I'm posting for Cameron. He is on vacation. He left Talas City 5 hours before rioting started there, and flew out of Biskek at 1:30AM before rioting started at daybreak. He is safe in London.

3/29/2010

5 Hours of PST

I woke up around 9:30. After eating breakfast and brushing my teeth, I made some changes to the resource center grant budget and went to the internet café to send them off. I spent over an hour on the internet, mostly typing emails. Today was a pretty big news day… lots of explosions in various parts of the world.

Thomas and I had made plans to coordinate about PST, since I’m still thinking about doing some sessions in May. He had to stop by work, so we decided to meet a bit later at my apartment. I picked up a bag of manti for lunch.

Thomas and I met in my apartment for several hours to debrief the PST ToT (training of trainers). He gave me everyone’s impression of the new PTO, and talked about the plans that we have for training this year. It appears that I’m going to be helping with a session on May 20th, and I’ll probably hang around for a few other days that week to help out with language sessions. It also sounds like I am being given up to 5 hours to present… which is a huge chunk of time, and is more time than the topics that I wanted to cover would be able to fill. I am hoping to bring Dawn on-board in order to help me present on the topics that I want to cover.

I left with Thomas around 5:00 in order to pick up some food at the bazaar. I bought cheese, potatoes and napkins. I had a really good time at the bazaar today… I was able to make both of the sellers that I bought things from laugh. One of those good days.

I came home and watched a motorcycle race. I ended up sleeping for four hours in the middle of the evening, which I think will unfortunately throw my sleep schedule off again. Oh well. I got up at 10:30 and finished the motorcycle race, then made cheesy potatoes to eat for dinner. I practiced guitar until after 2:00, then reviewed a bunch of blog posts for posting online. I got to bed really late.

3/28/2010

The End of Rome

No blogging yesterday since I spent the night at Kristen’s. I spent almost the entire day hanging out at Kristen’s apartment with Serena and Laura, who are both in town. We played a lot of dominos.

This morning I woke up late at Kristen’s, since we had stayed up late last night. I went back to my place around noon to brush my teeth and drop off a bunch of stuff. I got the new power bill for March… and it seems to be roughly in line with how much I would have been paying per month during the winter months given the huge bill I received a month ago. I actually talked to the power lady because she knocked on Kristen’s door when I was at her place again later in the afternoon. She’s going to show me the meter tomorrow to prove that the meter is correct then I’ll pay my huge bill. I’m only about 50% sure that the bill is correct, and that the charge isn’t corrupt. It seems like an awful lot. We’ll have to see what happens in a month or two when I turn off my heaters.

I stopped by the internet. Tottenham won again over Portsmouth in the league, and Portsmouth suffered several more injuries, which bodes well for the upcoming FA Cup semifinal. Not too much interesting in my email… I’ve been exchanging some emails with various people in the Emory admissions office, and I sent one or two final emails to K18’s, who are now at staging. They shoud be here soon… which is kind of exciting!

I was invited to a Talas poker game for the first time. It was 50 som buy-in with 6 people, Texas Hold’Em. The winner took home 250 som, and 2nd place got to take their 50 som buy-in money back. I came in second, which I was really proud of. I went through a brief phase in my junior year of college where I thought about getting into online poker, since I knew several people who were making a lot of money off of it. I went so far as to study strategy for awhile (since strategy for Texas Hold’Em involves a lot of interesting probability) and play a few games in the free online poker rooms with virtual money, but I never put any real money now. I think all of my strategy studying came in handy. Today I felt like I was getting better the longer I played.

I went home just as it was getting dark. I ate some leftovers for dinner, did laundry and shaved. I decided to sit down and finally finish the Alexander campaign in Rome. It took me until 2:00, but I did it… in 50 turns. The real Alexander died when he was 32. Mine finished his conquest when he was 45, and I felt like I was kicking butt and moving across the continent really quickly. By the end I was moving faster than I did at the beginning, so if I went back and played it again its possible I could go through the game a bit faster, but I’m not sure if it’s possible to finish the campaign by the time you’re 32. I’m not inspired enough to go try. I have played Rome to death, and although there are plenty of other empires that I could go and play as, I don’t feel like there’s much left to do in the game. I uninstalled it and all of its expansions from my computer to free up the massive amount of space that it was occupying. Time to move onto something else.

3/26/2010

Rhythm Part

I got up around 9:00, despite getting lots of sleep again. I guess I’ll just keep getting to bed at a reasonable hour and hope that I start waking up earlier.

I went to the internet at 10:30. For once I didn’t have a whole bunch to do. I wrote a few emails and checked the news.

I got back from the internet by 12:00 in order to meet Daniel and rehearse our songs again. We worked some more on “махабат кайырчысы” and also on “Talasum.” Daniel taught me the chord progression for a rhythm guitar part, which I thought I picked up fairly quickly. I have something to rehearse now!

We finished around 2:00. Michael came over to get some movies, but while he was over his laptop died. Hard drive crash! That’s really unfortunate for him.

Bob came over later in the afternoon to get his accreditation card. I went to the bazaar to pick up some bread and kefir, since I hadn’t arranged anything for dinner yet. I made lentils for dinner. In the evening I watched a BSB race and played Rome: Alexander for a long time. I seem to be doing really well, but the game keeps telling me that I’m behind schedule. I really hope that it is wrong! The game counter in the corner is counting down from 100 turns, but I’m wondering if the game ends sooner than that. I’ve tried to pick up the pace regardless… I hope that I can beat the scenario on the first try. Starting over would be kind of a bear.

I got to bed by midnight.

3/25/2010

The 4-year Pit

I had a really productive day today. I woke up a little bit late, around 9:30, but I got to work right away. I read the last few articles in the Economist (not work per se, but I wanted to get it out of the way), then tallied all of my receipts and did as much work as I could on the SPA completion report without talking to the pediatrics instructor. Once I reached a dead end, I went over to the medical school to talk to her and get all of my questions answered. I also bugged her a little bit about getting all of our testimonies to have the infant nutrition project expanded through UNICEF. Working on those is going to be a big priority for me next weekend.

I went home and finished the completion report, then talked to David on the phone for nearly an hour about business school application strategies. Right as I had finished and was about to eat some lunch, my counterpart called to tell me that she was ready to go to the lyceum and check up on the progress of the outhouse. By the way, if you haven’t yet donated to this outhouse project, you should: http://appropriateprojects.com/node/115.

The outhouse is making great progress. One thing that the lyceum agreed to donate in-kind was the digging of the pit for the outhouse. I had figured that this would be by hand, and I wasn’t quite prepared for the immense, machine-dug pit that awaited me. It must be 8 feet deep, and quite wide across! I met with the lyceum’s director. He thanked me enthusiastically for all of the projects that I (unintentionally) have been funneling towards his school. I didn’t intend to specifically target his school, it just turned out that all of the grants that kept falling into my lap made the most sense to apply there.

We have some leftover money from the outhouse grant, so what we’re going to do is to line the pit with concrete and move over some concrete pillars from a nearby Soviet ruin to use as support for the outhouse structure on top of the pit. The concrete lining should help reinforce the walls of the pit, which should make it last longer. It looks like the pit will still need to be cleaned by vacuum truck, but it should only need to be cleaned 1/8th as often, which whould produce sizeable savings for the school… they gave a rough estimate of once every 4 years or so. The pit is really huge!

After that I walked with my counterpart over to my bank. The resource center grant that we won needs a bank account in order for its money to be deposited. It also requires that the entire project be complete with only 80% of the money, and that the last 20% only be given upon the submission of a completion report. I understand what they were trying to accomplish with this policy, but following through with it is going to be a significant difficulty for us! 20% of the project’s budget is like 16,000 som, which is beyond the means of either me or my counterpart to front in order to complete the project. We’re going to have to ask the lyceum’s director for support -_-.

The bank requires that my counterpart open an account. She doesn’t currently have one, so she is going to do that tomorrow morning, and hopefully we’ll send off our latest round of grant paperwork by tomorrow afternoon.

After visiting the bank I went to the internet. Tottenham beat Fulham in their replay to advance to the FA Cup semifinals, which means that they’ll be playing against Portsmouth in the semi-final at Wembley WHEN I’M IN LONDON. How awesome is that!? I looked up the tickets, but they start at £150… so waaay too much for me to afford. I’ll still have to be sure to find a good Tottenham pub for game time. It has been about 21 months since I had the opportunity to watch a Tottenham match, so this will be really exciting! What’s best about Tottenham’s form right now is that they have been pulling off wins despite having huge injury problems. They simply have a really deep team right now, and Redknapp has gotten almost every single player to perform at their highest level, even a bunch of fringe players who looked to be on their way out a few months ago (people like Bentley, Bale and Pavluchenko). Why is it that Tottenham always have amazing seasons when I’m barely able to follow them? It happened in 2005/2006 as well.

I picked up some sugar at the bazaar then went home. I made cheesy potatoes for dinner. Daniel came over and we practiced a song that we’re preparing for PDM, “махабат кайырчысы” by Urmat Usenov. The title, when translated, means either “love beggar” or “love assassin.” We’re not sure which and we’re not completely sure of the meaning of the rest of the song either.

After Daniel left I made some phone calls and sent some texts to plan my schedule for May (it’s coming together already, amazingly enough). I watched a WTCC race then played Rome: Alexander until 11:30. I finished blogging before 12:00, so it looks like I’m going to get to bed a lot early than I have been recently.

3/24/2010

Coca-cola Chicken

Diego spent the night last night. He needed to come into town to use my computer to fill out his VRF and use the internet to mail it off. We had a good time last night watching racing and cooking chicken. I finally tried marinating chicken in a combination of Coca-cola, spices, onions and garlic. It was a success.

Today we got up late-ish. We went to the bazaar internet, which has been really fast all week during the holidays. I finally finished reading through the entire Goizueta admitted students’ website. It looks like on-campus housing might be affordable. While I was at the bazaar I picked up cheese, kefir, potatoes and a banana. Diego pitched in some for some more cornbread ingredients. We made cornbread when we got home. This ended up being the second time that we made cornbread during Diego’s visit… I’m making a concerted effort to use up all of my cornmeal. We watched an episode of Top Gear then Diego went home.

Once Diego left I napped (I’m slowing improving on my sleep schedule). I watched the one new Formula One race that Dan sent me (2009 Hungary) then warmed up leftovers for dinner, read the Economist a lot, took a shower and got ready for bed. Tomorrow should be really busy... I have a lot of project-related work planned.

3/22/2010

Health Care Reform Passed

I woke up at 9:30, in a great mood and ready to work. Unfortunately there was no school today because of the 5-day weekend for the Nooruz holiday (which I will miss both times during my service because I will have never lived with a Kyrgyz family when it came around). There was still some good work that I could accomplish though. I set four tasks for myself: 1) Finish my thorough house-cleaning 2) Do laundry 3) Finish off the last details of my SPA grant 4) Sign up for Darien Book Aid for the new resource center.

I went to the internet at 10:30 and stayed for over two hours. I have had a lot of correspondence to do over the last few days! I managed to sign up for Darien Book Aid while I was on the internet… 1 task down. At the bazaar I bought a can of tomato paste so that I could make pasta in the evening.

I came home after 1:00 and started reading the new issue of the Economist that I had picked up at the café. I also watched two WTCC races and took a nap (I’m making a real push to watch all of the races that Dan sent me before I finish my service). When I woke up I made tomato sauce and pasta, using the new Italian seasoning that my cousins had sent me. I topped it with cheese. The seasoning made it slightly better than the tomato sauce that I usually make, but I really need to wait for tomato prices to go down in the summer before I can make any truly good-tasting sauce.

I went ahead and cleaned my apartment and did my (admittedly small) amount of laundry, knocking off 2 more of my tasks. I took a look at the paperwork that I need to fill out to finally complete my SPA grant. It’s not too bad… and the first thing that I need to do is count up all of the receipts from the grant. As I write this it’s 11:30, and since I want to make a concerted effort to get my sleep schedule back to normal I’m going to put that task off until tomorrow. I still feel good about my day though. A good start to the week.

Oh, and health care reform passed! I’m really happy about this… both because it represents a major and long overdue landmark in American social policy, and because it means that insurance companies now won’t be able to discriminate against me if I have picked up some weird ailment during my Peace Corps service that I’m not currently aware of. I know other people who have gone to developing countries to do development work and then been denied insurance upon their return. I can’t believe such a morally bankrupt industry was allowed to survive for so long. It needed more than a kick in the pants; it needed a sledgehammer blow to the head. This bill isn’t a sledgehammer blow, but it’s a good start.

The Economist has been writing a lot about health care over the last year… and let me preface what I’m about to write by saying that I don’t *always* agree with the Economist on every issue (going to war in Iraq, for instance… which to be fair The Economist now openly and regularly admits was a mistake), I merely appreciate its top-quality writing and its ability to provide a comprehensive picture of world events to somebody otherwise cut off from immersive news. I also trust it very much with issues that have to do with money, since it does so much research and uses numbers regularly to back up its points.

America has two problems with health care. The first is a system where far too many people are uninsured and insurance companies were allowed to perpetuate immoral practices such as denying people coverage for pre-existing conditions, raising rates without reason or dropping people arbitrarily from their coverage. This bill fixes the first problem. The second problem is cost, and this bill doesn’t *really* address the cost issue comprehensively. I think costs will go down slightly because of the new competition from the government-sponsored non-profit cooperative insurers that people will now be able to buy from and the new restrictions on fees paid to service providers, but three things will still continue to keep costs high.

First, the tax credit for employer-provided insurance is still in place. In my mind, ideally everyone would either receive medical care from a central government entity like the NHS, or by buying private insurance plans in a properly-regulated and competitive market (with correspondingly higher salaries to compensate for peoples’ loss of work insurance). What exists now in America is a weird middle-ground that doesn’t work very well. The government makes employee-provided health care tax-exempt. This reduces the competitiveness of American business against other countries with socialized medicine by making companies pay for health care for their American employees, and it locks people into jobs because they are afraid to lose their health care (hopefully that will be a bit less of a problem with the new bill). The new bill removes the tax-exemption for “gold plated” plans (those given to high-paid executives and cushy union jobs), which will save the government money. Maybe in a few years once people have gotten used to the insurance exchanges the government will be able to remove the tax exemption entirely and move people into the non-profit insurance system.

Second, hospitals got off really lightly in this reform bill. American hospitals are in many places monopolistic, and are responsible for overcharging for a lot of services. The bill forces down the rates that can be paid to medical service providers, but doesn’t touch hospitals at all. That’s a problem.

Third, the democrats caved to one of their weaknesses and didn’t make big changes to malpractice law. The democrats’ unwillingness to take on trial lawyers is a really shameful aspect of the party that makes me unhappy. It is of course important to give patients recourse in the case of malpractice, but the United States currently pays twice as much for malpractice insurance as the next closest country in the world. That is too much protection against malpractice, and it is part of the problem of high medical costs. Not only do rampant malpractice suits contribute to medical costs by making malpractice insurance so expensive, they also encourage doctors to practice “defensive medicine”, where they will recommend a test not because it is needed, but because they want to shield themselves against malpractice suits. This cost gets passed onto patients.

I’m really happy that this bill passed, both for personal and moral reasons, but a lot still needs to be done to make health care more affordable. What this bill means is that health care is going to remain expensive, but fewer people are going to get screwed by insurance companies. That’s a step in the right direction.

3/21/2010

Blog Backlog

Today the skies were clear and there was lots of sun, but it was still pretty cold outside. There was still enough heat, however, to trigger large amounts of snow-melt.

I got up at around 8:40 to see Brad off on his way to PST. I dozed for awhile then got up again. Looking out the window I saw that the streets were drying out and the snow was going away, so I decided to make my internet trip in the afternoon instead of the morning. In any case, I was headed to Kyrgyz Telekom today so the time that I visited didn’t matter… Kyrgyz Telekom is always expensive and fast.

I spent time in the morning watching BSB races, blogging, shaving and taking out the trash. I finally headed to the internet around 12:30 or 1:00 and spent nearly three hours there, totaling 136 som. I had a ton of emails to write related to business school correspondence, my Europe trip and telling my friends and family about my scholarship. I also got my friend Laura Fishman to update my blog for me. Blogger has been blocked in Kyrgyzstan almost 100% of the time for the last month, so I’ve had to rely on my mom to update blocks of posts that I send her via email. Since I haven’t been able to look at my blog I have had no way of knowing if my posts were going up, but today I found three emails in my inbox from concerned friends who worried that I hadn’t posted anything in a month… which is what led me to ask Laura to help me with the update. She put all the posts up. Thanks Laura!

