MAKING SENSE OF THIS!!!
some of our white clothes may have already turned grey. and others turned gray.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
To get to the other side...an essay on crossing the street
I grew up on Long (STRONG) Island, on a residential, one block long street that connected two residential streets that actually intersected. There was no need for any car to go down our little lane, unless of course, that block itself was the destination. Therefore, crossing the street was simple - if there was a car in the street, wait. If not, cross. And you could play in the street, as long as you were in the middle of the 20 house long block.
Maybe I'm observant, maybe I'm just bored, but I've given a lot of thought to the cultural mores of street crossing these days. The first place I lived that I felt had a very distinct street crossing culture was my natal city of New York, New York (the city so nice, they named it TWICE!). You can always tell tourists from Manhattanistanis by this simple rule - do they, while waiting to cross, stand on the side walk or in the street? At some point in history, New Yorkers decided that the first 3-5 feet of the street actually belongs to the sidewalk and can be occupied to indicate a desire to cross. Hence, the famous joke "Why did the New Yorker cross the street?" Answer "To prove to the taxis that he/she owned those 3-5 feet." Umm, I'm sure that joke will catch on, maybe on a rebooted version of Night Court. Note - it is also acceptable, in NYC, to thump, with one's hand, any car that dared to stop in the crosswalk.
When I lived for three months in India, I took one look at the street crossing culture and the scales dropped from my eyes. I had SEEN this before. From some of my earliest childhood memories and obsessions, it all came flooding back. This was FROGGER. If you don't know the arcade video game FROGGER - 1. Don't try to cross a street in India and 2. You must be either <20 or >90. 3. Find it, it will teach you important lessons.
As I recall, in FROGGER you are a frog trying to get to your lily pad. First, you have to avoid several lanes of traffic. Then you have to not fall into the water (it's unclear why this would hamper a frog) by hopping onto floating logs...be very careful to avoid the alligators! The alligators are the best part, as a quick scan of the screen sometimes confuses them with the logs adding a degree of difficulty. Now, this is how you cross the street in India, just like in the game. You have to jump forward between rows of cars. Once you commit to the street, you are in and of the street. There will be cars to the left of you, cars to the right....there you are stuck in the middle..plus cars ahead and behind. While cars in India supposedly drive on the left hand side of the road, in actuality, it can be said that they drive on either side of the road. You must swivel your head and scan the entire screen like the legendary frog.
As in FROGGER, cars are not the only hazard on your way to lily padded nirvana. There are also alligators. Except these alligators are stray dogs and cows. The stray dogs will be along the edges and are usually no big deal, the real problem is the cows. Cows are in the street and are treated as honorary black holes - touch one and you evaporate. You must avoid these cows at all costs and realize that a car will hit YOU before it hits a cow. Seriously. Cows laying down in the road, and yes, they do this, are the closest things to lane markers in the subcontinent.
Again, my advice to you is...if you are terrible at FROGGER, don't try to cross a street in India. My father, who was born in British India, later Pakistan (the same rules apply in Pakistan, but no cows), is an exceptional FROGGER player.
And now, my new home, Kyrgyzstan. There are two street crossing eccentricities here in Bishkek, the first one was quite obvious, the second one took me a bit to figure out. The first is based around the fact that there are not three phases to the stop lights here, but four. They are, with their American equivilants - 1. green = green...GO! 2. blinking green = yellow...SLOW DOWN! 3. yellow = red...STOP! 4. red=red/green. GO! Let me explain what a red light is...for the traffic that has been moving, it is a red light, but for the traffic that has been stopped, it is a green...as in, as soon as you see opposing traffic flinch and slow down, you go, even though your light is red and their's might be yellow still. With this knowledge, you can safely cross only when parallel traffic has a green or blinking green...if it hits yellow, haul ass!
The second quirk is a function of massively broad streets. Some streets in downtown, like Chui Prospect, are wide enough for about 4-6 lanes in BOTH directions. There are only two lanes each way, so most of the street is sort of a street-like walking place/parking lot. That in itself doesn't cause any major difficulties, but, in the vein of keeping these spaces majestic, there are few, if any traffic lights on them. You could walk about .5-1km to find one, but that's not very sporting. There are crosswalks labelled and cars are SUPPOSED to stop for pedestrians in them...
