My 2016 In Photos

2016 is over, and I made a point to go outside and take photos during every month. And it was awesome! At the end of 2015, someone decided that it would be fun to create a website that would find your most-liked photos on Instagram. It turned out pretty awesome and I edited it together to make this post. So I went back to the same website and got this result:

I love it, but…there’s just one problem… 6 of the 9 photos are from a single week in December that I already featured in my post of photos from December yesterday! So, I decided to do things the old fashioned way and go digging through my old photos for my favorites from this year. And so I decided to summarize my year in photos instead.

#1 Berovo, Macedonia

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Last January, I took a quick detour from a trip to Europe to visit my dear friend Gwen in her little hill town in eastern Macedonia. And boy, did I fall in love with it. Macedonia is small, affordable, and spectacularly beautiful no matter what time of year or weather. I hope to go back again soon.

#2 Almaty, Kazakhstan

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Almaty oozes a sense of winter and excitement, and I had a great trip there last February, which helped inform my Almaty Destination Guide. I’m looking forward to going back for the Winter Universiade.

#3 Rural Bishkek

This is a photo from guesting with my Kyrgyz language teacher on the outskirts of Bishkek, where life is a bit slower and the houses seem to be more of a village style than city. I just love the way that the light and the snow play together in this photo with the mountains peeking from behind the smog.

#4 Kurshab Afternoon

These two shots of the afternoon sun and of me riding in a truck are from a trip to the Kurshab Reservoir back at the very beginning of May. Some friends invited me out to spend the day relaxing, eating, cliff diving, and swimming in the lake. All in all a great way to welcome the summer!

#5 Hill Exploration

In early May, I also got invited out to a farm in the hills outside of Osh with some colleagues. These two shots came from that day, which I wrote about here.

#6 Marathon Number Six

Last May, I finished my sixth marathon, running the Run The Silk Road Marathon in beautiful Issyk-Kul. At an altitude of over a mile, my time was more than 90 minutes off my PR, but this represented a huge achievement to me that I’m very proud of.

#7 Meeting Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet

When outgoing Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet first became Director, her very first task was safely evacuating volunteers in my site, Osh, Kyrgyzstan, during a period of unrest here. In May, she finally got to visit Kyrgyzstan and Osh, where she came to one of my offices to hear about our work. I respect and thank Carrie so much for the work she has done to improve the Peace Corps, and for her mentorship ever since.

#8 In And Around Osh

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My most popular posts have been my post about hats and my Osh Destination Guide. Last summer, to prepare for that post, I spent the summer watching for and taking photographs of Osh, especially Suleiman Too from different angles. Here are some of my favorite shots.

#9 Seasons of Osh

My favorite shot of Osh has got to be this one, which includes the former ruler of Alay, Alimbek Datka, trees, a museum, and Suleiman Too, four of my favorite things in Osh all framed in one photo. I managed to get a nearly identical photo in two very different seasons, proof that Osh is always amazing.

#10 Sary-Tash

On my way out to Chong-Alay for the first time, I snapped this shot through the windshield of the small crossroads of Sary-Tash with the massif of the Pamir Mountains behind it, the westernmost wisp of the Himalaya. Sary-Tash is an important crossroads on the Pamir Highway – East the road leads to Kashgar, China, a critical trade route. North leads to Osh, and the world markets. West leads to Dushanbe, albeit across a closed border, and South is one of the only roads to access the interior of the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan, the legendary Pamir Highway.

#11 Team Osh Takes Arslanbob

This has to have been one of my favorite weekends of my time in the Peace Corps, a weekend where local friends whisked us away to the fairytale town of Arslanbob.

#12 Hiking Pride

Another of my favorite photos of all time, this was taken at the peak of a hike last summer with several dear friends who were visiting from Switzerland.

#13 Harvard Takes Kyrgyzstan

When my friend Nico from Geneva and Harvard came to visit, we had to get hiking. So we hiked, we showed our Harvard and Swiss pride, and, of course, we ate plov. We ate SO much plov. Easily one of the best parts of my entire time in Kyrgyzstan!

#14 Beach Vacation, Kyrgyz Style

Kyrgyzstan, of all places, has got to have some of the cheapest and most beautiful beaches anywhere in the world. If you are willing to be frugal, you can even swing a beach weekend from Bishkek for less than $20, if you can believe it. These photos are of me doing yoga in Fairytale Canyon on the South Shore, and of a beach near a friend’s guest house in Kajy-Sai village.

#15 Squad

Just another selfie of me with some of my favorite colleagues in the world.

#16 Horse Games 2

I haven’t gotten a post up about this and I still feel guilty.

#17 Sary Chelek

We had a fantastic trip to Sary-Chelek, including a few of these great photos. One of our friends took a *perfect* photo doing a hair flip so naturally we spent nearly an hour and several degrees of body temperature trying to do the same.

#18 Mom And Dad Take Kyrgyzstan

My parents came to visit and it was perfect.

#19 World Nomad Games

There are too many good photos from the World Nomad Games for me to put them here, but this is one of my favorites.

#20 Uzbekistan

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I let myself pick three of the nearly 1000 photos I took during my trip to Uzbekistan. Check out more on my post about that trip.

#21 White House, Headquarters, and America

I still can’t believe that I was named one of 8 winners of the 2016 Peace Corps Blog It Home contest, and that I got to spend a week in Washington, D.C. talking to young people about my experiences and learning from the best and the brightest at the White House. Pinch me please!

#22 The 16 Girls Of 16 Days

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This post was one of my favorite projects I got to work on this year, and it even got translated to German. In case you missed it, my colleague Josefin guest-wrote a post where she interviewed 16 young women around Osh about their lives and their goals as a part of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. Be sure to check it out here!

#23 More Toguz Korgool