to Turkey and Beyond

I'm back in the wonderful land of sheep and it’s strange to be “home.” I'm in a new home in Kyrgyzstan. My 3rd home in a year…

Turkey was amazing. Stunningly beautiful. Delicious food (and icecream! mango, pistachio, blackberry, etc). The best friends in the world! Overly enthusiastic venders. Wonderfully friendly locals. Fascinating history. I could have had fun with those friends in a police station (and I have! Hannah!) but being in Turkey was icing on the cake.


A brief (not-so-brief) summary of our trip:

We began in Istanbul, in the Northwestern part of Turkey. Some quick facts about the city: Istanbul is divided between Europe and Asia and has a population of 20 million (larger than New York City). There are 505 mosques in Istanbul and 5 times a day, if you’re in the right place, you can hear the call to prayer ringing out in a breathtaking symphony. Istanbul has been the center of 3 empires. Everything is 100 times more spectacular than in any picture.

Once you leave the most touristy part of town, you find yourself in a world that comes alive in the late evening and continues to swarm with thousands of people late into the morning. Drinking tea and coffee, walking, going into clubs to dance, eating in outdoor cafés, enjoying the cool of the day.

After 3 days in Istanbul we went to Selchuk, a small town located near the ruins of Efes (Ephesus). It was a bizarre experience to be in a place that I knew about through Discovery Channel programs and Biblical references. I was that tourist, the one posing for a picture in front of ancient ruins in a fantastic place I never imagined myself visiting. The camera wasn’t able to capture my bewilderment.

After Selchuk we went to Pamukkale by night bus. Pamukkale is another small town located next to a fascinating place: a mountain turned white by calcium deposited by hot springs. Those same springs naturally form pools in steps down the mountainside.

Next we went to Fethiye: a beach town on the southern coast of Turkey. It was a perfect super-tranquilo spot to just chill and enjoy the sun. We swam in the Mediterrean, lay on the beach, and played tag with the fish. We were there for 3 days. One day we walked along a river gorge that tested our physical strength (we had to climb over boulders and up waterfalls) and revealed our fear of impending death.

Our next night bus brought us to Goreme, a town in central Turkey in the region of Cappadocia, but seemingly located on another planet. The landscape there was incredible. Volcanic events followed by centuries of erosion resulted in large conical rock formations jutting up from the earth. Ancient people carved out these rocks and lived inside them. The hostel we stayed in was a cave-hostel. During our stay in Cappadocia we visited an underground city and were able to visit 8 of the original 12 stories dug into the earth. Inside the city were stables for horses, a winepress, chapel, wells, and sky lights.

We then returned to Istanbul to say goodbye and make last minute tourist purchases at the Grand Bazaar and the Egyptian spice bazaar.

This was my first actual vacation (travel just for travel’s sake) outside the U.S. I’m very grateful to have been able to see my friends and explore such a fantastic country.

One Year in Kyrgyzstan

Today is July 2nd, 2009. In 5 days we will celebrate our 1 year anniversary in Kyrgyzstan. It's amazing. While at times the days, hours, and even minutes seemed to drag on endlessly, somehow my first year with Peace Corps has flown by.

In the last year I've:
had 3 separate host families: 4 brothers, 5 sisters, 3 mothers, 2 fathers
learned to communicate in a completely foreign language
learned to see the world from another culture's perspective
taught English, geography, philosophy, life-skills, and health to Kyrgyz students
learned to live comfortably without running water or consistent electricity
discovered that you can miss home and be home at the same time
cried openly in internet cafes as a read emails from home

Just a few of the things that I've done in the last year.
Everything looks so strange when looking back on it...


TRAVEL PLANS!
On July 9th I'm travelling to Turkey to celebrate my first year of Peace Corps and to meet with 2 very close friends from home. It will be the first time in a year that I will see a familiar face from the States!

P.S. For all of my friends who love ME but don't exactly know where KYRGYZSTAN is, I'm in Central Asia NOT Eastern Europe. :)

Haunted

The other day I was walking home from school and I smelt something that brought me back home. I couldn’t identify it exactly, and I still can’t. Maybe it really was a whiff of air from America, crossing oceans and continents to reach me. The smell caught me so off guard that I stopped walking in the middle of the street. I cow nearly ran me over, but swerved at the last minute and missed me.

