The life and times at TLS

September 24, 2008

The internet is SO UNBEARABLY SLOW today that I am feeling somewhat cranky. I haven't been able to upload anything to facebook, but at least I've been able to upload blog-sized photos for you to enjoy. I haven't done much of anything of interest, but I thought you cats might enjoy some photos of how we here at TLS spend our time :-) For starters, the other evening we decided that the courtyard was the perfect place for a bonfire...

Luckily we had a guy who could actually build one.

J and D pretended to help.

See? Granted, I wasn't even pretending.

War, Famine, Death and Pestilence.

J, E, F, A

D is a freakin pyro.

K had the stellar idea that we should make mulled wine,

which was a fabulous success.

E even made an oven for the wine.

Last night we began the many-days-long celebration of my impending 30th birthday.

It's on Thursday the 25th, if you were wondering.

And B shuffles worse than I do - yay!

The other night we went to Sweet 60s, but there was no music :-(

(K and me)

B, N and J

Looks like B and E had linked arms. They hadn't though, it was just a bizarre optical illusion.

Oh, and here's the school. I do work, you know.

Of nearly bra burning and early morning champagne

September 5, 2008

Wednesday, according to our “schedule” the power was supposed to be out from 6pm until midnight. It didn’t go out until 10:45pm, which I didn’t mind so much, but one wonders why they bothered making and disseminating a block by block power outage schedule. Yay, Kyrgyzstan. I was hanging out with my headlamp and numerous candles when I began to smell something (other than a candle) burning. The candle I’d had sitting on my plastic chest of drawers had burned a hole through the top of the chest and had ignited something inside my underwear drawer. Ooops. You’d think that after the Oh, holy shit, the plastic box is burning incident of 2005 I’d have learned to stop placing candles directly onto plastic surfaces, but obviously not. Luckily only one of my green headscarves (of which I have several) burned, and my entire selection of underwear was not lost.

Oooops.

Shortly after that I blew out the candles and went to bed… only to be awoken from my slumber at about 2:30am by a loud Crash! Bang! from directly outside my window, accompanied by a lot of shouting and swearing in Russian. After the crashing, banging and swearing continued for a few more minutes, I dragged myself out of bed to see what the racket was all about. For some reason a crew of five workers had picked that very moment to install a gigantic metal sign (to which billboards can be attached) directly outside my window. This involved large metal objects dangling from a giant, teetering crane, which were being smashed repeatedly (and accidentally) into the trees outside my window amidst much shouting: Come on! Come on! Come on! Sasha! Saaa-shaa! Dammit. Hell. Come on! Stop! Stop! Vanya, help Seryoga! Fuck! Lift it up! Lift it up! Gosha! Come on! Come on! I listened to Sasha, Vanya, Seryoga, Gosha and their foreman (the one doing the bulk of the shouting) crash, bang and curse for a full two hours before they managed to get the thing erected. Then they uncorked a bottle of champagne which they proceeded to drink outside my window before driving away. They left the empty bottle.

The view at 3am

The finished product by daylight.

Not even containing an advertisement, just an empty metal sign. Boo.

Lights out!

September 2, 2008

The above is allegedly the schedule for power outages for our block for the indefinite future. I say "allegedly" as it seems more of a rough estimate than an accurate schedule. For example, last night, when according to the schedule power should have gone off at midnight, we lost power at 10:17. Boo.

The tail-end of my vacation

September 1, 2008

Vacations are always too short, and this one was no exception. Tomorrow we start working again... and I only have two more months here in Kyrgyzstan before starting the next stage of the adventure that is my life. I will be sad to leave Kyrgyzstan, but I am also looking forward to going home for a while. In preparation for my departure, I've acquired all the documents I need to get my four furballs back into the US, and I've gotten four adorable kitty passports from my Bishkek vet (which are needed in order to take my cats out of Kyrgyzstan.)

 Aren't they cute?

Meanwhile, I had assumed that I'd be taking Heelio with me on the plane, while stowing the others in cargo... but she has grown at such an absurd rate that she is already bigger than Luball! I can't imagine how big she is going to get.

