A Kyrgy farewell.

very tired. It is very hot and humid in Istanbil and it does not see real that for the last 5 months I have been living in Central Asia.

It was very Kyrgyz the last few days, people working all hours, some very good presentations, and everyone so interested and keen on what they are discussing. Several people leave, they just slip away so I do not manage to say farewells. Then despite being very tired, the others put on a concert, including our music teacher who sang several songs in English. Just when I think I am dong something nice and good they do the same thing, 10 times better, so he sings these songs in perfect English,  but people were still very kind about our performance in Kyrgyz.  It felt very intense, and then everyone danced the favourite dance together, and I was given a thank you present, and farewells, and then the concert carries on, and my departure is thankfully swallowed up.

 I cannot sleep but not because I think I am going, but because I am full of plans and full of thoughts about how I might try and stay and yet spend more time in the UK, Then a lovely lovely picnic next day up in the mountains, where I have gone by horse.

Dancing, music, nature, food, and more of all, a little like a Turkish picnic in the UK, but ever more so, proper food call cooked from scratch.  I love the dancing here, it is totally normal for women of my age to get up and dance, everyone in a circle and one or two dancing in the middle, men and women together, though the staff are mainly women.

 Then suddenly people saying good bye,  then I am being told I am on the bus with the people saying goodbye.   I am back at the Ashu rushing to get my car to Bishkek, it is ;pouring with rain, thunder and lightening.  I stuff things into the bag. I run up stairs and give my presents to the staff, they just sit there, I just stand there, I do not know if they have any emotion, I do, I run back down again and bring my other bag to the car.  The sun comes back out and we wait. apparently I am not going in this car, apparently I am going with the art teacher and he is asleep.  He just arrives and at the same time the buses from the mountain come. My head wheels me down the road and into their bus, along with the director and the art teacher,  and here we sit drinking vodka. I am so tired I keep falling asleep. I do not know how long we sit and chat more final farewells including with the mother of the Ashu owner, her son is away, I have not said goodbye to her husband, despite all the emotion I know by now my room is housing someone else already, but we smile to each other and hug and the acknowledgement is genuine. She and a few others depart.  Then suddenly everyone decides to head to the spring, and there we have a few more vodkas, with a few of the other school staff The Director of the Foundation, the head of my school all have more vodkas and cognac. I just close my eyes and sleep, thinking we are here for hours, but no suddenly more farewells and now it really is goodbye.  I just sleep in the car. Only to be woken to have a meal as we are now so late, that everyone wants to eat, except for our director, who is asleep. We finally get to Bishkek at 9.30 6 hours after I left the picnic.  I catch a bit of sleep at the school owner's house, there is more thunder and lightening. At 12 I am off again to the airport. I wanted to be there early as I have no idea if my bags are overweight. And sadly they are so out go my shoes, a jumper, etc. Not quite sure how this has happened as I left several items behind I also unintentionally left my lovely winter coat behind, but it is so hot and so hard managing three bags that I am not sure how I could have brought more.  I do not like going to the airport as sometimes it can be very busy it is also a little weird I went through three different screeners, but no one spots or questions the bottle of water in my bag or several other things that breech regulations but my bag is searched because of a book!.  I am one gram over weight and my handbag now over weight but I am allowed on.  And just sleep. And now I am here and it is as if that time did not exist.  So strange.

Soon my head will be in the states with all the other directors, she will come back to the summer school, they have international staff to work in most of the schools, but mine, while they wait to see if I am coming back or not. It feels so nice and free next to the Mamara sea.   I have no idea what comes next.

A nice little get together at my Dom.