They do stop, but I still can't figure out how to tell which car will stop and/or why. What I've decided on is, in order to cross safely in Bishkek city...find a native and follow them. I call it my Fullback Attack or the Jerome Bettis Strategy. So, I sidle up to the car part of the street and wait inconspicuously for a Kyrgyz national. Sometimes they don't even break stride and I fall in next to them. Sometimes they stop and wait for a minute or two - I can't discern any difference in the traffic conditions, but apparently, they can. And then we cross the street, blithely in tandem.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I will follow 10 year old girls, using their wisdom to keep me safe...in my quest ...to get to the other side.
Maybe I'm observant, maybe I'm just bored, but I've given a lot of thought to the cultural mores of street crossing these days. The first place I lived that I felt had a very distinct street crossing culture was my natal city of New York, New York (the city so nice, they named it TWICE!). You can always tell tourists from Manhattanistanis by this simple rule - do they, while waiting to cross, stand on the side walk or in the street? At some point in history, New Yorkers decided that the first 3-5 feet of the street actually belongs to the sidewalk and can be occupied to indicate a desire to cross. Hence, the famous joke "Why did the New Yorker cross the street?" Answer "To prove to the taxis that he/she owned those 3-5 feet." Umm, I'm sure that joke will catch on, maybe on a rebooted version of Night Court. Note - it is also acceptable, in NYC, to thump, with one's hand, any car that dared to stop in the crosswalk.
When I lived for three months in India, I took one look at the street crossing culture and the scales dropped from my eyes. I had SEEN this before. From some of my earliest childhood memories and obsessions, it all came flooding back. This was FROGGER. If you don't know the arcade video game FROGGER - 1. Don't try to cross a street in India and 2. You must be either <20 or >90. 3. Find it, it will teach you important lessons.
As I recall, in FROGGER you are a frog trying to get to your lily pad. First, you have to avoid several lanes of traffic. Then you have to not fall into the water (it's unclear why this would hamper a frog) by hopping onto floating logs...be very careful to avoid the alligators! The alligators are the best part, as a quick scan of the screen sometimes confuses them with the logs adding a degree of difficulty. Now, this is how you cross the street in India, just like in the game. You have to jump forward between rows of cars. Once you commit to the street, you are in and of the street. There will be cars to the left of you, cars to the right....there you are stuck in the middle..plus cars ahead and behind. While cars in India supposedly drive on the left hand side of the road, in actuality, it can be said that they drive on either side of the road. You must swivel your head and scan the entire screen like the legendary frog.
As in FROGGER, cars are not the only hazard on your way to lily padded nirvana. There are also alligators. Except these alligators are stray dogs and cows. The stray dogs will be along the edges and are usually no big deal, the real problem is the cows. Cows are in the street and are treated as honorary black holes - touch one and you evaporate. You must avoid these cows at all costs and realize that a car will hit YOU before it hits a cow. Seriously. Cows laying down in the road, and yes, they do this, are the closest things to lane markers in the subcontinent.
Again, my advice to you is...if you are terrible at FROGGER, don't try to cross a street in India. My father, who was born in British India, later Pakistan (the same rules apply in Pakistan, but no cows), is an exceptional FROGGER player.
And now, my new home, Kyrgyzstan. There are two street crossing eccentricities here in Bishkek, the first one was quite obvious, the second one took me a bit to figure out. The first is based around the fact that there are not three phases to the stop lights here, but four. They are, with their American equivilants - 1. green = green...GO! 2. blinking green = yellow...SLOW DOWN! 3. yellow = red...STOP! 4. red=red/green. GO! Let me explain what a red light is...for the traffic that has been moving, it is a red light, but for the traffic that has been stopped, it is a green...as in, as soon as you see opposing traffic flinch and slow down, you go, even though your light is red and their's might be yellow still. With this knowledge, you can safely cross only when parallel traffic has a green or blinking green...if it hits yellow, haul ass!
The second quirk is a function of massively broad streets. Some streets in downtown, like Chui Prospect, are wide enough for about 4-6 lanes in BOTH directions. There are only two lanes each way, so most of the street is sort of a street-like walking place/parking lot. That in itself doesn't cause any major difficulties, but, in the vein of keeping these spaces majestic, there are few, if any traffic lights on them. You could walk about .5-1km to find one, but that's not very sporting. There are crosswalks labelled and cars are SUPPOSED to stop for pedestrians in them...
