One of my first days in KG

I finally made it to Kyrgyzstan. It took about a day and a half to travel here from Philadelphia, during which I got about 3-4 hours of sleep. That was a nightmare, because I was running on next to no sleep when we started traveling. We had a 6 hour layover in Istanbul, Turkey but we couldn’t leave the airport. So there was a pile of luggage with arms and legs sticking out in the middle of the airport as everyone tried to catch as many Zs as they could. We weren’t even at our gate; we were lying in front of security. Random people were taking pictures of the group as they walked by. Who knows, we could have been in a Turkish newspaper a few days ago with a headline like “Crazy Americans Invade Airport.” That’s not a very good headline. I hope they came up with something better.

We got to the hotel on Sunday at about 3:30am Kyrgyz time, which is about 4:30p.m. Chicago time. We didn’t get to see anything because it was dark on our drive from the airport (and we still haven’t ventured out of the hotel yet). They let us sleep for about 3 hours and then we had to be up for breakfast and the first day of training.

The food is very different. EVERYTHING has meat in it. I started getting the vegetarian dishes and they gave me breaded, fried cabbage for lunch today. I haven’t eaten very much in the past 4 days. I’m also getting sick from all of the traveling and lack of sleep and food. During language class yesterday (I’m learning Kyrgyz) I was blowing my nose. I was under the impression that it was the logical thing to do. My language instructors looked at me funny, but didn’t say anything. I found out later that blowing your nose in front of people is a faux pas. I would have been getting up every 10 minutes, so I ignored that social norm (just for the time being).

The people here are super nice. Most of the PC staff is Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Ukrainian, etc. That was a surprise to me, since I thought there would be a lot more American expatriates. Later today I’ll be meeting my host family. I’m really nervous, because they probably won’t know English and I’ve been studying Kyrgyz for one day. I’ve heard that they constantly try to feed you and it’s not unusual for a volunteer to gain 10-20lbs during the first few months as a result. Yikes.