I finally got off the internet at 4:20. I walked over to Ysyk Nan and picked up kefir, baton bread and butter, then walked home. I met Brad’s counterpart to help coordinate a complex hand-off of various items that me, Diego and his counterpart are coordinating to acquire a letter of support for his SPA grant that he accidentally locked in his room. I made cheesy garlic bread for dinner. I ate the whole loaf, which was a lot of food… I barely needed to eat anything else all night.

I took another evening nap. My body has gotten used to them now, so it has started to get tired at about 6:00 PM every day, which I know isn’t very healthy. I’m going to force myself to go to bed earlier tonight, even if it means sitting in bed watching TV for a few hours until I can fall asleep. I watched a motorcycle race, finished last week’s Economist (I’m caught up just in time for the new issue which I might get tomorrow), blogged and got a start on cleaning my apartment. I can already tell that this next week is going to be really productive work-wise… I’m in a great mood! The first step will be cleaning my apartment and catching up on laundry.

My efforts to get to sleep were in vain. After lying in bed for two hours, I had diarrhea, and even after that I wasn’t able to fall asleep for another hour. When I fell asleep, I had weird dreams about the K18’s coming to Kyrgyzstan, except everybody had super powers, and there was this one K18 who had been taken over by this weird black slime thing. She would corner other volunteers when they were alone and infect them with it. There ended up being a war between all the volunteers with super powers to kill all the ones taken over with the black ooze before they infected everyone. I was one of two volunteers who finished her off… I burned her to death with my human-torch-like fire powers.

3/21/10

 Updated Care Package

 It's been a LONG time since I updated this. I have received a lot of things now that I should be good on for the rest of my service. The need for TV shows and movies has also decreased somewhat… I have so many now that I can't possibly watch them all. Other volunteers still appreciate TV shows and movies.

 Are you living vicariously through my blog and looking for the way to take the next step towards involvement with my Peace Corps service? Are you concerned that I'm trying to support a 5'11" frame with only 135 pounds of emaciated body mass? You should send me a care package.

 Priority Items:

 - Cayenne Pepper

 What else to send (these are NOT listed in order of importance):

 - Peanut Butter, crunchy, with preservatives. This is probably the most important food item now. I still have a decent amount, but I'll probably use it all before I leave.- Yellow Cornmeal. Seal it very carefully. One plastic bag is not sufficient, please double-bag. I have quite a bit of this now, so lower priority.

 - Nature Valley Sweet and Salty granola bars, peanut flavor. Unfortunately the kind that I really liked, chocolatey peanut, is no longer produced. Think large scale… don't send me a box of six, go to Costco and get a huge pack, then take them out of the box so you can fit more in the care package. I just got a lot of these from two different people, but I could still take more… I really like these and I eat them all the time.-Beef jerky. I need protein. Get beef jerkey that isn't in puffy packages full of air… those take up a lot of space. If this reduces the quality of the beef jerkey you send, that's ok. I'm going for quantity of calories over quality of flavor, and anything that's sent is going to taste waaay better than the meat here. Could still use more jerky.-Protein Powder. I have a good amount now, but I could still use a little more

 - Spices. Do not send: black pepper, red pepper, salt, dill, seasoning salts, Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute (I have a TON now), anything related to garlic (also very well stocked). Everything else is fair game. I eat beans, chickpeas, lentils, chicken, and potatoes as staples, so send spices that go well with those things.

 -Non-DRM protected good music albums that have been released since I left in early July 2008, any genre

- Burned episodes of good TV shows (.avi format preferred but not necessary):

 -30 Rock Season 4+-Burn Notice (season 3, episode 8+)

-Californication (season 1 episode 9, season 3+)

-CSI Las Vegas season 1 episodes 1-4, 17-22. Season 3 episodes 4, 16, season 4 episode 14, season 6+

-CSI New York all

-Deadwood (season 1 episode 11+, season 2+)

-Dexter season 5+

-Doctor Who, season 5+

-Entourage season 5, episode 13+

-Extras, the two Christmas special episodes

-Flight of the Conchords season 3+

-Friends, seasons 2, 3, 5-7, 9

-Gossip Girl season 3+, episode 7+

-Grey's Anatomy, all

-Heroes (season 4+)

-House, season 5 episode 11+

-How I Met Your Mother Season 5+

-L Word, seasons 2, 3

-Lost season 6+

-The Office (season 6, episode 9+)

-The Pickup Artist, all

-Sarah Connor Chronicles (season 2, episode 14+)

-Sex and the City (season 2, 4, 5)

-Sopranos (season 1 and season 2 episodes 1-6. I have the rest, but I can't start the series without this! Priority!)

-The Unit, season 2

-Top Gear (season 11, episode 3+, season 12+)

-True Blood season 3+

-Tudors season 1, episodes 2 and 6, season 2+

-Veronica Mars season 3

-Weeds, season 4 episode 14+ if it exists, season 5+

-West Wing season 1, season 2 episodes 4 and 5, season 3 episode 9+

-Wonder Years, season 3 episode 5… I have everything else.

-X Files, everything except season 3 (you can probably skip the last bit after David Duchovny leaves)

 

 - Any other shows that you like that are awesome. If you want to check to see if I have something, email me at marmotzero@gmail.com- Good books that you don't mind never seeing again. They will get donated to the oblast volunteer library when I'm finished with them.- Computer file format DVD movies (.avi format preferred but not necessary) that have been released recently

- If it's a normal movie, send well-reviewed ones, but not the type that are boring character studies with superb acting, those films are no good- If it's an action movie, just send anything. I love them, good or bad.

- If you want to know if I have a movie, email me

- American Apparel t-shirts (size small) that would go well with jeans or khakis. My t-shirts are starting to get worn and stretched from the hand washing.

- 1-2 frisbee golf drivers. We've broken a few here and could use replacements.- Yourself! I'll show you Kyrgyzstan. I'm completely serious. Contact me if you want to visit, and I can start walking you through what you'll need to do.What NOT to send:

 - Mainstream computer games… I have a lot now, and there's now a store in Talas that sells new games, so I can buy those and run them on my fast computer.

 - Powdered Gatorade. Despite my still frequent diarrhea, I now have so much of this that I should be good for the rest of my service.

 - Moisturizing cream. I'm good to go.

 - LCD monitor cleaning solution. I have a CRT now!

 - A laptop base. I no longer have a laptop.- Wind-up flashlight. All cell phones here have LED flashlights built into them that run off the phone battery. Ingenious! I also have a headlamp.- Chocolate. My sweet tooth is completely satisfied for chocolate bars and sweet candy. The things that I miss are granola bars, peanut butter, and sesame snaps.

 -Sesame bars. I found a place to buy these locally.

 -Baby wipes. I have lots now, thanks!

 -Socks. People recently sent me new socks, I'm stocked

 - Travel toothpaste: I have plenty now

 -Toothbrushes: good to go

 - Deodorant: Also stocked until the end of my service, thanks

 - iPod headphones: I have several spares now, thanks Ron!

 I mentioned this a little bit above, but think large-scale! Don't send me one jar of peanut butter, send me lots! Don't send me a few episodes of a TV show or a podcast, send me lots and lots of seasons!The US Postal Service is going to be your best option for shipping packages internationally. The nearest FedEx location to me is in Bishkek, which is a four and a half hour journey each direction. There are two options for USPS. If your package is heavy but compact, the best option is probably to send it using the flat rate box. Go to a post office and ask for an international flat-rate box. You can then put the box together and mail it with up to 20 pounds of stuff and the cost will be like $37 for the small size, and more (but better value) for the bigger size. If your package is light, it might be cheaper to have it shipped at the variable rate, but you'll have to check with a post office clerk.Tape things really well. Seal up all of the openings on the box, then wrap tape lengthwise all the way underneath and around the package on either side of the main opening. This makes the box much stronger.Although it hasn't happened much in my oblast, there's a possibility that stuff will get pilfered by somebody in Kyrgyzstan. If you're sending anything at all valuable, buy insurance for the package. If it has been six weeks and I haven't contacted you to tell you the package has arrived, go claim the insurance right away. My parents had a package returned by the sketchy postal service here, and they had to pay the return shipping! If you're sending something irreplaceable, either do a really good job of hiding it inside the box, or contact me and I can have it sent to the Peace Corps headquarters. With all packages, pack things in such a way that it would be difficult to pilfer the contents without leaving an obvious mark, and seal the outside in such a way that it is not easy to cut and then re-close. It also might help to draw a big Islamic star and crescent on the package, since some people here are religious and superstitious.

 EDIT: The box I received recently was slashed open. Somebody along the line was curious and looked inside, but I don't think they took anything. Please pack carefully! Also, consider leaving desirable items off of the customs form… people sometimes use that as a guide for what to pilfer.I think the best place to mail packages will be to my workplace. It's a big address that's easily recognizable, things are delivered directly there so I don't need to go to the Post Office, and I've already successfully received mail there so I know that it works (whereas my home address is untested).It is much better if you print the address out in both Cyrillic characters and roman characters and tape it onto the package. Some postal workers have problems reading roman characters and packages without Cyrillic addresses might get delayed or lost. The address is:Куда: КыргызстанТаласская областьг. Таласул. Манаса 199Таласское Медицинское УчилищеКому: Блум КэмэронKuda: KyrgyzstanTalasskaya OblastGorod TalasUlitsa Manasa 199Talasskaya Meditsinskaya UchilisheKomy: Blume Cameron

 I just successfully received a package with these two address labels printed on it, but I've also been hearing reports of people having problems with the American post office not being able to understand the label. If you have problems in America, you can try this address (which is on my magazine subscription that used to arrive here):

 MR CAMERON BLUME

TALASSKAYA MEDITSINSKAYA UCHIL

ULITSA MANASA 199

GOROD TALAS

KUDA: KYRGYZSTAN

KIRGHISTANIt will probably get through, but considering how expensive it is to ship things here, it's probably better to play things safe.If you actually go to all the work of sending me a package I will WORSHIP YOU.Postcards and letters are great too! Send them to the same address.All the best!- Cameron

3/20/2010

Never Mind the Doldrums

So, big news first: I have been accepted at Emory's Goizueta Business School's two year MBA program, and they have offered me an $18,000 per-semester scholarship. To give an approximate idea of how good of a scholarship this is, tuition at Goizueta is $20,500 per semester, so total tuition for the 2-year program is $81,000. When you factor in estimated living expenses, health insurance, books and fees the total cost of attending is roughly $122,000, so this is a scholarship for 59% of the total cost of business school (87% of tuition). Big scholarship! This would put me in roughly $50,000 worth of debt upon graduation, but that would be reduced directly by the amount of money I make during my summer internship (since I've already taken living expenses into account). That's still a ton of debt, but for business school that's not bad at all!

Needless to say, I'm really excited. Before today the problem I was facing was "what is going to happen to my career?" Now the biggest problem that I have to worry about is "how am I going to get a ride to Osh in a few weeks to get to Daniel's wedding?" When I read the acceptance email I felt the weight of the last bad few weeks immediately lift off of my shoulders. I should be able to refocus on my work now and have a great finish to my Peace Corps service. I even have a Europe trip coming up in a few weeks! Things are really looking up. It's not an exaggeration to say that today was a day that significantly altered the course of my life.

That said, the weather outside was absolutely miserable today. It was wet and snowy for the entire day. I only braved going outside once: in the morning when I went to the bazaar to buy some food and check the internet. The internet actually died right after I managed to open the two emails in my inbox related to my admission into Goizueta. I walked home and called my parents. I had them peruse the accepted students' website and get some preliminary info about the next steps forward. After talking to them I fired up Rome: Alexander and played that for about an hour. Brad and Thomas came over and we played D&D for most of the afternoon. I'm a little D&D'd out now; I need a short break.

Thomas headed home and Brad stayed the night in preparation for his departure to Bishkek tomorrow for ToT. I can't believe that the K18's are almost here! Brad and I played some computer games, I helped him with his SPA grant and we cooked an egg-potato-cheese concoction with poultry seasoning. It turned out alright… not amazing, not terrible. We also watched some episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" and got to bed pretty late.

3/18/2010

An America To-Do List

The weather was absolutely miserable today. I stayed inside as much as possible. It rained all night last night and most of the day today.

I messed up my sleep schedule a bit yesterday. My late nap made it so that I couldn't sleep when I finally went to bed at 2:00. I ended up watching episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" and writing a short letter to Claudia to arrange a meeting. I also spent a lot of time just lying in bed and thinking to myself. I'm in a weird place right now. Everything is up in the air until I hear back from all of my business schools. I'm also struggling with how much I want to try to participate in PST. I haven't really taken any concrete steps to prepare any guest sessions, and I haven't talked with my program manager about how she would like to have me contribute. I'm still really disappointed about not being selected, and there's a bitter, defensive part of me that doesn't want to participate at all. There's also a part of me that's selfless and giving that wants to still push myself, pull out all of my favors to stay with friends in Kant for as many days as possible and contribute to PST as much as I can. Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to take some concrete steps towards making a decision. I keep going back and forth.

I haven't been doing a whole lot of work the last two weeks. I've just been in a bad place for a lot of the time, stuck between uncertainty and disappointment about PST. I go up and down. As I'm writing this I'm up… in a good mood, ready to participate and do projects. Too bad it's midnight.

I got up late because of my insomnia. I ate some cornbread for breakfast and went to the internet. I stayed there for about an hour and a half, mostly writing emails related to my trip. After internet I bought some bread, units and chicken. Like I mentioned, the weather was absolutely miserable. When I got home I was missing America and I wrote the following list:

Things I Plan To Do When I Get Back to America:

Wear a pair of dirty shoes around all day

Go to a modern grocery store and buy all the foods I like

At the store, buy two loaves of bread, not wrap them in anything, and put them loose in a bag with lots of other groceries.

Walk outside, take one loaf of bread and throw it like a football as far as I can. Run over to the loaf of bread, jump up and down on it with my dirty shoes then throw it in the trash.

Rub a slab of pork over the other loaf of bread then throw that loaf away too. Cook and eat the pork, since pork is delicious.

Make myself a sandwich with ham and sharp cheese.

Make myself bacon, since that's also delicious.

Eat other high quality meats.

Eat wild-caught Alaskan salmon.

Have a day where I eat nothing but breakfast cereal. Continue to eat breakfast cereal regularly, since I love it.

Drink milk with every meal.

Make myself a microwave dinner.

Eat something out of a can that tastes good.

Go to a restaurant and order food that tastes good.

Drink good alcohol.

Clean my dirty shoes then walk around for a day… then not clean them the next day since they're not dirty.

Change my clothes every day

Shower every day

Put a bunch of dirty clothes in a washing machine. Do something fun while the machine is running.

Do the same thing with the dry cycle. Hug the clothes when they're fresh out of the dryer, and note how they're not stretched.

Arrange transportation that leaves at a specific time, arrives at a specific time, doesn't take any unnecessary stops and has a price that I don't have to haggle for.

Buy a product at a store for a fixed price.

Use broadband internet that isn't charged by the megabyte or minute.

Travel on public transportation without having to tell my life story and explain why I'm not married.

While in a public area, talk to a female who is in her 20's without it feeling awkward or shameful.

Spend time with large groups of Americans without feeling constantly nervous.

Walk around on the streets at night and feel safe.

When it's cold outside, travel from a heated building to a heated car to a heated building, and never have to spend more than a minute in a non-heated area.

Drink water out of the tap.

Brush my teeth with water out of the tap.

Make ice cubes with water out of the tap. Put them in everything, even if it doesn't make any sense.

Never have a huge tub of water on hand in case my water cuts.

Operate a desktop computer without an uninterruptable power supply, since there's no danger of the power cutting.

Let my portable electronic devices have low batteries, since I know that I can recharge them at any time.

Save a document in Word 2007 format without worrying about compatibility.

Use nice toilet paper.

Eat exotic fruits.

Drive a car.

Wear a seat belt.

Travel on a road without potholes.

Drink root beer and Dr. Pepper.

Cook with an oven that heats evenly and produces the temperature that is advertised on the dial.

Buy a non-stick pan with a coating that lasts for more than 2 months.

Vacuum a floor.

Talk to my American friends on the phone without worrying about how long my conversation is.

Never forget how amazing America is.

Never forget my Peace Corps experience.

I didn't do much of anything productive for the rest of the day. I spent the afternoon watching motorcycle races, reading the Economist and playing Rome: Total War Alexander campaign (the hardest campaign/expansion). Once I beat Alexander I'll be done and I can move onto something else. Rome: Total War has kept my attention for a long time… it's a really good game!

