Random Musings

Since I’m in school most of the time these days, there’s not that much interesting to report. So I thought I’d write down a few of the peculiar things that make Kyrgyzstan….special.


One of my favorites, which I will warn still causes a gag reflex, is that I’m sure we find hairs in our food a significantly larger amount of time than in America. And this is thick, black Kyrgyz hair too (I really hope no one is eating their breakfast while reading this post). I’m talking so significant, that it’s almost rare for someone not to find one. Apparently, the Kyrgyz find that to be good luck – though there must be overly benevolent, bald cooks all over the country. The scary part is that boxed, sealed food is not exempt from this tradition – though I chalk that up to ridiculously underpaid Russian factory workers just trying to get even. On the third occasion that I found a hair in my box of muesli, I asked a friend and was told that in Russia they don’t have the health and safety concerns of the Western world. I pour cereal really slowly these days for a hair check.

Kyrgyzstan is also a very superstitious country. I particularly enjoy the superstition that if you eat ice cream on the street in the winter, you will without fail catch a cold. Wednesday during talking club I was bantering with our teacher about this and we decided to hold an experiment. During the break we walked across the street, bought ice cream, and then ate it standing in a snowy part of the sidewalk. If only I could have taken pictures of the looks we got from people on the street. This superstition is so engrained; they looked at us as if we had serious mental disorder - people to be avoided, surely. Though completely against my will I actually had the thought that night, “Oh man, I hope I don’t get sick from that ice cream – that was really tempting fate”. I have officially been in Kyrgyzstan too long. I can happily report that I have felt perfectly fine ever since.

Another Kyrgyz tradition is having one’s own personalized car horn. Some sound angry, some sweet, and some play Kyrgyz/Russian pop tunes. Our driver to Tash Rabat had one that sounded like turkeys. And as it happened, we came upon a group of turkeys on the road and spent a while getting them all excited by the car horn. It honestly never gets old to hear a turkey gobble. There is also the manner in which one honks their horn. A few beeps may mean, “Please, walk in front of my car as I will gladly stop for you”, while another says, “If you walk in front of my car I will not only hit you, I will also hang you on my wall as a trophy”. I’m still learning to decipher them.

No kidding, at this moment the electricity has just gone out – for the 3rd time today. Well done Bishkek, you have nothing if not good timing. So yeah, electricity and internet in Bishkek, ‘nuff said.

I have not yet mentioned toilets and such on the blog yet – afraid it might be vulgar and uninteresting. Well, vulgar at least – third world toilets are nothing if not interesting. But for those who have enough boredom to have read to the end of the post --- toilets here are the standard Asia fare. Squatters. The nice ones have a porcelain hole on the floor. And one must never flush toilet paper (you can actually flush the hole in the floor sometimes – it’s like an enigma) – this is a Soviet piping system after all.

Well, as toilet-speak is the clear conversation killer…I’ll just go watch a movie with the remaining battery on my computer. Evidently I’m not getting any homework done tonight with the lights off.