January 2012

Big Announcements

January 25, 2012

Just a quick post about some big news. I’m so ridiculously excited to have been chosen as a Glimpse Correspondent for Spring 2012! As a photo correspondent I will produce two photo essays that will be published on Matador Network. I did, in fact, start sobbing when I saw the list (which should not surprise [...]

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Crossing borders

January 20, 2012

Here are some photos from the second (and last) of my field trips with the photojournalism students from the University of Nebraska. This time we met up at 8am to go stand in the freezing cold at the Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan border. The students were interested in documenting residents of Kyrgyzstan who get paid to carry goods [...]

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on assignment in Tuz

January 17, 2012

Recently, a group of photojournalism students from the University of Nebraska come to Kyrgyzstan for three weeks for what must be the coolest class assignment ever. Through my connections at AUCA, I was put in touch with them and was invited to accompany them as they traveled around and took photos for some of the [...]

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Diversity Festival

January 15, 2012

On December 16, a friend and I went “on assignment” to an annual festival that celebrates the diverse group of ethnicities that call Kyrgyzstan home. It was hosted in the Kyrgyz Drama Theater and included an open house of foods, crafts and souvenirs from each group, as well as a performance of songs and dances.

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How to survive a Bishkek winter power-outage

January 11, 2012

Temperatures have dropped again in Bishkek, another sign that winter is most definitely sticking around, despite certain predictions that Kyrgyzstan wouldn’t get a winter this year. With decreasing temperatures, Bishkek residents race to turn up their space heaters, straining the crumbling electrical infrastructure. This means more power outages and rolling black-outs. Here are my tips [...]

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Candy Christmas

January 6, 2012

(the title is shamelessly stolen from an email written by a good friend about her envy-inducing Southeast Asian Adventure.) These are facts about Kirstin: – She loves to cook and bake and eat – She doesn’t particularly enjoy shopping – She has a growing scrooge-ness toward owning too many things that she projects onto other [...]

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2012 resolutions

January 4, 2012

I think I did a decent job keeping up with my resolutions. All things considered, I’m achieving many things that weren’t on the list. For example, I’m earning a salary from the business and we’ve earned enough to repay ourselves for all of the start-up costs. We even treated ourselves to health insurance, which I [...]

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2011 in photos

January 2, 2012

January. Watching the Ak Maral dancers perform at the Bishkek Philharmonic. February. Farrell and I take a short trip to Osh to interview journalists for a research project on Kyrgyz media. March. I take a weekend trip to Kochkor with some friends, get ambushed by smiling soccer players.

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Celebrating the New Year in Bishkek

January 1, 2012

Happy New Year! For the second time, I celebrated in Bishkek, surrounded by friends, food, and my wonderful husband. Just like my Christmas trip to Chon-Kemin, I was really happy to spend this time of year with a smaller group of friends than the usual gigantic expat extravaganzas. (Although, it was probably because all the [...]