I thought about napping in the late afternoon since I was getting tired, but I decided to push on through so that I could get my sleep schedule back to something that is more normal. I drank the rest of my kefir mixed with protein powder and sugar. That really perked me up and gave me more energy. I've found that's the best way to consume the protein powder that my cousins sent me.

I played some more Alexander then eventually took a break to cook some chicken for dinner. This time I cooked the chicken in larger slabs and without a sauce (just a little bit of oil, onions, a ton of fresh garlic and southwest chipotle seasoning). It turned out really well, but I wasn't very hungry. I could only eat about a quarter-kilo of chicken. I've figured out how to cook chicken that is really tender and juicy, but I haven't figured out a way to make the spices penetrate into the meat without cutting the meat into tiny pieces. Maybe I need to make a marinade. I'll work on that. I remember Rosa's parents once made an amazing marinade out of Coca-cola and onions. I think that will be my next experiment.

Thomas is coming over tomorrow to play D&D, so I spent several hours prepping my material for his campaign. I'm experimenting with a very open, exploration based session that has fixed encounters. My aim is to give him maximum freedom of movement with minimal prep time on my end.

Once I finished with that I watched another motorcycle race, then blogged and went to bed.

3/19/2010

Insomnia'd

I woke up relatively early. Thomas came over at 9:30 and we played D&D until about 2:30. At around noon we heard a really loud explosion from about a block away and the power went out. It came back on a few minutes later, only to be instantly followed to by another explosion and turn off again. It stayed off until 3:30. Thomas and I were rolling on the floor laughing after the second explosion… I think that's a sign of how accustomed we are to life here.

Brad and Diego showed up around 2:30. They hung out with Thomas in the apartment for awhile while I went to teach my afternoon second year class.

I had a really fun time with my class. I feel like I've made another step with my Russian recently, and I've *finally* reached the point where I feel relatively comfortable doing most of my grammatical explanations in Russian. I may have declared that I reached this point at some point in the past (I forget), but now I think I've really, actually reached this point. The lessons have turned back into the two-way learning interaction that I enjoyed so much when I first started teaching English here. The weather has now warmed up just enough to where it isn't absolutely cold and miserable every time I step out the door, so making it over to the school is less of a chore. Teaching was definitely the highlight of my week this week, even though I didn't do all that much of it.

Thomas hung out for a bit later. I walked out the door with him since I needed to go to the bazaar. I bought baking powder and kefir.

I fell asleep pretty directly when I got home and woke up around 8:00 (I really need to break the habit of these evening naps, they're giving me terrible insomnia). I realized that I had forgotten to buy an egg, so I walked outside after dark (something I almost never do now) and went to the store downstairs to buy an egg. I wasn't going to let the dark derail all my dinner plans. I made cornbread and some more kefir-protein powder concoctions for dinner. I spent the evening playing Rome: Alexander and prepping for yet another D&D session that's happening tomorrow with Brad. A lot of D&D this week. I had insomnia again, so I ended up watching TV episodes until late at night.

3/17/2010

Warm Enough for Catch

I woke up around 7:00. I took the opportunity to call my mom and have her book my plane tickets with her broadband internet connection. We spent most of the morning getting that done.

I taught a second year class at 10:00. It went really well. I've found that this particular group has gotten really good at comprehension and translation, but they're lagging behind in speaking ability. We spent the entire lesson learning new verbs and practicing speaking. They made a little progress, but I think I'm going to devote the next lesson to speaking as well. They have some catch-up to do.

After the lesson I went to the internet. I spent 60 som on the internet today, mostly downloading information about my new plane tickets, looking up maps of British racing circuits and emailing the people that I'm going to be visiting on my trip. It turns out that my flight from Istanbul to London was booked out of Istanbul's second airport, which is on the Asian side of the Bosphorus on the exact opposite end of the city from Ataturk airport. Getting there is going to be an adventure, but luckily I have a six hour layover.

Thomas stopped by the internet. We talked for awhile. As sometimes happens here, the internet owner had to leave for awhile, so he locked everyone inside the internet café… which is on the second floor of Kyrgyz Telekom and has barred windows. Thomas and I were coming up with escape plans in case something went wrong. The owner ended up being gone for 30 minutes, and I was done with the internet about 10 minutes after he left. I made him give me a cheaper rate for making me wait so long.

I rushed back home to meet one of my students who was coming over to get some software. Her brother had given her his old flash drive, and she was really excited to get some new English learning materials and anti-virus software. I gave her a whole season of Friends with subtitles, anti-virus software, Adobe reader, VLC and an issue of the Economist.

After she left I walked up to the stadium with my football to play catch with Kristen. We ate some ice cream on the way there. It was really warm today… so warm that I took off my long underwear and hat, and finally took my gloves out of my coat pockets since I hadn't used them for a month. I'm always cautious about taking off my warm clothes. I've become really superstitious about weather in Kyrgyzstan in the absence of access to weather reports. I feel like if I get too cocky the weather will punish me.

Kristen and I played catch and talked for awhile then I walked her back home and picked up an egg and a carton of kefir on the way back to my apartment. I sent some texts and baked cornbread. I then went to my room to watch some motorcycle racing, but I decided to nap instead. I took a nap that began at some point between 5 and 6 and ended around 8. This is a really weird time to take a nap, since you go to bed when it's light and wake up when it's dark. When I woke up I had no idea what time of day it was. I was relieved to find that it was only 8:00.

I watched the rest of the motorcycle race and read the Economist some. Later in the evening I took a shower. I worked a lot on compressions (after working on them for months, I'm actually nearing the point where everything will be completely compressed!) and read the Economist more later in the evening.

3/16/2010

More Bad Oatmeal

I woke up at 9:00 and made myself a new bowl of oatmeal with the oatmeal I had bought from my favorite seller in the bazaar. Two kilograms of oatmeal ago she had sold me a bad kilo. I went to a different seller for my last kilo, but my regular seller convinced me to try hers again. It was bad again… inedible. It has this weird sour taste. I talked to her later at the bazaar and she told me I could exchange it for a kilogram from a new batch.

I bundled up and went to the internet. I spent about an hour on it today, and the bazaar internet café owner had actually already downloaded the new Economist, so the two of those things put me out 81 som. I then bought a loaf of bread from my regular baker. One of the guys there has been a real jerk to me lately.

I also picked up toilet paper, potatoes and garlic at the bazaar. I went home and met Thomas, who wanted to hear about my interview. We talked for awhile. Thomas left and I did some scheduling for meeting my students tomorrow for some lessons and learning materials.

Corey texted me that I had a new package at the post office, and I needed to give him his new accreditation card anyway, so I walked up to the post office to pick it up and drop off the card (since his office is nearby). The care package was from my friend Dan, and it was great! Almost every single thing in it was something that I really wanted. I'll need to update my care package list again.

One thing that Dan sent me was 27 DVD's worth of racing and another 3 DVD's full of TV shows. I spent over two hours transferring all of this data onto my hard drives while I watched some BSB races. I'm really excited about all the new racing!

After all the transfers were done I read the Economist for a little while then did yoga for 45 minutes. I worked on some compressions and did all of my laundry. Around midnight I called Dan to thank him for the care package and get a general update. I used up a lot of the minutes that I had purchased last week just in case I needed to call America for the entire length of my Emory interview. I'm looking forward to the time when I can talk to my friends on the phone for as long as I want.

I blogged then got to bed around 1:00.

3/15/2010

The Sweet Burn of Garlic Bread

I got out of bed around 9:00. I began editing my responses to the feedback survey I worked on last night. At 10:00 my counterpart came over to have me help her type up a lesson plan that she's entering into a lesson plan competition. After she left I took the time to brush my teeth, clean my shoes and shave, then went over to the medical school and met with my director to get approval for my annual leave. I then went to Kyrgyz Telekom, which was closed, so I went over to the Russian internet café that I barely ever go to (both my counterpart and I needed a café with a scanner). We submitted her application along with my annual leave request, my VRF form and all my feedback for the national office. Even when my counterpart paid for the costs of her scanning and emailing, the bill came out to 75 som. This is why I rarely go to the Russian café. I know how much internet traffic I use by now since I go to the internet on most days and I've been frequently paying by megabyte. The attendant's claim that I used 13 megabytes was obviously padded. Since my counterpart started out on the computer I didn't check the bit counter like I usually do when I go there. It has become a habit because of their tendency to overcharge.

I stopped by ysyk nan, where I picked up a loaf of "baton" bread (the kind you make garlic bread out of), a new chocolate and peanut pastry that I had never tried (really good considering it only cost 10 som) and what looks like a sesame bar. I'll be really excited if I can buy sesame-bars in-country. I then went to the bazaar, where I picked up some cheese and a loaf of tandoor nan for eating with lentils. I went home to watch the end of a motorcycle race and sleep. When I woke up I made garlic bread and blogged then spent four hours practicing for my business school interview.

The phones worked out this time, and I had my interview. I think it went reasonably well. I felt very prepared… there weren't any questions that completely caught me off guard, and most of the questions I had specifically prepared for. I stumbled briefly when I was describing my biotech experience. I made a long pause and said "excuse me," then started again. I also sort of stumbled when I was describing how I participate in a group environment. My original answer maybe didn't convey enough leadership, so I added a bit more onto my answer to try to convey that more. When I was trying to explain why I specifically wanted to go to Emory I also accidentally implied that the school's career office finds jobs for its students (as opposed to just helping them). I had to backtrack and clarify. I don't think either of those was a major gaff, and I was generally pretty happy with how the interview went. I know that I gave it my best effort.

After the interview I talked to David for awhile on the phone to unwind and debrief. After talking to him I worked on some compressions, blogged, read the Economist and ate the last of the garlic bread. Garlic bread is an odd food… it tears up the inside of your mouth, but at the same time it's really tasty! Right now I have the sweet burn of garlic bread in my mouth.

3/14/2010

Another Poorly Blogged Weekend

I woke up this morning and talked to my mom for over two hours. It made me feel a LOT better about… life. It put things in perspective. I'm doing just fine and I have high standards for myself. Having high standards is a good thing, but I can't beat myself up if I don't quite reach them. I have to keep a sense of perspective.

My mom also did a bunch of research on airline flight prices. It was enough that I should now be able to submit my annual leave request for approval today and maybe buy the tickets as early as tomorrow. Exciting!

Ok, fast forward to Sunday. I had an incredibly busy weekend and so much work on Sunday evening that I couldn't blog. On Friday Thomas and Brad came over for another D&D game. Diego wasn't around this weekend, so I DM'd both of my campaigns, which it just so happened I was able to combine for a one-off session. It worked really well… we moved relatively quickly, we all got along and I think both players had a good time.

On Saturday I announced that my apartment was open to all volunteers for hanging out. About half of the oblast showed up: Taylor, Rachel, Thomas, Brad, Daniel, Chris and Brock. A few others would have come also had they not been out of the oblast. Rachel and Taylor decided to stay the night. We found a store that was selling ice cream (the 8 month ice cream season is just starting up again) and combined it with M&M's to have dessert before dinner. We then made tacos for dinner, which were delicious. Later in the evening we had a dance and sing-along. It was kind of ridiculous.

Sunday. I woke up relatively early and went to the internet, then met Taylor and Rachel at Kanat-Ata to keep them company while they had lunch. I went to the bazaar after that, then home to take a nap. In the afternoon I made a concerted effort to finish this week's issue of the Economist, and I also did my VRF report and filled out a bunch of feedback for the national Peace Corps office. That kept me up until 2:00.

3/10/2010

The "Lame Duck" Era

As you may have gathered from my blog recently, I've been having a tough time. The last few weeks have been a unique hardship in my service for several reasons. First, things seem to be going wrong in multiple aspects of my life. Let me list them: With my personal health I've been having diarrhea more frequently than usual. In the last month or so my apartment has had a 48 hour water outage, a 48 hour power outage, an electrical socket flameout and a huge power bill. This week I had to show up for a subpoena. With my business school applications I haven't heard back from most of my schools, I've gotten rejected from one and I was unable to interview with the one school that has given me a positive response because of a phone glitch. With Peace Corps I wasn't selected as a trainer, which was a major goal of mine for my service. I'm still coping with that disappointment. I know things aren't as bad as they have been in the past with some other volunteers. I've talked to people who at points haven't been able to get out of bed. I can at least do that.

In the past when I've run into problems I've gotten around them by focusing on my work. That hasn't been working this time. I'm at a point in my service where I need to start winding my work down, not starting new projects. I'm really having trouble bringing myself to keep pushing my clubs forward. After experimenting around with having students over to my apartment in order to teach using my computer, I've decided that I'm really not comfortable with it. This is tough, since I have almost no teaching materials to teach with outside of my computer. No textbooks, no grammar books… nothing. Maybe once my resource center opens up (hopefully within a month or two) I can start teaching there using the new books we're going to purchase. I do have some ideas for some other projects I can do, but unfortunately a lot of them require extensive internet use to set up… and internet use is expensive. Maybe I can make progress on those ideas over the next week or two.

In any case, my work has not been calming my mind. What has really been bothering me has been uncertainty about my future. I'm starting to gear up mentally for my backup plan: moving to a new city and getting back into biotech. In a way this would be exciting. I would get to pick a new city to live in, and this time around I would have some advantages with finding a new job: I would have connections, I would have experience and I would have already been through the process once before. On the other hand, I would have to deal with a terrible economy in a boom and bust, capital-intensive industry. That could be bad. I would have to get in touch with some biotech friends to see how they're doing.

Knowing that I would need to do this wouldn't be terrible… I could start researching the job market and really dive into it. What's killing me is the uncertainty. What I want most is to make the step into business school, and until I know the result of that quest I need to stay in that mindset and keep pushing. I also know that if I am going to re-enter the job market, the longer I wait the more promising things will probably be. There would be no reason to leave Kyrgyzstan early.

Really what I need to do is quite simple: nail my business school interviews and hang on until the notification deadlines. Once I know my status with business school I either need to prep for business school in the late summer or start working on the job hunt. Even with this clear though, I still feel really antsy. I feel like I'm ready to move onto the next stage of my life, even though it won't happen for months. Hopefully my European vacation will help.

Patrick once told me that your Peace Corps service takes on a different feel every six months or so. I would divide my service into the following stages: 1) The "PST" era (July – September 2008) 2) The "K15" era (October 2008 – March 2009), when the K15's set the tone for the social scene and there was a lot of drama. This culminated with the "Bishkek 20" incident. 3) The "Sarah" era, (April 2009 – September 2009) where I had a crush on Sarah and eventually dated her until the end of September. I also moved out of my host family and into an apartment right at the beginning of this time period. 4) The "Adversity and Productivity" era (October 2009 – March 2010) where I moved into a different apartment, got assaulted and went through legal proceedings, did all of my business school applications, staged the most effective project of my service and started winning lots of grants.

Each one of these "eras" as I've defined them had a completely different feel. I feel like the current era is almost over. My April vacation is going to form a natural boundary before what I am preemptively labeling the "Lame Duck" era. When I get back from Europe I'm only going to have a few months of my service remaining. I will finish up some projects and probably continue to run clubs and help out other volunteers, but at the same time I'll be focused on the next step of my life and I won't be able to start new projects because of the limited time scale.

I'm not sure where I was going with this, I just felt like I needed to write some of my thoughts out.

I got up earlier than I expected to: around 8:00. I ate breakfast, shaved and got my blog ready for an update. I also wrote an updated care package wish list after the last three packages that I received (thanks Diedas!)

I went to the bazaar internet. The owner was there. I got the latest Economist from him, but he punted me out because he had to go do something for 30 minutes. I bought some units, then went home and read The Economist. I missed last week's. It's good to have it again.

I went back to the internet and used it for an hour and 40 minutes. I sent off a lot of important emails, and I also read up on some Formula One news. I CANNOT WAIT until I am able to see races from the 2010 season. It's going to be awesome! I'm really happy with the direction that Formula One is moving. I can't believe that Kimi Raikkonen left Formula One to join the WRC! That's crazy!

Tottenham have been doing decently well recently. They're in the quarter finals of the FA Cup. They tied the quarter final 0-0 away to Fulham, so they get a home replay now. They're also still doing well in the league, and they won their last league match. This season still has a lot of potential for Tottenham! I hope they can get over their current spate of injuries.

