I have a garden!

Women are selling apple tree saplings and seeds on the side of the road. Everyone is in the garden after work starting to plant. The fruit trees are budding. It is most certainly spring.
I just got in from making rows in the piece of the family garden our family is letting me use for this season. Thus far I have planted tomatoes, onions, and garlic. I've also started spinach, lettuce, leeks, and peppers indoors (Thanks for the seeds mom!) and some herbs in pots. I made starter pots out of paper (you know you mold the paper around a bottle and then you can plant the paper and all once the seeds sprout) and my family sat and watched me like I was a crazy person. It was quite a spectacle. After a long winter in which the whole village is covered in white, its amazing to see green again!
Generally life is starting to get busy. I am doing a bunch of composting and job preparedness trainings.
I will write more and upload pictures my next trip.

Have a great week everyone,
Athena

Springtime!

It has been a little while since I last updated you all. We have officially been in Peace Corps a year now which is exciting. The most exciting news I have is that it is SPRING! I also ate spinach and avocados---very luxurious.

We recently celebrated quite a few holidays. We had an epic St. Patrick's Day party and have had many Kyrgyz holidays as well. This month we celebrated Mens' Day, Womens' Day, and Nooruz (Persian new year). There have been lots of days off and lots of parties. Which really means more food and fruit then usual :-).

In other news, I made my first Kyrgyz friend which feels like a really big deal. As volunteers we often know a lot of people but do not have more than cordial relationship with most of them. Over the past few months I have been tutoring a young teacher at my school and we have come to be friends. Yay for friendship :-)

In my professional life--I'm busy. Sarah and I are are planning the annual Talas Camp at which we will teach about tolerance, other cultures, and nutrition. Should be fun and a great thing for the new Talas volunteers to do over the summer. I am planning a seminar on job skills for young men and women for 'Take your child to Work Day' in April. I just submitted a grant proposal for my health curriculum project, which I think will be really amazing. Finally, I got my first grant! It was for hand washing stations to be placed at the three schools in my village. The grant was through Water Charities and is a super awesome program, so if you feel like donating to a great organization that helps bring clean water to villages around the world, check it out here. Alex is doing well and has begun to work at a second school with a really motivated counterpart. He is also working on a few translation projects and a technology training grant.

Now we are in Bishkek for Spring break and for the FORUM English teachers association conference at which we will taught teaching a few session. We are actually here for a bit longer than we expected due to the pass being closed. Evidently March/April is avalanche season. To prevent dangerous avalanches the government closes the roads and uses explosions to trigger controlled avalanches. Crazy stuff.

I hope all of you are doing well. Have a wonderful week!

Winter is coming to an end...

The sun is coming up early and setting after five. I definitely feel like spring will come sometime in the future and that's exciting. As you can probably tell-- the cold has been a bit difficult. Definitely not built for cold, long winters, but it feels really nice to have survived it! I now know I can heat a house through a whole winter with coal, that at low enough temperatures glass jars of food will explode, that sleds are the best way to transport water in the winter, and that hats are super awesome.

So as for things that have happened... after vacation we have about two weeks off of school for flu quarantine. That was a super productive time period that I used to work through the details of a lot of projects I want to do. After that we had some school and regular stuff. This weekend we decided to do some research in Naryn City and visit some friends. Turns out, Naryn City is wonderful. Everyone is really excited to hear you speak Kyrgyz, nobody seems all that surprised that there's an Indian in Kyrgyzstan, and the streets are clean-ish and well lit. The road to Naryn was long. We decided to go from Talas to Naryn in one day (two six hour drives) which was kind of crazy but fun. Naryn looks a lot like Talas but the mountains are closer and people seem to take more pride in their houses appearance (matching fences and stuff). Through their mountain pass there are random statues of painted women and silver colored statues of various mountain animals perched atop the mountains. One of the most amazing moments was actually driving into Naryn City, you basically drive towards this huge orange clay cliff and as you get close you see a path winding into it. You drive with cliff towering on either side, curve to the right and see the little city appear in front of you. This city itself is between two mountain ranges with a river running near it.

