Sunny

Here you go Mom,

this is Sunny for you.

The pictures with the red floor

are the most recent.

An Interesting Week

Well I managed to get a title up here yesterday but I'm just getting to filling in the actual description of my interesting week, sorry everyone. The basic story is that last Tuesday there was an uprising in Talas city that spread pretty quickly and surprised everyone by turning into a revolution in about two days. I won't say how I feel about the new government, but I really hope for the Kyrgyz people that they get what they need from their new leadership. This is a beautiful country with wonderful people and they deserve the same rights and freedoms that most of us in the West enjoy. Who knows how things will go in the next couple weeks and months but I really want the best for them and I hope to be as productive as I can in the next year for their sake.
When we got the word about mid-day on Thursday to pack our bags and book it to the airport ASAP, I was in the middle of cooking a pot of beans and handed them off to my host sister with a vague explanation that I'd be gone for a few days. I packed my bags and made some horrible decisions about what to bring with me, basically I left without any pyjamas and only one pair of socks but i did have plenty of shampoo and books to read. I walked out to the road and my dog followed me out and sat there while I waited for a taxi or a bus to drive by and pick me up. When one finally stopped and I got in, I watched out the back window as Sunny chased the bus down the road until she couldn't keep up anymore. Since then things have been pretty uneventful, about half of the volunteers have been moved together to a spot near Bishkek and we've pretty much been sitting around waiting for the situation to clear up long enough that we can go back to our sites. I'm hoping that within the next week we'll be back in our sites and back to business as usual. Peace Corps says they have no plans to evacuate at the time and it looks like things are calming down and clearing up sooo, fingers crossed I will still be here this time next year.

Egypt

Snow

Me, my neighbors, my host brother and sister, the cat and the puppy out in the snow.

Also, my room- not snowy.

Kyrgyz Children

The happiest child in K-stan

The two most annoying children in Kyrgyzstan. The little one throws snowballs at me on a regular basis and the big one opens the door to my classroom while I'm teaching and yells things. I think they're my host cousins.

My neighbor's kid in the snow.

Some friends of my host brother.

My host brother on his donkey.

Tom the Cat- Some recent pictures

When I first got the cat he was all black. A month or two later he turned gray, and now he's back to being all black. I can't figure out why he keeps changing colors but my two theories are a) local dogs keep eating him while I'm away and my host family replaces him with another cat and b) he's feral and changes colors with the seasons.

A Kyrgyz Party

A couple weeks ago I went to a party with my host mom. I made the terrible mistake of bringing my camera and now have about 27,000 pictures of me with random drunk people. This is a sampling. The woman in one of the pictures is my host mom, I have no idea who the other people are, I'm thinking maybe host uncles. I ended up escaping through the field behind the house so they would all leave me alone.