Escaping the snow. And heat. And mental stagnation

Without sounding like a broken record (or, stop me if you’ve heard this one before), I’m not exactly a man of the great outdoors. But I’ve now reached the two month mark of my stay here and Bishkek has started to strangle the life out of me. One of these days – yes, really – I’ll sit down and take the time to discuss in greater depth what Bishkek is like, but for now suffice to say that I find it uninspiring and drab. I think, therefore, that I shall make it a point to escape to the countryside as much as possible.

Spring is here and the temperamental weather has been up and down: one day hot and clammy, the next chilly with snow flurries. But late last week, on a day featuring a nasty snowstorm and icy cold temperatures, four of us made arrangements to flee from Bishkek for a weekend getaway. And so last Saturday we travelled three hours away into the mountains, to a small village of 16,000 called Kochkor. Part of the allure was that its name means ‘go away snow’ in Kyrgyz. So we were promised no snow, at least at sea level anyway. And a quiet interlude from the hustle and bustle of the thriving megalopolis that is Bishkek. We were sold.

But first, what’s so wrong with Bishkek?

I’ve been savouring Laurens Van Der Post’s ‘Journey Into Russia’ during my time here, and I’ve found many an inspirational passage that has resonated deeply within me. I’d dare not call it a ‘travel book’, though it’s easily one of the finest pieces of prose ever written on travelling in Russia. And even though it was first published in 1964, so much of what the author observed would still hold true today. But in particular, this continues to strike me:

‘Capitals, I believe, should be the end and not the beginning of a visitor’s schedule. They should be reserved to gather together and sum up all the ravelled ends of one’s experience as they do the life of their nations, otherwise they tend to turn all that follows into a kind of protracted anti-climax’.

Now I obviously live in Bishkek, but as I’ve struggled to get a grip on what I do and don’t like about the place, I keep coming back to that statement. In order to really put into words how I feel about the city, I feel like I need to see more of life outside the capital first. And then I’ll attempt to capture my thoughts into perceptive little chunks for everyone, myself included, to digest. Consider all that a long-winded euphemism for ‘procrastination’.

How I almost got myself a girlfriend. Almost…

Joining me on this trip (not like I arranged the whole damn thing or anything) were Brian and Kristen of Burana Tower/snowball in the back/‘good job being an asshole’ fame and Elizabeth, who you may remember as the one who Shanghaied me into downing that odious ‘small vodka’ shot. I can truthfully say that we’ve matured remarkably since that little episode.

It was a holiday weekend – Nooruz, the Persian New Year, which is celebrated across much of Central Asia. There wasn’t much of anything special planned, but the quiet solitude of a Kyrgyz village was in and of itself soothing enough. We shopped a bit for shyrdaks (traditional Kyrgyz rugs), had yet more lousy, fattening, sheep lard-doused local food at the only two cafes in town, took photos at the gaudy silver chrome Lenin statue (one of the only monuments in town), and meandered about through a decrepit park with rusty, tetanus-rich, Soviet-era playground equipment replete with chirpy, bright-eyed children incessantly approaching us and greeting us with ‘hello! hello! what’s your name? what’s your name?’ Those were the only English phrases we heard all weekend. The local English teachers must have it really easy if those are the only phrases they teach. But in fairness, these kids (and I’m generally no big fan of the whippersnappers) were quite cute, friendly and even borderline adorable.

One young girl named Zafie, who I think might have been Uzbek, immediately took a shine to us. Well, me, anyway. Barely had we exchanged names and various other introductory pleasantries – the usual where are you from, what do you do, how long have you been in Kyrgyzstan, are you married? - when she asked me for my phone number. Quite audacious for a 12 year old, I’d say. I mumbled some excuse but then she asked again. And looked quite disappointed when I wouldn’t fork it over. If only I knew how to say in Russian, ‘look sweetheart, you’re a bit too young for me, and besides, you speak no English, I speak little Russian, I’m only here one day, I’m not taking you back to Bishkek with me, I can barely hold a conversation on the phone with someone my own age in English, let alone bad Russian…’ Okay, you get the idea. Though come to think of it…I think I can actually say most of that in Russian. I’m making some progress after all.

