So, I’m beginning to get the impression that last year’s winter was an unusually mild one given that we had more snow during December of this year than we had in the entire winter last year. But that’s OK, because I like winter and I LOVE snow.
December started out quietly enough, with just some work things here and there. A few days into December, though, my phone buzzed with a text from a friend in Bishkek. He was inviting me to play in the Asian Championships of Toguz Korgool. What?! I sent a message to my managers (because I would need all kinds of approvals to get it together on short notice), and as luck would have it, they also saw it as a great chance to promote cultural exchange and understanding. So I booked a flight to Bishkek…
A few days later, another friend from Bishkek was visiting Osh, and after dinner, he and a few other friends in Osh invited me to tag along to a concert. Little did I know that not only would the concert include just about all of the biggest pop stars in Kyrgyzstan, but that he would sneak me and my friends backstage after for a meet and greet.
Thus is the story of how I walked into a hotel, and was suddenly swarmed with the cameras of four of the biggest pop stars in Kyrgyzstan because I greeted them in Kyrgyz. Nurlan Nasip, Mirbek Atabekov, Cholpon Talipbek, and Max Sadyrbekov (the latter two form a group called “Duet Non Stop”) all were first shocked, stunned, then went completely crazy when they realized that I spoke Kyrgyz, and they immediately whipped out their phones to take pictures of me and video, which they promptly uploaded to Snapchat and Instagram. For about 24 hours, video of me speaking Kyrgyz was shown to almost a million followers across Central Asia…
They were more than happy to pose for a photo with me and my friends after. I was really surprised by it, but also very happy to see how kind and down to earth they were with their fans. I’m looking forward to continuing to follow their music in the future.
Not long after, it was off to Osh Airport…where I spent 21 hours waiting, eating, and sleeping. Some snow had come through, then fog, then I’m not sure why our flight kept getting delayed. We watched plane after plane from Russia arrive and depart, but no domestic planes were flying, supposedly due to the bad weather which wasn’t that bad. I later was told there might have been some personnel issue at the airport.
Anyway, after spending the night in the cafeteria and sleeping on a bench, my flight was finally cancelled, and I was told to rebook… but alas, the flights had filled up fast, and they were saying I would only be able to rebook on the evening flight. But, then a few hours later, they said I had automatically been bumped onto a flight that had been delayed since midnight that would leave at 9am. But they wouldn’t reissue me a ticket to confirm it, they just said that it would work. So I wrung my hands for a bit, checking the long-term aviation weather forecasts for the airport, and decided that I was better off going home, sleeping in my own bed, eating not-airport-piroshki, and rebooking onto the first flight the next day (the 3rd day). So I did that.
It was a good thing – the flight I had been “rebooked” onto was delayed until 6pm and cancelled. Nothing flew that day. And when the time for my flight came, our flight was the only flight to make it in and out of Osh on the third day. I made it to Bishkek 50 hours behind schedule on the 3rd day trying, and was able to compete, breaking the known record for the longest trip from site to office of all PCV’s in Kyrgyzstan. Given that it normally takes me 5 hours door-to-door, that’s a pretty big deal.
During my delay while I wasn’t in the airport, I was able to get some fantastic photos walking around Osh. One photo is of the central park under Suleiman Too, and the other is right outside the front of the airport. I’d like to point out that, despite these clear blue skies, the airport was still closed “due to the weather” for another 24 hours after this.
Apparently, the airline learned their lesson about being skittish about weather, so the following weekend on my return to Osh, they overcompensated by taking off without deicing on several inches of snow in Bishkek and landing in a gusting blizzard on an icy runway in zero-zero whiteout visibility at night. They landed off-center and swerved the plane going 150mph. On an icy runway. At night. In a blizzard. It was insane. And I’m from Alaska, where the plane will literally try to land in hurricane force crosswinds and try 5 times before giving up and going to another airport.
The Asian Championships of Toguz Korgool went very well. I wrote about it in-depth about it in another post here.
It was nice to settle back down into Osh after that adventure. I showed “It’s A Wonderful Life” to my movie club, which was lots of fun, then had to say goodbye to some friends who were moving back to their countries. My host family threw me a lovely surprise party, and then I spent Christmas curled up with hot chocolate and books, which I was very content with.
And finally, we made it to the end of 2016! A bunch of us volunteers got together in Osh, played cards, cooked, and then climbed up Suleiman Too at 11:30pm to watch fireworks in every direction at the stroke of midnight to welcome in 2017.
It’s hard to believe that I’ve only got another five months left here in Kyrgyzstan. But I’ve got some of my biggest projects yet here to finish up. I can’t wait to see what I’m able to accomplish in the new year.