Adventures in Canning

It’s September, and I may sound crazy, but the hibernation instinct has already taken hold. This month I’ve jarred 6 liters of apricot jam, 8 liters of a hearty tomato/veggie sauce, 6 liters of eggplant winter salad, 6 liters of applesauce and 9 liters of dill pickles (see my “winter food pyramid” pictured at right). These preserves—or conserves, rather—will last me all winter, I hope. (The word “preservative” in Kyrgyz/Russian, pronounced “preservatif”, is a false cognate. Preservatives are instead called “conservatives”; a preservatif is a condom. This is one translation you don’t want to screw up.)

When my grandmother back in the states heard of my canning plans, she sent me 50 bucks to help. I’m happy to say, $50 in Kyrgyzstan goes along way: it more than covered the cost of all the ingredients, jars, and lids. Thanks Grandma!

The results, I hope, will be well worth the effort. But if not, the experience itself made the endeavor worthwhile. While making the jam (the easiest, by far), the power went out while I was boiling the syrup, so I had to wait a day—while the apricots fermented—to finish the job. And making pickles was literally electrifying, as you’ll read below.

But canning logman (tomato/veggie) sauce and winter salad was some of the most fun I’ve had in country to date. For two days in August, I visited another volunteer’s former host mom, who is one of my favorite women in country and happens to be an incredible cook and avid canner. She led my friend Brooke and I through all the steps of prepping, stewing, and properly sterilizing vegetables. We started cutting veggies for the sauce at 1:30 on a Friday afternoon. By 2:30, we had the onions frying away in a kazan (cast iron pot) of oil. Thereafter we added peppers, carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, eggplant, and finally dill and garlic.

All the while, Ryan’s host mom kept us in fits of laughter with stories of her initial fear of Americans (originally she didn’t want a volunteer; she thought they were all really tall and fat and had no idea what she’d feed him or her), the antics of former volunteers (she’s currently hosting her third), and her mother’s mistrust of most vegetables (she’s from Naryn, the same remote non-veggie eating part of Kyrgyzstan as we are). Her Kyrgyz is so clear we didn’t miss a word.

The second day we canned winter salad, a vibrantly colored layering of pickled vegetables. First we diced the various ingredients; I got eggplant slicing and carrot shredding duty, Brooke took the onions, which left tears streaming down her cheeks (the onions in Kyrgyzstan are insanely strong!). After we soaked the eggplant in a salt solution, we deep-fried it. Then the fun part began. Starting with a layer of eggplant on the bottom, we added a layer of red pepper, then carrot, then onion, then tomatoes, then dill and garlic, and then began again with eggplant. Throughout the process, we smashed the layers down so we had enough room for five complete repeats of the layers. On top we added a teaspoon of salt, two teaspoons of sugar, and a teaspoon of vinegar. Then we boiled each jar for 45 minutes. As we could only do 4 jars at a time and we had 13 total, this took us the rest of the evening.

Exhausted as we were when we finished, we were hungry and in need of a quick and easy dinner. Apa (we all call Ryan’s host mom, “mother”) suggested greniki, which none of us had ever heard of. Turns out, greniki is French toast, but not just any French toast. We fried freshly-picked apples for a topping and out of the recesses of a cabinet she pulled a bottle of maple syrup left from her first volunteer. I couldn’t have dreamt up a sweeter end to a perfect day.

Pickles

You may recall that my regular intake of vegetables last winter consisted almost entirely of a pickle every other day for two three months. Anticipating the oncoming vegetable famine, today I set about making my winter ration of crisp, dill-icious pickles.

I began last night by washing and soaking 8 kilos of pickles. This morning at 9 a.m., I carted the rest of the ingredients and equipment out to the kitchen, minus one very import element—the lid-sealing tool. I contemplated purchasing one at the bazaar when I bought the cucumbers, but couldn’t find one and decided someone in the village must have one I could borrow. So at 9:30, my search for the simple device commenced. My host mother has never made preserves, so it was no surprise when my sister told me the family has no such implement. I headed into the street to ask neighbors.
Shortly thereafter my aunt, and fellow teacher at the school, walked by on her way to school. Did she have the tool? Of course not, but all the teachers were congregating at the school for the annual start-of-school planning meeting, and why don’t I come along? No one had informed me previously that my attendance was required, but off I went to the meeting. I should have known what I was in for, but when I sat down I didn’t realize I’d just given up my morning.

