Author: Mark Jahnke

Mark Jahnke is a figure skater-turned-marathoner-turned-traveler currently making his way from Central Asia to London via Argentina and Uruguay. Follow him on Instagram at @mondaybazaar.

Two Weeks Left in DC

Published on by Mark Jahnke
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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood on a recent run. I picked the one with four inches of snow.

The countdown is getting real – there’s exactly one month left until I pull the final zipper shut on my duffels and, very casually, hop a plane to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.  This countdown also happens to mean that I have only two weeks left in my current home of Washington, DC, where I have lived since September.  I’ve got to do everything… take the GRE, sell my furniture (done), somehow dispense with my large collection of books, throw away a lot of useless trinkets, pack up the ones I like, and work my last week in the office before that.  And that’s before I get my ducks in a row back at my parents’ house in Seattle, visit family in California, and then finally put the things I need into the duffels that will have to carry me through the 27 months in a place that, so far, looks just as beautiful as I’ve imagined.

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Guest Blogging on the Importance of International Education

Published on by Mark Jahnke

This week, I published a piece as a guest blogger on the importance of international education on the blog of my friend and former teacher, Vicki Weeks.  Some readers who know me recall that in 2006, I had the chance to travel to rural China with my school’s Global Service Learning program, and I would never have had the chance to go if it weren’t for Vicki.   Vicki was the director of that program, and she now helps schools across the United States build their international programs to help students experience life in different settings from where they grew up.  Here’s the first two paragraphs, and you can read the rest over at Global Weeks.

I wasn’t particularly curious about the world growing up. Originally from small-town Alaska, I ate nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches and Hot Pockets, and my biggest life aspiration was probably to move to Seattle when I got older. That all changed when my family moved to a small town in France when I was 9 years old.

Enrolled in an international school, there were as many nations represented in my classes as there were students. Each person I met came to the school with a different culture, a different language, and a different story. This incredible diversity was all celebrated with an annual festival called the Kermesse, where students from each country would prepare food and art presentations. Through them, I unwittingly began my quest to better understand the world.  Continue reading…

Be sure to check out the rest of the post at Vicki’s website, Global Weeks.

Kyrgyzstan: An Announcement

Published on by Mark Jahnke
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The flag of Kyrgyzstan (from Wikipedia).

I think we probably all saw this coming, but I’ve got myself a ticket back to Central Asia.  This time around, I’ll be in Kyrgyzstan, one country over from Tajikistan, and immersing myself further in the ways of the Silk Road.  I’ll be working as a Health Extension Volunteer in the Peace Corps (although I can’t officially call myself a Volunteer until July), and as of yet I have no idea where I will be placed, or even which language I will be trained in.  I could be placed in the rural mountains, where feet of snow fall on yurts cast wide across the steppes, or I might be in a regional city, where marshrutkas abound and there might even be a movie theater.  I might be in a regional capital with other expats.  It’s hard to know now, but what I do know is that it will be one of the hardest but most rewarding things that I will ever do with my life.

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That Time I Got Typhoid

Published on by Mark Jahnke

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Some of you may recall my post last summer called Attack of the Tajik Tummy in which I recounted in lady-like detail my first encounter with the vagaries of Tajikistan’s many gastrointestinal flora.  Well, after discussing my symptoms with a travel doctor, apparently, the 25 hours I spent in bed with an insane fever, migrane, inability to retain anything in either end, and a general feeling of death, were actually the result of typhoid.  Hooray, I got an illness that I only knew of because of the many hours spent playing Oregon Trail as a kid!

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The Irish Couple

Published on by Mark Jahnke

On August 1st, which I remember because it was National Day in Switzerland, my host mother came into my bedroom not long after dinner, just after dark as was typical during Ramadan.  Her tone a combination of excited urgency, she said “Some foreigners just came by and they were speaking English and I think they needed help.”  Not one to skip an adventure, I grabbed my book and set out in the direction she had pointed me.  Two blocks up, sure enough, was a short young Irish woman with a rolling suitcase staring confusedly at her map in the dark.  Her husband soon joined from down the street, where he was trying to get directions in his very good Russian. In what was likely one of the weirdest moments of their trip, the white guy (me) walked up to them and began speaking to them in English.

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The Clown Car

Published on by Mark Jahnke

The other day, I was on my way to an evening at Public Pub, which is this lovely Irish pub (of which there are, unbelievably, two in downtown Dushanbe) where we like to have a beer every so often.  As usual, I stood on the side of Rudaki, waiting patiently for a car (or even better, a Lada) drive up with a nice big laminated “3” in the front window.  In minutes I was speeding down the road in my own private Mercedes (for the grand cost of 3 Somonis, or about 60 US cents), when we were flagged down again.  I watched incredulously as three other men my age climbed in and sat on the bench next to me, two more crammed into the front seat, and three others climbed in on top of us, to put a total of what must have been 9 or 10 people in a relatively small sedan.

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Cutlery on Porcelain

Published on by Mark Jahnke

Another postcard has gone live over at The Harvard Crimson! Head on over and check it out!

It’s 3:10 in the morning, and in the starlight, I can make out the outline on the tablecloth of bread, teacups, a tub of Turkish Nutella, and two bowls of “shirchai,” a warm soup made from whole milk, butter, and tea leaves. I sit in the darkness with my host grandmother, and as I eat my fill of the smorgasbord, I can hear the soft clinking of forks, knives, and spoons against bowls and plates across our neighborhood and across Dushanbe, the capital of the small mountainous republic of Tajikistan.

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Attack of the Tajik Tummy

Published on by Mark Jahnke

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, but I finally got sick. But the ever-discussed “Tajik Tummy,” the fear of which has been struck into us for over a month now as one by one each of us has fallen, is quite an adventure to behold here in the global capital of gastrointestinal illness. Continue reading “Attack of the Tajik Tummy” →