3/31

I moved into my host family's home after the matching ceremony (aka the most nerve wracking moment of my life). Thankfully, they know some English and have been sooo helpful with language! The family and I each have a russian to english dictionary and that has been a huge help.  I've been carrying a small notebook around to write down new words that I learn so it doesn’t go in one ear and out the other. My host mother asked to see my language notes  and went over things with me from training (aka I need to work on my spelling and definitely my handwriting).

The food is great! Not sure what i've been eating but I'm enjoying it for sure! The first night, my one of my host sisters made pizza! It really made me feel welcome. My host mother has 4 children (one older son and 3 daughters). Her two youngest daughters live at the house (age 16 and 7). I’ll meet her oldest daughter this weekend when she visits. I played cards with them to practice my numbers (not sure what game we played or what the rules were but I've got my numbers down haha). Almost forgot to mention that I'm living with chickens too haha they live outside of course. All the families in the village have farm animals and uses dogs for security instead of pets.

 It's definitely a great experience so far! I feel super overwhelmed in language classes but hopefully after 11 wks  (6 times a week) i'll be able to get a good enough grasp on things. My LCF (language/ culture facilitator), Usen, took my group to one of the markets in the village and taught us words for different foods. Fun times.

My ipod has been a great comfort blanket. Nice to listen to familiar sounds. Missed the memo on bringing a kindle and wish I figured out how to get movies on my computer before I left the states. Either way I'm surviving and have lots of studying and host family time to keep me busy. Still don’t have a cell phone and will probably only have internet twice a month. Surprisingly, I don’t feel as disconnected as I thought I would!

4/1

After getting lost on my way back to training after my lunch break, my house mom drew me a map that consisted of the two streets I have to walk down to get from point A and point B. Feel like I’ve mastered my route, just got the rest of the village to cover. Today, Usen gave us a mini village tour and saving the rest of the village for another day. We saw lots of little grocery stores, city hall (where some of last years riots were), pharmacy, hostpital, hair solon, and a billard hall/ café. This village is hopping haha. Even a  monument for soldiers that died in WW2 who lived in the village and read in both Kyrgyz and Russian, “Never forget, nothing forgot.”

I haven’t been here that long but have been receiving lots of looks like I don’t fit in. Little kids will point and say what is that, people will go silent when I walk by, and cars will even slow down to check out the American. It’s kind of humorous.

Even though I’ve lost my concept of time, the concept of having language training on a Saturday doesn’t sound fun, especially since I have a mini test. Need to get my study on! Keeping my fingers crossed I get the piece that’s missing for my water filter tomorrow. The emergency water supply in my medical kit is starting to get low and thinking I should probs get more bottled water soonish. So until then I’ll be pounding some tea to stay hydrated. Word among volunteers is that our water purifying tabs are gross. Miss clean tap water and automatically heated water.

4/4

I was enjoying the beautiful spring weather that we've been having until the temperature randomly decided to drop and snow. Hopefully it warms up soon. Oh well. I got to spend the day watching titanic dubbed over in Russian and some other american movies and tv shows. I wish they had english sub titles haha especially today when one of my favorite shows, sex and the city, came one. Guess it'll be my motivation to understand the language. Feel like I have the vocab of a 2 year old.

Today, I definitely realized that I was no longer in the states. On my way to language training in the morning, I almost got stampeded by a bull. Luckily, it slid to a stop a few feet away from me. I was wide awake after that. Then on my way home for lunch break I got chased by an angry dog. Not my day with the animals.

Other than that... just attempting to catch up on sleep and getting into the swing of things here. Crossing my fingers I get my cell phone soon so I can stay in touch with other volunteers outside of my village, not to mention I still need to call home! Also, I need the part to my water filter that I've been missing so I don't use up all of my emergency bottled water and purification tabs. I'm hoping medical has it on Wednesday when I go in for more shots. Fun stuff!

4/5

Woohoo for clean water! My water filter is up and running! Haha

So excited for hub day tomorrow/ aka the first time all 43 of us will be reunited again, after moving in with our host families! Can’t wait to see everyone! Every Wednesday all of the volunteers meet up for culture, safety, and  health classes. Should be exciting.

Found out that we won't be getting our phones for probs another 2 weeks. Seriously cannot wait!

I have such a great view! Huge snow covered mountains that put the rocky’s to shame. I can’t believe that it took me almost a week to notice a huge mountain range right in front of me.

4/10

I got 4 more shots on Wednesday but silver lining was they gave us juice boxes again afterward! Yay! It was a lot of fun getting to see everyone that the day went by too fast. That evening we got to go to the internet cafe in Kant city for a quick 10 minutes (was bummed I didn't save a lot of my emails in the right format on my usb for time efficient copy and paste). Oh well it happens. Our LCF took us on a mini tour of the city, including the local bazar. Definitely the biggest highlight of the day was getting mail from my rents! It was a great pick me up.

Thursday was an interesting day. The entire health promotion group got together went to the school in my village to talk about simple healthy lifestyle practices  (hand washing, teeth brushing, clean water, ect). Thank goodness we had translators with us or else that could have been a huge mess. The kids had sooo many questions about America and at the end of it asked for all of our autographs. One kid even had us sign his soccer ball.

Friday night I did my laundry for the first time in 2 weeks, all by hand. Yup, it all had to air out on the clothes line. Let’s just say that Victoria’s secret is out in Kyrgyzstan. That was definitely another step out of my comfort zone, gotta do what you’ve gotta do.

So weird how Sunday it was snowing and by Wednesday it was in the 70s. Hopefully the nice weather is here to stay. To switch things up, some of our language lessons have been outside so I'm finally starting to get some color. Saturday afternoon, after language classes, my language group and I went to the school to play some football, as they call it here. A few local kids even came over and joined our “game”. Having fun but can't wait to not have to deal with the language barrier.

One of my family’s chickens seems to have it out for me. Two days in a row it’s tried to attack me. I’m waiting for the day that it’s dinner. Knowing my luck that day won’t be coming home soon. Oh well at least my host family is getting entertainment from me running away from chickens. Haha

Today was a great afternoon! Our K-18 peer mentors organized a sports day for all of us! It was so much fun to hangout with everyone. We sang the American national anthem before our “football” game (not sure how culturally sensitive that was but guess we all needed to not feel so far away from home).  We also fit in a game of ultimate Frisbee which got pretty intense. Really hoping it turns into a Sunday afternoon tradition!

4/11
just had my site placement interview! keep your fingers crossed i get a sweeeeettt site!!! I should find that out in a few weeks!