping to ask Daniyar, the Rotaract Club president who also ate with us, if he can check the room that we started in before we switched rooms because I quickly grabbed my things out of the room and went to the other room because I didn’t want to be late for the meeting and my iPod might have been in my pocket of my coat and have fallen. The only other place I can think is that when I got up to go to the bathroom Mr. Arne grabbed it because I was sitting practically on it when our two large pizza came, it might have still be there and he grabbed it and forgot too give it to me because he was sort of in a rush with getting back to work. I asked him on Friday night since I was staying with him for the weekend or so until they have my second family ready.
Again this post is getting really long and it has only been a week and one day since my last blog post. So here are the quote and photo. This time the quote is by Robert Frost, and the photo I think is funny. This quote might be a good especially with all the events that are going on around the world currently and that have happened this year. There have been so many deaths around the world this year in all different kinds of ways from natural disasters to the Arab Spring and to what some people are calling might be an Arab Winter as well. These have caused so many deaths so far and this quote doesn’t make one forget about but it makes one hopeful for what could happen in the future after these events finish, and everybody can stop acting like a soap opera or immature high school students with each other of the whole ‘I am friends with them now, but they just became friends with someone I don’t like so I’m not going to talk to them anymore’.
“In three words
I can sum up
everything I’ve
learned about
life: it goes on.”
-Robert Frost

To make up for the 14 paragraphs above I shall provide another quote that I believe to be very powerful. All of these quotes are fantastic and brilliant, and I am going to try and talk with my future boss of teaching English that when I lead talking clubs if we can do a discussion of what people thing are being expressed by these quotes. This quote comes from his holiness the Dalai Lama XIV. To the Buddhist culture and religion his holiness the Dalai Lama is considered to be one of the wisest man in the world and has been able to explore the many different forms of reincarnation. This quote he talks about happiness, which to me is one of the most powerful emotions that anyone or anything can have the only thing that could possibly be stronger and more powerful then happiness is love. Both emotions are what I believe truly make the world go round, money and power don’t make the world go round, this love and happiness that makes the world go round comes for the love of an animate object such as your beloved pet that can always cheer you up when you are down, or you best friend that is always there to offer a shoulder, ear and hug when you are down. There is so much that can be said simply about these two emotions, they don’t come from money or a physical possession, such as sports car but like I said a person on animal that is there for you. Ok now here is the quote from his holiness.

“Happiness is

not something

ready made. It

comes form your

own actions.”

- Dalai Lama XIV

Day 90

It seems as the ever so strange and hard to believe day 90 creeps up on me I am at a loss for words that could be used to describe all the different things, besides that fact that I have things vanishing from time to time and I think that my 5 year old host brother is the reason behind it most times, like one day I had 365 som missing from my wallet. The reason I know this money was missing was because I went to count my money for the day, and I had just counted my money in my wallet two days ago when I had finished using the at my favourite little Italianish Cafe in town that has internet. Also, I keep a spread-sheet of all my money coming in and out and all my shopping I do is at places where I will get a receipt in the end. That same day my wallet went missing out of my bed room, where I had left it on the night stand by my bed and then i left the room to go brush my teeth, like I do after I eat usually, and the only person left in my room was my 5 year old host brother, and when I asked he he said he didn’t know, which I think is a big fat lie. Luckily the next morning I got up early an asked my host brother that speaks English to help, and he told his mum and she went and looked and found it and I was tempted to tell them, when they asked me if everything was still in there, that I was missing almost 400 som.

Okay anyway that was my rant I had to get out of the way so we can talk about the more happier and pleasant things that have been going on, such as I made some new friends both foreigners and a local girl who is supposed to be my ‘interpreter, translator, and tour guide while I am in Bishkek’. All the foreigners are from the school and everything some are the students in my school group and some are from another group but we all get along and have a good time at one friend’s flat/apartment which is huge, and cost like 12k USD a month, but she can easily afford it because she is working as an accountant while she is here. The local girl’s name is Alyona, she is 19 and going to one of the local universities, she is from Russia but she has been in living in Kyrgyzstan since she was 4 years old. She is not just my interpreter but Joe and Josette whom are the other two American Rotary students in Bishkek.

I am/was finally getting a handle on my money when the wallet incident happened. I was managing to keep it under control so that I am not spending a couple hundred USD in one month. I have fully decided that once I get all my passport and things figured out and handed back to me from either the school or the consulate's office I am going to try and open two accounts with the same bank, one checking and one savings. The money from Rotary will be put in my savings and maybe the remainders that are left in my checking at the end of the month will also get transferred to savings, because I really need to save up my money the best I can here and things so I can get good things and have some money on hand as I go through the airports.