After internet I bought a loaf of local bread, a loaf of "baton" bread (like what you might make garlic bread out of), and some cheese. I went home and ate the rest of my lentils from last night with the local loaf of bread. I then read the Economist a little more and sat down to watch "Rocky". Right as I was starting, my counterpart came over to get a few more tips on a lesson plan competition she is entering.

"Rocky" was surprisingly slow. Very little goes on for most of the movie. The scene where he goes on a date is hilarious. He's so sketchy! "Come inside! Is this a face you can trust or what? I got some exotic animals I want to show you. You want some chocolate? I got some cupcakes in the fridge." The ending also caught me off guard. Although I've never watched the Rocky movies, I know the general plot outline of all of them because they're so ubiquitous. I guess I hadn't realized that Rocky doesn't win the fight at the end of the first movie (sorry if this spoils the movie… I think the statute of limitations for spoilers on "Rocky" has expired). "Adrian! Adrian!"

I started to get kind of down, so I heated up some water for a shower and did a full 45 minutes of yoga. I tackled a new, difficult routine after two of the routines that I've been doing more regularly. I discovered that my deltoids are weak and need some work. I also discovered that balancing in crane position is quite difficult… although this wasn't because of a lack of strength or flexibility; it's just something I need to master.

I took a shower and made cheesy garlic bread. It made me a little queasy, but I think I'm going to keep it down. I took some pepto to aid digestion. I'm done blogging and it's only 10:45. I'm DMing this weekend, so I think I'm going to work on the campaign. I'm also hosting a sort of open house, generic hangout day on Saturday. It should be fun.

3/9/2010

Unable to Catch a Break!

I woke up before my alarm went off. I ate breakfast, got dressed and went to court.

This time it was the oblast court instead of the city court. I showed up with my counterpart. She told the clerk that we had been summoned, and that we had no idea what was going on with the case. The clerk told us to wait. We waited for 40 minutes. I watched a movie on my iPod. After 40 minutes the clerk told us that the person they needed to talk to was in a meeting that was probably going to continue for at least 2 more hours. He told my counterpart that he would call her if we were needed for the case. He never called her.

After the court session I went to the internet, where I met Thomas. I sent off a bunch of letters then bought some manti. Thomas and I hung out at my apartment for awhile eating manti before he left for work. When Thomas arrived at work there was nobody there, so he came back to my place to hang out for awhile longer. He watched me play Rome.

My counterpart came over in the late afternoon so that we could look over the resource center grant again. Despite trying all day, I was unable to find a way to contact Oxford Press in Bishkek… so we still don’t have exact prices for the books we’re ordering. I suppose we’ll just have to leave the grant as-is. It shouldn’t be a problem… we didn’t pad the prices by an exorbitant amount, just enough to allow for small increases from last year’s prices.

I dozed while I watched a motorcycle race. Right as the race was ending, I got diarrhea… again! It must have been from the manti. I just cannot seem to catch a break these last few weeks! I wonder when something good is going to happen to me in either my personal life or with regards to my future after Peace Corps? At least I’m winning lots of grants.

I decided to do a really thorough housecleaning and read through all of the stuff that Peace Corps has sent me recently. I’m going to host an open day at my apartment this weekend where everyone in the oblast is invited to drop by and hang out. I sent out some texts today asking if people would be interested in something like this, and I got a good response.

I made lentils and ate them with bread. I hope that meal digests properly. In the evening I played more Rome, and I finally beat the Goth campaign. I’m not immediately inspired to play another campaign in the Barbarians expansion or start the Alexander expansion, and Rome is taking up a ton of space on my hard drive so I might uninstall it and play something else. I have a lot of other games that I need to get to.

I got to bed late… the power has been staying on all night for the last few nights, and I need to re-discipline myself to go to bed earlier.

By the way, only $5 has been donated to my outhouse project so far. I know there are a lot of people reading this blog… so donate you stingy people!

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/115

3/8/2010

No Interview

I planned my entire day today around my Emory interview. I woke up at 8:00. I practiced answering questions. I called my friend Peter to get interview tips. I went to the internet and checked my email. I sent out a bunch of emails related to my Europe trip… I think I might finally have a set of dates that will work for everyone.

I was tired since the power had stayed on last night and I stayed up late to take advantage of it. I decided to nap. I slept until about 5:00. At 5:00 I started preparing for the interview again. I talked to the Peace Corps Admin Officer to get some tips. I practiced answering questions for a long time. Right before the interview was about to start I called Laura to chat for awhile and get warmed up.

Then the interview phone call never came. After ten minutes I tried calling the person at Emory who had scheduled the interview with me, but she was out of the office. After twenty minutes I called my dad, who told me to wait until 30 minutes had passed to call my interviewer directly. At 30 minutes I called my interviewer. It took me two tries to get ahold of her. Apparently she hadn’t been able to get through on my cell phone. I gave her my other number and had her call me back, but that number didn’t work either. Since I didn’t have enough units on my international sim card to last for the entire interview, I ended up having to postpone the interview for a week! I’m REALLY disappointed. I apologized profusely over the phone. My interviewer assured me that everything was ok, and that there wouldn’t be any problems. She was really nice.

This was not the conclusion to the day that I was hoping for.

3/7/2010

Cheaper Than Lentils

I woke up late this morning after my rough night last night. I did a little interview prep in the morning then made it out of the house by 11:00. The bazaar internet wasn’t great today, but I managed to finish the necessary stuff without resorting to Kyrgyz Telekom. It required some patience. My parents called me just as I was finishing up. I bought some bread and walked home, then sat down and did mock interview questions with them for awhile. I’m feeling better about my interview each time I practice.

I managed to rouse myself and venture back to the bazaar again. I bought baking powder and an egg so that I could make cornbread in the evening. I’m going to be spending a lot on international calling and internet this weekend, so I’m trying to keep my expenses as low as possible. I would have cooked lentils, but I’m actually almost out of them and buying cornbread ingredients was cheaper than buying more lentils. I stopped by the internet briefly to shoot off another email related to my Europe trip. The dates keep changing! I think I have the dates finally nailed down now… but I’ll need to send off another round of emails to confirm them with everyone.

I came home and played Rome for a bit. Michael came over to get some more TV shows and we chatted for awhile. After he left I played Rome some more until 8:00. At 8:00 I started heating water for laundry, watched an episode of “Better Off Ted” and took a short nap, then did laundry and made cornbread. During that process I managed to finish the last episode of Top Gear Season 6… only three more seasons to go! I love Top Gear, and I’ve been slowly rationing it throughout my entire service since nobody seems to want to send it to me.

Later in the evening I blogged, then did yoga until the power cut.

3/6/2010

One Rejection, Third Subpoena

We played D&D yesterday. It was a good game. I didn’t have anything too exciting to write about in the morning before the games started, and I’m behind on blogging so I need to catch up.

We had stayed up pretty late last night talking about, of all things, philosophy, so we all slept in pretty late this morning. People milled around my house until about 1:00. Brad used my new spices to make eggs and meat, and it ended up smelling strangely like crawfish. There’s a reason that I don’t often eat the “kielbasa” meat here… I don’t trust it.

I went to the internet. Bazaar internet started out acceptable, but then it slowed to a crawl and I had to move to Kyrgyz Telekom. I spent a total of 58 som on the internet today, most of which had to do with researching business school interview techniques and sending emails related to my euro trip.

I got some news on the internet. I got rejected from MIT, well before the notification date. The MIT application for me had a few things I was worried about. First, I took a high-risk high-reward strategy with one of the essays… and apparently that didn’t work. Second, the MIT application had nowhere for me to talk about where I had been or where I wanted to go with my career. It was really short, and it only wanted numbers and three short essays describing stories and anecdotes. Since my route to business school is non-traditional, I never had a chance to make my pitch and tell them what I cared about and where I wanted to go. I poured my heart into my business school applications and gave them my absolute best effort, but even when I had done that with MIT I looked at the application and said “that’s not me, and I have no idea how I could make it talk about me given this format. I tried my best.” I’m not sure what else I could have done!

I also found out that another grant had been approved. It looks like Talas Oblast Lyceum Complex is getting an English resource center.

I eventually made it back home. Thomas stayed to help me do some mock interviewing and to help me come up with good answers to common interview questions. I also had some militia show up at my door and give me another subpoena… once again with my name on the document, but the wrong address. I have no idea what it’s for, but it looks like I’m going to Kyrgyz court again! It really seems like nothing is going right in my life EXCEPT for my work in Kyrgyzstan. I really wish that something would go right in any other aspect of my life, especially with my future after Peace Corps.

I really started practicing hard for my interview today. I spent a lot of time after Thomas left reading guides that I had downloaded online and talking to myself. I even called a friend in America for 30 minutes to get some tips.

For dinner I ended up making cheesy potatoes and drinking some Kefir that had been open in my fridge for a few days. I was pretty tired after the phone call to America, and I ended up falling asleep in my clothes without brushing my teeth or exercising or anything. I woke up at 3:30 AM with another round of gut-purging diarrhea.

3/4/2010

Two Bad Weeks

I slept in until around 10:00 today. I got dressed and ate breakfast. I spent some time rehearsing answering questions about the things on my resume. My landlord’s husband came over around 11:00 to collect the rent. I received an abnormally high power bill (like three times higher than it should be) about a week ago, so I showed it to him and asked him if he could clarify. He went to get the “controller” and said he would be back in over an hour. I took the opportunity to use the internet.

The bazaar café was hopelessly slow today, so I went to Kyrgyz Telekom. I spent 71 som… quite a bit, but I think it was worth it. I sent a lot of emails off. I looked at new updates on ClearAdmit, which is really something that I think I should stop doing. It just makes me worried and depressed. Trying to track the interview process through anecdotal evidence on ClearAdmit is just going to make me stressed and will have no bearing on whether or not I get in to business school.

Seeing all of these discouraging signs from business schools has made me think really hard about the future. What if Emory doesn’t work out? I’m going to go home, move out pretty directly and try to find a job in biotech, since that’s really the best means I have of supporting myself. That would involve a lot of uncertainty and another uncomfortable spell moving into a new city without a job or an apartment. I would probably do the Bay Area this time around, since I think it’s my favorite part of the country and I have some family in the area that I could stay with occasionally.

When I got back from the internet my landlord’s husband was arguing with the controller in the staircase. I spent over 30 minutes talking to the two of them about the power bill, and I had to get Peace Corps on the phone to mediate and translate. The issue is far from resolved, and unfortunately I can’t write about it without violating the blog policy. Suffice to say that it’s a big, unwelcome headache.

I had one of my second year classes over in the late afternoon to do some baking. The class got delayed because of the power bill argument. I made them interpret my cornbread recipe in English with only minimal translational help. During the down, baking time we watched a few minutes of “Friends” which now has subtitles that I downloaded from the internet.

I had a bad evening. It’s really been a bad week to go with my last week which was also bad. Two bad weeks! I need to vacation sooner rather than later. At least this week I seem to have gotten a lot of work done. I played a lot of Rome and texted people. I did yoga at 10, which was great. I’m getting into some harder routines now that are really kicking my butt. I need to work on stretching my lower back and hamstrings every day, they’re not stretchy enough to do all of the positions in the new routines. I also listened to some Ben Harper and got to bed by 12.

3/3/2010

Care Packages are Like London Buses

I woke up at 7:45 for another 8:30 class this morning. This one went really well. I started it a bit early in order to give us a little bit more time than yesterday. I did this because today’s topic was really difficult: present perfect. I’ve taught present perfect to several different groups now and I’ve gotten better at explaining it each time, but it’s still a really hard concept to explain that doesn’t have a lot of direct equivalents in Kyrgyz. To their credit, the students that were there (a solid core group of 5 of the best first years from the group I’ve been teaching) pretty much got it. We didn’t delve into question or negative structures, but they were able to answer questions and translate sentences by the end of the class.

After class I went to the Altyn Kazyk and picked up some honey to put on my biscuits from last night. I went home and slept for a while longer. On my way out of school a teacher had informed me that I had packages at the post office, so I went to pick those up before my 12:00 second year class. I had three packages, all from the Dieda’s (my cousins) in LA. Three packages! It was great stuff too: a ton of beef jerky, a ton of protein powder and protein pills (which I had never considered), Gatorade, sugar-free electrolyte packs (good if you’re watching your weight, which I am not -_-, but also still great for diarrhea), THREE boxes of cornmeal (which may well last me until the end of my service), FOUR boxes of Breton crackers, a pack of Trader Joe’s chips, lots of new, amazing spices, moisturizer for shaving, some music on DVD, plenty of American notebooks to last me until the end of my service, a whole case of Sweet and Salty granola bars and six pairs of white socks… which I will need come summer time, since most of my white socks are either thin and starting to develop holes, or splotched with brown from all the dirt and dust here. I was blown away. This was by far the largest care package that I have received in Kyrgyzstan.

Hauling these three boxes from the post office was quite a chore. I had to stop and rest three times. I wasn’t expecting quite so many packages to come at once (usually I just get one at a time), so this made me late for my second year lesson. For the lesson, I brought along one of the boxes, plopped it down on the table and said “I don’t know what’s in here, but this will be useful practice. You need to translate whatever is on these packages. This will be useful because you’ll have to do stuff like this if you ever go into an American store.” They thought that the contents of the box were really interesting. We decided to meet again tomorrow at my place to bake cornbread.

I napped again for a little while in the afternoon then shaved, washed dishes, blogged and went to the bazaar to buy a kilo of chicken. I stopped by the internet café. They haven’t been able to get the Economist this week, so it looks like I’m going to miss an issue. I went without internet today, which really saved me a bunch of money.

Brock came over in the evening. We drank some beers and made a spicy chicken dish using three of the new spice bottles. It turned out pretty well, but Brock decided to cook it in butter. The butter was a bit much for me. If I did it again I think I would try to find a different liquid to cook it in, or maybe try baking the chicken or frying it outside of liquid.

Brock and I also watched two more MotoGP races. We’re one race away from being caught up for when Dan’s care package arrives (hopefully) over the next few weeks.

3/2/2010

Bad Indicators

It snowed last night. I got up at 7:45 for my early morning class, and by the time I got up the snow was already completely melted off the ground and the roofs were dripping. It was a testament to how much warmer it has become over the last week. In mid-February snow would have only melted at the peak of the day. Unfortunately last night’s snow absolutely drenched my clothes that were out on the line.

For my 8:30 first year lesson I taught about “if”. Teaching about “if” is a pretty simple lesson, since the grammar is actually easier in English than it is in Kyrgyz. The kids had it down after about 15 minutes, and I really struggled to fill time. Since the English classroom was being used by my counterpart I taught the lesson in my first year group’s downstairs classroom. By about 9:15 other students were filtering in and talking to each other and it was becoming hard to teach. The kids had the topic down, so I just ended the lesson.

Probably the hardest part about teaching “if” is coming up with sentences that don’t slip into subjunctive!

I went home and played Rome: Total War for awhile. The Vandals decided to roll into northern Italy, which was the strongest part of my new Gothic nation. Remembering how much grief the Vandals had given me during my first three failed attempts at playing the Goths, I took my newly built regular armies and slaughtered the entire Vandal nomadic civilization except for one noble family member who managed to get away.

I was expecting to meet my counterpart to check up on the construction of the Talas lyceum outhouse at 11, but the meeting got pushed back until 3. I played Rome for a little while longer then met Thomas at 12. We got gamburgers and talked for an hour or two. I played a little more Rome before meeting my counterpart at 3.

The construction site was out on the edge of the town by the Turkish lyceum, which was an inconveniently far distance to walk. We tried to take a 5 som city marshutka, which I have almost never done since moving to Talas (I don’t even know where the routes go). After waiting for over twenty minutes, we broke down and got a 10 som cab. The marshutka arrived just as we were pulling away. Fortunately, we had very little to do at the construction site (basically just check up on the outhouse, which looked great, and pay the guy the materials money), so by the time we were done the same marshutka was heading back along its route and we were able to immediately catch a ride home. I unfortunately forgot my camera… it would have been nice to get a picture of the outhouse construction in-progress.

I went from the marshutka stop to town center and bought onions, bread, butter, kefir and some phone units. At the Altyn Kazyk I saw Mass Effect 2 for sale. I was really tempted to buy it, but I convinced myself that I need to finish some other games first. I used the internet for awhile. I went on ClearAdmit and checked some news updates from the business school admission processes. It sounds like most of the interview invites for Berkeley and Harvard are already out. There is still a chance that I will get a late interview, but it doesn’t look good. I’m holding onto the hope that they do their hard-to-reach, overseas interviews last. MIT and Stanford haven’t sent out the majority of their interview invites yet.