I think she invited me, and only me, somewhere or other. But I politely declined and rejoined my companions, who were busy frolicking in the park and taking pictures with all the other children. I sadly never got a picture of Zafie, though she has a few of me. And I was slightly hurt when she gave Elizabeth a green hair clip as a present, though as I’ve recently cut my hair I wouldn’t have much use for it. She did, however, buy us all little lollipops, bless her kind heart.

Living [it up] with the locals

Kyrgyzstan has a good network of homestays, which are easy to arrange from various Community-Based Tourism offices. In fact, it’s said that Kyrgyzstan is perhaps the most well-organised and easy-to-get-around places in all of Central Asia, especially when it comes to low-impact, grassroots tourism (with that in mind, I can hardly wait to visit the other –stans). The best choice of accommodation is usually in the home of a local family, who can also feed you more sheep and horse fat if you plead and pay them enough for the privilege. We had a slightly awkward moment when we were invited into the family dining room for a bit of bread as we were on our way out to dinner. We’d already respectfully declined the offer of dinner at the home, though in retrospect it may have been a bad idea. With the Nooruz holiday, the family had put on one hell of a spread. So we were sat on the floor, around a low table with the extended family in attendance, drinking a pancake like batter that tasted of stale, weak beer, and eating fried bread (palatable, at least) and a beet/ham/mayonnaise/cheese/sheep lard salad. But because we’d not committed to eating at the home, the four of sat there like lemons not knowing how to act or what to do next. In the end, I took one for the team and begged leave of their company, probably committing an egregious sin against their kind hospitality in the process.

I end things there for now. In part II, I’ll talk about Sunday’s trip hiking in the mountains. From a literary perspective. You can start salivating in anticipation now.

Hmmm...Should I?

What the hell - my father would be proud

The finest engineering known to mankind

Would you let your children play on this contraption?

Hey kids! It's vodka time in the park

At the end of my last post, I promised a photo diary of my recent vodka kiosk experience. Alas, the wait is over and here you are.

I want to keep my commentary to a strict minimum (ha! that'll be the day). I'll merely offer a slight preface.

Elizabeth had read in the Lonely Planet about the ubiquitous alcohol and tobacco kiosks which sell convenient little 'nips' of vodka. It's at times like this that I much prefer the Ukrainian word - ГОРИЛКА ('horilka')- which bares a striking resemblance to 'horror liquor' - than the Russian ВОДКА. Now, I have a healthy appreciation for liquors of all kind and I have been partial to vodka in the past. But since one epic night back in May when I got my ribs cracked by a Russian bouncer in Riga, I've had this Pavlovian gag reflex - think the Ludovic technique vis-a-vis a bit of the old ultraviolence in 'A Clockwork Orange' - to the thought of drinking it again. I think I got over that in Tel Aviv when out on the town during my good pal Yonni's stag/bachelor party, as we progressed from convenience store to convenience store downing shots of vodka in plastic cups. But that was good stuff. I like, even love, the good stuff. The stuff sold in kiosks here is far from good stuff. It's downright horrid stuff.

But Elizabeth was steadfast in her determination to hunt one of these kiosks down, and it wasn't too difficult in the end. Despite Kyrgyzstan not being the alcohol-fuelled society that is so prevalent in large swathes of Eastern Europe, one is still never too far from the ghastly stuff. It's everywhere. So she goaded me into asking for it, and so I did, asking for 'a little vodka'. And there it was, presented to us in a neat little 100ml plastic container (much like the containers of orange juice we get on planes) for the low, low price of 14 som. That's around 30 cents. The Coke we bought as a chaser was around 50 cents. Welcome to Central Asia kids.