I glanced around wildly for the origin of the smell, like a schizophrenic chasing visions that aren’t real. Since then I’ve been racking my brain for what it might be. They say that smell is more tightly bound to memory than any of the other senses. This wasn’t the first time that I’ve been ‘haunted’ by a smell from home…

Last November I smelt gummy bears. Yeah, gummy bears. I’m not sure I ever realized that gummy bears have a smell, but they do. It’s strongest right when you open the bag.

To whomever reads this,
I sincerely hope you never have to smell something you love when there’s no way that you’ll be able to get that thing for several months. It’s something that could make a grown man cry…

Spring!

Now that spring is close, I become a poet when I walk around outside. The effects of spring’s approach on my mood are obvious. The soft waves of untouched snow glisten like tiny diamonds, rainbow drops created by the sun’s rays. Ice-sickles hang like elegant curtains on the eves of houses. The air is crisp but not frigid; the sun now brings heat as well as light. These are the thoughts that float into my head as I stroll around my village, rejoicing that spring will be here soon. I recognize that the day has made me positively giddy. Then I step on something that squishes under my foot. In my town piles of cow, sheep, and dog droppings litter the streets. For months they were equivalent to piles of ice. Now they’re thawing, and I’ve just stepped in one.

4 Volunteers, 3 Locals

Winter Camp...volunteers included

Group pic (volunteers not included)

Boys at camp

Little sledders

These are some kids on my street. Sleds: the BEST way to travel.

Leaving Naryn

Driving through Kyrgyzstan really highlights the essence of Kyrgyzstan. On Dec 14^th three volunteers and I left Naryn city (the central city in our region – 2 hours by bus from my village) for Bishkek, the capital. We travelled by taxi, about a 4 hour trip depending on the driver. When we left Naryn there was about 5 inches of snow on the ground and the sidewalks were mini ice-rinks. The first snow fell in early October and where it remains untouched by the sun, it lingers. The days have not been warm enough since then to melt it. Everything changed when the snow came. Barren hills and mountains without definition suddenly seemed to be carved of stone and ice in jagged rugged lines. While I was once unimpressed by the Kyrgyz landscape, I now find the scenery breathtaking.

Our region is the coldest in all of Kyrgyzstan and driving to Bishkek meant leaving the bitter cold for slightly warmer temperatures. We left the snow after about an hour of driving. The snow covered mountains became backdrop and tan plains became the most defining part of the landscape. There was the occasional tree, stream, frozen pond. If I had been keeping track, I might have counted over a hundred separate herds of sheep. That is stereotypical image of Kyrgyzstan and it is not a misrepresentation. The occasional horse could be seen wandering around in this empty land, not lost but seemingly not watched over by anyone in particular.

Then I spent 4 days in Bishkek trying to re-discover how to navigate a large city. Traffic is more unnerving that I remember it, and I find that my sense of direction is lost in a town with more than 5 main streets. It’s interesting comparing stories with volunteers who live in larger towns and cities. While I’m shocked that they have access to all kinds of different foods, they are amazed that we don’t have grocery stores even in our biggest city. I know volunteers who check their internet daily and others, like myself, who manage to get to an internet café maybe once a month. While we each have distinct experiences within Peace Corps, we all have similar challenges in adjusting to a new culture, language, and way of life.

During the last day of my stay in Bishkek I decided to head out on my own. Until then I had stuck close to city-volunteers or volunteers who have been here over a year, relying on their knowledge to get around. Running short of time, I stood at a bus stop trying to figure out which bus would take me where I needed to go. Normally I would turn to the person next to me and ask for advice, but there was a problem: everyone around me was Russian. While almost all Kyrgyz people speak Kyrgyz and Russian, most Russians only speak Russian. I only speak Kyrgyz (and it’s still very limited). That’s one challenge I don’t have to deal with at my site. Few Russian ever venture into Naryn...