They do stop, but I still can't figure out how to tell which car will stop and/or why. What I've decided on is, in order to cross safely in Bishkek city...find a native and follow them. I call it my Fullback Attack or the Jerome Bettis Strategy. So, I sidle up to the car part of the street and wait inconspicuously for a Kyrgyz national. Sometimes they don't even break stride and I fall in next to them. Sometimes they stop and wait for a minute or two - I can't discern any difference in the traffic conditions, but apparently, they can. And then we cross the street, blithely in tandem.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I will follow 10 year old girls, using their wisdom to keep me safe...in my quest ...to get to the other side.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Bishkek at its finest 2
There are some interesting flourishes of beauty around town here. In several places, we have fancy sidewalk tiles like here
And our street lights are rare and beautiful
Bishkek is, in many ways, a very beautiful city. Here is a snapshot from one of our many park/open spaces clustered around the downtown area. Those little robot things are trashcans - probably the biggest culture shock when moving in between Ithaca and NYC over the last year years, was the lack of public waste bins in Ithaca.
And our street lights are rare and beautiful
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Dordoi Bazaar
Dordoi Bazaar is one of the, if not the largest, markets in Central Asia. You can find almost anything you want there, except what we went to find, which was one of those baby carriers that you wear. They call them Kangaroos here, which makes perfect sense if you think about it.
Dordoi is unusual, if not unique, in that it is largely composed of shipping containers. Yes, those big metal boxes you see on the docks in Jersey or during the second season of The Wire.
In this first picture, it's not that obvious
BUT if you look here, you'll see how the entire market is constructed
Those doors will swing open and turn into shops.
It seemed like the market was divided into long alleys selling themed goods - e.g. one entire alley had stuff for kids - toys, clothes, strollers. Another alley, which we did not get a good pic of, was all track suits. We even saw a track suit with built in hijab.
Here are a couple more pics from around the bazaar
Dordoi is unusual, if not unique, in that it is largely composed of shipping containers. Yes, those big metal boxes you see on the docks in Jersey or during the second season of The Wire.
In this first picture, it's not that obvious
It seemed like the market was divided into long alleys selling themed goods - e.g. one entire alley had stuff for kids - toys, clothes, strollers. Another alley, which we did not get a good pic of, was all track suits. We even saw a track suit with built in hijab.
Here are a couple more pics from around the bazaar
Monday, August 19, 2013
ALA-TV 2
I don't want to alarm anyone but the Yankees were on my TV today. Seriously. The NY Yankees. There were even a few despondent Red Sox fans peering out of the TV at me. Mariano Rivera was pitching, so I assumed this could be a game, oh, let's see, anytime between yesterday and 1995. Turns out it was yesterday's game, or maybe even live? Wow.
New addition to the TV sports line up, besides the Track and Field World Championship - Men and Women's Field Hockey on station "EURO SPORT." Euro Sport, a compassionate station, they literally (!) ran an ad saying "Women's Sport - All emotion, all the time."
New addition to the TV sports line up, besides the Track and Field World Championship - Men and Women's Field Hockey on station "EURO SPORT." Euro Sport, a compassionate station, they literally (!) ran an ad saying "Women's Sport - All emotion, all the time."
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Kyrgyzstan 1 - USA 0...New Dimensions discovered!
In my efforts to alleviate my own and others fears about my son's safety and possible boredom here in Bishkek, I present to you our malls. Specifically, the top floors of our nicer malls, which all seem to contain some sort of play space for kids. At least this is true of Beta Stores and Detsky Mir. On the top floor of Detsky Mir is a carousel and an arcade. The arcade contains some awesome games like this one...
Presumably, you pay about 30 soums (60 cents) to pretend to be a Mom that cooks? Interesting.
In this same place, called Detsky Mir, we also discovered the 5th dimension. Well, we found where they were keeping it, harnessing it, or whatever. Now, my Russian is not good, so I can't completely describe what the 5th dimension is, but it looks like this...
Imagine my surprise, later in the day, when we took our son to the local amusement park at Panfilova Park, to discover that they had uncovered EVEN MORE DIMENSIONS!!!
In order of escalating Physics Absurdity...
We can't possibly top that...can we???
Thankfully, the madness stopped at 10 dimensions. For now at least.
And yes, I realize that there may be
1. An issue of translation
2. More dimensions lurking
3. Some other thing, like amount of speakers, range of movement of the seats etc. that these numbers are describing...BUT
I prefer to see it my way, which is, to embrace my reality, my krazystan.
