Hi everyone, long time no see! I’ve been very busy since my last post and the past three months have literally flown by. Speaking of time flying, I’ve officially started my second year of being a volunteer! It’s crazy to think about the fact that I’m closer to finishing my service than I am to beginning it.
The school year starts in a couple of days on September 2nd (it usually starts September 1st but it’s complicated this year with it being a holiday weekend – independence day is August 31st). Until then, I thought I’d share this post to catch everyone up on what I’ve done the past three months during my summer holiday. For context, school ended May 25th and Peace Corps’ only guideline for volunteers is to host camps and clubs, travel, and take time to both decompress from the past year and get ready for the next one.
June:
Honestly this month was not that exciting in terms of things to do, but it was very productive! I conducted English clubs for my school once a week. Each club had about 100 kids across all grade levels come, so it was a lot… One thing I loved about these clubs is that it had a lot of students that I don’t teach that are either in a different class or go to a different school. My rule for clubs is that if students show up interested and ready to learn, I don’t turn anyone away. This definitely got difficult at times like when we fit 40 students in a 15-person classroom. I think both mine and my students favorite club was our friendship bracelet making day. It’s definitely the hardcore Taylor Swift fan in me that loves making friendship bracelets, and I was very excited to share it with my students. My mom sent me a bunch of bracelet making materials (shoutout mom), and my students and I spent hours making hundreds of bracelets in English. With this, I also now have my fair share of friendship bracelets (and rings from the students who didn’t measure correctly). Bonus points: I also made a specially curated only Taylor Swift playlist for this day. My students didn’t really understand it, but they appreciated it nonetheless.
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| Friendship bracelet making with my 4th graders. |
In addition to English clubs, I also got in contact with one of the preschools in my village and started teaching 2 hours a week to their 5-year-old classes. With this age, I can’t say they learned much, but we started working on basic greetings, the alphabet, numbers, colors, and body parts. We do all of our learning through songs, dances, and games, and not to brag but it’d be difficult to find any Kyrgyz 5 year olds that know “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes” better than my students… Teaching this age made me remember how much I love working with younger kids and it’s something I plan to continue to do during the school year.
Finally, myself and the two other volunteers in my region hosted six different trainings for the English teachers in our area and the surrounding ones. We taught a variety of topics such as objective writing, lesson planning, and classroom activities. In total, we probably had about one hundred teachers attend, and from the feedback we received, it sounds like they really enjoyed it and learned a lot.
July:
This was my month of fun and travel. My school and preschool were closed this month for repairs, so my plan all along was to spend July traveling.
It started with a weekend trip to Sary-Chylek, which is an alpine lake three hours away from my house. This place was by far the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in Kyrgyzstan, and possibly even the world. Pictures are below but even then, they don’t do this place justice. We spent most of our time swimming and hiking, two things that I’ve been wanting to do for a while, so it was nice to spend a couple days in nature doing things I love.
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| The summit at Sary-Chylek |
I then went to Issyk-Kul, the largest lake in Kyrgyzstan and one of the most famous tourist destinations here. It’s on the opposite side of the country from where I live, so getting there wasn’t easy, but it was worth it in the long run. I spent some time visiting the city of Karakol, seeing other volunteers, and swimming in the lake. From there, the main reason for my trip was to attend Kol Fest, which is Kyrgyzstan’s first and only music festival located on the lake shore. Our days there were full of music, Kyrgyz cultural demonstrations, and meeting people from all over the world. I thought it was really interesting to meet tourists and hear their stories for how they came to Kyrgyzstan. I guess for me, I’d never heard of Kyrgyzstan before Peace Corps, so I’m always curious to how people end up here. The highlights of the festival include meeting Kyrgyzstan’s best Komyz (traditional Kyrgyz instrument) player (she said if I learned how to play I could perform with her so stay tuned…) and a singer from the UK, Wyldest, who I spent hours talking to on the last day about music, the “gig men”, and the differences between Western and Kyrgyz cultures (if you’re reading this…hi <3). Some other notable moments include: learning to twirl a flaming baton, 150 som hot dogs, and getting to wear themed outfits again (the concert girl in me was alive albeit very briefly).
Immediately after Issyk-Kul, I got on a bus to Almaty, Kazakhstan so I could head to Mongolia!! Almaty tends to have more international flights than Bishkek, so volunteers often bus from Bishkek to Almaty before their flights. From Almaty, myself and three other volunteers flew to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia!
I didn’t really know what to expect in Mongolia, the only thing I knew about beforehand were the Mongols and two-humped camels. It turns out Mongolia is one of my favorite places I’ve ever been. Mongolia is also a Peace Corps country and former USSR, so in my head I thought it’d be like Kyrgyzstan. In some cases they are very similar. Both countries are traditionally nomad, but based off my experiences, Mongolia still features this tradition more than Kyrgyzstan. We learned during our trip that many families are still nomadic and that students attend boarding school during the school year and meet up with their families during breaks.
We spent our first few and last days in the capital of Ulaanbaatar. We visited several museums, including the Mongolian history museum and natural science museum. We also went to several Buddhist monasteries and the North Korean embassy (accidentally). To my surprise, Ulaanbaatar had a lot of Korean influence and restaurants on every corner. While in the capital, I think most of our meals were spent at these places which I can’t complain about.
The highlight of the trip was our tour to the Gobi Desert. We took a four-day guided tour to Southern Mongolia to visit the Gobi Desert. We spent our nights in yurts, visited the place where dinosaur eggs were discovered, rode two-humped camels, and climbed to the top of Mongolia’s tallest sand dune. I also ate goat for the first time! If I had to rank it with other animals I’ve eaten, I’d say it goes right after horse but before sheep.
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| The peak of the tallest sand dune in Mongolia |
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| A Buddhist Monastery in Ulaanbaatar |
August:
After a whirlwind July, my August was much more relaxed. I restarted my English clubs for students and began prepping for the upcoming year. I took a quick long-weekend trip to the capital, Bishkek, to attend the new group of volunteer’s Swearing-In Ceremony. We now have 22 new volunteer English teachers ready to serve all over Kyrgyzstan (Reid’s mom if you’re see this, your son told me you’ve read a lot of my posts so thank you!). I was there to work social media during the ceremony, so I spent my time interviewing our new volunteers and staff members, hosting the Facebook livestream of the ceremony, and dropping the phone with the livestream during the US Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan’s speech…
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| The newest Peace Corps Volunteers in Kyrgyzstan! |
That’s the brief-ish recap of my summer! It was a whirlwind three months that definitely went by faster than expected. Going into the summer I was worried I’d be too bored, but in reality, I didn’t have enough time to accomplish everything I wanted. Summer was great, but I’m ready for this school year to get started. Now that I have a year under my belt, I feel much more prepared and ready to make a greater impact this year. With that, I also have several exciting events coming up including my project to build a new English classroom at my school, so stay tuned for that! Thanks for reading and as always make sure you’re folling my Instagram @emilyinkgz .
p.s. let me know if you get the song reference in the title of this post