Three hours later at the close of the meeting, I got to ask my question: did anyone have a canning tool? Of 24 teachers, not a single one owned a functioning device. I was beginning to see why the village starved during winter. After a brief conversation with my director about the fact that the neither of the school’s two English teachers would be working this year (one is expecting a baby and moved to Naryn city; the other’s husband has ordered her to stay at home and take care of his ailing father), I asked her who I should seek out for a canning tool. (For the record, I’m told I will have a fellow teacher to teach with this year, but as of yet no one has seen her or knows her name…and school starts the day after tomorrow.)
My director thought one of our family’s friends might have one, so after first going home to grab some pictures I printed from our joint families’ trip to Lake Song Kol, I headed to Jumagul Ege’s house. Today also happened to be Orozo Ait, the last day of Ramadan, so everyone in the village was preparing some variation of meal to share with friends and neighbors—but every variation included borsok, the fried bread bites that look like doughnuts but are definitely not, alas. Anyway, I found the family making borsok and was subsequently invited in for tea. I took out the pictures and quickly recapped my travels with my brother (who had joined us for the Song Kol trip). Then I asked my question.

“I used to have two tools,” she said, “But I lent them out and they never returned.” She suggested checking with another woman, and off I went. The woman was one of my best student’s mothers, and I was happy to find Kasiet at home, frying borsok, of course. I managed to repeatedly forget the Russian name of the implement I was asking for throughout the course of the day (instead, I mistakenly kept asking for whiteout), and this time was no exception. I explained what it was used for instead, and finally resorted to English, “Does your mother have one?” God bless her, she did.

So 5 hours later than I intended, I headed home, canning tool in hand. But the fun had just begun. I started by washing my three 3-litre jars and prepping the remaining ingredients—hot peppers, dill, and garlic cloves. Next, I boiled water for the syrup I’d poor over the cucumbers once I’d packed them into the jars. I consulted multiple recipes in the past week, some online a few days ago and also from our Peace Corps cookbook. They varied tremendously, so I made up my own ratios—for better or for worse—as I went along. Once boiling, I added one cup of salt to 4 quarts of water. I tasted it and thought it rather too salty, but I went with it. Next, while the pot was still boiling away on the hotplate, I attempted to pour in a half cup of very concentrated (80% vinegar). Turns out, one should not pour vinegar directly into boiling water. The result: an eruption on the scale of the volcano demonstrations kids do for the 6th grade Science Fair with the added shock of minor electrocution and momentary right arm paralysis. Yes, I’m fine, just stupid.

It’s a good thing the attempt failed however, because a half-cup of undiluted vinegar would have been way too much (even though that’s what the conversion chart on the bottle said). I added the vinegar by the spoonful once the liquid cooled. And fortunately my host mom reminded me at the last minute that I needed sugar. That made it taste a lot better.

I sterilized the jars next, boiling them in a water bath. I had to do them one at a time, but while one was boiling, I would pack the previous one with the cucumbers and other ingredients. Then I’d boil the whole jar again, with lid “on” but not sealed, for 15 minutes, then press the cap on by hand cranking the canning tool until the lip of the lid is tightly pressed to the jar’s neck. Apparently, I pressed too hard on the first one because I cut all the way through the lip of the lid—but I didn’t see this until later.

After processing 3 jars, I realized I had significantly more pickles than I needed. I washed my host mom’s last remaining 3-litre jar (I think it held paint formerly, but I got most of it off), sterilized it, packed it, and set it into the water bath to boil. Fifteen minutes later, I drew it out only to find that the bottom had blown out. Naturally. I weighed my options—salvage a small jar’s worth and spend another hour preparing it, or just use the one remaining lid to recap the jar that had somehow partially blown it’s seal, but wasn’t leaking in the slightest (they were all turned upside down). I opted for the later.

So at 6:30 I had myself three, not four, jars of pickles. They may turn out to be the spiciest, tartest pickles I’ve ever eaten, but so be it. I intend to eat every last one.

Applesauce

In perhaps the cheapest canning effort of all time, Brooke and I jarred 13 liters of applesauce last weekend for a sum total of $2—the cost of lids, a few jars, and sugar. Oh, and did I mention, it’s delicious!

Mind you, there was some significant labor involved. It started with a quest for the apples themselves Saturday morning. As it turned out, the village mayor had three fully loaded trees and was happy to let us pick to our heart’s content. Thus around 10 a.m. we found ourselves stuck high up in apple trees, giggling uncontrollably as we attempted to shake down the fruit (often impaling ourselves—and the fruit—on the branches as we went). We intended to can 10 kilos, but by 11 a.m., we found ourselves with no less than 35 kilos of apples in our bag (or so we estimate from the weight of a bag that was too heavy for either of us to pick up alone). A team effort—and a lift from a random neighbor—got us home, where the real work began.