So like naughty school children we slunk away and found a nice secluded bench away from any prying eyes and the busy street. I really struggled (my fraternity days are a looooong ways behind me), though Elizabeth came off as the consummate pro. She was mighty impressive. The pictures tell the whole story. I'll start with the way it ought to be done before the dismal pictures of yours truly's attempts to get it down in a dignified manner. I was put to shame, though I learned my lesson.

The professional approach. Or, watch and learn kids

And now, for how it shouldn't be done

And that's only the smell

Still life in Bishkek

But wait, there's more

I have yet another special treat. And yet another disclaimer. You see, all those years in a fraternity, all my Eastern European vodka drinking experience and many other life lessons besides, I was never taught the proper technique for drinking such vile vodka. It sounds so simple and basic, yet it wasn't until Elizabeth told me the proper way to do it that I was able to get it down in a more civilised manner. Conveniently enough, she didn't mention this until after my initial attempt. The results of my 2nd attempt, when I polished off the remaining contents, will be uploaded very shortly in video format on Facebook.

General housekeeping

Though a lot has happened over the past fortnight, I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a bit of housework and describe some of Bishkek’s wonderful little eccentricities. Starting with…

But they’re only here for your protection

I’ve been warned incessantly that the police will stop at nothing to extract money from luckless foreigners caught in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Local law dictates that we are to carry our passports on us at all times, but I usually just carry a copy along with the amateurish homemade photo ID that the school has provided. I couldn’t imagine it being of much use, and thankfully so far I’ve survived without great incident. I have twice now been accosted by the police on a corner not far from the school. Their audacity astounds me – they blatantly want my money, they don’t even have the decency to beat around the bush. It’s flagrant and offensive, but what can I do about it, other than pretend not to understand them? Thus far, I’ve got away with paying nothing, but not sure how long my luck will last.

What is this, global warming?

Maybe it’s just me, but when I think landlocked, poor, small, mountainous, in the neighbourhood of Siberia Central Asian country, I think brutally and unforgivingly cold. Yet the weather has been unseasonably mild since I arrived and there have been very few icy cold days. I even have a couple of sweaters that I have yet to don and I can’t imagine at this point ever wearing them. On top of this, as tends to happen in the former Soviet bloc, all heating is centrally-controlled. It gets turned on sometime in November and pumps out at full blast until whenever the government decides we’ve had enough heat. Thus, many places are unbearably hot and there’s nothing you can do about it, other than suck it up and sweat it out. I’ve had little desire to go to a sauna, normally a regular occurrence for me in the winter, as it is already too steamy everywhere you go. Considering that half the country is without power most of the day, this seems to be an excessively profligate policy, but then I’m not a resource specialist so for all I know it’s logical in its own way. I’m told that power outages were quite common - electricity was going out on a daily basis at 6pm until mid-autumn and classes at the school were conducted by candlelight – but they have been sparingly sparse since.

It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt

Though at times it has been awfully icy, especially in the underpasses. Naturally, I have slipped quite a few times and made an arse of myself – if you’re a faithful reader of this blog you are by now starting to detect a pattern here. For further details, contact my sister, who I’m sure will be more than happy to provide you with a meticulous account of my slippages on ice. There have been many and even when I have been seriously hurt, she has laughed. That isn’t nice.

Reminiscing on the good old student days

A whopping disappointment: it’s like being a student all over again, which isn’t a good thing for a curmudgeonly old fool like me who likes his space and a nice kitchen. The flats are conveniently located, being attached to the school, but I live in what is essentially a dorm room with a flatmate and shared bathroom. And it’s blisteringly hot – it seems utterly absurd to open my window and use a fan to keep cool in the middle of winter but I have no other choice. Though I hate to complain too much about this, I haven’t had such lousy accommodation for a good many years. It’s times like this that I wax nostalgic about the museum of a flat I occupied in Lviv, where I had no heating, [only cold] water for only 6 hours a day and a cupboard full of pickled vegetables dating back to 1978.

