Bosteri and Kerege Tash

well tomorrow didn’t happen and obviously the next couple days didn’t happen either. Between getting sick and having my phone turned off I haven’t managed to update again on the rest of my adventures in the village, but here goes!!

After Kyzyl Syy my friends and I went to Bosteri which is on the northern side of the lake, where all the tourist go. There we met with two other of out friends and spent a couple days on the beach, soaking up the warm sun. (I managed to come home and be darker than some of my Kyrgyz friends in the city:-) I’m not a huge fan of the northern shore during the summer, way to many people. Someone said about million people come over the course of the summer to stay in the hotels there, many Kazaks but also Russians. They are too expensive for Kyrgyz to go to, but then most Kyrgyz have relatives from around there so they stay with them. But it is the main source of income for the small villages around there.

From Bosteri we went back to Karakol and stayed in my friend’s village for a couple nights. I like it the best. It was the smallest village I’ve seen yet and it reminded me more of home, there were woods nearby and lots of open space and mountains, and in general it was just beautiful. On Sunday we took horses and went up into the mountains for the day and it was so relaxing and wonderful. I’ve decided that I need to learn how to ride a horse, so I can do more than just sit on it:-)

After the mountains the family killed a sheep for us and made Besh Barmak (the national dish of meat and noodles) And it was really good. Every time I eat good besh barmak I like it more and more, and every time I eat bad besh barmak I say I’ll never eat it again:-) I usually never have a choice of eating it or not but fortunately this time it tasted good:-)

In general it was a trip of first for me. For those of you have known me for a long time and will appreciate these things. I went for an entire week packed in just my little backpack and a purse! I went for a whole week only using outhouses and only taking one real shower and even that was in a rickity old shed. I went for 6 days without speaking English, and I didn’t drink coffee for a whole week. But I learned that I can drink tea as much as a kyrgyz, and I got to drink water from a fresh spring coming from under the ground, I got to take a shower in a hot mineral spring, and got to know my friends a lot better. It was a great time, if a little long. I was ready to come home at the end and have a couple quiet moments to myself, and take a shower by myself in my own bathroom, but ready to go back next summer!!

standing near the fresh water spring in Kerege tash

Karakol and the pretty Orthodox Church

So the next place I saw was Karakol, which is a sleepy little city on the east end of Lake Issykul. It looks like it hasn’t changed in the last 50 years, and it probably hasn’t. But there is a very pretty little orthodox church there that we found. It’s all made of carved wood and is quite amazing. Other than that there was just a very slow internet cafe, and no good water without fizz in it. My interesting discovery is that no matter where in the world, water bottled by Coca-cola tastes the same and I don’t like the taste:-)!!! But when you are in the village and there is no water to drink, you drink what you can find!!! I didn’t mention that Kyzyl Syy in English means red water, and the water is so murky there is was scary. I saw my friends washing my clothes in this water that looked to me so dirty I couldn’t imagine that they were going to be cleaner than they were before, and she must have seen my face, because she said, “Oh don’t worry the water always looks like that. Its clean and it won’t turn your clothes brown!” My clothes were clean although I don’t know how such brown water doesn’t make your clothes brown!! I guess after it rains it turns really red, ie.. Kyzyl Syy (Red Water)

Kyzyl Suu, first stop on the village tour

So I've been to the northern side of Lake Issykul many times, but this summer I got to go to the southern side. I highly recommend it, because it's a lot more peaceful and natural, and not all touristy like the northern side! So my first village in the tour was Kyzyl Suu, and my friend Altinai lives there and serves in her fellowship there. My friend Nurgulya and i got on the marshrutka at 2:00 for what we thought was going to be a 5.5 hour ride. Over 9 hours later we finally arrived. If Nurgulya hadn't been there I don't know what I would have done, probably gotten off and hitch hiked home. It was the worst marshrutka ride ever! First of all it was packed full, after everyone got in, someone packed in empty cardboard boxes into the aisle so we couldn't even move, then we stopped at this place where you can buy fruit really cheap and people bought so much fruit, like 10 kilos of tomatoes, and watermelons and everything, so that was piled ontop of the boxes!! Then to top ot all off there was a very dirty smelly drunk man, who drank three bottles of vodka, who was moving all over the place and talking to everyone and in general very obnoxios. So all that with a driver who drove so slow and stopped so often that it took 3.5 hours longer than normal, I was about at the end of waht I could handle! But eventually we made it, and Altinai met us and fed os fresh ploff and hot chai!!

I wish there was some way I could sum up village life or give a really picture of what it is like, but maybe imagine books you read about the west a hundred years ago and what life was like, and I think you have a good picture. There is no running water, they go to a pump down the street and carry the water. No water means no toliet, no shower, and no sink. So there is an outhouse, and they have a make do like sink, and they use a public banya (Russian style bathing facility) once a week. But despite that they keep a clean and orderly house. But then they have different ideas of refridgeration too...ie almost nothing needs to be refridgerated, I'm sure its a miracle I didn't get sick from some of the stuff that I ate, either that or all the American standards of food saftey aren't true:-) And the flies that came as a result of food being left out all over I can't even describe. I have never in my life seen so many flies! So all that being said...I really like viallge life. Its quiet, few cars, people are more relaxed and the air is cleaner, and some how it takes me back to my childhood, of coming from a small farm town, although praise God we had water!!!