Heelio is already big enough to get to the top of the wardrobe.

When I first got her, she was too small to jump on a stool!

Also, I learned that cats have "baby teeth" just like humans. I discovered this when I found a tiny tooth on my bed and then checked the internet to make sure Heelio wasn't suffering from some dental disease.

I found this quite fascinating, personally.

Today was Kyrgyzstan's Independence Day. We had hoped there would be horse games at the hippodrome, but alas, no such luck. The center square was packed full of people milling about, but not much seemed to be going on. Not the most exciting end to our vacation.

Ala Too Square, Bishkek, Independence Day 2008

In other news... I mentioned the Toktogul Reservoir and how low it's become in my last post. This is a problem for Kyrgyzstan as the country functions on something like 95% hydroelectric power. The Toktogul has been depleted partly due to over-use last winter when the country sucked down more electricity than ever before in our record cold winter, and partly due to the fact that a large percentage of Toktogul's water has been sold to Uzbekistan. Recently, the Kyrgyz president sold several hydroelectric power plants and the rights to their reservoirs to Kazakhstan! Check out the following pictures of the Orto-Tokoy Reservoir (near Kochkor), in the spring and then in the summer, following the sale to Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, rolling blackouts have started again with a vengeance.

Orto-Tokoy Reservoir in March 2008

Same place in Orto-Tokoy Reservoir, August 2008

(photo by B.)

And, irony of ironies, this sign appeared today in the center of Bishkek.

It reads, in both Kyrgyz and Russian:
Yes, there will be peace and success in our fatherland!
And it's president Bakiyev next to a hydroelectric dam.

We didn’t need that hot water anyway.

May 17, 2008

Years ago, when developing their infrastructure, the Soviets decided that hot water would be distributed to everyone from a central source; no one would have their own water heater in their home. Unfortunately, a system as vast as one which supplies piping hot water to the masses must be closed periodically for maintenance. In Russia, they usually do it by region; one neighborhood loses hot water for a week, then regains it as the workers move to a different region of the city. Here in Bishkek, they simply shut off the hot water to the entire city for a full month. The hot water went away last Monday, and there are rumors that the hot water will be off not for a mere month, but until September. Boiled water bucket showers, headscarves (my solution to unwashed hair) and stinky people – woohoo!

There are a lot of rumors about water flying about these days. My student who is a plumber (one might assume he would be in the know regarding such matters) has heard that ALL WATER in Bishkek will be turned off in June. I’ve written about this a little before, but just to refresh your memory: Kyrgyzstan receives most of its electricity via hydroelectric power plants. Since this winter was the coldest in Kyrgyzstan’s recorded history, the Toktogul Reservoir was nearly depleted to provide electricity for heating purposes (both for heating the state run systems and individual electric heaters throughout the country). Because of this, the reservoir is at record low levels. Additionally, Kyrgyzstan has a trade agreement with Uzbekistan: we give them water and they give us natural gas. If we don’t have enough water to meet the trade agreement, they cut off our natural gas supplies. This is (allegedly) the reason for the (rumored) water shut offs in June. Personally, I’d rather have water than gas; I can always just eat shashlik everyday. Anyway, K, Young B and I have started hoarding water. It’s probably just a groundless rumor, but I’d rather be safe than sorry!

Additionally, since the bulk of this country’s electricity comes from the aforementioned hydroelectric power plants, our power shortages have worsened. Random blackouts began in February, and in April became regularized; for the past month and a half, the power has gone out (in my block at least) around midnight, and has remained off until around six in the morning. On top of that, we’ve had random day-time power-outages this month as well. At least it makes the days unpredictable...

Also, in case you’re interested, here’s the current promo-shot of all the teachers (er, minus M for some reason) for the local newspaper. Young B obviously didn’t get the white shirt memo.

Back row: Old B, J, Creepy C
Front row: K, Young B, Me

En vino veritas

April 22, 2008

I am not going to tell the full story of what befell us on Saturday night, as the story itself isn’t really mine for the telling. My role was peripheral, and as such, my coverage of the events shall be as well.

