finally got on a horse :)

And another week... Very busy, as usual, and in general a good week. I met with more women from more NGOs and now have a huge list of people to call. I'm getting tons of information, but feel like I have no clue what I'll do with it all! Ah well, I guess I'll figure it out back in Colorado...

So. The first few pics are from a party that one of my Russian students, Tanya, invited me to. It's the first time I've been in a Russian home (having only really met Kyrgyz people), and it was very different. The pictures are from a small arbor-type place in the (side?) yard, and they, like the Kyrgyz, have a lot of gardens. The house has storeys, which is something I haven't seen in Kyrgyz houses. And of course, the traditional outhouse with lots of newspaper provided.

This party was on the 13th, incidentally my brother's birthday! And so the first picture is of myself and one of the Russians toasting Greg; they all wished him health, happiness and love.

And then you have me learning how to make shashlik. It's fantastic!!!! You have to marinade the meat for one day in a huge pot filled with slightly sour milk, lots of spices, salt, onions, and I guess whatever else you like. Then you have to put it on the skewer, and you must skewer each piece of meat twice (I got a real course in how to do this). And then you stick it over the fire, as you see Tanya's husband doing in the next picture. One further note is that the second batch is always the best one. So that was yummy :) There you have one of the children who was there eating his shashlik; we had a great time together. He gave me smarties and I shared the rest of my emergency gummy bears with him and his sister who you see in the next picture with Tanya.

On Saturday, after having a great visit with some American friends in a Dungan (another ethnicity in Kyrgyzstan) village called Milyanfan (and I'm afraid I have no pictures), we went back to Nazgul's home village of Pervaya Maya. And I finally got to ride! It was actually quite an experience. You see the horse's foal having a drink in the first picture; well the foal followed us the entire way and kept getting distracted by dogs and kicking up its heels while crossing right in front of his mother and I... And there's a picture of the baby getting a "ride"... And you may have noticed in the picture of me on the horse that I'm wearing flipflops. Not a great idea, and if I'd known that I'd be riding I'd have brought better shoes. So no, control over the horse itself was not ideal, although I did manage to get it to trot every so often and now my ankles are a bit raw. And to finish up there are some landscape pictures again. Absolutely beautiful, and I wish the one of the lake was better but I was trying to keep the horse from turning away on me.

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