June 18, 2013
Yesterday morning the
weather was cool – highs in the 60s – but the skies were clear and sunny. By
noon clouds had blown in and rain had started to fall. By mid-afternoon the
valley had turned into a wind-tunnel, with wind and rain howling past my window.
By about 6pm, the rain had begun turning into sleet and snow flurries. By 8pm
we were in a full-on, mid-winter type blizzard. A freakin’ blizzard. In June.
And me with all of my summer clothes. Around 9pm, the power went out. After
eating dinner by candlelight, I retreated under my covers with my kindle. The
power remained off until about noon the following day.
Apparently this is the only
time that anyone in the village can recall a snow storm in June. A few years
ago they had a snow storm in May, but never in June. Just my luck. I
experienced the coldest winter in Russia in decades back in 2006, the coldest
winter in Kyrgyzstan in decades in 2008, and now the coldest summer in memory
in the Issyk-Kul region. For a native Floridian, this is a rather horrible
string of bad luck with weather.
When I awoke in the morning,
it was still quite frigid and the sky was an ominous grey – although the snow
had stopped falling and the previous evening’s snow was in the process of
melting away. I dressed in as many layers as I could gather. (I’d come prepared
for summer, not for snow!) Then it was time to meet with Adilet and Aizhan, who
had been sent out to Toguz Bulak from The London School to take photos of me,
my host family, and my students for some sort of project. I was never really
clear on what kind of project this was, but apparently the pictures absolutely
had to be taken today. (For those of
you wondering why I had to go to Bishkek on Friday to pick up my passport if
people from The London School were going to make a surprise trip to Toguz-Bulak
on the following Tuesday… well, this is Kyrgyzstan. Who knows?) Normally I
would have been dressed professionally in order to teach – and especially for
some kind of photo-shoot. I might have even considered make up… but it was
really incredibly cold, and the only thing I was considering was warmth. I
definitely looked a bit rough.
Adilet took photos of me and
my host family at breakfast, and then we set off for the school… which was
locked. My students were waiting by the locked front door, but no one else was
around. Luckily, one of my students in Group 1 is the daughter of the school’s
director, so I sent her off on a quest to locate the key. (Pretty much everyone
here, including most of the students, has a cell phone, but as the power was
out to the cell towers, no one had a cell signal, and they had to go in search
of the key on foot.) Finally, after waiting on the frigid front step for a good
half hour, they key arrived and we were able to go inside. Of course, being
inside wasn’t much of an improvement, as the school was chilly on the best of
days, and didn’t have any heat. Sigh.
Adilet took quite a few
photos and videos of me teaching Group 1, and then returned to Bishkek. Some of
the photos have since appeared on Facebook, but I’m not sure what’s going to be
done with the rest.
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