For the next 6 hours, I peeled and Brooke diced, and peeled, and diced, and…you get the point. A kind aunt stopped by for an hour and also lent a hand. (This is also the aunt who is giving me Russian lessons in exchange for English lessons.) By the end of the afternoon we had enough apple pieces to fill the huge cast iron kazan. We let the apples boil away for an hour and a half, adding just a bit of sugar and plenty of cinnamon. (Brooke, at left, is stirring the kazan. It was very hot, though perhaps the welding mask was unnecessary.) We had only the hotplate to work with and a pot big enough only for four jars at a time, so the process was slow going. We’d sterilize the jars, fill them, set the lids on top, boil them for a half hour, and take them out and seal the lids with our new canning tool. At this rate, we were set to finish at the stroke of midnight. But as luck would have it, the last batch didn’t go quite as planned; we were reusing jars from my host mom’s collection and after we’d prepped and processed them, we discovered that 3 of the 4 jars’ necks were millimeters to thin for our lids to seal properly. After ruining two lids, we decided to consolidate our losses in one 3-liter jar and use the last remaining lid. Fortunately, this worked—but it added almost an extra hour to the proceedings.

We fell into bed a 1 a.m. too tired to care about the mouse running along the walls (he’s been eating my emergency food supplies). Hey, we’re all preparing for winter here. Eat and let eat!

Goin' on a Picnic

This spring I was delighted to discover that like my family back home, my Kyrgyz family here takes part in an annual family picnic—with a twist. In a remote village of 800, just about everyone is related somehow, so the entire village goes down to the river on the same Sunday in April. But this is no simple picnic table potluck.

Families packed up cars, trucks, and many a donkey-cart with 20-gallon cast iron kazans; two-foot tall samovars to heat water for tea; bags of bread, borsok, potato and beet salads; china dishes and tea cups; wool-stuffed sitting mats; tablecloths; and of course a sheep…or two. Every family group set up camp along the river, which, running with the fresh muddy snowmelt from the mountains, churned like a chocolate milkshake. Some older cousins dug out a hole for our kazan, lit a fire beneath it, then slaughtered and put the sheep in its entirety into the giant pot to boil for the next 6 hours.

In the meantime, the family sat, conversed, and drank tea. I met a number of older family members I hadn't been introduced to before, then attempted to use the time to lose myself in a good book in the shade of a tree, but my younger students found me and wouldn’t leave off peppering me with questions. So we went off to explore, clambering up foothills and over the ravines that ran down them.

We finally ate the sheep at 2 o’clock, which was first served in large hunks, then finely diced up and mixed with noodles, which we ate with our fingers, i.e. besh barmak (“5 finger” food).

Afterwards everyone was ready for a nap, so we packed up quickly—or as quickly as possible when you have a set of 20 dishes and a 20-gallon cast iron pot to clean—and loaded into the cars. All in all, what my stomach missed from an American picnic—think salads, brownies, grilled chicken, etc.—was more than made up for by the fellowship of family. All 800 members of it…

The Other End of Giving

Have you ever wondered what happens to the Christmas shoeboxes you pack, gift-wrap, and donate every holiday season?

I found out this past February when a shipment of such boxes arrived in my village from an organization called Samaritan’s Purse. For a small fee (the equivalent of 20 cents per box), a mom could pick up a shoebox for each of her children from the post office. (I’m still not sure why there was a small surcharge, but that amount was not a barrier for any families as far as I could tell.) My host mom came home that afternoon with 4 boxes. An unpacking frenzy ensued.

After the initial excitement, my oldest host sister Daria carefully laid out and catalogued the contents of all the packages on the living room floor on behalf of the family as a collective: 4 toothbrushes and toothpastes, two bars of soap, two knitted hats and scarves, two knitted hand-puppets, one doll, 2 British Pounds, one box of pencils, 5 small notepads, one matchbox car, one wind-up toy, a pair of socks, and a number of other trinkets my memory—and the kids—have lost with time.

For the rest of the week I had students coming up to me asking to translate fairytale story books, explain pocket-size Parcheesi sets, and otherwise identify simple but utterly unfamiliar toys (to them). I had one student write all her answers on a magic magnet sheet (that erased the answer when you lifted the top sheet) for the rest of the semester so I could check them before she copied them into her notebook.

Months later, the toothpaste tubes have been exhausted and the McDonald’s caliber toys have been all but forgotten, but Ainuru still carries around the doll as if it were her own child and a number of new pencils are still in the cabinet awaiting the start of the new school year. So on behalf of a very thankful family and a village, thanks to all who took the time to fill a shoebox this year. It was a pleasure to witness the joy on the other end of giving.

On Happiness

January 10th - This week my literary selection has taken me around the world, from revolutionary Tehran in Iran Awakening (highly recommended) to the circus circuit of Depression Era America in Water for Elephants. Salt: A World History was particularly interestingly and geographically broad in scope, but the winner for the most introspective world tour goes to Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss. Weiner decides to track down the catalysts for happiness with visits to many of the world’s most felicitous countries, among them Bhutan, where the government measures GNH (Gross National Happiness) instead of GDP (Gross National Product) and Iceland, where a culture so readily accepts failure as the expense of genius that it supports its citizens as they serially try out careers like hats at a costume shop.

