10/21 – Wednesday – Around the City

The jello shots party was a success – we all decided to wear silly Russian hats and danced until early morning. I still took it easy and feel pretty good today.

I took a long walk around the city today with another girl to see some of the main sights. There aren’t many. That’s not to be overly dour about my new city of residence – it is just fact that Bishkek does not have many wonderful qualities on the surface. The air is quite polluted with diesel fuel and burning trash – I got pretty sick to my stomach on the walk from it. And the buildings are all old Soviet concrete style and are crumbling apart. I think that during the Soviet era the best job to have would have been in concrete – because they made the concrete so poorly that it has to be repaired all the time. That’s some good job security right there.

So we saw one of the main squares and the Kyrgyz White House (they really call it that) – but that is their government building, not where the president lives. I’m not overly sure they have a president….meant to do a bit more research on the country before I left. And there’s not exactly internet access much here to look anything up.

Apartment building (all of them are falling apart like this):

Symbol of Kyrgyzstan:

Kyrgyz White House: