September 2010

the law of shwarma

September 30, 2010

Shwarma is a glorious thing. Take a giant spool of meat, spin it around a continuous flame, drippings marinating the meat and landing on a griddle below where toppings get a quick sizzle before hitting the bread and, soon after, your mouth. It’s street food, so it’s always cheap. As I discover more and more [...]

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back to life, respect the camel, etc

September 24, 2010

Farrell and I spent over four hours last Saturday morning in the most Kafka-esque police station in the world. Raise your hand if you’re a city with police stations that handwrite everything, all reports, all forms, all copies of reports and forms. *Bishkek raises hands* We did get a lawyer (a senior law student at [...]

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no profit without loss

September 16, 2010

Before arriving back to our apartment, I would have ranked today as one of the coolest days we’ve had in Bishkek by far. …but then we realized the front door was unlocked. We were burglarized. The silver lining to this situation? They left Farrell’s iMac, it must have been too big (everything they took fit [...]

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Political Instability

September 16, 2010

Yesterday, running late on our way to school, Farrell and I sat in a cab at one intersection for about ten minutes. A traffic cop seemed to simply refuse to let an entire street move, and as the starting time for Russian class ticked closer, we started expressing to our (non-English speaking) driver about how [...]

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some good news

September 15, 2010

Ahh, it seems to be the blogger’s constant struggle; how much is too much information? I guess I didn’t really reveal much as far as actual information about my life, but I’m sure readers don’t come here expecting an outpouring of emotions. So, apologies for the downer post, but I’ve got some good news to [...]

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two phrases

September 14, 2010

There’s a big difference between: “I can’t believe we’re living in Kyrgyzstan!” and “I can’t believe we’re living in Kyrgyzstan!” The first one is what I thought as we finally finished transferring all of our stuff from the shabby apartment to the nicer, cheaper one. Farrell and I sat on a couch that wasn’t broken [...]

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now it’s serious

September 13, 2010

We got a cat.

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Americanski University of Central Asia

September 12, 2010

Last week Farrell and I were invited to a lunch with other international students studying at AUCA. We nibbled on mini burgers and samsa, a Kyrgyz hot-pocket, (aww, what a nice symbol of globalization) and talked about what inspired us to come to AUCA. We all had our own reasons for choosing to move to [...]

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Irahat Cafe

September 10, 2010

Dinner can be an exhausting experience. In DC, Farrell and I rarely ate out at restaurants, so here in Bishkek, our first plan is to cook. After several nights of some combination of beef, rice, potatoes, onions, and carrots, we were a little weary of going for another round of fighting with our grimy stove-top, [...]

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Gamboorger

September 3, 2010

Thursday is my busiest day. I’m only signed up for three courses at AUCA but they all meet on Thursday. Yesterday’s classes involved a test in Beginner’s Russian and a group project in Political Research Methods. Bwugh, group projects! It can be summed up as me trying to talk over a handful of chatty Kyrgyz [...]