I have come to know the meaning of these two words: “shas” and “azur”. “Shas” in Russian means wait a minute, and it usually means what it means. “Azur” in Kyrgyz means “now”. My other volunteer friends who are living in more kyrgyz communities have made jokes about this word many times, and I haven’t really understood this word entirely until a couple weeks ago. “Azur” can mean anything after the present moment. It could mean 10 minutes from now, or hours from now. When I was going to visit my friend in Naryn, who lives an hour outside of Naryn City, I naively thought to myself, “if I leave Bishkek at 9:00am, and it takes 5.5 hours to get there, and if it’s another 40 minutes to my friend’s house by taxi, then I should get there by no later than 4, giving time for traffic. I got to Naryn City, and then patiently waited for my friend’s host father to pick me up. I waited at the station for almost an hour before he showed up. When he showed up, I was relieved. I thought “Now. Now we can leave.”… How wrong I was. He told me we had to wait to pick other people up after the bazaar closed. My heart sank. I heard him talking on the phone, and he kept saying “azur”. All I could think was ” I am tired, and hungry, and I am tired of waiting.” (We do a lot of waiting in Kyrgyzstan. We wait for a marshrutka to leave if it is not full yet, when we have appointments, we are waiting on someone to show up, we wait for all of the sheep to cross the road, we just wait on someone to finish something before we go anywhere. We wait for the electricity to come back on so we can send that document we have been working on, or cook dinner, or if you are lucky you’ll be getting that nice hot shower (I’m not one of those people)). The short and the long of it, I finally made it to my friend’s house. I said, “I don’t like when people say azur.” and he just laughed.
I told myself I would never be late for anything. I have started being late for things. To school, to my russian class, to meet up with friends. I had asked my friends if there is a word for “late” in Kyrgyz. There is, but I forget what it is at the moment. The pace of life is so different here, and I have started adopting this (sort of) into my life. I don’t get mad anymore if people are late to things. Sometimes in the middle of the waiting period, there is frustration, but when the person shows up and say ” I am sorry I am late.” I instantly forgive them, because I myself have been guilty of this.
Pictures
Scattered kyrgyzstan tidbits
Bread is sacred-There are all kinds of bread here. White bread, round bread, fried bread, bread rolls, sweet breads, bread, bread and bread. If you are offered bread at someone’s house, you must eat it. You can’t turn it down. Even if you don’t want any, you must at least taste it. A spot of butter and raspberry jam is complimentary to the bread experience.
Mashrutkas- If you didn’t know already, a mashrutka is a big van, and it is how we get around in the big KG. There is ALWAYS room on a mashrutka.And I mean ALWAYS. They will make you fit.I have seen people squeezing to the middle to have the last person be able to shut the door. We are packed like sardines with no seat belts.(Sorry Mom!) There is never a line at a mashrutka because the people will all fit, some way, some how.
When I had moved to my permanent site, I was figuring out how to say to the driver where to take me in Bishkek. I was tripping over the name of the intersection of where I wanted to go. They driver just watched me as I struggled to get my words out. I am pretty sure he knew where I wanted to go, I think he was just enjoying the my word play.
Mashrutkas sometimes change route. I got on one to go to Bishkek, and the mashrutka wove back and forth around the city. I was exasperated because we passed my stop and he didn’t stop. Maybe my Russian has to be improved to convince the driver to let me off.
PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers) are like rock stars. We are recognized and talked about. I was on my way home on the mashrutka, and a girl whom I have never met before asked me “Are you Lila?”. She was from my village, my former host sister’s friend. I talked to her for a while.
It seems there is a demand for a talking club. I want to have one for older students, not just for my high school students. But one step at a time. I am excited to meet my students!
I started an English club last week, though we haven’t met much since it has been Ramadan and there are special practices during this time. Last day of Ramadan is tomorrow. At the last club meeting my students said they want to go on a picnic with me. I hope I get to go before I go back to hub site for training.
What else?? If you guys have any questions, email me or respond on here and then I can do a blog answering your questions.
❤ you!
-Lila "LilaJe" S.
My new home away from home
Hey guys, just a quick update. I just finished El campo, an english camp in Bishkek, it was for 8 days for campers, and 10 days for staff. It was great. I was a team leader as well as a teacher. We had 3 core classes that all students took, health, project 101 and geography and then there were electives to pick from: art, dance, theatre and music. I taught geography and theatre. The first day was rough getting every one through the day, figuring out classes, event schedules and the big one was figuring out when people could take showers(there was a lot of math involved…thanks Steve!) We had many events and dress up days. Hollywood day, halloween, superhero day,spirit day… and we had a scavenger hunt, waterfight, movie night, quiz night,latino night and haunted house night. When it was all over, the staff went out for chinese food and it was amazing! And it was a late night of playing mafia.
After all of the goodbyes, and packing, I went straight back to move to my new house. My host family had decided it would be best if they went back to Russia to be with the father, who has been working there for almost a year. It was sad but it all worked out for the better. I can still walk to work if I want to, and my tutor lives on the next street over. My new host mom is so jolly and I have a host brother. My host sisters live in Bishkek and one is teaching in Austria. I have a lovely garden, and I have a dog (YAY!) a cow and some sheep. My mom said I can cook if I want to. Once I get settled in, I will take a crack at it and cook dinner and see if my family likes what I can whip up.
I have about 3 weeks until I have to go back to my first host site. So I will use this time wisely to buckle down and get some studying under my belt because I think Usen is going to test us really hard when we get back to hub site.
I know some of you have been begging for pictures, and I promise you they will happen! Soon! That’s all I got for now. Hope you are all well! Write me! I love any kind of letter. Miss you ❤
Here we are Guys!
