Кыргыз кыз

December 3, 2005

Ask and ye shall receive. My school's one and only electric heater has been installed in Informatsia/English room, also now known as Miss Audra's Kabinet. Yay! It still isn't warm enough to take off your hat and coat, but at least my hands won't freeze when I'm writing on the board. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I remembered to turn off the heater when I left the room this afternoon. Ooops. I'd better make sure I get there first tomorrow to check or they might take it away from me.

Today nobody showed up at my club because there was a concert at my school that all my students went to. I actually knew about the concert because they made an announcement during one of my classes yesterday, but so many kids asked me if I was going to have club that I assumed they would come. They didn't. So, there was nothing left but to check out the concert. It was terrible.

They had hung up a big poster above the stage in the little auditorium featuring over-sized glamor shots of the star, a handsome Kyrgyz jigit and “super star” (the poster's words, not mine). He probably sings at weddings on the weekends. When I came in, a young man was singing a popular Kyrgyz pop song, but he was most definitely not the guy from the poster: he happened to be a four foot tall dwarf. He started doing some crazy comic dances and it became apparent that he wasn't singing at all, but lip syncing. To his credit, he did sing a little later (karaoke style, of course, like the rest of the concert). Besides the guy from the poster and the dwarf, there were also two not-so-good-looking guys with mediocre karaoke skills. In between musical numbers there were some comedy routines, almost entirely centered around the dwarf's height. I can't imagine that I would have found the jokes nearly as funny as everyone else even if I did understand them in their entirety.

There was one good part of the concert that was nearly ruined by the shitty sound system that was being used (I don't think it could have made anyone sound good): a song that the poster guy and the dwarf guy did together. It was in Kyrgzy, but it had some Middle Eastern or maybe Uzbek flair to it. If I drowned out the static and feedback I really liked it a lot. During the whole song they did all their movements in unison, including this crazy little dance that I was a little bit obsessed with. I can't explain it, but I have never seen anything quite like it.

Anyway, it was exactly like I should have expected an after-school matinée concert. in the auditorium of a freezing cold Soviet-built school featuring a C-list pop star in a developing country to be like, so I don't know why I'm complaining. They even let me in for free (tickets for the students cost 20 com. Thats about 85 cents and the cost of four ice cream cones for these kids).

December 6, 2009

I'm taking a break from reading a book that I started this morning and haven't been able to put down since. I've never been so sucked into a non-fiction book before. Its called Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, and it is excellent. I've got a full free day ahead of me with nothing to do, so I'll probably just plow through and finish it.

I stayed in the village this weekend at the repeated insistence of my host family. They hosted a guesting last night and really wanted to show me off to their friends. Also, I am sure they were happy to have an extra pair of hands to help out. My host mom asked me to make few pizzas for the guests, and although the sauce was amazing (if I do say so myself), the dough was pretty bad (I'm blaming the yeast) and the cheese that Apa picked out at the bazaar was not the best for pizza, although I'm not sure if there is a good pizza cheese to be found at all in Uzgen.

To prepare for the meal, Apa started baking bread on Friday morning. After I came home from work some neighbor ladies came over to help fry borsok (Kyrgyz donuts), which they always make in ridiculously huge quantities for any occasion and is at least a three-woman job. They showed me how to make and roll out the dough and fry it, insisting that I need to learn these skills just in case I marry a Kyrgyz boy and have to cook for my in-laws. Fresh, hot borsok is the absolute best Kyrgyz tradition, hands down. It also clears up the mystery of why I'm not losing any weight with as little food as I eat. Whenever there's fresh borsok around I gorge myself on it, eating probably the equivalent of six American-sized donuts in one sitting. Its a really bad habit. It was a really good time until they force-fed me bozo (a pinkish-colored milk drink that tastes like sour cream mixed with club soda) insisting that if I drink more of it I will start to like it, and even if I don't, it is good for my health and I should drink it to keep my blood warm during the winter. Bleh.

Everyone went to bed early that night and by the time I got up at 8 in the morning, Apa had already put out two huge piles of ingredients for me to peel and cut up for two different salads. I was also given my usual assignment to peel onions and potatoes. Even though I basically spent five hours cutting vegetables, the whole family was sitting and working and talking together, and there was a nice warm fire going in the stove, so I'll admit that I had a surprisingly pleasant time. I spent the afternoon making pizza by myself and helping set up the table and such. The guests finally came at 6, and my host dad effectively kept me hidden from sight until everyone was there and I could make my dramatic appearance to a chorus of “oooh, beautiful girl!” like he had just unveiled a new work of art. So awkward. Anyway, after the guests were all served I went and hid in my room “babysitting” my little host niece because I knew that my host dad had wanted me to give a toast and sing a song, and I hoped that if he went through enough vodka toasts and I was out of sight he might forget. He didn't, but I told him I would only sing if he sang first, which got a good laugh and let me off the hook.

December 8, 2009

I just want to continue my thoughts on that book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. In a nutshell, it talks about how geography and the layout of the continents, as opposed to physiological differences between the people themselves, led to the differences in when people in different parts of the world had advancements in the areas of food production, tool making, etc. which led to developing the diseases, weapons, etc. that allowed them to conquer other groups in other areas of the world.

Anyway, like I said, I breezed through it, even though it was a pretty big book. It was one of those books where you are reading it and think, “ok, thats great, but what about....?” and then your question is answered in the next paragraph. However, now after I have finished the book, I thought of something that he neglected to touch on. I was walking home from work when I saw a familiar sight, even for three in the afternoon: a man passed out in the mud on the side of the road. I got to thinking, what role did Russia's vodka play in expanding its empire back in the day? I can only assume that its pretty easy to get people to do what you want after a few vodka toasts, especially if you are a big Russian man who has been drinking vodka all his life and you are up some Central Asians who are half your size. Had Kyrgyzstan been swallowed up by China instead, would we still see this problem here? I don't know. Maybe I'm putting the blame on Russia unfairly. Maybe the toasting culture goes back further than that. Maybe if they had some wine and beer that wasn't absolute shit they would drink that instead of nasty cheap vodka. My host dad and I have been engaged in an endless argument over which is better: expensive American beer or cheap Uzgen beer. He'll bring home a half empty bottle once in a while for us to share (most of the beer here comes in plastic bottles—what does that tell you about the quality?), insisting that it is a good bottle this time (the fact that the taste changes noticeably from bottle to bottle should also indicate the quality of beer we're talking about. It ranges from watery, stale-tasting beer to watery, stale-tasting piss). His argument is that Uzgen beer is better because it is so much cheaper: 20 som, compared to the $4 he paid in the states—100 som.

Really, me and my host dad only have had about four conversations since I have been here, and they just keep continuing. The others revolve around pigs, swine flu, and why Christians should take it as a hint to follow the example of Muslims and stop keeping pigs and eating pork; the fact that everything is made in China; and some mystery monument he saw when he visited what he keeps calling “Square Times” in New York (he keeps thinking that if he talks about it enough I'll figure out what he is talking about).