So this is Kyrgyzstan

I wish I had brought a flash drive of pictures (the mountains here are breath-taking, and my family is beautiful), but you guys will have to wait until next time- my planning skills did not magically improve on the other side of the world. The matching ceremony was exactly one week ago, so I have been with my host family that long, and it is incredible. I have a mother and father, both farmers- we live on maybe an acre and a half of land and have six cows. Also, their granddaughter, the most dynamic little six year old, lives with us. Most of this past week, my sister-in-law also lived with us, my apa (mother) told me that she is now in a different region with her husband, so I don't know if they'll be back at all. This has pros and cons- unfortunately, my jinge was the only person in the house with any grasp at all of English, so that was really nice at times of conversational impass. Obviously, her leaving was also a pro in terms of the whole sink or swim language immersion mentality. Furthermore, the girl of the house does the chores- not a lot, just washing dishes, pouring chai, and helping with the cooking- and now I am that girl. Honestly, this is my favorite part of my jinge being gone. I feel like now I'm allowed to be a lot more involved in the everyday house-y things. I'm also inching my way into helping with milking our cows- should be an adventure! My apa seems weary of this- she's very protective of me. Today was the first time I was allowed to cross the street alone! Going through PST is truly like progressing through elementary school again. We don't know how to speak, how to bathe (which I did, by the way, and banyas are awesome!), how to wash our clothes, or anything necessary for survival/hygeine.

Classes are going really well- I've been able to hold longer conversations at home with my apa, so visible improvement. We've started tech sessions, so hopefully I will soon now how to teach. The tech (and culture, health, and safety) sessions are all at our hub site, which means we're all together- all the volunteers, which is a real treat! There are only six of us in my language group, so those are the only five faces I see regularly. Now, every few days a week, we can see the whole gang!

Oh, and my birthday will be extra special this year. For that week, we are doing a week-long site visit to our permanent sites! So I'll be celebrating with meeting my permanent family and familiarizing myself with my new host community. I am so excited! Okay, well, that's all I really have to say for now.

I hope all is well on the home front (at the hub site, they posted news stories on the wall so that we aren't completely detached from the "real world"- and I saw that in Japan a dog was reunited with his owner, how lovely!).

(Oh, and I've decided to just not check facebook, at least in the internet cafes, so please just relay messages to me via email or here.)

I love you guys