This event was amazing. It’s ranked up there with the cat show for Best Things I Ever Experienced In Kyrgyzstan. This was the Mister Kyrgyzstan 2013 competition. Thirty-three of Kyrgyzstan’s most strapping young fellows competing for a coveted title and a free trip to Turkey. (This post is really heavy on the photos, so click …
Tag Archives: absurdity
Cat Show in Bishkek
I first heard about a cat show hosted in Bishkek over a year ago (maybe even two), but news about the event had only ever reached me after it had already happened. Until now. I went to a cat show in Bishkek, and it may have been the best day ever. I had a few …
Karakol animal market
Okay sure, let’s wake up at 6am and go to the animal market. We (Farrell, me, Win strapped to my chest, and Cami, the only other person out of our 18-person group who wanted to go with us) walked 10 minutes to get to the main road. We’ll catch a cab, that shouldn’t be too …
on the road to Zil
When you spend nearly an entire day in a car, you figure out how to amuse yourself. For me, I took advantage of the coating on the car window and photographed the rainbows that appeared on the landscape through my lens. And here are a few other scenes that caught my eye. There were about …
Zil is a ski resort
One fine Saturday a couple weeks ago, a new friend (who has already left Bishkek) invited Farrell and I to go to the mountains. We learned two very important lessons that day: 1) Zil, the place he said we were going, is a ski resort. 2) In Russian, to “go to the mountains” implies skiing, …
Kirstin gets sued (hypothetically)
The revelation that some House Hunters and House Hunters International episodes might not be as truthful as they first appear hit some people hard. When I was back in the states one woman’s account of making her episode was national news. But nothing was affected more seriously than the strained diplomatic relations between Kazakhstan and …
If there were ever a “purpose” for this blog…
…it would be convincing readers that Kyrgyzstan is, in fact, an incredibly normal (and sometimes absolutely wonderful) place to live (and visit). A pretty popular travel website recently posted that Vice documentary on bridenapping that I ranted about a while ago. My first reaction was “UGH!!!” How could they!? Introducing so many people to Kyrgyzstan …
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Bishkek Rock Festival
It’s necessary to set the scene with this music, a clip from the movie “From Dusk til Dawn.” The details of my night are a bit different from the movie. I walked into the Russian Drama Theater with my husband and members of his band. We’re late, having not known this event existed until it …
Real Life House Hunters: Best of the Worst
Gold tunduk chandeliers? Offices with showers? Marble staircases? Houses only half-constructed? All of the above. Even though there were a few gems in our search for a new house/office, the majority were not even up for consideration. A few of them deserve special mention for their ridiculousness. This one wasn’t so bad, but it was …
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winter will not? winter is.
The temperature in Bishkek today reached an astoundingly chilly high of -16 degrees (Celsius). Snow fell steadily all of yesterday, although when the weather is this cold, I suppose it won’t have a chance to melt and refreeze into the hazardous sheet of ice that is now a permanent fixture on all sidewalks for the …