My friends had decided to spend another evening out at the rock club Zeppelin; however, as we’d been there the night before, and as I was feeling decidedly head-coldy following my walk-n-ride, I decided to stay home. After a couple of hours sobbing my way through Battlestar Galactica reruns (in preparation for my attempt to acquire parts of season 4), followed by a few minutes of escapist mystery reading, the power went out. No surprise there; it’s been going out every evening around midnight. I figured that was a sign that I should go to bed. Not five minutes later, a loud ruckus from the courtyard convinced me that perhaps I should be out and about.

Let’s just say that a now former Kyrgyz friend of ours had imbibed way too much, causing him to turn into an angry, belligerent monster. And monsters have a tendency to attack. Four of us ended up holed up in K’s room, recovering while the fiend rampaged. Eventually said fiend passed out in the backseat of his car. Extra points go to Young B for excellent sneaking skills, even if he was lacking in locating-passed-out-monsters-in-cars skills, and for use of the word ‘jumpers’ in a tight spot. The night could have been disastrous. As it was, it was thoroughly unnerving and distressing, but we managed to find humor in a lot of it.

We continued to find humor in the morning, when we discovered that not only was the monster still hanging about, but he and our alleged night guard (who had done next to nothing to assist us the night before) were drinking Devyatki (a super strong beer) at 10am. Thanks a lot, guard. Way to do your job. By noon the two of them were completely hammered, and lurking at the café across the street, waiting for a certain member of our party to emerge. (In fact, when two of our group tried to leave, they ended up essentially chased into my apartment by ye olde monster. My apologies to them for the fact that I had not yet cleaned the litter boxes at that point. My apartment was a bit stinky.)

The four of us decided that we did not wish to be trapped inside all day. Unfortunately, there is only one entrance/exit to the school’s “compound” – and the monster and his drinking buddy were waiting in direct view of it. So, we decided to get a bit creative, and snuck out over the back wall.

K&A
A's arm, me, B
A&B
Jump, A!
A, K, & B After achieving our freedom, we bought a two-liter of tan and some plastic cups and headed to a nearby park to enjoy freedom and the company of the sane and sober.

Feeling a tad cranky.

March 14, 2008

Luball is in heat. She's the youngest of the three kitties I inherited when I moved to Bishkek, and she's the only one who came to me un-spayed. I knew she'd be going into heat soon, but kept putting off doing it because I don't have a cat-carrier and didn't so much like the thought of carrying her to the vet in my backpack. Anyway, she's started prowling around the apartment scouting - and crying - for a boy cat, and it is unceasing. Additionally, this started at exactly the same time that the weather became warm enough to open the windows (a must, as the state-provided heat is still blasting into my apartment). Unfortunately, as I live on the ground floor and my windows have no screens, I can't really do this, as Luball just pops out the window and goes running down the street with her ass in the air. So I'm stifling in my apartment until I have time to both take her to and pick her up from the vet. Given my schedule and the vet's schedule, this doesn't seem likely to happen for two more weeks. Gah! Also, somebody (I'm assuming it was hormonal Luball) peed on my awesome green coat last night. Grrrr, anger. Getting it clean is going to be a bitch.

This morning, after awakening to discover that my coat had been peed on, the power went out. Since the sun is already up by the time I get up (even though that's at 7am these days), it wasn't too much of an inconvenience. My MercyCorps Компаньон driver - the super talkative and friendly one - told me that the biggest power supplier to Bishkek is the Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Plant. He said that the plant used way more of its water reserve this past winter than usual, as people were using more electricity than usual to keep warm. This means that the water reserves are now low. As such, Bishkek is still shutting off power periodically to various disctricts in order to conserve electricity and to allow the water supply to replenish. Meanwhile, he told me that Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have an agreement: U-stan gets water from the Toktogul reserve, while K-stan gets gas from U-stan. Since K-stan might have to renege on its part of the deal on account of low water reserves, U-stan is threatening to cut off K-stan's gas supply! Sheesh. There goes cooking dinner.