Anyway, the book got me thinking about what makes me happy in Kyrgyzstan. And despite the sub-zero temperatures, I am quite happy in Kyrgyzstan; on a scale from 1-10, I’d say I’m about a 9. Yes, eating real Italian food and Salsa dancing—two things that top my general list—are impossible here, but I give you 15 things that do keep a smile on my face:

1) Daily life as the source of infinitely unpredictable and wildly improbable stories. We’ve devised all sorts of methods to keep ourselves entertained in America, from lazer tag to pranks involving cling-wrap and a friend’s car. But no one would ever think to put two donkeys in the kitchen. And here they needn’t to; here the donkeys do it themselves, and I wake up to yet another day where the “mundane” village life is anything but.

2) Reading detailed letters and emails. Any PC volunteer will tell you that a letter from home is a real treat, but for me, I am especially grateful to those who’ve taken the time to write me almost lyrical prose about the magnificent and mundane events of their lives. You have no idea how happy it makes me to know you learned to make a delicious quinoa salad or that your sons caught a 5 pound catfish. Thank you. (And please keep the emails coming!)

3) Writing. Yes, writing about the details of my own life give me almost as much joy as reading about the rest of yours’. Whether you, dear reader, appreciate the stories I post here or not, recounting such ridiculous events as go on in my daily life brings me great pleasure. It also must be said that I’ve always enjoyed the craft of writing and finally having the time to do it is a joy in and of itself.

4) Reading Dr. Seuss with 5th graders. Reading the genius of Dr. Seuss to anyone is a joyous endeavor, but helping bubbly Kyrgyz 5th graders read it themselves is a pleasure indeed. Imagine having never seen a picture book, then flipping through Dr. Suess. You’ve just imagined my 4th-5th grade English Club, the highlight of my teaching week. Taking turns passing the book around, we’ve learned colors and numbers with the help of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, rhyme with Green Eggs and Ham, ‘right’ and ‘left’ with The Foot Book (and a little Hokey Pokey afterwards), and a whole lot more. Thank you Theodore Geisel (and thank you Mom for sending the books).

5) The laughter of children. I am blessed to live in a family with adorable, giggly, twin three-year-old girls. Tangnuru has learned the colors in English and has lately taken to going around pointing to everything and identifying its color. (As I write this, her father is quizzing her in the other room.) Adorable.

6) Pickles. Delicious—nutritious--and the only vegetable I’m currently able to keep in my diet (unless you count the ubiquitous potato). My friends and I canned dill pickles back in August anticipating the winter’s lack of vegetables, but I don’t think any of us envisioned three months bereft of the entire food group. The once sparse carrots and turnips in our soups have entirely disappeared, so I’m left with my pickles, which I’ve rationed to last me through mid-February, eating one pickle every other day. I eat a mandarin orange—my sole winter “fruit group” representative—on the alternate days.

7) Eating (and cooking) good food. This doesn’t happen often. But when it does, the contrast to all that bread you ate last week make the meal doubly pleasurable. Granted, with all the ingredient substitutions and baking with an oven that unevenly heats to a scalding 500 degrees and no other temperature, some things are bound to be a bit off. Nonetheless, when volunteers congregate, the one requisite for a good night seems to be making good food—and that we do well. The fried chicken and creamed spinach at the Karakol Christmas party certainly top my list of foodgasmic experiences and well illustrate this point (this was the first time in about 3 months I’d had chicken, let alone battered and fried, and only about the 3rd time in Kyrgyzstan that I’d had spinach). But not all delicious meals are reserved for holidays. Just last weekend I was able to whip up a delicious cheese-onion-red pepper quiche that was divine and completely doable with ingredients readily found in Naryn City. So yes, in the village I’m subsisting on dinners of fried potatoes, fried pasta, fried rice, or a combination thereof (and pickles and oranges as of late), but every now and then a quiche or homemade pumpkin ravioli will pass my palate—and its almost worth the bleak contrast of every bite of potato for those few meals of taste-bud bliss.

8) Deep musical tradition. One of the first things that endeared me to my first host family—and indeed Kyrygz people in general—was the pervasiveness of music in their lives. My host mother regularly sang to my host father’s accordion accompaniment, and she was happy to teach me some of her favorite traditional tunes, an endeavor that was a highlight of my pre-service training. The results also made me a sensation in the village; I’m called on to sing at every party. Everyone here takes singing seriously, to the point that national musical talent shows are featured weekly on TV. A popular party game is the “sing off,” where two teams take turns singing songs that start with the last letter of the last word of the previous song. The game can go on for as much as an hour, such is the breadth of Kyrygz vocal literature and the depth of my hosts knowledge. In addition to singing, I’ve also picked up a new instrument. (I decided my cello wouldn’t like the cold much and left it behind). I’m learning the komyz, a tear-shaped instrument much like a mandolin, but with only 3 strings. It’s beautiful to watch true masters play; the instrument may be simple, but the strumming can be quite elaborate and, if well executed, almost dance-like.