The big day came and went quickly. Swear-in day! I’m a volunteer. Wow! We had a lovely ceremony. There were speeches, and a couple performances. One volunteer performed Manas, and another played the guitar and sang a kyrgyz song. To follow there were pictures, hugs and goodbyes. We went our separate ways each with our counterparts. I came to a village, about 30-40 minutes from the capitol. My village is small and it’s in the foothills, so it’s a little cooler than in some places in Chui oblast.
I live in an apartment with my host mom, 2 brothers and a host sister. I love my family! The first day my mom said to my little 3 yr. old brother that I am his “eje ” now, which means sister in kyrgyz. I have been spending more time with my family now that there has been a change of pace. I have no schedule and no place in particular to be, this for me is strange, going from almost every minute of my day being planned to being asked “what will you do today/tomorrow?”. Some days I have no clue. But I’d like to think that I have been putting my time to good use. I have been chai eeching with my tutor, a sweet lady that lives in the village that is 20 minutes walk from me. I went with my counterpart to have lunch with her sisters, I went on a field trip with my sister to have a picnic by the river with her classmates, I have studied some russian, but not as intensely as my brain has needed a rest. My older brother has showed me the scenic places around my village, and I have taken up running with my brother in the evenings when it has cooled off. He is such a good sport, since I have only begun running regularly here. But there have been a couple days where it has just been way too hot to go outside. That time has been spent writing very simple journal entries in russian, and sleeping (the non stressed kind that has been the best ever!) a movie here and eating cherries from my teacher’s cherry tree. Next week is when I will have 2 weeks packed of fun my oblast mates and I are doing an english camp soon! I am so stoked!
One of the battles for me everyday is my russian practice. I understand more than I can speak. I understand my mom when we converse, and she understands me because she is a sympathetic listener. With others I trip a lot over my words, but with practice comes improvement.
Me and my counter part, the teacher I will be working with.
Some of the family 🙂
Until next time!
Love you guys!
Catch up
Hello all! A lot of things have happened since I last posted. In more recent news, we all had our language test and we are finished with that for a little while at least. I have come far in learning Russian, but there is always more to learn. No time to get bored with learning Russian. No time to be bored period. Here are a few random things I have learned while living in Kyrgyzstan.
1) People love their chai(tea) here. It is the main way people conduct business by having tea. Socializing and doing business at the same time. I think it’s awesome!
2) Oh my god the candy. Not a day goes by that the table isn’t covered with candy for the taking. I have noticed that I have been eating more candy here. Maybe stress eating?? I have been eating a lot of halvah here, which is a candy of ground up sunflower seed and honey. Delicious!
3) People think that any kind of cold weather will make you sick. Any sort of breeze. Or if you drink cold water it will make you sick. I had a cold once and my mom said to drink tea with raspberry jam.
4) Locals think that if you sit on cement you will become infertile.
5) Here you can do anything until the cows come home. Every evening the cows come walking down our street around 7:00 in the evening.
Here are a few pictures from daily life:
This is a picture of my backyard when the sun rises. I took this the first morning in my village in Kyrgyzstan.
This is my 4 yr. year old niece Felicah.
Puppies.
My fellow PCVT and her host brother. I hang out at their house a lot.
The cutest donkeys live in Kyrgyzstan.
My favorite foods ever! Home made cheese, fried bread and cucumbers and tomatoes!
My host cousin with the indoor frisbee! (Thanks Katie and Larry McNeil! This has been a hit!)
Statue of Manas, the hero who united the 40 tribes of Kyrgyzstan.
First hike in Kyrgyzstan.
When the cows come home.
I have been very lazy with taking pictures, but I hope to be taking more.
If you have any questions, email me if you want more specifics!
-Lila
First Lesson
Well, it’s been about a week since I have arrived here. We were staying in a hotel by the Issykkul; the infamous lake of Kyrgyzstan for a few days to get our bearings and get over jetlag. It feels longer because we have done so much here. The second day we were assigned our language groups. In my mind I had expected as much that I would be learning Kyrgyz, since I had read that 80% of the volunteers would be learning Kyrgyz, and the other 20% would be learning Russian. Well, I ended up as one of the chosen few to learn Russian. At first I was shocked and paranoid, because I had bothered to study Kyrgyz before I had come here. But my language group is awesome and we have the best language teacher ever! He is really supportive and believes we can succeed.
I am living with a Turkish host family, and has been really great. They feed me really delicious food and they are very understanding when I trip over my words. I am living with my host mom, dad, brother, sister in law and the cutest 4 year old niece ever!
So far while I have been staying with my host family, I have been going to language class and have had what we call hub day training, where all the volunteers gather at the hub site village for medical training and other PC trainings. I live in the hub site village, so I am about a 10 minute walk from my hub site. One of the volunteers lives right next to me and our families are related so we see a lot of eachother.
Russian group class has been making my head swim. Today it’s starting to come together. But after having it all day, all I can say is “school hard.”
After school, I would come home for dinner and then walk right across the road to the school yard and play games with the kids. I brought out the frisbee last night and we all had a blast.
More to come! If you have any specific questions or just send me a message on here, feel free!
Peace!
The trip ahead
The day has come! I am going to Kyrgyzstan for Peace Corps, a magical land of mountains and snow leopards. Never have I dreamed to go to a place like this. I felt bad about my shaky knowledge of geography when I first received my invitation to go to the Kyrgyz Republic. The first thing I did was look it up on a map. 
I will be teaching English and once I get my teacher routine down, I will get started on my secondary projects in my community. I’m already thinking of starting a green house project and starting an ultimate frisbee team, and goodness knows what else I will get into.
I cannot wait to meet my fellow PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers)!
Kyrgystan Bound 