I played a bunch more Rome in the evening. I should be in a strong position to finish out the game as the Vandals. I still need to take on the Huns, the Roxolani and the Eastern Romans, but I’m in a really strong position and I shouldn’t have to fight more than one of them at a time. I’ve discovered the efficacy of assassins… they’re quite useful, especially for taking out nomadic armies.

I stopped playing Rome at about 10:20. I used the rest of my evening to bake biscuits, which was a good decision.

3/01/2010

Outhouse Go

Today was a good, productive day. I got out of the house at 10:00. I went to the medical school and arranged to teach some first-year lessons Tuesday and Wednesday in the early morning. I next went to the bank to pick up my March living allowance. With my Bishkek trip and big heating bill I managed to almost exactly break even for the month of February. My grant money came in. I tried to pick it up, but it turned out I needed my American passport.

I checked for packages at the post office then went to the bazaar internet café. The power seemed to be out in the entire bazaar area, so that was a no-go. I went home for a little while. I started the movie “Candy,” which was one of Heath Ledger’s last movies. I took a twenty minute nap and ate a quick snack, then went back to the bank. This time I managed to pick up the grant money. It looks like we should start construction this week on the outhouse! Be sure to donate!

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/115

I was going to meet one of my students at the internet café to help her fill out an application for a computer-learning program. She called me to tell me she was in Bishkek. Today was the deadline, so it looks like she won’t be able to apply… maybe I’ll email them or something to see if they’ll accept a late application. I went ahead and did some internet stuff at Kyrgyz Telekom. I sent out some more emails to plan for my Europe trip.

I came home. My counterpart came over to do some planning for grants and seminars that we want to accomplish this spring.

I finished watching “Candy”. It was a slow character study… which is a genre of film that I usually don’t like… but it was still alright. It’s about a guy who falls in love with and marries a gorgeous woman who turns into a drug junkie and slowly drags him down with her. It was depressing, but at the same time I wanted to give the characters a good shake and say “You live in Australia! Look at all the luxuries you have! Don’t waste your life like that!”

I played some more Rome: Total War Barbarian Invasion. I had to backtrack to an earlier save, but my game as the Goths seems to be turning out alright. I’ve managed to stabilize my finances, and I’m slowly expanding northwards and pounding down opposing armies. I made chicken for dinner, and this time it turned out really well. Watching Brock make it when we played Settler’s of Catan really provided me with some good tips.

I’ve decided to start doing yoga at least every other day. I did about 35 minutes tonight, and it felt amazing! I might start doing it every day just because it makes me feel so good. I finished blogging by 11:35 and I played Rome for a little longer before the power cut.

2/28/2010

The Beginnings of the Euro Trip

The only thing that I wanted to do today was finish a long letter to Peace Corps and spend a ton of time on the internet. I spent the morning editing the letter to make it perfect. I got to the internet around 12 and stayed on it for three hours. I sent off the letter (which related to some ongoing discussions I’ve been having with the country director). I updated a lot of correspondence, checked the news, started reading about business school interviews, got the money transfer number for my grant project and started vacation planning. I’m tentatively targeting April as a time for me to use up the rest of my annual leave days. Fortunately plane tickets right now are really cheap, so I might be able to get to several countries in Europe. It’s exciting planning a trip! I’d really like to go to Austria, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and England, but I know that I probably will only have time for 2-3 of those places. I sent out some emails to the people I might be visiting on vacation.

After internet I picked up some bread and chicken and headed home. I fell asleep watching a motorcycle race. I woke up and finished it, then ate the rest of my leftover curry.

For once, I didn’t have a lot hanging over me in the evening. I got a really early start on blogging. I sat down and finally beat Mass Effect. I was really proud that I managed to beat the entire game in Russian! After that I talked to my parents on the phone for an hour and a half. I mostly had them search online for a bunch of different plane tickets around Europe. I’m starting to get really excited about my Europe Trip! I think the money is going to work out.

2/27/2010

No PCVT

Not too much to write about yesterday. I went to the internet and sent off my Economist internship application in the morning. I went to Romashka’s to hang out with Annie and Taylor, then went home and prepared for people to come for D&D. While I was home I got a call from Peace Corps, telling me that I had not been selected as a PCVT. I am (notice the present tense, a day later) really upset about this. The decision didn’t make sense to me, and I was told there was a heated debate among the staff about whether or not I should be selected. Calling me personally to tell me about the decision was even a little extraordinary… even the successful candidates only got emails.

I had been trying to become a K18 PCVT ever since getting caught up in the “Bishkek 20” incident last March which prevented me from being a K17 PCVT. I simply can’t wrap my head around it. I’ve gone through the whole range of emotions, but I’ve focused a lot on anger towards Peace Corps and apathy towards my work here. I know in my head that neither one of those is going to be a very productive path, so I’ve been trying to come up with a new plan for the rest of my service over the last day or so. Even writing about it is making me angry again, so I had better change topics.

Fortunately having a 24-hour D&D session with some of my best friends in-country was one of the best possible things that could have happened to me immediately after receiving this news. We played D&D for the rest of the evening, the next morning and into the afternoon. Unfortunately my warden character got killed by an evistro demon, so I had to make a new one. I rolled a cleric.

After everyone left I took a late shopping trip to the bazaar to pick up flour, baking powder, potatoes and garlic. I took a shower and made cheesy potatoes for dinner. I also watched a motorcycle race, did some cleaning and towards the end of the evening I tried out one of the yoga videos that is on my external hard drive. I did 40 minutes of yoga and it felt great! It’s like getting a workout, yet simultaneously feeling totally relaxed. The breathing kept throwing me off. It seemed like every time the person on the video would say “breathe in” I would be in the process of breathing out, and vice versa. Maybe I’ll take a yoga class when I get back to America.

2/24/2010

One Interview

I was destroyed this morning. Because of a combination of recovering from illness and the following evening’s men’s day celebrations I was barely able to get out of bed until noon. I ate bread, peanut butter and nutella for breakfast and watched a motorcycle race and some episodes of “Better Off Ted” in my room. I really liked the first few episodes of “Better Off Ted.” It’s about a guy who works for a huge, vaguely evil corporation. He has to manage his research team, struggle with his boss to not do anything too evil and raise his young daughter whose mother abandoned them to do development work in Africa. It fits my sense of humor.

I spent awhile in the early afternoon compressing files then set about getting my life back in order. I blogged and washed all the dishes from last night. I also shaved and took out the trash.

I went to the bazaar to use the internet and buy bread and cheese. I stayed on the internet for about an hour. Today felt weird. It was a really gloomy day, and the streets and bazaar both seemed unusually empty. The bazaar closed down early. By the time I bought cheese at 5:00 almost everything was closed.

I got my power bill for the last month (which was really snowy and cold). 1000 som. Ouch! I’m going to start turning down the heat a bit now that it has warmed up.

At home I napped some more and watched another motorcycle race. I then buckled down and did a lot of work on my article for the Economist internship I’m applying for. I finished all of my research and wrote over half of the article. I was eventually interrupted by a phone call from Emory… saying that they want to interview me! I’m REALLY excited about this. This is the first that I’ve heard back from any of the business schools that I have applied to, and it gives me a lot of hope for the future. I’m going to be practicing for my interview over the next week and a half.

I texted a bunch of people with the news and called America, but I only got voice mail. I couldn’t concentrate on my article anymore, so I ate the lentils I had been slowly cooking all evening and read the Economist. I got to bed around midnight.

2/25/2010

Bad Oatmeal

I had a bad today. It didn’t start bad. I got up at around 9:00 and had a productive start, reading the Economist and working on my internship application. I unfortunately received a bad batch of oatmeal last time I went to the bazaar. I checked with the seller today, and she told me to bring it back and show it to her. I guess I’ll do that tomorrow.

I was making great progress on my application, but the power cut on me at 12:30. I left my apartment and went to the internet. The bazaar café’s internet was barely working, so I went to Kyrgyz Telekom. Even Kyrgyz Telekom’s internet was sluggish, and on top of that the guy at the café was rude.

At the internet I got into an email discussion with the safety and security officer over some comments she had made to me and some things that she had posted on the facebook board that I disagreed with. This culminated in a speaker-phone call with her and the country director later in the afternoon. There are a lot of issues still to be resolved, and this weighed on my mind in the afternoon and made it hard to focus on other tasks.

Just to make things even more aggravating, there was a power cut while I was at Kyrgyz Telekom which made me re-start a letter, and the internet completely died before I was able to finish everything. I did see that Tottenham saw off Bolton pretty easily in the FA Cup, 4-0. Two more goals to Pavluchenko. I’m really glad that he’s doing well… I’ve always liked him.

I got my mind off of security stuff by watching motorcycle racing. I was later able to focus on my internship application. It’s done… I’ll need to go over it with a fine comb in the morning. It still isn’t perfect, but given the limited time that I gave myself to complete it I think it’s still going to be pretty good.

I made lentils and watched more motorcycle racing later in the evening. I’ve got a really busy morning ahead of me tomorrow.

2/23/2010

Krunk

I got out of the house by 10:00 to get a haircut. I had let my hair get too long. I’m going to try to get it cut sooner next time.

After my haircut I stopped by the internet and browsed for awhile. The internet was really fast today. I also bought chicken and units.

Annie stopped by in the afternoon to pick up a program that will help her connect to the internet through her cell phone. I had downloaded it for her in Bishkek.

Brock, Stephany and Corey came over in the afternoon to play Settlers of Catan. Stephany had brought a portable version of the game with her from America. I hadn’t played Settlers in ages! Brock won the first game. We took a break to cook some chicken and pick up some snacks at the store.

There was no school today since today was a Russian holiday called “Men’s Day.” We brought some beer in for the second game. I won the second game by snatching the longest road and then developing my cities before anybody else could take it back from me. Stephany and Corey headed out right before it got dark.

Brock stayed over to watch motorcycle racing. We watched two full MotoGP races and invented drinking games to go along with them. He actually ended up getting me really drunk, which I suppose was an appropriate way to celebrate Men’s Day. It was the drunkest that I’ve been in a long time… I think since last September in Beijing, or maybe even longer.

2/22/2010

Rain Snap

(These blog entries are going to be short. I’m writing them all at once)

I got up early on Friday morning, before 8:00. I spent the morning finishing up the week’s Economist issue, packing for Bishkek, taking a shower and doing a little bit of cleaning. Some other volunteers are going to stay in my apartment over the weekend, so I wanted to get it ready for them.

I got a ride into Bishkek with Inessa. It was really nice to be able to ride in a Peace Corps vehicle, especially with how snowy the mountain passes are. I got to Anthony’s village around 7:00 and hung out with him for the rest of the evening. We watched the first half of the version of “Titanic” that was commented on by the Mystery Science Theater guys in their new incarnation that comments on famous and recent films.

Saturday morning was a bit slow. John came over and the three of us talked for awhile and swapped movies. All three of us are really worried about volunteer safety. In the afternoon we went to a Georgian restaurant and I swung by the bazaar. I’ve gotten to the point in my service where I can start thinking about stocking up on supplies like toothpaste and shaving cream until the end of my service. I bought enough toothpaste so that I will definitely be set until I go back to the developed world.

In the late afternoon I headed into Bishkek. I had dinner at an Italian restaurant with Taylor. Either the Italian food or the Georgian food made me have diarrhea. I’m not sure which it was. When I eat rich, strange foods after cooking (mostly light food) for myself in Talas for a long time I sometimes get sick. I went back to Taylor’s hotel and chatted with her, Ginger and Candy for awhile then went out to a bar with some other volunteers.

It was a really fun bar. Since I had been sick only a few hours earlier I decided not to drink anything, but even without drinking I started to feel nauseous a little bit after 11:00. I stayed outside for awhile to catch some fresh air and went back to the village in the first taxi of people that wanted to go home. Despite this, it was still a really fun night out! I got to see a lot of people and sing karaoke.

On Sunday morning I woke up feeling terrible. I felt nauseous, and I couldn’t imagine traveling by marshutka and taxi for six hours to get back to Talas. I ended up staying at Anthony’s and going back to sleep. Around noon I called my program manager and the Peace Corps doctors and got permission to stay in Chui for another day on medical leave.

I slept for most of the daylight hours. In the afternoon I went to the store to buy some light foods (bread, yogurt and kefir) and watched a few hours of Top Gear. I napped some more until Anthony came home. We watched the rest of Titanic. In the evening I decided to go over to Laura’s place to talk to some other volunteers. I ended up crashing there.

Monday morning I got up at 7:00. I made my way back to Anthony’s, where I packed up all of my stuff and headed into Bishkek. I spent an hour or two in the resource center taking advantage of the high-speed internet to download some articles that would have been very difficult for me to download in Talas. I got to the vakzal by noon and found a taxi pretty directly.

The weather in Kyrgyzstan improved drastically while I was in Chui. The jailoo was still pretty slow, but the Talas and Bishkek sides of both passes on the way home were mostly clear. It was raining in Talas when I got home around 5:00, but the fact that it was raining and not snowing at that late hour was great news. I went to Brock’s to get my key, and I ended up staying for about an hour to help Brock and Daniel with computer stuff. At home I slowly unpacked. I read a bit of the Economist. I made myself some pasta with a leftover sauce that my weekend house-sitters had made (which ended up being incredibly spicy)! I also called someone for girl advice. In the later evening I listened to music and did some laundry. The bar that I went to in Bishkek was incredibly smoky. The sweater that I wore there was so disgusting that I had to use up two complete tubs of soapy water to get all of the grimy smoke out of it. The power didn’t cut at midnight, but I was really tired so I went to bed anyway.

I managed to finish the history podcast series on the Crusades that I’ve been listening to for the last few weeks. The Crusades were a really brutal, dark period in western history with very few heroes. It wasn’t very uplifting.

I also listened to the Fratellis album “Costello Music” for the first time in awhile. Great album! You should go listen to it.

Even with all the sickness, this was a good weekend. My goal in going to Bishkek was to see some new faces, since I hadn’t been out of Talas Oblast for three whole months. I got to see a lot of people and I had a great time. Success.

Remember to donate to my outhouse project at:

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/115

Thanks!

- Cameron

2/18/2010

The Goths, Again

I had a slow morning that involved lots of reading and a little bit more Rome. I still didn’t quite manage to beat the main campaign.

I spent nearly two hours on the internet. I sent a lot of emails and browsed a lot of different things. At the bazaar I picked up oatmeal and bread. Today was finally a day where I managed to stay under my daily budget. I’ll need a few more of those when I get back from Bishkek (oh, right, I’m going to Bishkek tomorrow! It has been three months in Talas with no travel.)

At 2:00 I met with my director and Inessa (who is in town) to talk about the last few projects that I’m planning and work out some details about my potential replacement. We showed her the poster that we’ve been making to summarize all of our nutrition seminars, and I think she really liked it.

I went home after this meeting. I was absolutely determined to beat Rome, and it actually didn’t take me that long to finish the game. Once I beat it, I decided to start a game in the Rome: Total War Barbarians expansion. Now that I had mastered the original game, I decided to try playing as the Goths again (avid readers might recall me attempting this last fall). Even with my newfound skills, the Goth campaign is still really hard! I found myself overrun by Huns and Vandals (just like last time), so I had to re-start the game. On the re-start I used up all of my money building permanent (non-horde) units, then turned myself into a horde as soon as the vandals arrived, then moved my entire population to the Italian peninsula and sacked three Western Roman cities. I have my finances sorted out… barely, and I’m scrambling to get some garrison troops from the north to the south in order to keep order in my third city (and there’s a small rebel army blocking the reinforcements’ path). If I can manage that, I should have a good base from which to build the rest of the campaign. It has taken me five tries to get this far on the Goth campaign.

I was so obsessed with succeeding at the Goth campaign that I played until 11:00! I still have a lot of stuff that I would like to take care of before I leave for Bishkek tomorrow. Blogging was the second thing on my list. The first was drying all of my laundry. When I went to get my laundry off the line I discovered that it was soaking wet. It was wetter than when I hung it up! The snow around town has been melting for two or three days straight now, and the streets are covered with puddles and slush. I guess there has been a lot of runoff from the roof too, which drips directly onto my balcony clothesline. I wrung the clothes out again and put them straight on my heaters, which actually dried them out surprisingly quickly. It makes me wonder if I should even bother with winter line-drying in the future.

