Friday was a big day for us – not only did it mark over two weeks at our training villages (it says a lot that I began typing “months” instead of weeks while typing that sentence), but it was also our big Bishkek Day. Bishkek Day is a milestone because we get a full guided tour of Bishkek, the largest city in Kyrgyzstan, and it also is the point at which we are allowed to leave our villages to visit other volunteers, shop in a regional city, and also to travel back into Bishkek. In short, we are all thrilled and exhausted.

We started out our day at the normal time, but rather than sit cross-legged around a table and study Kyrgyz all day, we climbed into a marshrutka (a kind of minibus that I’ll write more about later) and rode into town, changing vehicles along the way. From one bus station, we took another marshrutka to the other so that we would know where both were (this is very important, since we have to take the local minibuses to get around town and the country). These each have waiting halls, a bunch of shops and stalls, and outside, a series of parking rows where the next minibuses to assigned destinations in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan depart. Merchants walk up and down selling bread, water, and soda from small carts, while drivers of shared taxis and the buses alike shout names of destinations in the hopes of getting additional fares. The logo of both bus stations is an “A” in a circle, with wings coming off the sides, in a socialist realist style.

Then it was off to TSUM, the TSentral Universal Market, which is a kind of department store in former Soviet capitals (there was one in Dushanbe too, but nowhere near as nice as this one. It is a shiny, brightly lit store with stalls around with various brands, including cell phones and electronics on the first floor (including carrier branded stores for the local carriers), clothing and hygiene/beauty products on the second floor (with everything from local brands to TopShop), and watches, jewelry, more clothing, etc. on the third floor.

After that was the Post Office, followed by a small outdoor paintings market with some spectacular pieces of artwork. Two of my favorites: one was a stormy ocean with just a mast poking out from under the waves, several sailors clinging on looking into the distance. In the background, the sun is just rising over the waves. My other favorite was a portrait of a Kyrgyz man tending to his eagle.

Ala-Too Square was next, followed by the White House, both areas with lots of government buildings. Ala-Too Square is a massive public square filled with gardens, fountains, and the History Museum. We saw the Statue of Manas, the legendary hero of Kyrgyzstan immortalized in the world’s longest epic poem, and also watched a changing of the guard at the National Flag Pole (yes, there is one here too). By the White House (much larger than the American one, by the way), which houses a large number of government offices (recall that the executive branch in the US spills into several other large office buildings besides the West Wing), there is a beautiful monument to the 86 people who died during the 2010 Revolution here.

We stopped for lunch at a place called the Jalal-Abad Tea House, which is a traditional-looking teahouse with plenty of topchans (raised eating platform – I finally found the word for it!) outside filled with locals and foreigners alike. After a lunch of shashlyk (lamb kebab), manty (steamed dumplings), and compot (a delicious juice-like byproduct of making fruit preserves – not compote in the English sense), it was back to walking, this time to Beta Stores (a large Turkish grocery store with all of our favorite American brands), the Philharmonia (a large concert hall with a public square), then Osh Bazaar, which is the main bazaar in the city. It was lively, but hot, and so we made our way quickly through, making a few purchases of food along the way. We also visited the Peace Corps office.

After all of that, it was back on the marshrutkas, with two or three needed to get us back to our village for a well-earned ice cream.

Now that we’ve been through all of that, we’re looking forward to hopefully getting out to visit the other villages in the near future!

Until then…