Lucky seven months in Kyrgyzstan! It's hard to believe it's been seven months, and that my first holiday season in Kyrgyzstan has come and gone. I don't have much to say, but here is my month 7 recap:
- New Year's Performances at schoool
- In Kyrgyzstan, New Year's is the big holiday this time of year. It's very similar to American Christmas with a Christmas tree, gift giving, and Santa Claus
- The last week before school, each class put on their own New Year's performance complete with singing, dancing, games and speeches. One of my sixth graders even gave a speech in English just for me!
- Most of the songs students used were actually English songs. The most popular being "Jingle Bells" and "Last Christmas"
- These performances were also a chance for the students to dress up in either nicer clothing or holiday-themed costumes. For example, one class of 4th grade boys all dressed up as Santa Claus...
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| The view outside my classroom for the 4th Grade Performance |
- My host sister also performed her own solo dance, and I was her designated videographer. My host sister is also very particular about pictures and videos of herself, so it was a huge accomplishment to be assigned this role (lol).
- I went to India!!
- An entirely separate post on this later, but long story short: I used the first of my leave days to travel around Kerala, India for a week
- Until the India-specific post is released, here's a picture to show just a small fraction of the beauty we saw there
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| Trivandrum, Kerala, India |
- I created a New Year's video featuring Peace Corps countries around the world
- After attending a social media conference last month (see other posts), I've had several ideas involving social media, one of those being creating content featuring volunteers from around the world.
- With this idea, I reached out to the few Peace Corps connections I had and also DM'd other volunteers I'd never met to ask them to film a New Year's video.
- In the end, it featured roughly 15 countries and 60ish volunteers saying "Happy New Years" in their host country's native language! Although, the video did not do as well on social media as I would've hoped, it was very cool to meet so many people living around the world doing the same thing that I am.
- New Year's Resolutions
- I've never been a big fan of New Year's Resolutions. However, since this entire Peace Corps journey is about new things, I thought I'd try to have resolutions this year.
- Read a book recommended to me every single month
- I've always liked to read, but I usually stick to the same genre of books. This year, I want to expand what I read, and I'm doing that by having a different person recommend a book to me each month. If you would like to recommend a book please let me know in the comments or on instagram (@emilyinkgz)!
- You should also add me on GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/174497692-emily
- Write on this blog more consistently
- Improve my Kyrygz and Russian
- I think this one is pretty obvious. Although my Kyrgyz is decent at this point, I'd like it to improve. I'm also about to start Russian lessons and so hopefully by the end of the year I will be okay at that.
There's my short and sweet recap of month 7. Sorry for it being both extremely late AND short, but I have been busy getting back into the swing of school and taking on new responsibilities at my site (more on that later). Until next time, this post was named after the song "seven" by Taylor Swift for it both being month 7 and this lyric in it: "we'll move to India forever." It's almost like Taylor Swift knew in 2020 when she wrote this album, that 1. I'd have a blog and name months after songs and 2. Month 7 would also include me going to India.