In this same place, called Detsky Mir, we also discovered the 5th dimension. Well, we found where they were keeping it, harnessing it, or whatever. Now, my Russian is not good, so I can't completely describe what the 5th dimension is, but it looks like this...
In order of escalating Physics Absurdity...
Wait...there's more!!!
And yes, I realize that there may be
1. An issue of translation
2. More dimensions lurking
3. Some other thing, like amount of speakers, range of movement of the seats etc. that these numbers are describing...BUT
I prefer to see it my way, which is, to embrace my reality, my krazystan.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
The Nice Play Spaces
To ease the minds of the parents among you and all of you who love my son, here's a few snaps of a safe/nice playground we bring him to...the only problem is that it's in a swank restaurant called the Four Seasons. The food is good and we actually get to eat it, since he's playing the whole time, but the price is too high to go more than once a week. It's also in a park, so on three sides of the restaurant is trees - mostly oak, birch and juniper. We've been there twice...tonight he brought all the trucks and cars to our table and "repaired" them for us. Watch out Dingo Dog!
File Under : Jagged, Dirty, Dangerous? Must be for KIDS! 2
There are a few options for kid entertainment here in Bishkek beyond the dirty, jagged playgrounds. There are the ubiquitous bounce houses known as batoot. Where they came from is a interesting question, one that I hope to pursue in a series of blog posts. But there are also a few other things you can do, like this, for instance
Yes, you strap your child in and then pull on the cord AND...
You've got yourself a brand new Yuri Gagarin! Let me recap - you pay the guy in the white shirt a certain sum of soums (probably 50-100 or $1-$2) and he straps your precious little one into that device. Then you, in your swank outfit, pull on the chord and send baby to the stars.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Is this Bishkek...or Brooklyn?
Apparently, one of the AUCA graduates started a gelato truck business. The truck lives in Erkindink Park, which is a long narrow park in the middle of a swank neighborhood. We live in the upper middle class park of Bishkek, this is the upper class part of downtown.
We got some gelato - Mint Choco Chip and Peach. They had no chocolate flavors, just those two plus pistachio and banana.
The gelato was good. And then of course, there were hipsters too...
Maybe the NYTimes will do a Bishkek travel article making it sound like Brooklyn, the way they did it with Santa Barbara and, uh, everywhere. NYTIMES!
We got some gelato - Mint Choco Chip and Peach. They had no chocolate flavors, just those two plus pistachio and banana.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
AUCA 1
This will be our place of work. There will be pictures coming of the interior, which has a confusing layout worthy of any of the CUNY schools I've taught at...
As you can see it's on a broad avenue. There is a park across the street, with Lenin in it, gesturing towards AUCA (note AUCA is not the building in the picture, but is next to it on the right)...
Here's a close up of the school...
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
And the sign says...2
Everyone loves a good Hinglish sign from India...I remember a guesthouse I stayed at in Varanassi that had "Snakes" on the menu, instead of snacks. So, I bring you this swank coffeehouse with bad proofreaders and assure you that paste is not a Kyrgyz specialty...and that does look like Sliper Coffee, but we can give them that one...
Kyrgyzstan 1 - USA 0
So downtown Bishkek has a statue every 15 or so feet. Seriously. You know the Literary Walk in Central Park? The whole city's kind of like that.
Today we walked a new way around town and approached this statue
Which of course I assumed was some sort of surrealist chicken, a giant Joan Miro or something. Unfortunately, when we got to the other side, it turned into this...
Which is actually pretty cool as Kozhomkul is a real/mythical 20th century Kyrgyz wrestler (btw, the best thing I did before coming here was learn to read Cyrillic).
To me, this is like if NYC decided to erect a giant statue of Andre the Giant overturning a car of French jerks. So Bishkek, you win this round...
Today we walked a new way around town and approached this statue
ALA-TV
Sports on TV here lately
1. The Western Southern Open???
Tennis from Cinncinatti? I can't even spell that right and I don't care.
2. Premier league, Bundesleague and Russian League
Makes sense. You can tell if it's Russian League because the grass is torn up.
3. Rugby from Australia
I don't understand when they have to give up the ball to the other team
4. Euroleague Basketball
Looks like a lot of Americans.
1. The Western Southern Open???
Tennis from Cinncinatti? I can't even spell that right and I don't care.
2. Premier league, Bundesleague and Russian League
Makes sense. You can tell if it's Russian League because the grass is torn up.