9) Grammar faux pas. Whether its my constant mix up of the Kyrgyz words “cow” and “house” (virtually indistinguishable to the untrained ear) or a student’s mis-statement, “Sally shits in the chair,” instead of “Sally sits in the chair,” mistakes like these keep me and my host family continually bemused.

10) The tendency to toast. Our teachers’ lounge sees at least weekly toasts to new brides, new coats, new hats, birthdays and reunions. I still find vodka shots before a 1:15 class a little disconcerting, but the toasts themselves, given in turn by every person in the room, are a beautiful symbol of the genuine care the Kyrgyz share for one another.

11) Greeting everyone in the street. When was the last time you said “hello” to a complete stranger on the street? Try it and I guarantee you’ll find yourself smiling 10 times more on the way to work. Here it’s a sign of respect to acknowledge anyone older than you when you pass in the street, and I think, a tradition worth adopting.

12) Spontaneous guesting. It is culturally accepted, in fact it is actually polite, to drop by a neighbor or friends’ house unexpectedly for casual chat and chai. No prior phone call, text, or email needed. Would you do this in the States? I think not. Your neighbor is undoubtedly busy and needs to find time to work you into the schedule and the house probably needs a bit of cleaning before its presentable, right? Not so in Kyrygzstan. Your neighbor is most likely home, happy to receive you, and the carpets are certainly clean—they’re vacuumed daily.

13) “It happens when it happens” mentality. Most volunteers are annoyed by this attitude—especially coming from a culture that values pro-activity—but I appreciate aspects of the “azer” outlook. (Azer being the word that translates as “now” but means anything from in the next 5 minutes to the next 5 hours.) Yes, it can be frustrating to wait in a “taxi” for 3 hours for it to leave, but once you learn to accept your powerless in certain situations, it’s actually liberating. (Though certainly plan ahead for such predicaments by bringing a book.) While stressing over something in the States might actually have some effect over the situation, it won’t here. So why stress?

14) Mountains beyond mountains. I see them ringing the valley I live in each time I walk out my front gate. If the altitude isn’t enough to make you catch your breath, these peaks certainly are.

15) Blue skies, nothing but blue skies. When Irving Berlin penned this song, he surely couldn’t have had the Ak-Talaa Valley in mind, but he may as well have. My region of Kyrgyzstan is strikingly similar to the American Southwest when it comes to weather and rock formations. The climate is incredibly dry and we might get rain (or in winter, snow) once every two weeks, but 95% percent of the time the sun is shining. And as it turns out, 10-below is not too bad when the skies are blue.

Жаңы Жыл (“Janguh Jil”)

Decorating a tree, getting presents from Santa, spending time with family… Can you name the holiday?

For the Kyrgyz, this is New Years.

The Kyrgyz celebrate New Years much as secular Americans would celebrate Christmas. I had quite a bit of confusion in class differentiating the two holidays, until I got across the point that Christmas was really a Christian holiday centered on the birth of Jesus, and New Years for Americans was just a party. Nonetheless, when my students presented their Venn diagrams on the subject, it still surprised me just how much of American Christmas transferred over to celebrations of the Kyrgyz New Year, a major holiday in this Muslim country. It makes sense if you think back to Kyrgyzstan’s Soviet era, as Orthodox Russian celebrate Christmas, but it’s not celebrated until January 8th and that connection certainly wasn’t made by most of my students (who almost certainly have never seen an Orthodox church, as there aren’t any in my province).

There are a few differences, of course. For instance, Santa’s (“Aiaz-Ata”) yuletide partner is his daughter (“Aiaz-Kuz”), not Mrs. Claus. Trees bear shiny ornaments and lots of tinsel and garlands, but the multi-colored garlands are usually strung vertically rather than horizontally around the tree, and in such a number, you can hardly make out the tree behind them. Despite their abundance in the mountains, trees are expensive, so my family made do with just a juniper branch this year. It had two decorations—a pinecone someone painted gold and a brass ornament my parents sent from the Shenandoah Valley.

The holiday itself, January 31st, is spent largely at home in the company of family (which is particularly notable, as most holidays include the whole neighborhood). My family’s holiday started the night before when my host dad came home bearing candy and oranges as presents “from Santa.”

Before going to bed, I instructed my host sibs to leave out their socks, just in case American Santa came to visit. I woke at 6 a.m. to stuff these “stockings”. I always thought my Dad’s stories of getting oranges and nuts in his stocking as a kid were quintessentially old fashioned, but oranges (mandarins from China, now relatively cheap in the bazaar), candy, dates, and hot chocolate packets were exactly what I filled my siblings socks with now. I threw in some stickers I had as well, and the weight eventually pulled all the socks of the door (see the “before” picture at right). The sign they left me reads “Thank you Santa.”