Okay more tomorrow....

rolls, rolls, and more rolls, these girls make over a 1000 every day from scratch without a mixer!!!

a house in Kyzyl Suu

my friends in Kyzyl Suu

Issykul

the southern shore of Issykul

Kyrgyz Weddings

Well this wedding was the start of a week long adventure in true Kyrgyz culture! My friends got married a week ago Sunday, and I finally learned what they mean that a Kyrgyz wedding goes for ever. It was all in Kyrgyz too so I didn't undertand much!! But some things I learned from observation:

There is no kissing in a Kyrgyz wedding, in the ceremony or the reception

they are long...we started at 1:00 for the church service and ended at 12:00 at the cafe

every group of guests has to say something, and they take a picture with the bride and groom

getting up and singing a song to the bride and groom is not weird

there is very little dancing...only about 15 minutes

they are very big...about 150-200 guests

you eat a lot....appetizers and salads, soup, the first main course, the second main course, and desert

there is no cake a Kyrgyz wedding, we ate watermelon

and you have to take a doggy bag of the leftover food with you or they will be offended.

Okay those are a few quick observations...more pictures and more observations from the rest of my adventure will come shortly!

fellow American friends

Bayan and I

toasts in a yurt

Aselya, Talas and I

you know you are in Central Asia when...

Well I'm off to the village for a week in 5 minutes so I thought I do a quick update....The Turks just built a mall here in Bishkek...a true western style mall, with a food court and all....it's a little strange and I wasn't quite sure what to do with it when I first went in since I'm not used to that kind of sight here. But then I started exploring, and discovered I really was still in Central Asia when I found two sheep heads celophane wrapped, sitting in the meat section next to the imported pepperoni. Its was a little disconserting to look over from the pepperoni and see two sheep heads smiling at me. But it reassured me that all was right in the world and I was still in Bishkek. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera, because for those of you who have never seen a sheep's head like that, it is the oddest sight ever:-) Okay more when I get back in a week!

Little Cabin in the Woods, or lying in bed for 10 hours trying to fall asleep....

I wish I could adequately describe the vacation experience my friend and I just had. Unfortunately, I think you probably had to be there.

It’s summer here in Bishkek and all anyone in Bishkek thinks about during the summer is Lake Issy-kyl, and swimming and fresh mountain air. So my friend Bianca and I decided that we should take off and go to the lake. We made absolutely no plans, didn’t know where we were going to stay or anything, beyond wanting to do it as cheap as possible, and we wanted to be close to the beach. So we hopped on a marshurtka and our adventure began. We got on a good marshrutka and it had pleasant people on it. (That’s always important because sooner or later they find out you are an American and some respond more respectfully than others:-)

So one by one all the people got off the marshrutka, and by that time the driver knew we were looking for a place to go that didn’t cost much money, so he said hang on and I’ll take you to this resort and see what we can find. So we waited and he talked to a lady and found us a place for 5.00 dollars a night. It turns out that the workers at the resort rent our their rooms to make more money over the course of the summer so we ended up staying in a worker’s cottage on this resort. There was only an outhouse and a sink, no showers (well supposedly there were but we didn’t find them and didn’t figure we’d feel much cleaner after using them anyways:-) But there was light, and we were on the grounds of a resort, so we were a two minute walk from the beach, and the resort had one of the nicer beaches I’ve seen at the lake (and I’ve been at some of the nicest resorts on the lake as well) So we thought we were all set and had got a deal, especially when we looked at the hotel on the resort and realized it looked as bad as the cottage and cost three times as much! But then we tried to sleep...and come to find those walls on the cabin were as thick as a piece of paper and there were about four disco clubs on the resort playing music till 4 AM!! Needless to say we didn’t sleep at all either nights!! Especially cause the beds weren’t all that comfortable either!!!

So we had one of those random experiences where we didn’t know what to do with it all, but it was pleasant over all, we found a nice little cafe (by nice I mean friendly waitresses, cheap food that tasted good, and all the atmosphere of the cheapest central asian cafes...plastic lawn chairs, cheap plastic table clothes with holes in them, flies, and lots of beer and vodka,for the other customers) and ate there for dinner both nights. We saw camels on the beach, and horses on the beach, and people selling stuff, one lady was even selling pizza! Actually that just made me laugh, because you lie there by the water and all these village kyrgyz walk by selling their stuff, and they shout out what they have and what’s funny is that all the names of what they sell happen to rhyme and so it’s almost as if there is a constant song going on around you and you know all the words, and then some random lady walks by and says hot pizza!! and your mind does a double take because you aren’t supposed to hear those words in that setting!!

We came home tired but with good suntans/burns, plenty of bug bites (I have at least 23 on my feet and ankles), and ready to spend a little more money next year for a nicer place:-)!!!

Bianca and I

where we could have stayed

Bianca in our cozy little cabin

camel on the beach