3. Rugby from Australia
I don't understand when they have to give up the ball to the other team
4. Euroleague Basketball
Looks like a lot of Americans.
Losing our only American Celeb
Kyrgyzstan is losing its only American Celeb, Ivory Pomegranate. She played some role in our deciding to move here, both due to the economically misleading House hunter International episode she was in and due to her kind, detailed response to questions my wife had about childbirth and child-rearing in Bishkek. She's a good photographer/writer, so I encourage you to check out her blog http://ivorypomegranate.com/
And I suppose this means that I am writing the only English language blog in Bishkek now? Can that be right?
Update - it's not. There is a French national that writes a blog here - it's also interesting you should read it too!
Update to the 1st Update! Colleagues of mine are keeping a blog as well, and their's is actually well-written and informative - http://stickingtotheplan.com/
And I suppose this means that I am writing the only English language blog in Bishkek now? Can that be right?
Update - it's not. There is a French national that writes a blog here - it's also interesting you should read it too!
Update to the 1st Update! Colleagues of mine are keeping a blog as well, and their's is actually well-written and informative - http://stickingtotheplan.com/
Channeling the Soviet Union
If there's one thing that horror movies have taught me, it's that children are terrifying and can communicate with the dead/ghosts. Since we arrived in the former Soviet Republic of Kirgizia, my son has refused to wear anything but his "worker boots" and tells everyone he is a "worker." He lets people know he is going to "fix things."
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
File Under Casualties in Bishkek - The First
I plugged it in, turned it on...it went whrrrrrrr then POP, fizzle and dead. I suppose I shall part my hair behind, eat a peach and let my beard grow...
Finding an Apartment is stressful!
Finding an apartment in a city where one has no idea of
value and is going to overpay due to being a foreigner is upsetting. It rankles to be taken advantage of, yet it
is going to happen. It’s stressful to
look at places that blur together and to have weird time limits and no idea
where everything is.
The first day we arrived we saw four apartments. The following day we saw two more, which were
remarkably similar to the first four, but an additional $100-150 per
month. Some things were nice about each
place and the only think that seemed to differentiate them was price, proximity
to our work and the number of rooms – apartments here aren’t two bedroom apts,
they are three rooms i.e. living room plus bedrooms. The exteriors of the buildings, and the
hallways are uniformly frightening here in Bishkek. The building we chose has a window at floor
level in the stairwell that is wide open and calls to children to play with
it. Come and see, it seems to say. My son, thankfully seems scared of it.
On our third day in Bishkek, we were basically given a
choice – pick one of the six places we saw or spend a few more days at the
guesthouse and then move into the President of AUCA’s apartment (which was
super nice of him) and continue searching.
Then we would transition to one of the cheaper places for a month and
hope that September would bring new opportunities. We were, in a sense, stuck
between the rock of limited housing and the hard place of overpriced housing.
I chose, for better or worse, to rent the most expensive
place we saw. It was also the largest –
4 rooms -and had room for a home office and two bedrooms, luxuries here in
these former Soviet blocks. We are no
doubt paying too much, but we have a stipend for housing that covers about
2/3’s of the cost of the place. We also
had to pack our stuff up and move in 15 minutes, a feat that most could not
accomplish, but my wife has extreme packing skills. Due to the holiday – the little Eid, or
Eid-ul-fitr, which most people in Kyrgyzstan seem to have no idea about – we had
to move immediately on Wednesday evening or wait until Monday. We made the leap, for better or worse. For the better – super close to school, has
two Soviet death playgrounds in the courtyard, there is a small-medium sized supermarket
I call Beyonce Mart (due to one wall of it being coated with her image) that is
less than ten minutes walk, and there are more playgrounds nearby, an amusement
park and natural parks and, of course, the space to spread out inside the
apartment. The worse – definitely
overpaying and the windows are new which means my son could conceivably open them
and fall out. We're on the third floor and its a little scary, but he seems to be old enough to understand not to play with the windows.
Sometimes it’s hard to be here i because the
options you are presented with are not great. And
you don’t know what else is out there, because you lack information and
access. When the choices and decisions are
made by others, they can take indefinite periods, but when they get back to you, you have to decide immediately.
Another interesting feature of housing in Bishkek are
addresses. Knowing what blocks you’re
between is helpful, and the streets are, more often than not, labelled. They never labelled on street corners,
which is irritating, but on the sides of large buildings, so you use them more
to confirm your location than to find out which way to go. The actual numbers of buildings usually
refers to a block of housing which always has multiple, non-connecting
entrances. In Bishkek, you just need to
know where you’re going and usually, you can’t get there directly from here,
you gots to go around.