So for breakfast—a good four hours later, we had a veritable sugar feast, as withholding candy or explaining the concept of “saving for later” to a Kyrgyz 3-year-old is just not done. At some point, Tangnuru decided the crocheted Christmas tree my parents had sent from the states would make a nice hat. I agree.

We spent the rest of the morning making “boluchka”, or sweet rolls. Mine never turn out as nicely twisted as my host mom’s, but since she makes the dough, they all taste good. Actually, it’s very akin to challah, but made into individual rolls. The afternoon was spent snacking on various elements of our later meal and playing games. Daria put up a good fight, but in the end, I soundly beat her in chess. Tangnuru (3) on the other hand, beat me in a matching game of color flashcards.

Around 7 o’clock, my host parents, 11-year-old sister and I headed to our neighbors—an aunt and uncle’s—for the first of our New Years celebrations. My host brother Beksultan headed up the mountain behind the village with his classmates to light a bonfire. I’m not sure how and with what they scrambled up the icy slope in what were negative 15-20 degree temperatures to light such a blaze, but the fire was pretty impressive as seen from the village. Apparently it’s a New Years tradition.

Nurai Ege (my host aunt) made manty, or Kyrgyz dumplings, for our feast. Hers were particularly good, actually, with a higher onion to fat ratio than normal and beef instead of mutton. Still, the requisite of proper manty seems to be that the copious grease ooze down your fingers until congealing like candle wax (my host mom’s recipe calls for equal parts meat and cut up bits of solid fat). Once, in an attempt to cutout some of the fat, I actually “milked” the dumplings onto my plate, leaving enough fat for my host mom to save for later cooking. What to do once your fingers have solidified into wax sculptures? Just rub it in. It’s actually a pretty good hand salve (and much needed in winter).

I suspect just one manty is cause enough for a heart-attack, yet Kyrgyz hospitality would never permit such a portion. (And in fact, the Kyrgyz unfortunately do have a very high rate of heart disease.) I’m usually started off with 4 or 5 dumplings, and when finished, despite protests that I’m quite full, more are inevitably put on my plate. In Kyrgyzstan, apparently “no” means “yes”—at least at the dinner table. You’d be a bad host if you acted otherwise. The solution is, after at least politely finishing one portion, to leave the second or third on your plate. Cleaning your plate will not get you excused from the table; you’ll just get more.

The drink of choice for the evening (and every other Kyrgyz party I’ve ever attended) was the traditional bozo, a frothy fermented barley beverage (not at all like beer), naturally alcoholic but usually supplemented with a drought of vodka for good measure. In my region, bozo is drunk sour. In my friend Brooke’s rayon, just three hours away, good bozo is always sweet from added sugar. The usual toasts proceeded with wishes of good health (“den-so-luk bol-soong”), good fortune (“bai bol-o-lu”), warm clothes (“jiloo kee-eem bol-soong”), and peace (“tinch-tuk bol-soong”).

We left shortly there after. If you’ve never walked home on iced-over dirt roads in the pitch dark, you should try it some time. It’s a real trip.

Back home, with three hours to go until midnight, we did what any family would do to kill time til the ball drops: we turned on the TV. But instead of overly-hyped pop performances and a lot of filler from announcers and camera pans of giant crowds in New Years, the Kyrygz national educational channel was broadcasting staged performances of traditional vocal, instrumental and dance pieces. Naryn Oblast (the “most Kyrgyz” of all oblasts) was the home of at least half of the performers. Many, I was told, were in fact from neighboring villages, and on more than one occasion my host mom pointed out a singer who was a brother’s wife, niece, or relation of some kind. I guess in country of 5 million, that’s bound to happen.

With the rest of the family entertained, my host mom and I turned to the other tasks at hand—making more food, of course. First on the prep list was a second “salad” (we’d make Kyrgyz potato salad earlier in the day). Salad or “salat” just means anything that is not a main course, usually has some form of vegetable in it, but never consists of a leafy green. Two of my favorites include layers of tomato slices and fried eggplant with garlicy mayonnaise between the slices and “funchosa”, a cold Chinese noodle salad with strips of red pepper and carrots doused in oil. “Bird’s nest” salad, as she called the one we made this particular evening, turned out to be the strangest salad I’ve ever seen in Kyrygzstan.

We started by mounding pomegranate seeds in the centers of three plates. (Note: I’ve never seen my host mom buy the rather expensive pomegranates before this.) Next, we added a ring of canned peas around the tart seeds. This was followed by a ring of apples bits coated and mixed with mayonnaise, and outside that, a layer of diced dill pickles. The outer ring was chopped hardboiled egg. (See picture). As if this wasn’t enough, the masterpiece was then covered in mayonnaise and sprinkled with a light dusting of chopped walnuts.

I will concede that it was very pretty. And fortunately, it was actually not as bad as it sounds, though, you have to like a sweet-sour-oily mix and not mind it tasting different every bite. I admit, I did my best to steer clear of the peas in the same bite as the pomegranate, and the pickles in the same bite as the mayo apples. Even my host dad and the relatives that came over later were wary of it.

