and you though going to the super market
was a pain...this guy is coming back from the
well with his trusty pal!

the other photo is me and some of my students. its my b-day so that means i can do whatever i want......at least thats what i told them!

Ahhh, life in kr, definetely not one of convenience....
For instance only about 10% of the households here have a car and if they do have a car its a beater that needs to be worked on everyday. Now considering most people live in villages that are usually not big enough to contain most of the necessary things (a store, internet, post office) and there just isnt enough money to fund mass public transportation, they needed to get creative and so was born the marshruka. At times they are the bain of my existence and at other times they are my best friend. They basically are the public transportation of kr, but they are privately owned by individuals or 'companies'. they look like a VW bus with a camper top (do you know what i mean?) and they hold about 12 people. they run a specific route and pick up and drop off folks along the way, not at specific stops, but really wherever you want. this is nice if you dont want to walk any further than you have to, but the time really adds up after awhile. Last week I was on a marshruka headed from bakia-ata to talas and we picked up a fella on the road, 10 sec someone wanted to get off, 8 sec later someone else wanted to get off, 8 sec. later we picked up someone else. I timed it, in 1.5 minutes we stopped 7 times. the other thing about about marshrukas is that they are all about making a buck. 10-12 people can sit relatively comfortable but they will cram that thing so tightly that you are literally embracing the person standing next to you for support and to allow the 7 new people to get on. but hey its better that walking!
then there's laundry. I assumed that once the temperature dropped as it has that we would make a makeshift clothes line inside in order to dry our clothes....makes perfect sense to me. well, that's where im wrong. i did my laundry 4 days ago and no more than 2 minutes after I brought them outside, they were frozen solid....my pants are still able to stand on their own.
outhouse, freezing temperatures - enough said.
Technically, my house has running water (we have one sink that is hooked up to a hose and we only get cold water). But for some reason it has not been working for awhile and no one can explain to me why. So yesterday Edu (host bro) and i drove 16 kilometers to the river and bucket-by-bucket filled up two five gallon jugs that would last us until the next day. Some have wondered why it had been 20 days since i had bathed and the reason is that it is such a pain in the neck to get the water!
but i'm not complaining, as the coat of dirt grows so does my character....right?

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!
I hope that the holidays have been great, wish I could of been there, but I have not been disappointed in KR! Is there snow at home? Most of the volunteers in Talas got together in a nearby village on the 23rd. We attempted to make mac-n-cheese, but failed miserably. we didnt let some bad mac-n-cheese get the best of us so to lift our spirits we went to the disco (which consisted of a volunteer hooking up his Ipod to some speakers) at the local school and got funky with a bunch of middle schoolers to crazy russian techno/pop. it's ridiculous how much fun I had!
Christmas Eve we brought out the classics and sang carols, made cookies and fried chicken, and had a gift exchange. I received pepper spray and pasta seasoning (not bad, one girl got old Neil Diamond cassettes!). we then moved the get together to another village for Christmas in KR part II. This second part involved a few more bottles of alchohol, a sled, two santa hats and a frisbie.....good times!
My birthday was fabulous, I had lessons, but i told the kids that i didnt want to work that day. Instead I had them teach me Kr games which were all a lot of fun, though i think that they were being easy on me. One student, this really quiet boy that sits in the back, made me a card that had a drawing of me and said 'my fond of teacher', sweet huh? Probably 14 times that day i had random groups of students come
up to me and sing me happy b-day (in english too) and I got twice as many kisses from all of the teachers - they're a very affectionate bunch! Later on my pal lisa (she lives in a village about an hour away) came out for lunch and we caught up on all the local Kr gossip. It was also my host dads b-day and he and some of his pals got into a bottle of vodka while the ladies shared some wine (this wine though is super sweet and super strong, you actually have to take shots, yuck). It seems like they got te hint that i miss my pups at home because muliple folks gave me stuffed puppies.
Kr being an Islam country and all, they dont really celebrate Christmas (there is a significant group of russians here and a lot of russian influence so some people do celebrate). Instead the big winter holiday is new years and its just about as big of a deal here as Christmas is at home, though they dont quite get going as soon as the day after thanksgiving because 1) they dont celebrate thanksgiving here,
i'm working on that one 2) they arent quite as neurotic as we are! There is a New Years tree though and Santa does come so i didnt miss out on some of the crucial Christmas Hub-bub. A few weeks before the hype started to grow and all anybody would talk about was janga jil! All the students decorated their classrooms and brought in radios so they could dance inbetween class. They really weren't in the mood to talk about simple present tense which was just fine with me since I was all caught up in the excitement! The last day before winter break the school put on a New Years performance. the younger kids went first and and they dressed up like their favorite magical creatures or in formal, prom-esque get ups....it was super cute. santa also came and they sang songs, and performed skits all around the christmas...i mean new year tree. I was really impressed by some of the singers. they all sang very traditional songs and some even played music to accompany. during the performances the rest of the kids would attempt at a box step. one of my students in the seventh grade (who's short for his age anyways) asked me to dance and really how could i say know! we had a great time and showed off to all the other kids. then it was time for the big kids to go. all of the students looked like they had stepped out of a cheesy 80s prom film. the girls wore big poofy dresses with the big sleeves and tacky colors, the guys actually looked pretty slick. there was a talent show and i have to give it to these kids for their nerves of steel. most of the 'talent' involved lip syncing to american pop songs and chorographing dances to go along with. oh it was so bad that it was so funny. After the formalities were out of the way the disco began. During school hours the relationship between the students is very formal and proper so I expected most of the teachers to keep to themselves. boy was i surprised when my apa, this chubby old woman with quite a bite, grabbed the first boy she saw and started getting jiggy!
So as you can see there was a lot of build up towards new years and unfortunately i was disappointed. the day started off good, i was able to bathe (yeah, it had been 20 days folks). then edu (host bro) and i left home with a burlap bag and a empty water bottle and headed to the neighbors where we got some milk (straight from the cow) and a turkey (still flapping). when we got back to house edu left the bird in the bad outside to run inside and get a knife. when we headed back out the turkey had escaped from its bag and was checking out the yard. Our attempt to corner it backfired because the darn thing ended up on the roof. One of the funniest images I have is edu on the roof squaking and flapping like a turkey and chasing the bird (which he finally got and took care of) instead of a nice stuffed turkey with mashed potatoes and stuffing we had the turkey over noodles and ate with our hands. not only was it bland as dirt, but also really messy. then i was expecting lots of people and dancing and just merriment, but the night of i hung out in my room till 11;30, then had a glass of champagne with the fam and called it a night. maybe it's because my host parents are a bit older and they are all partied out, but i'll know better next time!
So the holidays might not of been ideal, but they will be ones that i never forget!
~machalla