8-10-11
8:02 AM
I’m in living in
the future! I’m now in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, which is 10 hours ahead of my home
time (Eastern Standard Time, GMT -5). Trying to calculate the time for my home
is sort of funny, because I often have to go back a day. I’m feeling so Bill
& Ted right now.
My
first thought about the landscape here was, “It’s so beautiful… It’s so flat!” I arrived at 5 AM, just before
the sun rose. It wasn’t until I the sun came up that I saw the huge mountains
not far in the distance. I’m used to mountains (Appalachia!), but these are incredible.
They are snow-capped and jagged, and have a clear beauty that I’m sure you can
only appreciate in person. On the drive from the airport to Aidai’s apartment,
we saw many short houses along the road, which she said look very “how to
describe it..? Soviet.” In a funny way, the houses reminded me a lot of Mexico.
The world feels so huge & small at the same time.
Breakfast
was very delicious, and I learned that Kyrgyz fruit is way tastier than
American fruit. Watermelon back home is mostly just sweet, but here it actually
has a flavor. Melon, too, has so much more flavor that it almost tastes creamy!
The peaches smell very sweet, and instead of becoming mushy when ripe, they
feel solid and thick with very delicious juice. I feel like I’m in C.S. Lewis’s
The Magician’s Nephew, when the main characters eat Narinian fruit (or
is it a toffee from a toffee tree?) for the first time. This fruit is a big deal.
After
breakfast, I ended up sleeping literally all day, and I woke up just before
sunset when Aidai and her mom could break their fasting for Ramadan. We ate
well again, and then I got to see downtown Bishkek. Dinara and her sister, two
volunteers from Kazakhstan, are also staying in the apartment, so we had a good
group for exploring. We walked around parks and main squares with monuments
dedicated to Kyrgyz soldiers, the epic story hero Manas, and different writers.
I noticed that there are much fewer street lamps here, so unless you are on a
main road or even a main path in a park, there is very deep darkness.Even in
the capital city, you can see the stars clearly at night. In one park, there
was a permanent bounce house for kids to play on. There was also an amusement
park with a number of small booths and arcade-type games. We rode a ferris
wheel!
I
am enjoying myself very much, and I will try to post updates as often as I have
access to the internet.