2/17/2010

Turtleneck

I got up a bit late this morning. I spent awhile reading the Economist. I managed to get out the door by 11:00. I went straight to the medical school, where I met with my first year group and scheduled an afternoon lesson. I went to the bazaar internet café, but after only a few minutes one of the wall sockets exploded and all of the computers lost power. I walked to the Altyn Kazyk to get units then made the trip up to Kyrgyz Telekom to finish up my internet usage. There wasn’t a whole lot to do. I sent off a few more emails that I’ve been meaning to send for awhile. I checked them off my “to-do” list.

I walked back to the bazaar, where I bought a new extension cord and some bread. I went over my daily spending target again today, but only by about 52 som, which wasn’t at all bad considering how much the extension cord cost. I went back home and rested for a few minutes then taught my lesson at 1:00.

There was pretty good attendance today. A core group has definitely formed ever since I moved the class up to the English classroom. I worked more on past tense today, and I also introduced some new words for different types of clothing. A lot of the girls were wearing turtleneck sweaters, which produced some laughs when I gave them the literal translation for the word.

I have one really stellar student in my first year group. She has an amazing talent for picking up language, but she is such a fast learner that she has started to instantly translate everything that I say and spout out the answers when I direct questions at other students. This is a common problem in Kyrgyzstan… it’s part of the culture here that students assist each other… but with language learning it can become really detrimental, since many students will simply parrot the response that one of the good students in the class tells them. Because of this a lot of students end up not learning anything. It was starting to become a big problem today. I told my good student repeatedly to stop helping other students, but she would start blurting out answers again immediately. She was completely ignoring me. After the fifth time that I told her to stop giving people answers, I threw my cleaning rag at her. It was a really light throw and the rag was soft and only mildly damp. It hit her in the cheek. She was surprised and really embarrassed, and she didn’t help another student for the rest of the class. I felt bad about resorting to throwing a rag.

My English teaching differs from that of TEFL volunteers in several ways. First, I teach alone, without a counterpart. Counterparts are usually in charge of maintaining order, so I have had to assume this responsibility. Second, I only teach optional classes. When I have students that act disruptively or do not attend class regularly, I simply kick them out. I’ve never kicked out a student for lack of ability, but I also teach my classes at a fast pace and most of the time the slower students stop coming.

Having a good student act disruptively poses a new challenge for me. I don’t want to kick my best student out of the class, but I also can’t allow her to destroy the learning opportunities for the other students or undermine my authority by blatantly ignoring me. The rag throw solved the problem today. She clearly felt bad and realized that she was out of line… but if it’s a problem in the future I might have to take harsher measures, like making her leave a lesson. I hope it doesn’t come to that. It would really be a shame!

At home I took a nap then spent a lot of the evening attempting to finally beat the campaign mode in Rome: Total War. I didn’t quite manage it.

2/16/2010

Socket Flameout

I got up around 8:00. I set about doing some compressions and eating breakfast. As I was walking through the living room, I noticed that it felt unusually cold. I went over to the heater and discovered that it wasn’t giving off any heat! This alarmed me, since I rely on that heater to make my apartment habitable and the heater also cost me a lot of money. It seemed to be plugged in correctly. There are several large carpets hanging on my walls, and they conceal two of my exposed electric sockets that have no plastic cover. I pulled back the carpet and discovered that my extension cord plug had partially melted and that there were scorch marks on the wall. Something happened in the early morning (possibly when the power turned back on) that caused the socket to flame out. I was actually probably really lucky that it didn’t set the carpet on fire. I had always looked at those carpets and thought that they might be a potential fire hazard.

I called my landlord. She sent over her husband, who turned out to be a wonderful older Kyrgyz man (I had never met him before). During the day he not only fixed the socket in the living room but also repaired the socket in the kitchen. He cleaned up all the dust from the wall, filled the plaster back in and even emptied my trash. He also, oddly, took away all of the nice screw-top peanut butter jars that I had been saving. They were for my old landlord. I’m not sure if they got thrown away or requisitioned. Either way, I didn’t need them. We talked about America. Apparently he had been there on a farmer’s exchange program and knew a few words of English.

I’ll need to buy a new extension cord tomorrow. My old one is fried. I’ve been going over my daily budget for several days in a row recently, and a new extension cord is more than a day’s living allowance to buy. Some of this profligacy has been due to a lot of internet expenses this week, but I’ve also been eating out and spending a lot on food. I hope I can find ways to reel my in-site spending in for the rest of the month.

I headed out around noon to meet Amber and Matt for lunch. We went to Asia café and ate duck schnitzel. We sat around and talked for a really long time afterward. I left at about 3:00 to use the internet briefly at Kyrgyz Telekom, pick up my newly downloaded issue of the Economist and grab my hard drives. I got back to Kristen’s a bit late for the health meeting. Matt talked about ideas for a new volunteer health handbook that is being made. It was really productive. People hung around afterwards to talk, and we eventually made our way to Kok-Tom for another meal out. I wanted to minimize my spending, so I just ordered a beer and fries. I walked home with Brock.

In the evening I read the Economist for awhile, warmed up some soup, shaved and compressed movies. I’m really glad that I was able to handle my apartment’s third utility crisis in less than a month with a minimum amount of stress today.

2/15/2010

Hedging Against Regret

I had a bit of a slow start to the morning. I managed to get out to the internet around 11:30. It was fast today, which nearly made up for how much trouble I had yesterday. I arranged with the owner for him to download the newest Economist issue in the evening when traffic is low. I also checked the news and my email. The Talas Lyceum Complex toilet project grant was approved! It looks like I’ll have a cool work project to take up a lot of my time over the next week or two. The money will be coming in next week.

The way that Appropriate Projects works is that they pre-fund the project ($500) and then post an advertisement for it on their website to ask for donations. If you would like to contribute to this outhouse project, go to

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/115.

I know there are a lot of blog readers out there. This is your chance to support me in my Peace Corps service! (Although if you’re a K18, save your money… you’re going to need it here… but tell your friends and family!).

I also went to a shoe repair guy this morning (a shoe repair guy is a cobbler, right? I don’t use the word cobbler very often). When I came to Kyrgyzstan I brought along a pair of black Merrill shoes that I’ve been using for my entire service. I absolutely love them, but they’ve been through a lot. When I was down in Jalalabad last May the leather around the edge of the heel on the left shoe started to peel away. I took it to a repair place. The guy down in Jalalabad fixed it with super glue. This fall the part that had been fixed started to peel off again, and it had gotten so bad that it needed to be repaired again.

When I showed up the guy told me that it’s a bad idea to fix shoes with glue, because it dries over the leather and makes difficult to fix. I explained that I hadn’t glued it myself, but that a bad shoe repair guy in Jalalabad had done it that way. He told me he would fix it for 20 som.

20 som! That’s less than 50 cents! This is one of the very rare times in Kyrgyzstan where I’ve felt really bad for paying a price that I feel is too low, even on a Peace Corps salary. Many people try to rip off foreigners here, and it’s a constant struggle to get fair prices. This guy did a great job on my shoe, salvaging the glued-over leather and sewing the heel part back together. It was twenty times better than anything I could have done myself, and I really felt like I should have been charged more for the work. I felt really bad for the guy - it looked like he had some medical problems – but simply giving him extra money could have started all sorts of problems. Word could have spread that volunteers overpay, which could undo months of hard negotiating in the bazaar. I’m definitely going to recommend him to the other volunteers if they ever need shoe repair. I want to give him more business.

It was a little warmer during the height of the day today. There was some more melting. I was able to see pieces of pavement in a few places. It got really cold in the afternoon though.

It’s been so cold for the last 10 days that it has become really hard to motivate myself to get out of my apartment. I ended up watching a motorcycle race and taking a nap. Brock came over for a little while. I had a pretty productive evening. I typed up a nutrition lesson plan for a meeting tomorrow with Matt, I cleaned the inside of my toilet and bath tub (they both really needed it), I made peanut butter soup, I took a shower and I watched the movie “Up”.

“Up” was decent. Pixar had a lot to live up to after “Ratatouille” and “Wall-E”. “Up” wasn’t as good as those movies, but it was still pretty good. I know I’ve talked about this before, but Peace Corps service is a great way to ensure that you don’t have regrets later in your life. I wonder if many people who watch “Up” would regret having never gone on the great adventure that they promised themselves they would pursue. I might never have that feeling now. I’ve really put myself out there and gone to the other side of the world. It feels great!

I had diarrhea in the evening just as the movie ended. That didn’t feel great. It must have been from the soup. All that I ate today was oatmeal, bread and soup. I’m going to boil it a bunch tomorrow and try it again. There’s too much peanut butter in there for it to go to waste. I wonder if maybe I just made it too rich. I think I put in too much peanut butter. I suppose I could dilute it.

The power, thankfully, stayed on after midnight. Diarrhea in a cold, dark apartment is terrible.

2/14/2010

Kind of a Miserable Valentine’s Day

It snowed again last night. The snow from last week is far from gone. It had just started to melt a little bit over the last few days. It warmed up during midday today enough to melt some more, but I still think there was negative progress in terms of clearing all the snow away.

Fortunately today was Sunday and I didn’t have much to do outside of my apartment, so I stayed inside for most of the day. I finished my PCVT application, I did a bunch of work on compressions, I finally finished watching “The Constant Gardener” (I updated my criticism entry accordingly) and I watched some Office episodes. I left my apartment around 2:00 to check the internet and buy groceries. The internet was really slow and actually ground to a halt altogether after about 45 minutes. I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to. It was really frustrating. This was probably my low point for the day in terms of mood. I need to remember to go to Kyrgyz Telekom for internet on Sundays, or to come really late in the afternoon (that wasn’t an option today). For food I bought bread, chicken and sugar. I also picked up some napkins. My whole time outside of my apartment was pretty miserable. It’s too cold.

My favorite vendor at the bazaar wished me a Happy Valentine’s Day and asked me if I had a girlfriend. I had forgotten it was Valentine’s Day. I told her that I didn’t have a girlfriend, and that there weren’t many American girls in Talas. Yeah…

Chris and Michael both came over for a little while in the afternoon. Brock also came over later to have a beer and watch a MotoGP race. My evening was a little better than my afternoon. I got a lot of cleaning done. I made some progress on typing up the lesson plan for my nutrition lesson. It’s taking a lot longer than I expected because it contains a lot of Cyrillic characters. I also cooked chicken. It was remarkably easy, and I’m kicking myself for not experimenting around with cooking chicken earlier in my service. You can buy perfectly decent chicken breasts at the bazaar for 150 som per kilogram. This evening I ate a half kilo of chicken (which is a quite a lot). I seasoned it with Trader Joe’s “21 seasoning salute”. I have two shakers of it that my parents sent me awhile back, and I’ve been struggling to figure out what it goes well with. It turns out that it’s great on chicken! I’ve been trying to introduce a lot more protein to my diet in the last week or two, and I’ve been successful so far. I haven’t had any protein cravings recently, which is good. I’ll have to see if it makes me put on weight.

I watched some clips from Formula One 2008, since I haven’t had any new Formula One to watch for quite some time. Despite its flaws, Formula One truly is one of the greatest sports. The money, the politics, the technology, the noise, the energy… it’s absolutely amazing. I still don’t get tired of watching the best parts of the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix, and sometimes I’ll just sit down and watch qualifying laps of the famous tracks like Spa and Monza. I finished blogging by 11:50. I’m going to get ready for bed. I have no idea how long the power is going to stay on. It has been all over the place recently.

2/13/2010

Fridays are Better

Friday was a pretty good day. I turned in my second of four grants in the morning. I taught a class in the afternoon. It was my first year class and only two students showed up, but since neither one of them had come to the last lesson I was able to repeat and catch them up. Late afternoon Friday time slots are killer. It’s really hard to get good attendance.

The D&D group started showing up in the late afternoon. We got going at about 5:00, although we chatted for a long time before we got down to playing. Overall we had an above average session. I was really happy with it.

We got up at 9:00 to start playing again. We played until around 1:30, when we packed up and went to Kanat-Ata to meet Rachel for lunch. I ordered gyuru lagman and fries. After dinner I went briefly to the internet. There wasn’t a whole lot of interesting stuff in my inbox.

I walked home, saw everybody off and did some cursory cleaning of my apartment (I’ll have a bunch more to do tomorrow). I ended up taking a nap until around 8:00. I spent the evening reading the Economist and compressing, with a break to cook up and eat all of my leftovers. I’ll need to do some food shopping tomorrow as well.

It’s really nice to have your big social night on Friday night instead of Saturday night. You still have all of Sunday to recover and prepare for the work week.

2/11/2010

Salvaging My Work Week

A friend of mine from America called me last night at 2 AM. I was really groggy and I didn’t remember much of the conversation!

Today was really productive. It partially made up for what has otherwise been a really unproductive and inconvenient week. My work pretty much ground to a halt for two days while I lost power.

I saw Frank off first thing in the morning. I went back to my apartment and read the Economist for awhile, then put it away and wrote a grant. A whole grant! It’s a short grant and it doesn’t require a very descriptive budget, but it was still a grant. It’s the lyceum outhouse grant that I’ve been meaning to write for awhile.

I rolled down to the internet café, where I spent an hour and a half catching up on my email and doing some work-related stuff. I unfortunately forgot the pictures that went with the grant, which prevented me from actually turning it in… but I should have no problems sending everything in tomorrow morning.

I bought bread, sesame bars and soap and I got help at the phone kiosk in the Altyn Kazyk unsubscribing from a service I had accidentally signed up for on my phone. I went home in time to meet one of my advanced students who was coming over for tutoring. I had her read some of “Harry Potter”, and we used my lingvo dictionary to translate all of the words. I also burned a dictionary onto a CD for her, which should help her learning at home.

I spent awhile compressing movies. I made lentils and got a start on writing my PCVT application, which is another piece of paperwork on my long list of odds and ends that I need to finish up within the next week or so. I also washed clothes in preparation for another shower in the near future. I find that I need to wash clothes between every shower since I have a limited amount of winter undergarments.

Late at night my friend from America called me again and we had a proper conversation, although the connection was a little bad and hard to understand. Last night the power didn’t cut, and I’m staying up to see if it cuts tonight. If it doesn’t there’s a lot of stuff that I can set to run on my computer overnight.

2/10/2010

First Guest in Three Months

I spent most of the day cooking with Frank and Kristen. We made lunch at Kristen’s apartment then re-located to my apartment (where the power had returned) in the afternoon. Dinner took awhile to cook because my plietka (hot plate) isn’t very good, but it was still tasty. Frank made a curry over Uzgen rice. We watched “Angels and Demons,” which was good! Frank slept on the some tushoks in the living room. He’s headed out tomorrow.

2/8/2010

Why I Dislike “The Constant Gardener”

I got moving at around 9:30. I spent the morning productively, reading the Economist and washing my sleeping bag. Somebody who had borrowed my sleeping bag had told me that they were worried it might have bed bugs. Nobody I talked to this weekend was really sure what bed bug symptoms look like, and I haven’t had any similar symptoms or found any bed bugs around my apartment, but I figured I would wash the sleeping bag just to be sure. I washed it in hot water (sleeping bags are highly unpleasant to hand wash), then hung it up to freeze outside. After it has hung outside for awhile I’m going to cook it on top of my heaters. Hopefully that will kill anything that might be in there.

I watched a second episode of “Sports Night,” an Aaron Sorkin show that predates “The West Wing.” I decided that I’m not desperate to see the rest of the show and that I’m going to compress it.

I went to the internet around 12:00. I stayed there for about an hour and got a decent amount done. I’m starting to get to a long list of emails that I put off during my business school application crunch.

I came back home at 1:00 because the pediatrics instructor had told me that she wanted to print out all of the pictures for our poster that is going to sum up our project. I spent all afternoon on this, including an hour of time spent waiting for a photo salon to open and then subsequently searching for another photo salon that was near a bank that doesn’t exist anymore (the instructor forgot it had been bought out and re-named). When I got to the photo salon it took over an hour to re-size and re-touch all 53 pictures. I finally made it back to the medical school, where we put all the pieces of the poster together. The plan was to create a map of Talas Oblast and then draw lines to each destination that we visited along with pictures from that village’s seminar. It turns out that the poster won’t be big enough to fit both a map and all of the pictures. The instructor is going to re-think the design overnight.

The pediatrics instructor also had me haul a 20kg sack of cheese up to the third floor of the school. She offered to sell me some for the low price of 120 som per kilogram. I bought 350 grams… and the cheese is about the quality I would expect for such a low price. It’s a little salty.

When I got home I watched “Captain EO,” which I had acquired in a hard drive swap a few weeks ago. I had seen part of Captain EO when I was 5 and my dad took me to Disneyland for the first time. I got scared and left after about 5 minutes. I never saw it again before the attraction closed. Going back and watching Captain EO was kind of a way to tie up a 20-year old dangling loose end from my childhood.

