We’ve been here in our village for a week now, and I’m in love with it. I had told many of my friends about how excited I was to be coming back to Central Asia, and I truly meant it, but I had no idea both how much I had missed it here and how much I would love it when I got back. I also didn’t know what to expect in terms of differences between my new experiences in Kyrgyzstan and my previous ones in Tajikistan. But it’s all far exceeded everything I wanted for it to be.
I live in a small village in the valley of the capital city, Bishkek, and will be here throughout my training over the next two months. There are about 2,800 people in the village, and there are about 4-6 stores, the largest of which is smaller than the average 7/11 in the US. We’re mostly clustered within a five to ten minute walk of the main road, so the village is long and narrow (kind of like the Boston University campus), but all of our group is clustered a short walk from the house where we have our language classes.