Very very very tired and a little alcohol fuelled, now that is what I call a staff conference. We started at 8.40 and have only just finished at 8.40 pm and tomorrow it will be the same, and a recent Uzbek tour guide accused the Kyrgyz of not being hard working! This, in the case of the staff from my school,  after working all day yesterday preparing the showers and rooms for all the staff from the 5 Bilimkana schools so that they can sleep in the school and attend the conference - they have done a brilliant job they look great and it is a good dry run for the summer camp,  or in the case of the visiting staff they went on a factory tour on route to here to assess a potential place for group visits.    I was one of today's speakers, I had made a short video, but then discovered I had a 30 minutes slot but had so much to say that was easy,. I then disappeared up to the school to build on my work yesterday trying to burying as much wood as possible in the apple field crazy I know but everyone else was busy putting up pictures, or making beds, they work instinctively as a team, this is my way to contribute and what was nice today I meet someone from the Foundation who totally understood my aims.I had carefully embedded the apple project into my talk so that the school will have to follow up on it.  This new colleague who works at head office and is helping with the summer scheme studied at the Schumacher College in England she studied holistic science so of course she got what I am trying to do.  So although I am very tired it has been like all good staff conferences very thought provoking, we have covered, schemes of work, the dreaded lesson plans, I have refused to return if I have to do them here! we have looked at tablets, and whilst I was away marketing. In my case challenging of course as I do not speak Russian, but everyone has engaged with me, and tried to help me, it is lovely seeing some of the people I have met before, and now we have all had a first glass of vodka we are all a little more relaxed.

End on a high note.

The end of an amazing day, it could not have gone better. We have raised about 12000 coms, the duet went really well and was received well, all the kids sang very well, even if I did have the usual fight to get their work included despite fully informing people what they were performing even down to saying has he written it down.  The children loved the lucky dip there were fights to get into the bin and after they just demolished the box in case, the number of sweets did not go down so well but the money raised from the two games covered the costs of the things I bought, but this year was about introducing concepts, as I donated the prizes. The Kruskhi kids sang brilliantly happy and hey brother, and then one of them ended the whole concert with the traditional Kyrgyz dance and I was encouraged, nae forced to join him.  Just a lovely lovely day, and kept me from getting too sad as it was so much fun. Everyone seems to be assuming I am not coming back, and today would be a hard act to follow.  However, I have said I hope that even if not as their permanent teacher the foundation will find a way for me to come back sometimes as working with them despite the moans has been a real privilege.

As usual no video me or the English work, but I took this during rehearsals with the Kruski students.

I have heard of events being rained off but this is ...

Wednesday afternoon, sat on the swing and taught group three there last lesson. Just three of them left so a huge drop out which is not good and discovered one of the three is the older brother of one of the 2B children, I already knew that the other two had relatives either studying or working at the school so clearly these three felt obliged to come.  Other classes the drop out rate has not been so bad. Anyway as you can see it was lovely. The builders creating the kitchen have put up a temporary stage too for our concert and it was all looking lovely.

I woke up yesterday morning to this.

All the hard work snowed off, well not quite.  The roof for the temporary stage was broken by the snow fall, and it is so cold that we have decided to move the event inside. It means fewer people can attend. But over lunch I could see a anxious discussion taking place and I guess that was the decision taken as a result. This is the first time that the school has held a fundraiser and my head is very anxious that people locally will not understand the idea or appreciate it so she is concerned that my plan to just do a lucky dip for 20 coms e.g. the price of an ice cream may be too much for the audience.  The event seems to be a bit of a missmash of the usual children's singing and us staff performing, anyhow we will see how it goes.   Everyone is very tired and my throat is not the only one knackered so not sure how the singing will be at all. We were at the school till 7 last night and so I am working at the Ashu this morning to as I know it will be mayhem and rehearsals at school.

 There are two guests from France staying and speaking with them I had such a pang to be home.  But just one last hurdle the staff conference and if it warms up I will be probably very reluctant to leave at that point. 

Book worms?

It may be the Parkinson's principle at work, but despite being under my hours in terms of teaching, I always work a full day and leave with things still to do. So today having gone in relatively early 10.00 (having already done some work at the Ashu) with the intention of doing some urgent computer work, I was confronted with the fact that we had no water and no electricity and certainly no internet, but by the time, I had prepared my classes, scattered ash round the apple trees, discussed the concert, put back some of the trilingual language cards, it was dinner time. 

When I finished my last class with the year 1 children, I felt quite emotional, it was a lovely class. I had found 18 English books suitable for their age about the school so after practicing their song for Friday and having a reprise of Walking Through the Jungle which they did months ago and which they mostly remembered but still cannot name the animals that they have just sung about, I let them loose on the books and it was nice and calm while I did some one on one work with a few of them.  Then I kind of realised that was my last session with that group. Then I went and had my last session with the year zero children and they too were entranced when I let them loose on some books suitable for them.  They even sat quietly or joined in appropriately when I read them a story. This story was a slight accident. I was printing out some books for the year 2 students, and kept getting it wrong, usually when I do this I give the resulting over print of individual pages to the younger children to colour, but this time I also read the book to the children as it had words that they were familiar with plane, boat, train.  And it was so lovely. I do not know if it is because I am going at the end of this week or because there are less children in at present, but I just felt relaxed with them and they loved the noises we made for all the different transport system. This was how I had imagined class would be with them and it happens now just at the end.  I still feel torn but talking to my son for the first time in weeks and hearing of his plans for November and my strong desire to join him doing some of these things does make me wonder. 