And speaking of my super-friendly driver.... it turns out that he's an Evangelical Christian! Booo. So now every day he tries to talk to me about god and keeps asking me to go to church with him.

Today was supposed to be my Kyrgyz lesson day... I got to class early, and waited for my fellow students to arrive, but no one came. Neither did the teacher. Eventually I sent out some text messages, and learned that class had been cancelled, and somehow everyone had been told of this except me. Annoyed.

Then I decided to quickly go and check my email. I figured I'd just pop into Шаттл, the crappy internet place by my house since all I wanted to do was check my messages. Well, the internet in Шаттл isn't exactly reliable, but usually it works. Of course today it didn't - and like before, I still had to pay for the privilege of sitting in front of an offline computer, before walking 15 minutes to the other internet cafe. Sigh.

So I'm feeling cranky. And I guess now I'll go home and take my pre-afternoon-class nap in my hot and stuffy apartment with the horny and noisy cat.

Ripped from the headlines

January 27, 2008

The above headlines all came from last week’s edition of The Times of Central Asia (free copies of it can be found at Fatboy’s, among other places), and seem to provide a little bit of background behind why we here in Bishkek suffered extensive blackouts nearly every day last week. Granted, this edition of the Times was published a good week before the Bishkek blackouts began, but obviously energy shortages – both gas and electric – are of big concern in the Stans these days.

We had all assumed that our Monday blackout was a fluke; however, by the end of the week we had all grown accustomed to teaching by candlelight, and my students had (mostly) stopped laughing at the absurd sight of me, teaching in my LED headlamp. One of my older students told me that the city of Bishkek is shutting off power to different grids of the city at different times each day, because the electronic generators are overworked. Rolling blackouts, I suppose. Not really what you’d expect from capital city of an allegedly developed country, but I guess the Californians weren’t expecting it back in 2002 either.

While other Stans are suffering from shortages of natural gas – and from the fact that Uzbekistan, which exports natural gas to the rest of the Stans recently upped its prices dramatically – Bishkek at least doesn’t seem to be suffering from gas shortages as of yet. So heat, hot water, and cooking-gas are still available in plenty. Meanwhile, I’m getting quite accustomed to doing things by candle and LED light!

In my kitchen, by candlelight,
wearing a headlamp and holding a cat.

Wednesday Weirdness

January 26, 2008

(I’ve been incommunicado for the past few days on account of the combination of sickness and power outages... But here’s my story of what happened this past Wednesday. I’ll try to update on the rest of the week when I feel better.)

We don’t teach classes on Wednesdays, and while I’ve spent the previous two Wednesdays busily engaged in lesson planning, I decided to actually *do* something with my mid-week break this time around.

I awoke promptly at 9am, not thanks to my alarm or my brilliant internal clock, but to the annoying chiming of my doorbell which whines a synthetic Beethoven at an obnoxious volume. After persistent ringing, I stumbled out of bed and peered through the peephole to find S., the school’s cleaning lady, with my freshly laundered clothes. (This is a service we have to pay for, but in my opinion, it’s well worth the money.) After she left, I managed to convince myself to go ahead and get dressed. The lure of the internet will do that.

After spending some quality time (not to mention soms) at the internet café, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and go buy a cell phone. The whole process was remarkably easy. (Additionally, I got to select my own number from a list of options. I ended up with 43-64-51 as my last six digits. Some people might note the significance of these numerical combinations, especially what with 6+4=10 and all. Yeah, old habits die hard.) It’s good to be vaguely wired again, even if it’s not via constant internet access.

A new teacher (he’s actually a student here on an internship, and will only be teaching for one month) arrived on Monday, so we decided to take him out for lunch to get to know him. We went to Fatboy’s (yes, I go there a lot, ok?) and hung out there for about an hour or so.