Captain EO is weird. There are lots of scary looking puppets and costumes and the plot doesn’t make any sense. I can understand why I was scared when I saw it for the first time.

In the evening I decided to watch “The Constant Gardener.” It was on my “to watch” list… not because I haven’t seen it or because it is a good movie, but because I hate it so much and I wanted to watch it again just so I could tear huge holes in the plot.

If you haven’t seen the movie and you’re worried about plot spoilers… I don’t care. It’s a bad movie that doesn’t deserve to be watched and I’m going to spoil it for you. The premise of the movie is that the wife of a low-level British diplomat gets murdered because she starts to uncover a conspiracy to test a new TB drug, Dypraxa, on poor Kenyans who have TB. Dypraxa helps TB, even drug-resistant TB, but it has side effects (that are never explained) that also kill people. The British government is aware of these tests, and they are so intent on keeping them quiet that they begin to murder their own diplomats and their families when they start to uncover the conspiracy. A loose network of people work together online to try to uncover the conspiracy, but the conspiracy is so huge that they are afraid of being murdered, even in large, developed countries like the UK and Germany, and every time they try to blow the lid off the trials there is a massive conspiratorial cover-up at the highest levels of government.

Seem a little far-fetched? Here’s what the trials are intending to accomplish: the evil pharmaceutical companies performing the tests want to stage a fraudulent human trial in Kenya where they only report the good results and exclude all of the side effects and deaths. This will somehow give them a leg up on their competitors (since they won’t have to go back to the lab and “fix” the defects), and let them make untold billions by selling the drug all over the world.

I don’t even know where to begin! Let’s start with the practicality of this test. The developed world would never approve a drug that was subject to such slip-shod testing. I’m trying to imagine a company coming to the FDA and saying:

“So… we ran this test in Kenya. We gave the drug to a bunch of people. Here’s the data from some of the recipients… good right? Oh, you want to know what happened to the others? We won’t tell you. So, are we approved?”

Comical. The drug approval process has multiple stages and it’s quite rigorous. This trial is a total fantasy that makes no sense.

Second, there would be no profit-motive for releasing a drug with such drastic side effects. Let’s say, somehow, that the evil pharmaceutical companies managed to get their drug approved and it went into wide distribution. Would people not quickly begin to notice that a lot of the drug’s recipients were dying? Would this not spawn global lawsuits that would destroy the corporation? Think of Merck and its drug Vioxx. Vioxx had some side effects, and the result was a series of lawsuits that had a huge negative effect on Merck. I don’t have good data in front of me, but I’m pretty sure that the lawsuits more than wiped out the gains that Merck made from developing the drug in the first place. There would be no profit-motive for releasing a dangerous drug.

Finally, there’s a point in the movie where one of the heroic persecuted people trying to uncover the conspiracy tells the main character why the company wants to stage a fraudulent trial. Here’s what she says:

“[…] they haven’t got the formula right yet.”

“So why don’t they work on it?”

“It’s cheaper to fix the trials. Exclude the patients who had side effects, you know? To go back to the lab would cost them time, two years, millions of dollars and other companies would have time to produce their own cure.”

I don’t think that you really “go back to the lab” with pharmaceuticals. I don’t think it’s very easy to just tinker with a molecule and get rid of the “bad part.” Frequently the drug has to be completely abandoned. I might be wrong on this point though.

Also, if other companies are also developing cures, the fact that this specific company’s cure was delayed wouldn’t really have an effect… unless on some off chance the two companies were developing the exact same molecule and one had to beat the other to a patent (the chances of this would be very, very low, and I think the patent would have been filed earlier in the process anyway). If this was a death drug I think the other company’s product would quickly be shown to be superior when in wide release.

Anyway, later in the movie it is revealed that the British government agreed to help the evil pharmaceutical company fix its trials and murder its opponents in order to secure a new drug factory in Britain that provided 1500 jobs. Supposedly if they hadn’t done this France would have won the bid. The heroic network of critics uncovering the conspiracy wanted the trials stopped and the drug to be re-worked, which would take exactly three years (don’t ask me how they knew this exact amount of time… or why it’s different from the time given earlier in the movie). In order to prevent this, the British government and a drug company work together to murder Rachel Weisz, whom the diplomat main character had fallen in love with after she gave an incoherent rant about the Iraq war at a lecture he was giving.

Assuming this 1500-job factory did end up opening, it would quickly close down as soon as everyone realized that the drug it was producing killed people. I just don’t get why anyone thought this movie was profound or relevant!

Rachel Weisz’s character, by the way, would have made a miserable aid worker. Inconsistent, righteous, indulgent… her character fits the western stereotype of what an aid worker should be - somebody who goes around hugging children and handing out food and medicine – rather than what is actually effective in reality - somebody who can implement sustainable development. She never would have made it through PST in Kyrgyzstan… she would have gotten kicked out, either for cultural insensitivity or inappropriate political involvement.

“The Constant Gardener” is a sloppy, irresponsible movie that embodies everything that is wrong with Hollywood stereotypes. I would rather work for a soulless pharmaceutical corporation that produced life-saving drugs than for a film company that spews out negligent garbage like this. At least I’d be doing something helpful, even if the motivation for it was solely monetary… but then again, what is the film industry’s motivation?

I should add that I really liked how the hero of “Milk” was a businessman. All too rare.

I don’t think there’s anything inherently evil about business, just evil people implementing evil practices. Business is an incredibly powerful tool, and I want to harness it to work for good.

I paused “The Constant Gardener” about two-thirds of the way through and wrote most of this blog entry, then went to the kitchen to cook up more cheesy potatoes. I have lots of potatoes and LOTS of cheese, both of which are food items that go bad somewhat quickly. I need to eat them both up.

As I was washing dishes the power cut and I heard a series of explosions from the stairwell. I looked out my windows and discovered that every other building in the neighborhood still had power… which is usually a bad sign. I knew that there was no way that the power was going to come back on, so I just went to bed at 9:00. The next day was forecast to be the coldest day of my Peace Corps service, with a high of -12 Celsius. My sleeping bag was wet and out on the line. It was a cold night.

My power was out all the next day, so I ended up staying at Kristen’s apartment. Frank, a previous K16, came out to visit, so he stayed at Kristen’s as well. We spent the evening cooking great food.

It’s weird how routine it feels to have my apartment be uninhabitable for two days. It happened just a week or two ago with my water. I guess I’ve become more adaptable.

2/7/2010

Colder

I went to Brad’s village yesterday for his birthday party. The D&D group spent the night there afterward.

I woke up at Brad’s. I was the first one to wake up, so I watched “Enter the Dragon” on my iPod. It was pretty good, although the cheesy sound effects felt really dated.

Everyone else who was over woke up right as the movie was ending (some other people in addition to the D&D group had spent the night). Everyone who wasn’t playing D&D left by noon. The D&D group stayed around for awhile longer to play for a few more hours.

It is COLD now. Really cold. Probably as cold as or colder than it has been during my entire time in Kyrgyzstan. It’s miserable… and the weather is forecast to get even colder, with Tuesday listing a *high* temperature of -14 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit). It’s also snowing. I’m not happy.

I had some stuff to do before I went home. I went to the internet café to send off the K18 packing list and tech guide to the Peace Corps staff (the internet had been totally down Saturday morning). I also got the newest Economist (I totally missed last week’s after that 37 megabyte download heartbreak). I bought potatoes, onions, kefir and bread.

I had decided to switch my heaters off before I left in order to save power and reduce the risk of some electrical mishap while I was gone. This turned out to be a bad decision, as my apartment was really cold when I arrived back. I immediately switched on both heaters, turned on my computer and started distilling water (which generates a lot of heat) in order to heat up the apartment as fast as possible. I ate the loaf of bread with peanut butter and nutella. I had a lot of dishes to do and I intended to cook later in the night, but it was too cold for me to tackle any of those tasks. I watched the movie “Milk” while my apartment warmed up. It was a great movie! I made me realize how far America has come culturally since the 60’s and 70’s. It also made me proud of America. Gay rights are a highly generational issue, and it is only a matter of time before gay marriage becomes legal in the entire country. More of the old, hateful people need to die off.

I’ve been meaning to write a long entry about the American “Tea Party” movement, but I’m waiting on some statistics that Thomas has. Stay tuned.

Later in the evening I read the Economist, cooked cheesy potatoes and took a shower. I also listened to a little bit over half of the new Eminem album. It’s pretty consistently good so far, although no one track has jumped out at me as a killer single. My hair is still wet and I’m not very tired, so I’m thinking of things to do to keep myself occupied after the power goes out.

2/5/2010

I Am Simply Not Good at Cooking Rice

I got a pretty productive start to my morning working on the K18 packing list. I went to the internet at 11:00 and started downloading all the edits and submissions people had sent me for the tech guide and packing list, but unfortunately the internet shut down before I could finish. I relocated to Talastronics to finish up.

Kristen came over again around 12:30. Once she left I put time in editing the technology guide. I took a break at 3:30 to meet the pediatrics instructor and choose the pictures that we want for our poster. The college has agreed to pay for picture-printing.

Once she left I took a trip to the bazaar to buy hamburger meat, units and cheese. I got home and finished the tech guide, then attempted to make another rice dish. I used the Uzgen rice again, but this time I cooked about 300 grams of hamburger meat separately in a pan along with onions, garlic, cayenne pepper, seasoning salts, black pepper and barbecue powder. The meat turned out alright, but when I combined it with the rice the dish degraded to only “ok.” I can get the right amount of water to cook rice with and I can get it to be the proper texture, but I’m still really missing something in the seasonings! I have yet to make good-tasting rice in Kyrgyzstan. Today’s dish was at least better than the dish I made two days ago. I probably won’t have to throw the leftovers away… but there is still a LOT of room for improvement.

On another food related note, I’m running low on American food! I’m out of granola bars. I’m very nearly out of beef jerky. I’m beginning to run low on cornmeal and protein powder, and I could even use more peanut butter. Send me food!

Once dinner was cooked I took a short break to organize some movie files and watch an episode of “Seinfeld”. I managed to slam out another three hours of editing work to essentially finish the K18 packing list. It felt good to reach a major stopping point right before the power cut.

2/4/2010

Poster Impasse

I woke up a bit late. I spent awhile in the morning watching Eddie Izzard. My friend Dan sent me all of Eddie Izzard’s stand-up routines, and I’ve been trying to work my way through them so I can compress them.

Kristen was coming over, and I was planning on making a quick run to the internet before she arrived, but she ended up arriving early. She left after about half an hour. Thomas then stopped by shortly afterward to hang out for awhile until he needed to meet his counterpart for work. I dashed out quickly to remind my students that they had class in the afternoon, only to find out that they in fact had no fourth period class. They asked me if I could reschedule to fourth period because they didn’t want to wait around. I was able to do this, but it was on about 30 minutes notice so it threw my plans for a bit of a loop. Brad had planned to stop by in the afternoon as well, so I got dressed, gave Thomas my key so he could let Brad in and dashed out to teach.

When I got to the school the pediatrics instructor pulled me aside and talked to me about scheduling a time to finish up grant stuff. The school wants to make a poster talking about all the seminars we did, but they don’t seem to be willing to pay for any of the materials to make it. I’m not really in the mood to pay for it either, so I’ll have to see what happens when I meet with her tomorrow. I also realized that my classroom key was on the same ring as my apartment key, so I had to dash back to my apartment to get my classroom key. As a result of these things, class started fifteen minutes late.

Only five students showed up, which was below-average attendance for my first year class. The topic for today was an overview of past tense and then an introduction to simple past. It went pretty well. I started them out with simple, positive statements and didn’t mess around with questions or negatives (since they can get confusing pretty quickly). It was a pretty successful lesson. Unfortunately there is a lot of memorization involved in the English simple past since there are so many irregular verbs, and simple past is always a really difficult and slow concept to teach. At 2:00 I gave the students the option of leaving (since it was my fault the lesson started late) or staying for an extra 15 minutes. They decided to leave.

Back at home I talked to Thomas for awhile then the two of us headed out. I needed to use the internet, but both the bazaar café and Talastronics were closed. I ended up walking all the way to Kyrgyz Telekom where I spent 20 som quickly checking my email, some facebook forums and the soccer news. Tottenham thankfully won their FA cup fourth round replay against Leeds, and they drew Bolton in the next round. That’s not a terrible draw!

I had picked up some soy sauce early in the day in an attempt to salvage my rice dish from last night. The soy sauce made the rice part of the dish taste even better, but it didn’t help the soy meat. I talked to Brock in the afternoon, and he told me that you need to season and marinate the soy meat separately in order for it to take on the correct flavor. I think next time I’ll just try cooking with meat. I really just need maximum protein. I don’t think I’m getting enough.

It started snowing in the late afternoon. It was powder snow. Today was cold.

When I got home I was really tired so I napped for a few hours. I spent my time in the evening working on compiling the K-18 packing list information. I still have two more submissions to collect tomorrow in email before I can finish compiling it and mail it off.

2/3/2010

Post Application Funk

I slept for a long time last night. I played Rome for about two hours in the morning. I switched Rome off around 10:30. Over the last… 6 months, I’ve always had something to do when I pry myself away from my computer entertainment. It has always been “oh, I need to do some GMAT studying” or “oh, I need to write some essays or work on some aspect of my application.” I was still in this mindset this morning, so when I shut my game off I thought to myself “right, now what do I need to do?” The GMAT is taken. The apps are sent in. The TEA grant is written. I’ve done everything that I can do for the moment on my end of the K18 packing list. There’s really nothing pressing at the moment. I didn’t know what to do with myself!

I do have a few things to do in the medium term. There are 2-3 more grants that I want to turn in, but none of them are on a hard deadline, and I know that I’ll churn them out pretty quickly over the next week or two. I need to write my PCVT application, but that’s not due until late February, and it’s only going to take me an afternoon or evening, tops. In a day or two I’ll have to compile all the comments on the K18 packing list, but that also should not take much time. I need to count up all my SPA grant receipts and write the completion report, but that’s also just another afternoon of work that doesn’t have a hard deadline.

It might sound like I’m procrastinating, but that’s not how it feels. After putting the hammer down and working so hard on GMAT studying and business school apps, these other tasks don’t seem very daunting. I know that I’ll get everything done.

I decided to go to the internet. I didn’t really need to do anything on the internet, but I didn’t have anything else to do. The emails in my inbox weren’t very interesting. I spent an hour and a half on the internet, and I didn’t have much to show for it aside from a few messages sent out to people on facebook that I hadn’t spoken with for ages.

I also brought along my new copy of Resident Evil 5 and let the café employee play around with it. He flipped out! He was really excited to get access to a new game for free. He made a copy of the disc, installed the game and started playing it while I was on the internet. I think I made his day.

The one goal I did set for myself today was to try cooking something new. I have a few staple dishes here that I’m able to cook really well, but I’m starting to get tired of all of them. Brock is a fantastic cook, and he is able to make great rice and tofu stir fries. I decided to try to make a stir fry like the ones that Brock makes.

At the bazaar I picked up a kilo of Uzgen rice and a package of soy meat. The rice was really expensive (140 som!) but a kilo of rice goes a really long way and Uzgen rice tastes fantastic. I also picked up four new light bulbs and some phone units. I had gone through my four spare light bulbs that I bought around the time I moved into my current apartment.

I had a class with my beginner group scheduled for 2:40. Nobody showed up. 2:40 classes are always tough sells. There’s another 2:40 class scheduled for tomorrow, so I think I’m going to stop by the classroom and remind the kids about it tomorrow morning.

When I got home I played Resident Evil 5 for a few hours. Now that I’m used to the controls and I know how the combat works, I LOVE the game! I think it’s great. I’m already becoming inspired to go back through the levels, play on high difficulties and unlock all the secret stuff. The only flaw in the game that I found today was in the extra backstory files that you can read outside of the main game. I was looking through them since I wasn’t very familiar with the Resident Evil storyline, and they were in series need of some editing! They had all kinds of awkward sentence constructions. It was either a poor translation, it was really really rushed, or it was written by somebody who is not a good writer.

