Well I’ve been slacking on the writing again. I’m sorry. Spring is a busy season. It seems like after the Winter holidays everyone is hibernating until March. Then in March as the days begin to get longer and the sun shines more, people start to get active again.
Winter wasn’t too bad. Thank goodness. I did get a little bored because it was too cold to do anything outside so I would just cook and watch movies. I was very inactive. Whoops. Next Winter I know not to let myself get that way. But in Balykchy is was so cold and windy all you wanted to do was hibernate. My external hard rive was how I got through those days.
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| Hanging out with Alyssa's host family! |
March went by in a blur and was the beginning of our last quarter in school. I visited another oblast to help them with their summer camps and got to see where some of my training village friends live now. At my school, some 11th form students asked for harder grammar concepts so my counterpart and I focused on sports, health, and different English speaking countries for the last quarter. We drilled students on progressive tenses and conditional tenses. Students seemed to like to learn about different countries and fantasize about what they would do there. In March I also started helping out my friend Chinara at the Education Center with one of her English classes. We turned it into a girls empowerment and English through learning about American cities class. My last class will be next week and I’ll teach them about Chicago and Miami.
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| Talas in March! |
In April I started up the Balykchy Photo Club again. I was trying to keep Photo Club going over the winter working on a website based in Wordpress, but the students weren’t coming and didn’t seem interested. I asked them in our first meeting back if they wanted to continue with the website and if it was interesting to them or if they were just finished. Sadly they said they wanted to do other things, so I decided to change the focus of the club. We decided to continue to take students to beautiful places around the Issyk-Kul area to show Kyrgyz youth their own back yard. Many people don’t leave their village, city, or rayon except to go to Bishkek or visit family in a neighboring village. Choosing to take the students places where many tourists go but they have not been has been fulfilling. The students get so excited and are always asking me when and where our next trip will be. We usually meet on Wednesdays for club at the local organization (DANKO) and work on editing pictures on the computers. Then every other Sunday or so, when students don’t have school, we go out on field trips. Our first trip was to the Barscone waterfall on the South shore of Lake Issyk-Kul. The water was still frozen but the students climbed up the ice and explored for half the day.
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| Looking from the waterfall into the valley. |
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| There were many statues commemorating Gagarin, the first man in space. |
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| My students climbing up the first waterfall. |
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| All of photo club on the second frozen waterfall. |
Our second field trip was to Jeti Oguz and the Karakol Zoo. Jeti Oguz reminds me of Denver’s Red Rocks Park as the rocks are sandstone-like and a bright red. The Karakol Zoo was just for fun and on the way home around the lake back to Balykchy.
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| Jeti Oguz! |
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| Walking in the canyons. |
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| Photo Club! |
Our last field trip was today, to a small National Park in between Balykchy and Bishkek. The Park, Chong Kemin, is located in a beautiful valley where things are lush and full of life. I now know why Balykchy is so brown and desert-like. All the rain falls on that side of the mountains. Since there are villages in the nature reserve area, we just wandered around until we fond a spot close to the foothills for some exploring.
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| To the mountains! |
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| Walking in the foothills. |
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| Photo Club! |
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| Our view laying on the mountainside. |
Since we have been visiting many touristy places, for one of our final products we are making postcards. Each student will choose one photo from the entirety of the club and we will print it as a postcard. We told them it has to be a really good picture showing Kyrgyzstan and can’t be a selfie. All the postcards will be printed as a set and the local organization that partnered with us can sell them for future fundraisers. Our other final product will be a gallery showing where each student will have four pictures printed and hung in the organization’s office. This grant was written in partnership with the local small newspaper DANKO. We hope to write a blurb in the paper and have people from the city come as well as the student’s friends and family. I’ll update you all on how it goes.
In March and April two other volunteers and I wrote a grant for the GLOW camp this summer. I participated in the camp last summer and was set on keeping it going for this year. I have two great partners working on this huge project that will bring together 35 girls from around our oblast and teach them about leadership, health, and their rights as young women. We will hold a training in July for our teachers and peer leaders and then hold the camp in August. I am happy to announce that we got approved and will now go through the ‘let girls learn’ program to crowd source and apply for LGL money!
At the end of April, school started getting harder. It started getting harder to be motivated. Students seemed to be checking out, it kept getting nicer out, we had many holidays at the beginning of May, and now everyday it seems we have to test the students. This year our school is up for national testing to check the students' knowledge and understanding. With just two weeks left to the school year and four classes for each class, all we can do is review the year’s material and give our own test. I can’t believe I survived a year of teaching! I’m so thankful for working with my counterpart, having her experience, and being able to collaborate with her. I think the way this program of partnership and team-teaching is great. As volunteers we don’t just swoop in and teach English ourselves for two years, but we help build the capacity and improve the English of a Kyrgyz national who is already making a career out of teaching English.
As it’s been getting warmer, fellow volunteers and I have been taking advantage of our weekends. Last year since we were in training and couldn’t leave our training sites, we didn’t get to go exploring and experience KG. This spring and summer I hope to get out more and continue to explore this beautiful country with my friends!
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| Emily and I with our friend Chinara and her family in their village on the South shore. |
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| Staring cow in the village. |
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| At jailoo outside of Kochkor, Naryn. |
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| Naryn Jailoo! |
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| Ala-Archa National Park in Chui! |
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| On our way to the waterfall in Ala-Archa! |
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| Tamlyn and I at the waterfall! |
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| Hiking back down. Notice the heart? I <3 Ala-Archa! |
So as things wrap up, my goals are to close the photo club grant, enjoy the closing of school ceremony, and finish my club at the Education Center. For the summer I am looking forward to meeting twice a week with my two English clubs (one for high school, one for middle school) and starting my FLEX/Essay writing club again. I’ll also be gearing up and planning for the GLOW camp and helping other volunteers with week long programs at their own sites. In Balykchy we hope to have a learning English through theatre camp which I will help lead with a fellow volunteer.
I am also excited about a new connection I made recently with the American Corners in Kyrgyzstan. I noticed a Little Free Library at their Bishkek location and posted about it. Long story short I got in touch with someone who had gone to America and seen the LFL phenomenon and it inspired her to bring it back to KG. Along with my mom, the gentleman who met the woman in the states and showed her LFLs, and the woman in charge of Libraries for the American Corners in KG, and myself, we have a project going to get the libraries stocked with English books and registered through the LFL program. Also I am hoping to help them with inspiring and sharing information about the LFL program to other American Corners around the country. Here we go library promotion and library information classes. I can’t wait to see where this project will lead.
We are currently waiting for the new group of volunteers to come. We finally got our VISAs and have our accreditation and VISAs secured until next June. YEY no more VISA stress! We hope to see the new group in country sometime in June. Also during this time, the group before us is gearing up and ready to go home. Their 27 months are up and they are planning for what their lives will be like back stateside in a month! They have been great resources, good friends, and mentors. It will feel weird to be in country without them.
For now, I’m counting down the days until school ends and I get to take a trip to recharge. I’m going to Taiwan and Hong Kong on May 30th with a friend who has family in Taiwan and who is also in the Peace Corps KG program with me. When I come back I’ll be re-energized and ready to take on the summer projects.
Oh yeah, we passed that one year mark in April. It was weird. The time is going by really fast here yet it seems just like yesterday we were all told to go home with a family and spent six hours a day learning Kyrgyz. Many people have described this experience as being the toughest job you’ll ever love and I think I agree. Some days in our service are great and some days are bad. We live for the good days and press on through the bad. But when you look back, you really only remember the good. Here’s to another year of challenges and good memories!