My classes and the London School.

What are my classes like? In a word, fine. I have very lovely students who are extremely well-behaved, on the whole motivated, and a great pleasure to teach. The school does certain things in a rather idiosyncratic and frustrating way that creates a lot of unnecessary hassle, and they’re terribly guilty of massive copyright infringements, but otherwise it’s a decently-run outfit. At risk of boring people to tears, I will share merely one story. Every language school I’d previously worked at separated students into age groups, which makes logical sense. Not so here. So in one class, for example, I have all 14-16 year olds plus one 12 year old and a 27 year old. It’s a bit odd but you get used to it. The funniest situation occurred in my evening class, where 8 of the 9 students are over 18 and most are in their mid-20s. On the first day, a small boy of 11 dressed in a sharp suit and carrying a small briefcase knocked on the door and asked if he could come in. I’m not entirely sure why, but inexplicably all of the students and I burst into a raucous laughter. I asked him a few times whether he had the right classroom, and he indeed did. To date, he’s been one of the best students in the class, but it really was a comical sight to behold. Sometimes teachers are amused by the silliest things, but this was a new one for me.

The bizarre bazaar. Or, the joys of bartering with rosy-cheeked Kyrgyz women

I’ve rediscovered the fun behind shopping for food and personal effects at the local bazaar, Ortasay, an experience I relished in Ukraine but I didn’t take enough advantage of in Latvia. The haggling is terrific language practice, even if I hardly understand what I’m saying. The local, Turkish-owned supermarket is a bit overpriced, so it makes sense anyway to visit the market. I admit, at first they can be a daunting experience: the frenetic hustle and bustle and general anxieties that come with trying to barter in a language you can barely speak, and the pressure to perform on the big stage where umm-ing and ahh-ing are severely discouraged. If you so much as stop to peruse some fruit or veg, the elderly, plump Kyrgyz costermongers are on top of you to buy their half-rotten apples, ridiculously expensive tomatoes and shriveled, dried-up aubergines. It’s no place for the indecisive, i.e., me. (‘Once I make up my mind I’m filled with indecision’ Oscar Levant)

False promises and dashed hopes with the Russky

This has to constitute another disappointment. Let me be slightly pretentious and say that my primary raison d’etre for coming here was to learn/improve my Russian. I had seriously considered studying it intensively full-time, though I found that option to be financially irresponsible and thus opted to teach with the promise of 6-8 hours of study a week. But due to a shortage of local teachers and overwhelming demand from the foreigners and full-time students, I’m only getting 2 hours a week. As it is, I struggle in a 1 on 1 setting with my wandering attention and lackadaisical attitude to learning the grammar, so I can’t imagine having the necessary motivation and concentration for full-time study. I study individually when I can, and there has been some progress. I think.

Runway commentary and sartorial elegance

I offer you this profound statement: former Soviet bloc fashion awakens all the senses and confounds all expectations of normality. I usually find it to be an exotic blend of intriguing and bewildering, which is probably a euphemism for something else, but no matter, I’m not going to delve into the specifics. Two years of living in Eastern Europe hardly makes me an expert on post-Soviet haute couture but I long ago tired of describing and analysing various styles, colours and shapes of overly exuberant outfits. Suffice to say that here one also encounters thigh-high leather boots of black, red, white and purple, along with the ubiquitous and absurdly ‘luxurious’ fur. Despite Kyrgyzstan being a rather poor country, to walk in the centre of town on a weekend and observe the lissome young Kyrgyz and Russian venuses clad in their furs, you’d think you were in the fashion capital of Central Asia. It’s hard to refrain from passing judgment, but, well, it disgusts me. The fur that is. The other stuff is really…something else. I’ll leave it at that.