Monday, August 12, 2013
File Under - Jagged, Dirty, Dangerous? Must be for KIDS!
Arriving
We arrived in Bishkek at 4am on Monday, August 5th. This was after travelling for twenty hours over three different calendar days. Also, for some reason, Turkish Airlines only flies into Manas International Airport in the middle of the night...arrivals are either at 2am or 4am.
It was an uneventful 4 hour flight from Istanbul to Bishkek, but I lost my glasses on the flight from NYC to Istanbul, which I was hoping would not some gesture of cosmic symbolism. Since my wife can't read Cyrillic yet and hasn't had the stringent 4 hour course of Pimsleur Russian CD's that I had, I was happy that she had my contact lenses in a carry-on so that I could see past the tip of my beard.
Manas airport, however, was a decent one with more English signage that I had expected. Getting luggage and getting out of the airport was a bit tense - somewhere between the order of the line loving North Atlantic and the full steam aheadedness of South Asia. A driver from the school was there to get us, the temp was in the mid 60's and the sun was coming up - perfect. The drive to Bishkek, heading south towards the mountains, was mostly farm land and fields. The guesthouse, Philomen or Philomene was on a side alley near a giant leafy boulevard that I think is Erkindik Street, but there are no street signs here. There is a local puppy who bounds about and everyone, from children up to the biggest dudes are terrified of him.
Traffic does actually stay in lanes and obey traffic lights, although there are occasionally three foot wide sink holes that drop five feet into the sewer, so again, Krazystan is a somewhere in between place. We took our son to a playground of sand and what seems to be Bishkek standard equipment - 4 individual swings that are wooden seats with seat backs and a jagged metal steps-two slided- monkey bar think with ornamental tops. My son liked it and was able to get some pretty good speed on the two giant steel sheets that formed the big slide.
At 9am we arrived at AUCA and met with HR. Order of business number 1 - take an HIV test! This seems to be standard practice in Central Asia - if you are a foreigner and want to work here, you better not have HIV. Tajikistan apparently tests every six month - here in liberal Kyrgyzstan, we only have to do it once a year. We were promptly escorted to the clinic, had our blood taken and then we could handle things like finding an apartment and getting cell phones etc. The test results came back in 24 hours...we still don't have the work permits we started applying for in April...
It was an uneventful 4 hour flight from Istanbul to Bishkek, but I lost my glasses on the flight from NYC to Istanbul, which I was hoping would not some gesture of cosmic symbolism. Since my wife can't read Cyrillic yet and hasn't had the stringent 4 hour course of Pimsleur Russian CD's that I had, I was happy that she had my contact lenses in a carry-on so that I could see past the tip of my beard.
Manas airport, however, was a decent one with more English signage that I had expected. Getting luggage and getting out of the airport was a bit tense - somewhere between the order of the line loving North Atlantic and the full steam aheadedness of South Asia. A driver from the school was there to get us, the temp was in the mid 60's and the sun was coming up - perfect. The drive to Bishkek, heading south towards the mountains, was mostly farm land and fields. The guesthouse, Philomen or Philomene was on a side alley near a giant leafy boulevard that I think is Erkindik Street, but there are no street signs here. There is a local puppy who bounds about and everyone, from children up to the biggest dudes are terrified of him.
Traffic does actually stay in lanes and obey traffic lights, although there are occasionally three foot wide sink holes that drop five feet into the sewer, so again, Krazystan is a somewhere in between place. We took our son to a playground of sand and what seems to be Bishkek standard equipment - 4 individual swings that are wooden seats with seat backs and a jagged metal steps-two slided- monkey bar think with ornamental tops. My son liked it and was able to get some pretty good speed on the two giant steel sheets that formed the big slide.
At 9am we arrived at AUCA and met with HR. Order of business number 1 - take an HIV test! This seems to be standard practice in Central Asia - if you are a foreigner and want to work here, you better not have HIV. Tajikistan apparently tests every six month - here in liberal Kyrgyzstan, we only have to do it once a year. We were promptly escorted to the clinic, had our blood taken and then we could handle things like finding an apartment and getting cell phones etc. The test results came back in 24 hours...we still don't have the work permits we started applying for in April...
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