Well, January came and went quickly.  January is usually a very slow month in Central Asia because there’s a bunch of holidays and school breaks.  With students out of school and universities closed, a lot of regular work stops as parents stay home with kids and people return to their villages from the city.  Despite this, the month was still lively thanks to some beautiful snowfall and time with friends and a major work breakthrough.

January started at midnight on the New Year.  A bunch of volunteers got together and we had delicious food before writing wishes for the new year and burning them.  According to Soviet tradition, you’re supposed to take the ashes and drink them in champagne, but we decided to skip that step.

After making our wishes we climbed to the top of Suleiman Too to watch the fireworks.  There isn’t a single organized fireworks show in Osh – people in every neighborhood and part of the city just shoot them off.  So, at the stroke of midnight fireworks erupted into the air from literally every corner of the city, all of which we could see from our perch.

I started the month taking up a few New Year’s Resolutions, one of which is getting ready for marathons again this spring.  And, as luck would have it, one of my friends from the Run The Silk Road Marathon in Issyk-Kul happened to come to Osh, and we were able to kick off the marathon training season in style.  It’s unclear whether I’ll be able to run any marathons in Central Asia this year because of Peace Corps rules, but there’s still a few options for me after I get back to the US.  I’ve even started a running club to help me and other locals get in shape for the races.

Without regular clubs to lead this month, I was able to focus some energy on planning and other work I’ve been putting off.  One such project was overhauling the website of a youth center that I work with.  We’ve gotten our plans together for our programming this spring too, which is exciting.

Along with break from school, though, comes the chance to work with teachers and students who are free on winter break camps.  This time around, I was asked to help out with a Winter Camp to help build friendships and foster collaboration between English teachers across Osh and the surrounding regions.

For Winter Camp, we brought all the teachers up to the Chyirchyk pass south of Osh, where there’s a rope tow and a tube/ski run. We did a bunch of activities to help them get to know each other, before devolving into a massive snowball fight and tubing for the rest of the day.  After eating lunch, the teachers gathered to make a plan for monthly trainings that will rotate between their institutions, and should help them all become more effective in their work.  Best of all, it’s all locally led, with me and my colleagues just advising and helping people practice with a native speaker.

My other favorite accomplishment this January was finally launching the first steps of our updated health curriculum project in Osh.  About a year ago, my counterpart at my HPU and at the Ministry of Health sat down to create a roadmap to bring a new structure and curriculum for health education to the 55 or so schools in Osh City.  Unbeknownst to us, the Ministry of Education actually created a full curriculum that was approved for use about the same time, and began rolling it out last summer in the North of the country.

After leading the charge on an English translation of the book (so that PCV’s could aid implementation), I decided that I wanted to get the book into Osh schools since we had talked about it with my counterpart previously.  So, over the course of two months, we carried package after package of books from Bishkek to Osh, distributed between me, staff, colleagues, and so on until all 60 books made it to Osh.  My counterpart and I designed a training, then my counterpart actually took the lead to design the implementation structure.  The end result was that we have a highly structured project that will have this fantastic new curriculum introduced at all schools in Osh City before I leave Osh.

The big first step took place at the end of January, when we distributed the books into our network of health workers.  Each of them will work closely with the health teachers at about 5-7 schools to introduce the curriculum, train them on its use, and provide support and monitoring over the next several months.

I’m so excited about this project not only because of the permanent impact it will have on the health education of every child in this city of 500,000 people, but also because so much of the project was initiated, designed, and led by my local colleagues.  It’s high-impact and sustainable, and while it took a lot of work on my end, the end result is going to be so huge for my community here.

What’s next? I got another set of the books (the last 20 left at the Ministry, in fact) that I’ll be rolling out in a distant corner of the oblast in the next two months.  I’m way too excited for words!