And now for the epicurean highs and lows

Even at the worst of times I’m an adventurous eater and will try anything once. After all, I had no qualms about eating bush meat in Nigeria, though I never did find out what it was. I also tried slugs on a stick, a popular roadside snack, which were predictably chewy, even more so than calamari, but also quite flavourful. For my first month here, I put my ethics on temporary hold and forsook my vegetarianish diet in order to try all the local specialties, all of which are meat-laden. Amongst the local delights are lagman, a spicy noodle dish common throughout the region; beshbarmak (‘five fingers’, so-called because that’s how it’s designed to be eaten) the Kyrgyz pride and joy, flat noodles topped with horse or mutton drenched in a tepid vegetable broth; manti, mince meat and onion filled dumplings; and gamburgers, which is self-explanatory (consider other words in Russian: Gollywood, Gomosexual and Garry Potter). There are many more offerings, but those appear to be the most common. Thank goodness various other cuisines proliferate, for the local dishes wear on you fast. Turkish and Chinese restaurants are common, and one can find Korean, Georgian, Syrian, Lebanese and Mexican if you look hard enough. But beware the aspirational menu: get your hopes up at your own peril, for chances are that anything that sounds too good to be true usually is. One recent minor fright: apparently dog is available in some places and some of the teachers have even tried it, one commenting that it was ‘very tasty’. I wouldn’t in a million years consider eating dog, though I was terrified that I recently had. On the menu was ‘Kitaisky’-style meat, which I mixed up with Kutaisi, a city in Georgia. I was excited for Georgian-style meat but then after ordering it was pointed out to me that Kitaisky is Russian for Chinese. So, Chinese-style ‘meat’ it was. And it was awfully delicious, though for the life of me I couldn’t tell what type of meat it was. Then I panicked. I could easily leave you in suspense here and say the mystery was never resolved, but that would be dishonest of me. Fret not, for it wasn’t dog but beef.
Phew.

Once a month had passed, I re-discovered my morals and have now given up the meat, for the most part. We’ll see how long that lasts, but a recent [vegetarian] arrival has been an extremely good influence on me, and I trust she will keep me in my place.

As for the new arrival, Elizabeth is tremendous fun. She arrived near the end of February and is my temporary flatmate until she moves into a local homestay in a few days. We spent her first weekend in town taking in all of Bishkek’s sights (which took less than an hour) and introducing her to the wonderful local cuisine, which I think she’s already fed up with. I’m very grateful for her presence as I now feel like I have a good friend here. Anyway, she’d read about there being a widespread phenomenon in Bishkek where kiosks sell shots of vodka and she was eager to try it. So yesterday, on our way to Ortasay Bazaar on a particularly chilly and windy day, we decided to stop en route and partake in the experience. At this point, I leave you in suspense and promise an upcoming treat: a photo diary of the whole experience. We even have me on video downing the vile pish, which I will attempt to post on Facebook. Stay tuned.

Minor tumbles in the Kyrgyz hills

My dear readers and friends, I’m afraid I’ve been overcome with a minor case of both writer’s bloc and inertia. And, I have to admit, on more than one occasion have I thought about throwing in the towel altogether with this [at times wretched] blog: technology has almost got the better of me, but for now I persist and The Layman’s Guide to International Relations lives to see another day. No further details necessary just now.

Revisiting nature and Kyrgyzstan’s outdoor splendours

Last weekend saw me escape to the countryside for a couple of days of good, clean, rollicking fun. Day one was Burana Tower, a school-sponsored trip (that was very kind of them) which even the Lonely Planet struggles to describe in flattering terms. Amongst the more imaginative adjectives used are ‘interesting’ and ‘ancient’. In more concrete terms, it’s a ‘1950s Soviet restoration’ of an ‘11th-century monument that looks like the stump of a huge minaret.’ If that kind of thing doesn’t excite the senses then absolutely nothing will.