Last Friday I figured out that both the US & UK allow dual citizenship, so I am going to e-mail the British embassy to the US and see if I meet the criteria and if they will let my 7 years I spent almost 7 years ago count as the time frame of the 5 years that are required according to the Home Office. I need to look at this test tat they want one to take also from www.lifeintheuktest.gov.uk, after that or even before that I should try and contact my uncle whom is an International lawyer in the south. I am hoping they will accept it because than that would help me with my dream and hopes of going to university in the UK, so far the best rate I have found was the University of Wales – Newport which only costs 8,280.00 GBP = 13,138.64 USD for foreigners, and I have found some airfare rates to Cardiff, which is the closest airport they say, that are as low as like 750 USD for like 3 connections. I even have one of me mates in the UK helping me and giving everything a second pare of eyes look over.

This Tuesday I went to my first Rotary meeting in the almost three months that I have been in Kyrgyzstan. It is at this famous American hotel called the Hayat Regency Hotel (sp?). They have it in this fairly nice room and they have a meal too, we had a local style fresh salad but it also had lettuce, which is not common in the fresh salads here. A fresh salad is normally just wedge sliced tomatoes and cucumbers and fresh onion rings (the normal type not the battered and fried type) all with just a tiny bit of salt to get the vegetables to release their juices a little I think. After that we had a nice like I think strip steak with like a brandy based barbecue sauce with mashed potatoes and a few pieces of steamed cauliflower. I actually did eat the steak-- which the people who know me know that I absolutely hate steak because I don’t like foods where I am spending a long time chewing a small piece so I can swallow it, but this was actually really good. The guest speaker was from a mining company that is trying to get a mine set up in one of the villages, the mine would produce a gold and copper composite mix that would be exported to China or Germany or maybe Australia. I just can’t really remember for the life of me.

Also, at the meeting Joe, Josette and I met a former Rotary student who was a rotary student 10 years ago to Germany. He is in one of the outer-laying villages with the Peace Corps. We actually all had lunch together at this local Mexican place called the Mexican Cantina, and we all agreed that it was really good and could believe that the beef and chicken where real beef and chicken not like ‘mystery meet’, like is found occasionally throughout the country. He comes in to town just about once a month or so, he is still in town all week but he will be busy finishing up some things that he has to get down before going back to the village. He told us that he is going to try and shout us some e-mails because people have been asking about Rotary Youth Exchanges and things. He is coming back in town for like the 2nd and/or 3rd week(s) in December. After, we all ate and tried to do math to figure out who got what out of the change, we went to this Turkish Supermarket called Beta Stores—I actually have their discount card that cost me only 50 som and gets me a 3% discount on my total—it is a really nice store on the bottom floor then it has 4 more 3 more floors. The 2nd floor has some phones, jewellery, souvenir and clothing stores as well as a barber, the 3rd floor is purely clothing they even have a “The North Face” store, 4th floor is just furniture, a children's play area as well as the toilets that cost 5 som to use. Anyway, we went straight to the third floor because Joe’s host mom wants him to get boots and we all just played about and found some awesome looking shoes, even a pair that had like a bunch of tiny white dots with small black spaces in-between and I did the pick up and go in a circle with it in a friends face thing. Joe complained and didn’t get any shoes so IDK his and Josette’s fate because Joe’s host mom has called Joestte’s host mom to tell Josette about Joe needing shoes.

On a side note that is completely unrelated, which that's just how I am, I decided to wear plastic bags over my shoes to walk to school and found something really good out that if you do that use the high quality super market store bags that we have here and not the ones you get from the bazaars because both shoes where wet by the time i reached school but I had water and slush in the bag from the bazaar and my shoes was completely soaked through to my sock, and my other shoe was only a little damp all over not enough to be felt by my feet through my two pairs of socks. Furthermore I almost completely wiped out on the stairs to the underground areas to cross the streets easily because of the bazaar bag, oh the bazaar bag was like one you might expect to get from a Chinese take out place, a fairly thing and clearish bag that had the yellow smile face saying thank you for shopping. Of course I did get a lot of strange looks from everybody but I felt quite accomplished, because on Tuesday it was raining and because I have to walk town hill and the water from the streets runs on to the side walks so imagine like literally an ankle deep river flowing down the side walks I ran through that so I wouldn’t have to slowly walk through it. I was really glad that I wear my Under Armour thermal pants underneath my Flanner lined Old Navy Khakis, which where soaked on both legs all around from food to knee.