Before we left Fatboy’s, I.T. showed up. She and I decided to make our way to the Osh Bazaar to see what we could find. The journey there, in and of itself, is quite an adventure. Transport in the city of Bishkek consists mainly of marshrutki, or mini-buses. They are somewhere in between a mini-van and a regular van in size, so they are not very big. Additionally, they don’t seem to have any capacity limit outside of how many bodies can be crammed inside. When going to a popular destination – such as the Osh Bazaar – one should be prepared for conditions that make a tinned sardine’s life seem spacious.

The weather was absolutely frigid, and after wandering about the food section of the market for a while, we decided to take refuge in the one large, fancy(ish) indoor part of the bazaar. (For people who’ve been to Vladimir, Russia that section is like Dobryak was before they remodeled it and made it all fancy.) While inside, I managed to buy the most awesome woolen felt slippers ever for myself, as well as a pair of tiny slippers for M&A’s soon-to-be-baby. The proprietor of the stall where I purchased the slippers threw in a felt-covered papier-mache yurt for free – probably feeling guilty that I’d simply accepted his price offers without bargaining. I.T. and I also spent a long time chatting with a seller in one of the indoor stalls who used to be a Russian teacher. She invited us to come by on Sunday to meet her daughter, whom she claims speaks excellent English. I told her I would come, although as I am currently rather ill, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it.

(M&A: I'll try and mail them soon, but given my hatred of post-Soviet post offices, I'm not sure how "soon" that will be!)

We left the cozy indoor part of the market and headed out to the clothing stalls. The people who run these places must be utterly miserable, spending all day outside in subzero temps with no heat whatsoever. While I.T. didn’t find what she’d come to the bazaar in search of – a dull yet warm sweater – I managed to come away with a fabulous green and yellow prayer rug. I’d love to hang it on my wall, but as my walls are concrete, I’ve currently got it draped over the side of my wardrobe.

After spending way too much time wandering about the Osh market in the miserable chill, we decided that what we really needed was a nice cup of tea to warm us up. We found a café on the bazaar grounds – indoors and only *slightly* warmer than the great outdoors – and ordered our tea. The interior of the café was thick with cigarette smoke, and cold enough that we could see our breath.

I.T. drinks tea.

Only two other tables in the joint were occupied: one, a man and three women, all exceedingly drunk; the other, a group of seven Kyrgyz men celebrating the birthday of one of their group.

Inevitably, the men began approaching us, one at a time to chat. One told us that he owned a nearby restaurant, gave us its name, and said he hoped we’d stop by. Another, the only young one in the group, shyly sat down and asked for my phone number (which I gave him – not sure if I’ll regret that or not). He told us that he lives in Almaty, in Kazakhstan, but that he often travels to Bishkek to work in the market. Then he returned to his friends.

When I’d taken my camera out to snap the photo of I.T. drinking her tea, the group asked me to take their picture as well. One of the members of the group said he was a photographer (as in for a living), but didn’t have a digital camera. After I took their picture, he asked if he could take the memory card to print out the picture, promising to return in ten minutes or less. You know how I covet my electronic goods, and I was not too thrilled by the prospect of lending some strange man my memory card, but he was persuasive... not to mention that his friends seemed very much to want him to return with photos. He returned with copies of the photo for all of the men, into which for some reason he had photoshopped the Taj Mahal into the background! And, of course, he returned the card to me.

I.T. and I were just beginning to contemplate getting on our merry way, when the waitress arrived at our table with three cups of coffee. At first we were quite confused, but then one of the men came over, said they were from him, and asked to join us. This was another creepy-old-dude of the mouth-of-gold-teeth variety. However, the warmth from our tea had worn off and the café was cold, so the coffee was welcome, even if the companionship was rather suspect. The photographer soon joined us. While Gold Teeth pumped I.T. for information on how she managed to get from Norway to Kyrgyzstan, the photographer quizzed me about my camera, then offered to buy it. When I turned him down, he asked if he could just borrow it, because it was so much nicer than his. Again, I turned him down, although I doubt he had expected me to agree. Besides, I totally understand camera envy.