The tower and its surroundings were fairly nondescript and bare little merit of further description. But it certainly falls into the kind of category that would warrant the ‘what a waste!’ remark that my father has employed on more than one occasion. So many places we’ve visited over the years have ended in a desultory ‘well, that was a waste!’ comment. Most of the time it’s been used to apply to a fairly turgid football match (though he has used it for the occasional 3-3 thriller) but every now and then it gets applied to some tourist attraction that most people deem worthy of their time and attention (such as St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin: and he’s Catholic!). Not so for my father’s more discerning tastes. It comes from the well-known ‘you mean, that’s it?’ school of ancient ruins appreciation.


You mean, that’s it?

But no matter: we found other sources of entertainment, such as bombarding the two new teachers, Brian and Kristen, a couple from Texas, with an avalanche of snowballs. From the tower itself there was little to amuse us, other than trying to launch snowballs into a rubbish bin on the ground below. When this proved unsuccessful, my fellow travellers - Kole and Will – and I thought it would be more fun to try and hit the newbies as they made their way down and out of the tower. Kristen wasn’t thrilled when Kole pelted her in the back as she made her way down the tower, down precarious, narrow, winding steps in almost total darkness. Brian wasn’t amused when Kole nailed his camera as he was attempting to photograph Kristen coming out of the tower. Neither were pleased with us as we rained a torrent of snowballs on them on the landing from up above. And then as they made their way across the field away from the tower and towards the small on-site museum, Kole launched his final assault: a line drive snowball from a good 50 metres away that plunked Kristen square in the back, eliciting no reaction whatsoever from either of them. They made their way quickly through the museum and then escaped to the relative safety of the waiting minivan. The three of us wondered if we’d really upset them and decided that the best way to address the situation, in lieu of apologising, was to simply let things fester and wait for a reaction from them. And boy, did we get one.

After spending the better part of an hour rummaging through the museum with our gold-toothed, fur-clad Kyrgyz guide, and a bit longer wandering the area examining the ancient Turkic balbals (totem-like stone markers honouring the dead), we made our way back to the minivan, where Brian and Kristen had been eagerly awaiting our arrival. Upon getting into the van, Brian asked, ‘what took you guy guys so long?’ whereas we muttered something about ‘how interesting’ the museum had been. And then came the classic, one of those ‘you had to have been there to fully appreciate it’ moments, where Brian uttered his epic lines: ‘So, whoever threw that snowball…it knocked the wind out of her and her back still hurts…good job being an asshole’. We were stunned. Will and I sheepishly slunk away in the back of the van while poor Kole took one for the team, turning around and offering a meek apology. We had decided on our way back to the van that we’d take collective responsibility for our actions (though in fairness, Kole had launched all the controversial shots), but once in the van I cowered in the bank and couldn’t suppress my snickering. The ‘good job being an asshole’ line quickly achieved legendary status and since then, all of the teachers have been quoting it ad nauseum. It has thus far failed to get old and is probably a good indication of how pathetic English teachers abroad really are when the crassest form of low-brow humour becomes our most entertaining form of amusement. Or maybe it’s just what living in Kyrgyzstan does to people.

As a disclaimer, I must emphatically state that in no way, shape or form does this little incident mar my feelings towards the new teachers. In fact, they are wonderful people whom I like very much, and I’m very glad for their arrival.

Sunday offered the chance of more excitement in the form of a skiing excursion to one of the Bishkek area’s ubiquitous slopes. Unfortunately, it was a tumultuous day which resulted in an unpleasant injury for your dear author. I’m no expert on skiing, and I fear my ignorance of the correct terminology, as well as my expectations of the standards expected in the third world versus those of the more modern world, will expose me as a bit of a fraud. But do I care? Of course not.

Cutting right to the chase: don’t ski in the third world. Or, consider alternative forms of entertainment

In previous skiing encounters, I was spoilt for choice: numerous slopes of varying degrees of difficulty to choose from, modern equipment, excellent facilities and an overall pleasant experience. Not so at Polytek, where there was really only big, steep slope: going up the hill one could alight at one of three stops on the way up. But essentially, it was one enormous slope down, not so good for amateurs like me, and even worse for my travelling companions, all beginners.

