The scourge of Kyrgyz taxi drivers

I have been using my dongle for the last few days so I have only dropped in on the computer. In theory I should be on wifi as my hotel in Osh has it, but yes I am still on the dongle.  But for tonight it is fine. It has taken longer to get here than expected, the buses that in theory run to the airport I could not get them to understand when I asked airport, so I got off in case they did not really go there. Even the taxi driver said airport as if I had asked for something strange and despite my flapping arms etc, was very dubious as to whether he was taking me to the right place. Then when we got there he did not have the change so had to sit whilst I scrabbled round in my bag, in the end rather than taking my £1 coin he took bits and pieces but it was either than or I pay 200 coms over the odd. The taxi here has also just regretted picking up this English person declaring it was plougher or something like that terrible that I could not speak Kyrgyz so in the end I explain that was the whole point that I could not speak so that the children had to speak English, but it is a nightmare when trying to get about being so pathetic at either Kyrgyz or Russian despite having been here 7 months.

We had a long works meeting on Tuesday and definitely the key person there was a 25 year old Kyrgyz lad with two degrees, who lived for a year when he was 16 in the States and knew my part of Kentish Town from when he lived there whilst doing his Masters at the Uni of London. He is the new International Relations including bloody minded English teachers at the Foundation. He is very very good at translating. Us remaining two teachers had a huge list of things we wanted to discuss to understand both what has happened and why this year and what next year might be like. We did discuss a lot and had even more discussion over a lovely meal, but some key players were missing and the director disappeared after lunch somewhat truncating the discussion.

Luckily he was also able to help me find a dentist when my healthy snack of dried strawberries aslo turned out to contain a cherry pip or two on which to crack my tooth. So far I have been to dentists in Senegal, Turkey and now Kyrgyzstan, and so far so good. But clearly my teeth do not travel well.

Anyway Osh looks bigger than expected, not sure what I will do here, try and go out to the largest Walnut forest in the world or just climb the local mountain, I will decide tomorrow. But for now bed.