Having stuffed ourselves with manty earlier in the evening, my host mom and I both thought forgoing our plans to make the main dish was a good idea, but I think my host dad protested or my host mom just got bored with two hours left ‘til midnight. In any case, at 10 o’clock I found myself helping to roll out noodles for logman (pronounced “log-mun”), a traditionally Dungun (a Muslim Western-Chinese ethnic group) hearty noodle soup.

My host mom had made the dough earlier, a simple mix of flour, water, and salt. Now she cut off slices and rolled them into thick coils. I took the coils and began rolling and lengthening them between my fingers. They were then oiled and re-coiled, and the process was repeated. Finally, we took the now 6-foot-long noodle, strung it between our fingers like Cats Cradle string (see picture) and literally whipped the noodle against the table like we were beating laundry. The finished product was super thin and over 10 ft. long (and we made about 20 of these). The noodles were boiled in salty water, then transferred to cold water, like you’d make any noodle. These were then ladled into bowls, and a fried mix of turnips, carrots, potatoes, and meat was poured over top. Logman is quite possibly my favorite meal in Kyrgyzstan, and certainly fun to eat. Daria (left) and Ainuru (right) demonstrate.

With 2nd dinner finished and still a half-hour to go ‘til midnight, my host dad decided he was tired and didn’t need to wait til midnight to start the toasts. I had bought a “children’s” non-alcoholic bottle of champagne in Karakol, and he decided we’d start with this. The picture at left shows my family’s response as he maneuvered out the cork. (In actuality, it hardly even made the ‘popping’ noise.) After our carbonated juice (for that’s what it really was), we opened the real bottle. I think I preferred the fake stuff; Crystal is the high end of champagne to be found in Kyrgyzstan, if that tells you anything. And this wasn’t Crystal.

Nonetheless, toasts were made all around. It is Kyrgyz custom for everyone, kids included, to offer a toast at a gathering, and this was no exception. Then at 5 minutes ‘til midnight, President Rosa Otumbaeva came on TV for a national address of hope and peace in the New Year, speaking first in Russian, then in Kyrgyz.

We drank our final drops of champagne at midnight and headed outside to shoot off our two fireworks. Our neighbors were also shooting off sparklers and the like, all of which combined to scare 3-year-old Ainuru to tears. (I have to say, I myself was scared for my host sibling’s hands as they held the fireworks through the length of their incineration). I’m told in other villages, the shows were pretty fantastic, but I didn’t stay out long enough in the freezing temperatures to see the extent of ours.

By 12:30, the last of the well-wishing New Years SMS’s had rolled in (both me and my host father had been sending and receiving texts on our cell phones all evening) and I crawled into my sleeping bag. жаңы жылыңыздар менен куттуктайм! (Happy New Years everyone!)

"American" Christmas

I don’t think there is another place in Kyrgyzstan that you can tell a driver a destination and there be two routes to get there, but Lake Issyk Kul has two shores—and thus two roads to get to the city at its farthest end, Karakol.

A number of volunteers live in and around this city, so it’s to Karakol I traveled with other Naryn volunteers for Christmas. Unfortunately, as Brooke and I discovered once we’d already spent half of the day just getting out of our villages and our oblast (province), there are two routes to Karakol from Balykchy, the city at the opposite end of the lake. Of course, we accidentally took the marshrutka along the longest (southern) shore of the second largest alpine lake in the world. Five hours later, after a good conversation explaining our work as volunteers to some of our fellow passengers and later an annoying 45 minutes ignoring 20-something drunk men who kept trying to get our attention in Russian, we arrived, and I unsuspectingly hopped off the bus into a 3-foot snowdrift. Turns out Karakol, though much warmer than Naryn, gets twice the snow.

For the holiday festivities, we gathered in a volunteer’s apartment for a “Southern” Christmas, complete with fried chicken, baked mac’n’cheese, creamed spinach, meatballs, and plenty of cookies (someone’s family had sent them molasses and brown sugar to cook with, bless them). Back at our hosts, we concluded the evening with homemade eggnog. (I was staying with two good volunteer friends, a young married couple from Washington, who graciously let us take as many hot showers we liked—but when you’re in the habit of bathing only once a week, a shower more than any other day seems truly excessive.)

The next day, we drove just out of town to hit Karakol’s beautiful slopes for a day of skiing. As it turned out, the runs were limited (2), but long, nicely groomed, and offered breath-taking, jaw-dropping views of the Lake one side, and the gorges of Karakol valley on the other. (The picture, at right, doesn’t do it justice.) To my delight, I found that my fellow volunteers were as competent skiers as myself, and we spent the day racing down the slopes. It was also remarkably uncrowded for the day after Christmas, the ski rentals were surprisingly top of the line, and there were very few beginners to contend with. (I imagine its too expensive for the average Kyrgyz person to spend money to learn how to ski. The ticket and rentals came to 1300 som—$25 US—or about a seventh of my monthly salary.)