My downfall has always been getting up the slope on those ghastly T-rope bars (the right terminology?). Because my coordination and concentration are so lackadaisical, I’ve always had the most trouble getting up the hill intact. Fitted out with Soviet-style retro-70s skis that just weren’t very secure for my already-two sizes too small boots, I had little hope of getting more than 10 metres up the hill without collapsing into my own private little heap of mangled arms, legs and skis. It was only on my 4th attempt that I managed to make it up the hill to the first stop. Compounding the problem was the archaic T-bar/rope system employed: every skier had to carry his own little waist bag containing rope and a block of wood, attaching the metal clip onto the wire, propping the block of wood against your backside, and then trying to maintain an upright stance as it jerked you upwards. If you were lucky enough to make it to the top in one piece, you had only a few seconds to take off the clip, reel in the rope and put it safely away before the next advancing skier was on top of you. I really struggle to describe this accurately and I only hope that my readers will fully accept and trust that it was indeed a logistically futile Sisyphean task trying to get up the hill. I felt better seeing that I was far from the only one having difficulty with this. Along with my companions, good deals of the locals were struggling mightily as well, though I must admit that the vast majority of the stragglers were children under the age of 10. Still, judging from the prone, crumpled bodies littering the slopes on the way up, one would think that a sniper was hiding in the hills taking potshots at all the little kids and foreigners attempting to get up the slope. Eventually I got the hang of it, though I was tempted to throw in the towel and spend the afternoon in the tiny café and its leaking ceiling drinking pots of tea and drowning my inadequacies in cognac. I’m a terribly impatient, easily flustered person and this was proving to be dangerously close to that ‘more trouble than it’s worth’ type of endeavour (much like making homemade croissants). I also lack any willpower whatsoever in controlling my language. The more I fell, the more I swore. And when I get frustrated, I swear in just about any language I can think of: English, Russian, Spanish, French and Italian. After one particularly nasty attempt to get off the starting blocks, I unleashed a torrent of foul language directed at all onlookers, with loudly audible gasps from the crowd doing nothing to deter me. It was after this, as I sheepishly made my way back to the start of the queue, where I once again spent 15 minutes trying to get my skis back on, that an elderly woman approached me and said in excellent English, ‘ah, so you are an English teacher?’ I’m glad the locals can appreciate the fine linguistic talents of those of us here to educate Kyrgyzstan’s youth. She remarked on the fine range of vocabulary I had employed, though I’m not sure if it was in disdain or in wry amusement.

At least the view was nice

At least the snow was soft

Have I mentioned how nice my companions were? (L-R: Janat, Karlien, Nicola, Will, author)

On the plus side, I did have some excellent runs down the slope. On the minus, there were way too many frustrating ones, such as the run where almost immediately after alighting, one ski fell off and travelled unaccompanied all the way down to the base, almost decapitating a little girl in the process. Throughout the day, I was pleasantly surprised about how helpful and concerned were the locals. Whenever I took a nasty spill, the nearest skier so kindly interrupted his run to enquire whether I was alright. I resisted the urge to swear at them and instead meekly smiled and nodded.

But alas, a nice souvenir for my troubles

And most unfortunately, your dear author failed to escape completely unscathed from the afternoon. On my final run, going out in a blaze of glory, I took a nasty head-first spill, resulting in what I believe to have been a minor concussion and a badly damaged thumb, which swelled up to double its size. Even now, over a week later, I’m battling through the pain, though I’m hopeful that it’s merely a bad ligament strain and nothing more serious.

By now it must be clearly evident that I am not built for the great outdoors, though considering I spent almost all of my childhood in the Boy Scouts, I hardly know how this is possible. My father would clearly be ashamed, though I’ve seen him attempt to ski and he was even more hopeless than I. Deep down, it was a fun day out, but to repeat something I learned during my fraternity pledging days, it was probably ‘the most fun I never want to have again’. At least it wasn’t a complete waste.