One very nice thing happened today. The music teacher and my head suddenly hurtled out, I had no idea why in fact I thought that there might be a problem, but when she returned about an hour later, she was really relaxed and happy. She had been to a sort of nation day nearby and there she had met people who told her about apple projects and she even met a man who could tell her about and here we had mimes, guesses, snakes and then finally I realised what she was telling me, worms. She has met a man who can help us to get worms. Her genuine pleasure and relief makes me feel that some of the problems I have been having re the apple project, composting etc, is just that it seems a bit overwhelming to her. She has all this stuff on her plate and then this foreigner comes with new ideas that really seem alien, but now meeting local people who can help her, makes a great difference. I would feel the same to be honest and in fact one of the reasons I am hesitant about coming back is that I feel overwhelmed with what I would have to do if I came back, this year has been hard, but it is probably much easier this year,when no one knew what they were doing, but next year there will be more classes, more students, more everything.  

A very elegant young woman came into school today and confidently asked in English how are you? Turned out she is a relative of one of our teachers, her grand neice, and she works as a private English tutor but all over Central Asia.  It felt very strange suddenly having someone other than my head speaking with me at school and explaining things to me, I wanted to say I have been here some time, so sort of know what you are telling me, but then we started talking about children and language acquisition so that was quite nice. 

I will probably curse my failure to take more pictures of the children just doing every day stuff. I grabbed some shots of my kruski students but these days only three turn up.  

It is still cold, so really hope things warm up for Friday.  Time to go and find out if there is any dinner tonight as it is past 7.  

Noises in the night.

Still on the dongle in my room so no pics, but can get internet elsewhere in the Ashu, but the Ashu is full tonight with a seminar.  I am pleased to say that the owners wife and their son are back too, I was worried I might not see them before I left. Although only 8 months old their son is definitely making talking sounds.

Last night at 12 there were other sounds. Someone banged on my window waking me up, looking out without my glasses on, I thought it was the owners mum complaining that I had the song I am trying to learn on too loud, I turned it down and was just thinking hang on why is she knocking on the window not the door, when a gentler tap on the window came, I opened it and ,someone, who I vaguely recognised,   explained in English that they were builders. Having seen the panels that will be slotted onto the new building arrive by big lorry earlier that day, this seemed likely despite the time of night. . I therefore went to take them to the room in which I had seen other builders sleeping, the stars looked amazing as I walked them over, but he said he had already looked there so that was no good so that meant waking someone other than me up.  Just in case I suggested the grandfather as I know that he can defend the property if it turned out I was helping these people improperly,but he was not in the sort of lean too cupboard in which he usually sleeps, so I had to stand outside all the doors (the family swop the rooms they sleep in according to need) until I worked out where she was and woke her up.  I left them to sort it out but at 5 this morning the noise of a cow bellowing woke me up again. Shows me how much double glazing  protects me round here as I have never heard the morning cacophony before, but I had left the window open by accident.

I felt very rough this morning, have dragged myself through the day and although I knew there was a ton to do for the fundraiser we are having on Friday just left as soon as I could. I have a sore throat and my voice sounds dreadful so hope it improves before I have to sing. It is cold again here too, which does not help.  However, the rest of the school are all singing and dancing and moving. Furniture is coming in for the first summer school and apparently someone English will be helping at it so a new guard is arriving and apparently after summer more than one new year will be added to the school, they will recruit for further classes of a higher age than our current students.  As per usual all change. I do not quite know how my head manages it all. She is looking tired and stressed to be honest but not too bad under the circumstances.

I found out who the young woman was, She was not to do with the Foundation as I suspected, but the head of the Foundation is also her boss, and apparently she is involved in yet more charities that he runs, is there no end to the number of ventures he is involved.