So things are going we right now. We are more than 10 months in to service and that feels good. New volunteers will be coming in the Spring and I have applied to be a trainer for them, so that might be a cool thing in the future. As usual, I miss you all and look forward to seeing you again.

Athena

Here's a picture of my 5th form...

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N, we're gonna have some fun.

Does anybody know that song? I have had it on my mind for a few days now. If you haven't guessed Alex and I are on vacation. We are spending Christmas and New Year with our family in Italy/Spain. So far it has been wonderful. It has been amazing to spend time with our families in such a beautiful, developed place. Not to knock Kyrgyzstan; but running water, refrigeration, heat that happens without work on my part, and complicated food has been a really nice break for me.

We have been busy since we have arrived. Mostly, catching up with family and traveling. We first spend a action packed day in Rome and saw most of the major sites in a very leisurely manner. It was really nice being there in December without crowds. My absolute favorite site was the Sistine Chapel, absolutely amazing. It made me cry. We've also visited Parma which is a wonderful place to eat. I mean, they invented parmigian cheese and prosciutto. Also, you can buy a great bottle of wine for 3 Euro. Today we went to Florence which is also amazing. I feel like I should generally be telling you more about these places but, I think I'm still taking it all in. I guess the things making me happy are my family, the Sistine Chapel, cheese, and red wine. Thanks Italy! Here's a little bit more detail in the form of images.

http://www.facebook.com/media/albums/?id=7606386

Кыш келди—Winter has come

I just walked to the outhouse in the rain. When I opened the door to leave the outhouse it had begun to snow---quite surprising. Anyway, its winter. I wear thermals everyday and we are regularly using our coal stove to warm our house.

This is the first week in a few in which I feel that things are going really well. I have been talking to my friend Roxanna about a health secondary project which I am getting excited about; we're doing a training for Vice Principals on Thursday to get started. I'm also working on talking to the local government about starting weekly teacher trainings for English teachers next year. I am also working on getting a regional resource center in our village and a possible solar heating project. Anyway, it now seems that I'm hitting a stride. For some reason, when Peace Corps told us it would be a while before we truly adjusted and became productive I didn't really understand what they meant. Well, now I do. Anyway, things are starting to move forward---Yay for progress!

Oh---here's a tangent---I ate horse! Can you believe that? It was tasty but not better than other meats I think. It may be that it wasn't especially good as it was cold and not spiced at all (most meat is cooked in Kyrgyzstan by putting it in a giant pot of water and boiling it). A friend of mine actually at wolf which was a bit of a mind trip to think about.

In not work or strange meat related news, I went to a party for a teacher's birthday this past weekend which was really fun. It was the first gathering of Kyrgyz people that I really felt comfortable at which was nice. I think its that I know have gotten to know the staff a bit and that my Kyrgyz is good enough that I'm not entirely confused by most conversation. I've also begun to start learning Russian. Its been a good way to give my brain some exercise. And....its almost Thanksgiving! We're having a big Talas volunteer thanksgiving in Talas city which promises to be delicious and fun. I've gotten close with the Talas crew and am always exciting to spend time with them all. I can definitely see how people have lifelong friendships after doing Peace Corps together. You experience an amazing strange two years in which you and your perceptions change on a daily basis. Pretty crazy/scary/wonderful.

On the 12th of December we will be heading to Bishkek for Program Management & Design conference. Should be interesting. I'm excited that the whole thing will be in Kyrgyz—there's never enough language practice. Plus, I'm pretty sure I'm familiar with the information and would be bored in English. I'll try to upload more picture while I'm in the city so keep an eye out for that. We're also getting ready for our trip to Italy/Spain with our families which is more exciting than I can describe. Wine, cheese, vegetables... I can barely imagine it