The building I have class in doesn't have a central heating unit so we use two heaters, one slow and pathetic one that the teacher brought from home, and then she has a much better one that can easily be bought for like 25 USD in the bazaar, but I’m not going to buy it since we need it to stand up and shout heat and this things sits on the floor and only shouts a small bit upward and then forward and also I wont use it but on school days. Also, if I get two cold I can wait an hour or so till our ‘rest time’ which is a 30ish more or less sometimes break period where we can get some food and stuff, I actually went and bought my school group, sugar cubes, Nescafe Classic Instant Coffee and some Lipton tea, and the teacher brought an okayish kettle. I say okayish because the seal near the water gauge is not very good anymore and if you leave water sitting in it for a period of time it starts to drip, she put some sort of plastic thingy with a lip and I have to empty it every morning when I get to school and get new water in the kettle and have either a tea or coffee.

Thursday we had our own family Thanks Giving things with out host families, and then Friday was our Rotary Thanks Giving things with all of our host families getting together for it and all meet each other. We were hoping to be able to have Dinara with us but she was still under the weather because with the weather constantly changing in Kyrgyzstan and the climate changes are killing and she has bronchitis from the weather because in her other home outside of Dubai it is still Summer and the warm part of fall, while in Kyrgyzstan we are in the cold, damn cold and super damn cold and wet season, because if it rains in the morning and through the day by evening it is becoming snowing and decides to snow for the day and might continue for a day or so. We all had a good time, and had roast duck and things. Everybody’s family was there except mine.

The day after when I had breakfast I got yelled at by my host mom, and she asked why I sat at a cafe yesterday—she knew why but I don’t think she liked that I wasn’t at home. I tried to invite her the night before because I thought she has been asked on Wednesday when Josette’s mom called her. Then she went on to say that I don’t talk much and that I am not like Austin, and she wants me to be like Austin—Austin was the boy from my Rotary district who was with them maybe two or three years ago—she was saying that Austin would constantly buy things for them like bread and vegetables. I was really tempted to tell her “WELL I AM NOT AUSTIN! I DON’T HAVE A JOB YET! I DON’T HAVE MUCH MONEY WITH YOUR ‘LITTLE BABY KANATA’ IS STEALING MONEY FROM MY WALLET! ALSO, I NEED INTERNET AND YOU DON’T HAVE IT AT HOME AND THAT COSTS ME OVER 100 SOM A MONTH!” I am still tempted to tell her that. Furthermore I have cleared all of my things our of the room they are all packed up into my suitcases, and since I don’t have a second host family I am tempted to grab my stuff and just go and take a bus into town and try and stay in a Rotarian’s house for a while until I can be placed with a new family.

This post seems to be getting longer than I though it was going to get but i guess it is because so many new things have been happening as my Russian improves, I even have it worked out that starting in maybe January I will start taking Turkish along with my Russian I just have to find a place that teaches it maybe my school depending on how much they want. This Turkish could help my even just later this year when I might be going to Turkey for a week for the District Conference since this district here is based out of turkey. I think I shall now start this inspirational quote as the last line of my blogs as well as maybe a funny note or just something I think is fantastic.

So here is the first quote comes from Gandhi and it is something that I think many people in there life should follow and then they could go to sleep at night or lay awake thinking or dreaming of how this can and will change their life.

“Be the change

that you wish

to see in

the world”

-Mahatma

Gandhi

 

 

Btw, my official day 90 was on Thursday 24 November, because I am not sure when I am going to get to post this because of all of the Thanks Giving things that we had on Thursday and Friday, and Friday is my normal day to stay in town and eat at Olive’s Cafe in town because they have a good bi-lingual menu and wait-staff as well as free Wi-Fi since I currently don’t have Wi-Fi with my first host family.

IT'S GETTING BETTER

Okay so the past couple days I have been hanging with some class mates and it makes me feel so much better, and we try to talk Russian most of the time and things. I am glad that I have been doing this it helps me make good friends and we all have a really good time together. Yesterday we worked for a friend and helped him clean up his new apartment and get it clean so the building manager could look at what was wrong. Today we went to the local Philharmonic Hall, and I think 'sqwuated' on the concert. Anyway the concert was really really interesting and fantastic I just wish I could have understood it more.

Going back to yesterday, after we finished working in our friends flat he treated us all to some really good Chinese food, that has menus in Russian, Chinese and Korean. Also, by the way the friend is Korean and really nice and works as a webpage designer I believe. That is besides the point though, but we all had a good time together and decided that if our friend needs help again we will help because the food was really good and things.

Today, for our entire lesson we went and watched the spectacular concert for almost the entire lesson. After, that some of my class mates and I went to a local Bar & Grill called 'Obama's Bar & Grill'. They had really good handmade pasta and pizza there and we all had a real good time. Now as I type this I am sitting in a friend of a friend's house using their WiFi and she is really nice and her Chinese friends make really good food.

Maybe by the end of this year in Kyrgyzstan I will know Russian, English, some French, some Korean, some Chinese and maybe some Turkish. I am hoping to be fluent in Russian by the end of the year and have a good base for Turkish when I leave.