For lunch, we hit the lodge, and despite its relatively outrageous prices (to our budgets), I greatly enjoyed a caprese salad (tomatoes in December!!) and cheesecake. I admit, I skipped the main courses, which were all very meaty, but my friends ordered steak, a meat as hard to find in Kyrgyzstan as tomatoes in December.

I would say my eating experience—and the pounds I gained—pretty much sums up the remainder of my holidays. Dinner that night was homemade individual chicken-pot-pies, which I must admit, Brooke and I outdid ourselves on; they were incredible. The next night Mark cooked his homemade lasagna, making the ricotta cheese from scratch. (I hadn’t imagined learning to make Italian food from scratch would go on my “learned-in-Kyrgyzstan” list, but there you have it.) Brooke made cheesy garlic bread to complete the meal, and again, we ate until we could no more. The last night, we headed over to another volunteer’s apartment, singing carols all the way (this really completely my Christmas). He had all the makings for sushi and had found a coconut in the Karakol bazaar! While he rolled the sushi (all veggie and all delicious), I cracked and scraped a coconut to make Papua New Guinea coconut rice. Brooke fried bananas to complete my dessert, and we all left with very full stomachs.

If you can’t have family for the holidays, friends and fantastic food make a pretty good substitute.

I realize I’ve devoted significantly more time to recounting anecdotes than explaining the ins and outs of my daily routine; this post should paint a more accurate picture of my daily life.

I teach 3-11th grades (my 4th A class is pictured at right). Each grade has two 45 minute classes a week, and 6th grade for 3 periods for some reason. My school has just under 200 students, which makes for wonderfully small classes, my smallest at just 10 and my largest at 24, averaging about 15. I teach (most) classes with my wonderful counterpart, Gulnor, for which we plan together and share the teaching 50/50. I have a second counterpart, Nurzada, with whom I’m supposed to teach 10th and 11th grade, but due to illness she’s been in and out of the classroom all semester.

My day starts at 7:30, which is currently before the sun comes up. I get up, head to the outhouse, then eat half a Cliff Bar and head to school for 8 a.m. class (and some lucky days, later). On any given day (Monday-Saturday), I have 1-6 classes, averaging about 4 a day, and Tuesday being my “mostly” day off with just one class. We only have 7 classrooms in our school, so 6th-11th grades have class from 8 a.m.-1 p.m., and the younger grades from 1:15 -5:30. It makes for long days, but except for 6 classes Friday, I never have all my classes consecutively. Between periods, I plan with my counterpart or teach one of my three English clubs (3-5th, 6-8th, 9-11th). We strive to teach very student-centered classes, playing a lot of interactive games to learn vocabulary and grammar structures, and using as much English as possible. This last week of class has seen quite a few games of jeopardy review for finals. I wrote the finals with Gulnor, typed them, and printed them on a decade-old printer so each student could take the test without having to waste time copying all the questions from the blackboard. This was a first for the teachers and students, and I got lots of questions about where I got the paper (Bishkek) and why I’d bother, but I could show the tests as reason enough; I could actually use graphics (including pictures of my host sister washing her hands, brushing teeth, etc.), which made the tests much more interesting for 4th graders.

I love designing new games to play with the kids, and I get the most chance to do this with my English clubs. The most motivated students elect to come to my hour long clubs to practice speaking and reading, mostly. With the younger kids, we’ve been reading Dr. Seuss books (thanks for sending Mom!), learning color vocab with flashcards, and ‘right’ and ‘left’ with the Hokey Pokey. In the older grades, we’ve recently practiced giving toasts and writing resolutions for New Years, translated the Beatle’s hit “I feel fine,” and played adjective/adverb endings dominos (eg. peace-ful, quick-ly, etc.)
After class, I usually meet with one or two students for tutoring, my favorite part of the day.

I head home about 5:30 or 6, have chai with my family (see my host sister, Ainuru at right), do yoga, play games or watch a video with my host sibs. We eat about 9. Sometimes I cook, sometimes my host mom. The fare is sometimes fried potatoes, sometimes fried pasta, and sometimes both together. When I cook, I try to use vegetables, but lately they’ve been pretty hard to come by. We’ve been eating a lot of carrot, pumpkin or corn bread when its my night in the kitchen.

About 10 o’clock (after more chai, of course), I usually retire to my room where I read, listen to music, or watch movies on my computer. Around midnight, in 3 layers of long-underwear and a hat, I crawl into my 0 degree sleeping bag and turn out the light. I can sometime’s feel the wind whistling through the panes of my window that don’t quite reach their frames, but thankfully my heater works—even if it’s currently hotwired for lack of an outlet.