Had a nice days teaching. I explained to the children about how to do a lucky dip and they are very excited about the idea.  I am not quite sure how I will manage it and the how many in the jar sweets and try and sing I am trying to resist making more films as my camera really is on its last legs.  I have donated the presents for the two games so if the idea does not catch on there will be no loss. Judging by the kids reaction though they will want to have a go.

A couple of days ago going through my luggage ready for going home I found a blow up globe I had brought with me, interestingly it has the capital as Frunze, not Bishkek. Frunze was the previous name and it is why Bishkek is Fru for the airport. I have been using the globe, just to throw at the kids individual questions, it is harder for the others to shout out the answers in that context and fun for the kids, what was nice today was before I used if for class, 2B's teacher showed them Kyrgyzstan, and how small it was and then a quarter of the way round the world they found where I live, even smaller. Gasps at both the distance and the sizes.  And on Friday when the women from the States came the children who met them were blown away by the fact that they would travel half way round the world to get home and take 24 hours to do it. I often forget where I am in some ways, I am just here in my little bubble.  If the school were round the corner it would be easy of course I would stay.

Anyway, only 2 more days teaching, I am desperately trying to get all the children's books as complete as possible, they will need to go over the same ground next year for a while but at least chunks of work on paper will have been done,and I am desperately trying to get the year 1 children as close to reading as possible, Today one group were so quick with the activity (picture of chicken and rice - use letters to spell both words) that they had finished it before I had explained what to do. Two tables managed the task relatively easily and then swapped words so spelled four words in the time two tables managed to spell one of their two words,  so a gap in ability seems to be developing.  And yesterday I managed to very calmly read to the year 0, most of whom listened, then for the second time, they watched quite nicely as I showed them sort of how to play snap and some of them went away and did it.  I realise how much they have grown in this last year.  Not little kids anymore.  Some of them know most of the alphabet and are ready to move on to year 1.

My taxi is booked.  I am not looking forward to managing my two bags in Istanbul in between Bishkek and getting home, but I am hoping I can leave one bag at the airport.  Then back to the UK at the beginning of June.   I definitely cannot regret having this year, I have been very lucky, despite some niggles and if I could only become more Kyrgyz in temperament then these niggles would not exist.

No sense of humus.

Today I got a lift to work with my head and her husband. I surprised her by asking if she had gone to work on Saturday. Yes more subudnik, apparently people were sorting out the playground, but you could not tell anyone had done anything. However, why wasn't I asked was floating through my head. However, I still headed to the rows of apple trees with a sense of optimism that someone would have magically restored all the wood to the ditch it had been taken out of. Here miracles like that happen, it was the same in Senegal, go home at the end of the day, come back next day, in theory no one has been at work, but tons has been done.   HOwever, in this tons had been undone. Despite very politely telling my head that one row of hugel kultur had been destroyed, now the second one has been.  I know it might seem silly, but I just feel despair.  We can speak English together but are not speaking the same language.


I think my colleague is having the same problem, she is still off sick from stress, but here that is such an alien concept that it just does not compute.  Howevers as a result of the ever flowing emails between her and our liaison person I am learning more about what one should do here if ill. Judging by the amount of alchohol consumed it seems unlikely that people do not suffer from stress here, but they do seem to be much better at coping with little planning and things being just thrown at them.  The liaison person said here people know that classes can be cancelled unexpectedly and they do not know why, so for them that does not become a health issue, but if they cost as much as we do to employ perhaps they would think differently too.

A mysterious wodge of bags have appeared in the building I am occupying, and mattresses and an ironing board.  I am wondering.  Hopefully will find out soonish.

Not actually feeling very well at present, too many trips to Bishkek, trying to sort out the hugelkultur then disappointment over its destruction, adapting to new glasses and trying to get lots of paper work sorted means I have been pushing my body a bit further than it can cope with.  Normal stuff for lots of people at the end of term.  At least I know timetables will be thrown out of the window as staff try and get the children ready for the fundraising concert.

However two good things, I am now getting loads of emails from head office, they are in Russian, but with the automatic translate as least I have an idea of what is being discussed which is much nicer. Tonight at dinner I thought I had been given everything I was due to have (I am given a scaled down version of the guests meals) so had tucked into the bread and jam only to be given two little apple pies and given my mania for them using apple in cooking have had to eat them. I might have lost weight when I first got here, but definitely putting it back on today.