Then Gold Teeth suggested cognac. Now, I am fully aware that cognac is pretty much an open door to drunken catastrophe, but for some reason (mainly because he went to great length to express to us the purity and quality of Bishkek Cognac) we agreed to one shot, stressing that by one shot we meant just that: ONE. And of course, instead of bringing us each one shot, the waitress brought out an entire bottle. We insisted again that we would only have one shot, and they didn’t press us. However, after our first shot, Gold Teeth made a nearly successful attempt to kiss I.T., although she quite forcefully pushed him away just in time. He didn’t seem too offended, although he did try to defend himself by claiming a kiss after a first shot is Kyrgyz tradition. Um, bullshit. At that point, we decided it was probably time to leave, and despite their attempts to bribe us into sticking around with more shots of cognac, we refused and ventured back out into the cold.

By this time, the sun had set and it was definitely well below 0F (and I mean 0F, which is -17C) outside. Just walking from the café to the nearest place to find a marshrutka van left us cold to the point of pain in our extremities. The marshrutka we took back to the city center was not crowded in the least. Unfortunately, the ones I needed to cart me from the center back to my apartment were all packed to the gills. I squished into one, but only made it about halfway home before desperately needing to get back my personal space and tumbling back out into the freezing night air.

When I finally approached my block, I noticed something eerily familiar: darkness. Yep, the power in my block was out again. Luckily, after Monday’s adventure, I managed to locate my superfabulous LED headlamp, so the next three and a half hours I spent at home were not spent in darkness. Additionally, the state-provided heat and hot water was not out, so my apartment was dark, but not cold – which was excellent, as I was in desperate need of a thaw. The power surged back into life at around 10:15, only to blink off a mere 45 minutes later. Sigh. But I’ll write more about out frequent power outages when I’m feeling a little better.

Just another manic Monday

January 23, 2008

Monday was... interesting. Actually, the bulk of the day was fairly normal for a Monday. Then, at exactly 7:00pm – right as my final class of the day was beginning – the power went out. Not just to The London School, but to the entire city block in which the school is located. All the teachers wandered downstairs, wondering what the protocol might be for such a situation, only to be handed candles inside little plastic cups, and sent back to class. As you know, all of my classes are fairly low-level, and this class was Elementary 4. We’re currently studying the present perfect. After asking as many “Have you ever...” questions I could think of, I then began asking every low-level question I could think of. (We couldn’t really hold class by the dim light of a candle, and I couldn’t find my stellar headlamp flashlight.) Eighty minutes of basic questions was a bit much, but luckily my last class of the day is filled with hilarious, good natured people. It might not have been the best lesson, but at least we laughed a lot. Well, except for the point when I may have begun shouting profanity as my candle caught my plastic cup on fire and melted plastic dripped onto my finger. Yeah. I’ve got quite a pleasant battle scar from that.

Ouch!

After class ended, the power was still out in the entire block, which included our apartment building. So, some of the other teachers and I decided to go out for dinner. Jess, who has taught in Korea, had mentioned a Korean restaurant earlier, although when she suggested we dine at a place called Santa Maria, I certainly didn’t connect the two. Yes, we went to a Korean restaurant with the odd name of Santa Maria. I have seriously mixed feelings about this place. I had utterly delicious bibimbap and kimchi which tasted *exactly* like it does in Korea. Nick had scrumptious smelling samgyopsal, which the manager not only cooked, but wrapped up in little lettuce/rice/garlic/gochujang bowls for him as well.

The problems came with the bill. For starters, I had ordered a Baltica 3 (a type of light beer) to go with my meal. I’ve been drinking Baltica 3 pretty regularly since 1999, and I’ve never had trouble ordering it. (Baltica comes in options 1-9, by the way.) However, the waiter somehow was under the mistaken impression that what I wanted was 3 Balticas of some indiscernible number. While I managed to convey that I only wanted ONE beer, when the bill came, I was charged for three. (At least this we managed to get them to remove from the check.) Katie was overcharged for tea, Jess and I were charged for the extra gochujang we’d requested for our bibimbap (not to mention we’d had to pay for kimchi!), and Nick was charged for the extra lettuce he’d asked for. Boo! Additionally, the meal didn’t exactly, shall we say, digest well. Sigh.