Respect

By now regular readers of this blog will know that I have mentioned several groups of people older than me travelling through Kyrgyzstan, I have been deeply impressed but today respect. I have discovered first of all that some of the group are in their 80's, but that did not stop most of them going horse riding! And this afternoon they watched a demonstration of some Kyrgyz sports, it started quite late so I joined them, and wondering back asked what they had done earlier in the afternoon, thinking they would have rested or pottered about a bit, which is all I can do after a horse ride, but no this lot went WHITE WATER RAFTING!!! At the age 82 one guy had his first ride on a horse and first rafting experience. RESPECT And shame on me for my ageism.

The little kids gave me respect today too. I was waiting for the Kyrski class to arrive from the village down the road so was just sitting there and one of the young girls came in and asked me what I was doing so I just sang her the first bit of the song I am trying to learn in Kyrgyz, bless her she clapped and ran to get some of the others to listen, so it obviously sounded vaguely correct, but that is the easiest verse to learn. They are so quick they picked up the tune straight away.   So a lovely day really sun, hard work, and lots of good company.

Another nice thing happened actually two.  The year 2 children, 8/9 have written a book albeit with a bit of help from me, I live in Kyrgyzstan, we eat etc. and they have drawn pictures. My plan is to be able to print it out for them to take home over summer. But first of course the kids have to type it up, this is very good for their letter recognitiion, first the quick brown fox, then they can type their page. The two best readers happened to sit together and they quickly typed the phrase to practice so then I was able to show them their pictures and ask them to type the sentence they had written, that done I then gave them the flash card with pictures of all their pages to insert and these two boys twigged and they did it.  They were so excited though too that was the nice thing. So using the skills that they have learned in Russian computing classes my class.

On the way to work this morning carrying my bundles of twigs and wood shavings so a bit of a struggle I met an old woman who was hoping for a passing car to give her a lift, but she engaged me in conversation, indicating Bilimkana school and walked with me there. She found it hysterical that I could not communicate with her.    She tried everything she could think of, then I would say, sorry I can't speak Kyrgyz and she would rattle with laughter.

When I arrived at the school the mystified music/computer teacher gave in and gestured what is it with all these sticks. So I tried to gesture back rain, wood goes yippee and then trees go yippee the earth is damp, I hope he got it.