I shut off Resident Evil 5 after an hour or two, again out of habit. I realized once again that I didn’t have any work to do, so I decided to start making dinner. There are two things that I mess up when trying to make rice stir-fry. The first is the rice. I usually don’t cook it correctly. The second is the seasoning. I called Brock up to get some tips before I started. I actually ended up cooking the rice really well. It was tasty. I still messed up the spices though. The rice ended up tasting kind of bland, and adding more seasoning salts and black pepper wasn’t doing anything to it. Brock told me that he usually makes the rice with soy sauce, but I didn’t have any and I didn’t want to go out after dark just to buy soy sauce, so I tried to make do without. I had the taste of bland soy meat in my mouth all evening. There’s still a bunch left in the pan, so I think I’m going to buy some soy sauce tomorrow and see if I can salvage it. I’m also going to buy some meat! It’s time to try making some other new dishes.

Once dinner was finished, I once again had a dilemma of what to do with my time. I almost started writing a grant, but instead I decided to finally finish off Battlestar Galactica. I watched the last three episodes. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I was fairly satisfied with it. A lot of people really criticized it, but I thought it was fine. My only complaint was that it was a little too long. The final episode was a double episode, with half of it devoted to the big climactic battle and the other half devoted to epilogue. I thought it could have been about 80% battle and 20% epilogue, or it also simply could have been shorter.

That wrapped up at around 11:00. I blogged. I think I’m going to drink a little bit of protein shake to get the soy taste out of my mouth then go to bed.

A friend from America called me at midnight. That made my day.

2/2/2010

Tottenham Transfer Window Deadline Roundup

I didn’t get out of bed until 9:00. I put in nearly an hour of work on the packing list before Thomas showed up. Our plan was to meet and do a little bit of D&D stuff. I was going to level-up the characters that I use in his campaign, and we were also going to work out some item purchasing. I did manage to level-up my characters, but we basically just talked about random stuff for three hours.

I went with Thomas to the newly-reopened Talastronics. I sent out some emails and read the news for awhile. I also got a badly needed anti-virus update (It had been about a month and a half).

Tottenham had some deadline-day transfer deals. The big one was that they loaned out Robbie Keane to Celtic. This is the second time in 18 months that Robbie Keane has left Tottenham… although this time it made a little more sense. Robbie Keane hasn’t been getting playing time, and he has fallen out of favor with Harry Redknapp after being responsible for organizing some illicit player parties and gatherings.

Redknapp also just brought in Eidur Gudjohnssen (I doubt that’s spelled right, my Icelandic isn’t that great) on loan… so the net result was to loan out a striker and bring in a different loan striker. Interesting strategy. I guess maybe he thought things needed to be shaken up a little bit? Keane and Pavluchenko have both been almost totally stonewalled out of the starting lineup recently because Crouch and Defoe have been playing so well. It looks like Pav is going to spend at least another half season at Tottenham. Nobody managed to sign him in the transfer window. I really like Pav! I hope he gets a chance to shine at Tottenham.

The funniest thing about the Keane deal was that Keane was quoted as saying that he had always dreamed of playing for Celtic. This seemed odd, as he had also claimed that he was a huge Liverpool fan when he signed for Liverpool. A little disingenuine perhaps?

Redknapp also loaned out Alan Hutton. Tottenham have two world class right backs at the moment in Alan Hutton and Vedran Corluka, and Corluka has been getting all the playing time this year. I guess maybe the management wanted to recoup some of their money on Hutton? It makes me worried. There isn’t really good cover if Corluka gets injured.

Jamie O’Hara extended his loan deal to Portsmouth. O’Hara is a great midfielder, but the central midfield of Huddlestone, Jenas and Palacios is playing really well and staying healthy right now, so I guess they figured they could loan O’Hara out.

Younes Kaboul also got re-signed. Kaboul was a really promising young defender, but he was forced into the starting lineup way too quickly and wasn’t quite able to cope with the Premier League when he first signed. Tottenham sold him to Portsmouth. It looks like he’s had some time to mature at Portsmouth, and Tottenham probably need a little more cover at central defender. Bassong and Dawson are healthy at the moment. Woodgate might be out for the rest of the season with his groin injury, and while King is world class and able to play occasionally, his knee injury seems to get tougher and tougher to deal with and he’s able to play less and less. If either Bassong or Dawson got injured Tottenham would be in real trouble, especially now that there’s no one to cover Corluka at right-back if he needed to move into center defense. I think getting Kaboul back was a good signing.

It was actually a pretty crazy transfer window. I think Tottenham emerged from it in almost the exact same shape that they started in. They gained a striker and lost a striker. They gained cover at central defense and lost cover at right back, and they extended a loan deal for a midfielder. It probably made better financial sense to organize the team this way, but I think it’s a wash in terms of quality on the field.

It’s weird though… I feel like Redknapp is trying to undo all the bad sales that happened under Damien Comolli. Kaboul was probably sold prematurely. Keane was definitely sold at a bad time, and nobody was brought in to replace him. Getting Defoe back has proven to be a great decision (and selling him was a terrible one). The only really bad re-signing that has happened so far under Redknapp was Pascal Chimbonda. That was a disaster.

I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing an example packing list, which, aside from editing the packing list submissions that other people give me, should be the last original work I have to do on the K18 packing list before I turn it in. I made lentils for dinner, and I spent a lot of the evening playing Rome. I really want to finish the Imperial campaign before I get too sucked into Resident Evil! It’s taking absolutely forever for me to conquer Egypt, but I’m starting to get close. From what I can tell they have 9 provinces left. I got to bed at midnight.

2/01/2010

I’ll Bring My Longbow

I woke up around 8:00. Since I wasn’t on a deadline for the first time in months, the first thing I did was to turn on Rome: Total War. I played until about 10:30. I got out the door and went to the bank, where I picked up my February living allowance. I then went to the bazaar internet café. It had used up its monthly allotment of internet, which is why the internet had stopped working over the last week or so… but since it was the first of the month the internet was back. I attempted to download the new issue of the Economist. This week it’s a staggering 58 megabytes! I had a go at downloading it today, but the internet connection got reset at 37 megabytes and it failed. I was at the internet for a little under 2 hours, and I caught up on almost everything. I even sent facebook messages to some random people I hadn’t talked to in awhile.

After internet I went and added some units to two of my sim cards. A few months ago, one of the phone kiosks at the Altyn Kazyk installed a new display case full of computer parts and computer games. I hadn’t seen it get a lot of business so far, and I had wanted to support it for some time. Before it opened, there was no place to buy computer games in all of Talas… and the computer games that they sell are both really new and cheaper than zum! The thing that was holding me back was that I already have a lot of other computer games to play. To keep myself from going overboard with games, I’ve decided to stop myself from buying new games in genres where I still have good, unplayed games back at home. I try to play one game at a time from each genre until I either beat the game at the highest difficulty that I find fun, or I decide that the game isn’t interesting enough to finish. Right now my strategy game is Rome, my RPG’s are Morrowind and Mass Effect, my racing game is Richard Burns Rally (although I think I’m pretty much done with that game now) and my first person shooter would technically be Rainbow Six: Raven Shield, since I’d still like to go finish that at some point. It was a fun game. I would have also counted Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast as a shooter as well, but my new monitor is unfortunately too dark to play it! The gamma correction doesn’t work for some reason. This is really sad. I had been waiting for years to play Jedi Knight 2, and the few levels that I played on my laptop right before it died were really fun. I need to make a point of finishing that game when I go back to America.

I wanted to reward myself for finishing all my business school apps and I wanted to support this new store, so to get around my own computer game rule I needed to buy a game from a genre that I currently don’t have any games from in Kyrgyzstan. I decided to buy the PC version of “Resident Evil 5”. I didn’t have any survival-horror games in my game library, and the only Resident Evil game that I had ever played was the Gamecube remake of Resident Evil 1.

When I got home I spent awhile calling some volunteers from different parts of the country to get input on the packing list. I got a lot of responses! I worked on this for over an hour. I eventually fired up Resident Evil. It’s a beautiful, new game, but it still runs decently on my computer and I can maintain a perfectly playable 25 fps without even cranking the settings all the way down to minimum. The game feels really consoley, and it feels a LOT different from the original Resident Evil. It’s really linear. It’s not all that scary either (and I’m somebody that doesn’t like horror films). The plot seems pretty weak so far. There’s a lot of zombie-blasting between plot points, and very little has actually happened four levels into the game. Despite these flaws, the game is still pretty fun. Resident Evil games are built around the “too many zombies, not enough bullets, tiny inventories” gameplay mechanic, so you’re always trying to conserve ammo and you’re forced to make painful decisions about what to bring and what to leave behind. I’m enjoying myself.

Oh, the tutorial is terrible! It took me an hour of gameplay to figure out how to slash with my machete. I didn’t realize that you could scroll down through the “keyboard controls” menu. There’s a lot of stuff that the tutorial doesn’t teach you. I actually learned more about the game by watching the benchmark demo than through the tutorial.

After I burned out on playing Resident Evil I decided to watch “17 Again”. This might seem like a weird movie choice for me… and trust me, I’m not a secret Zac Efron fan… but as studious followers of my blog will remember, I’m a little bit obsessed with daydreaming about going back in time and doing parts of my life over again. I dedicated a large chunk of a blog entry to this topic… awhile ago. I picked the movie up in some big data dump that I got from someone else, and as I was checking the audio sync I realized what it was about. I had to watch it!

I just looked up when I wrote that blog entry about going back in time. Creepily, it was almost exactly a year ago. February 2nd, 2009. Life is funny sometimes.

The movie was surprisingly not that bad. It had Matthew Perry and Jan from “The Office”. I loved the millionaire nerd character, and I also loved it when the movie made fun of “The Game.” “17 Again” was worth the time that I spent watching it. Also, is Michelle Trachtenberg ever going to age? I thought she would be older by now!

I decided to go to bed early so that I could wake up early and make a bunch of modifications to the packing list before I mail it out to some other volunteers.

1/28/2010

Fretting About Emory

It seems I forgot to blog yesterday. It wasn’t a really interesting day… probably not a huge loss. The internet has been down, which is giving me problems with my Emory application.

So… on to today. I woke up really early: 7:20. I needed to edit my essays and still get to the prosecutor’s office by 9:00 to finally pick up my plastic bag full of cell phone documentation which had been held as evidence. I had a really nice conversation with a guy who was there while I was waiting for the prosecutor to arrive, and I also had a really nice conversation with the prosecutor.

From the prosecutor’s I walked to the internet. I was still hoping that I might be able to mail off my application this afternoon. There are all sorts of challenges with the Emory application deadline… and I’m not sure I’m going to meet all of them in time to officially be considered for a scholarship. This makes me really sad.

Anyway, I mailed off another essay draft. This might be the last one. I think I’ve pretty thoroughly burned out my readers by this point, and I’m almost totally burned out on applications as well. I’m almost positive that I’m not going to apply to another school after Emory. My Peace Corps work has been suffering for too long because of the business school crunch (which has now lasted two and a half months), and I need to focus back in on my work here. Emory and the other schools that I’ve already applied to will have to suffice.

I’ve been thinking about what I would do if I don’t get into business school at all. A contingency plan. If this happened, I would actually need to make an even bigger career decision than the decision I made to apply to business school in the first place. I would need to decide between going back into biotech, a professional job that would keep me on track to re-apply to business school with my still stellar GMAT score that’s good for five years, or pursuing my fancy of doing study abroad work. Academic study abroad work looks like a really cool job. You get to work with college students, you get to help them go on cool study abroad trips and you get to travel all over the world setting up programs. Study abroad work is not particular high-paying, but it would bring a lot of satisfaction and be really enjoyable.

I think at this point I would lean towards plunging back into biotech and re-applying. I know that I would be able to slam out more applications again… especially with regular access to internet in a developed country… and the re-application process is frequently shorter than the initial application process. That’s not the real reason though. I think the reason that I would go back into biotech and try again is because I’m ambitious. By choosing to work in an academic study abroad office I would close a lot of doors. It’s not a career that easily transitions into a lot of other things, and I would probably never do anything really amazing or world-changing as a study-abroad director. Business school is my opportunity to do something really great, and I want to keep pursuing that.

This is all just contingency planning. Hopefully I’ll get into business school this year and I won’t have to worry about this decision. If I do run into this dilemma though, I want to be mentally prepared for it.

We had our final infant nutrition seminar today out in Thomas and Rachel’s village. It went really smoothly. The pediatric staff and I are a well-drilled team now and we have the process down almost completely. There were a few notable things. The first was that we took a Lada Niva out to their village. Nivas are cool little cars… they’re the old off-road Lada model. They’re really rugged, and they can probably handle rough terrain better than most modern SUVs. I had always wanted to ride in one.

The second cool bit of news is that our seminar series has caught the attention of UNICEF. If we can submit a bunch of letters proving that we gave all ten of our seminars, that they were well-attended and that they were helpful for people, the nursing school might be able to get UNICEF funding to continue doing more seminars. There are certainly plenty of other villages to visit. I think the project should be really sustainable after I’m gone too. Basically all that I do at the seminars is handle the money and receipts and help put up posters. Neither of those tasks is something that couldn’t be handled by the pediatrics staff. Although this might sound like I’m being lazy, this minimal amount of volunteer involvement is actually the best form of development. It’s sustainable after the volunteer leaves. This was my hope when I first designed the project.

I unloaded the Niva at the medical school and had a quick meeting with my director about some paperwork related to getting a replacement volunteer. I dropped off my bag at my apartment then went to Asia Café to meet Corey, Rachel and Thomas. The cafe actually had enough chicken today to prepare their schnitzel dish for all four of us. We had a great lunch. It was a bit of a splurge for me.

I walked to the internet and tried to work there for a little while. The internet in town has been really bad this week. My regular bazaar café has been down since Tuesday, Talastronics is closed all week and even the usually reliable Kyrgyz Telekom has been having connection problems. I picked up some units and vegetables and went home.

I had a really unproductive evening. I spent a lot of time fretting about Emory. I can have the main part of the application done as soon as tomorrow, but I’m not sure that I’ll be able to turn all of the supplemental parts like my official GMAT score report and my official transcript in by their scholarship deadline. If I can’t make their scholarship deadline, there’s no point in me applying. I’m not going to go to business school with no financial aid. It would be a real pity if this were to happen, since I’ve already put so much work into my essays, my readers have put work into editing my essays and my recommenders have already submitted their recommendations.

There wasn’t much else that I could do to help my application in the evening, so I played Rome and watched Top Gear. I was in a bad mood. Fresh start tomorrow.

1/26/2010

Bringing Out the Basins

It feels weird to just write /10 in the date. I feel like I need to spell out the whole year.

I woke up this morning with no water once again. I spent awhile reading the Economist, but I was able to get down to business with my Emory essays by late morning. I put my head down and slammed out 2-3 solid hours of work that produced rough drafts of all of my essays. I’ve written a lot of essays by this point, and the process keeps getting faster every time. Many schools ask very similar questions… for instance, “what are your career plans?”

I had some things scheduled for the afternoon, but none of them ended up happening. My advanced students delayed and then cancelled their lesson. My counterpart also cancelled a meeting we had made to work on the lyceum English resource center grant. The Emory application is definitely having a big negative effect on my Peace Corps work this week, and I feel bad about that. I could be writing grants right now. I’m going to try to have most of my grants in by the end of next week.

The result of this was that I had almost no reason to leave my house today. The water, thankfully, came back on around 3:00. This time I didn’t want to mess around, so I got out both of the huge wash basins that I use for laundry, put them in the bathtub and filled them full of water. One of them is soapy water (since with the basins in the bathtub there’s no longer any room to wash my hands,) but I figure that if the water cuts again for an extended period of time I can use the soapy water for flushing the toilet and the non-soapy water for cooking and distilling. I also distilled more water, and both of my storage jugs are now full. I’ll probably leave the basins filled until the water has stayed consistent for a day or two. I can’t leave them there all the time; I’ll eventually need my bathtub.

I went to the bazaar to buy food. I hadn’t been food shopping for awhile, so I actually had more items that I needed to buy than I had money for in my daily budget. I stuck to my budget and limited myself to cheese, tomato paste, potatoes, onions, mandarins and oatmeal. I was planning to make pasta again for dinner, but when I got home I realized that I was nearly out of pasta. Oops! I made cheesy potatoes instead. I misjudged how hungry I would be (you don’t want to make too many cheesy potatoes since they don’t make very good leftovers), so I had to supplement my meal with a protein shake later in the night. I then managed to make my protein shake too strong and overfill myself. Those shakes go a long way!

I felt good about my accomplishments, so I rewarded myself by playing a bit of Rome. The power cut for awhile and I took a nap until it came back on an hour or two later (I’m actually not quite sure how long I slept for!) I read some more of the Economist then spent a long time on the phone in the evening talking to David, reviewing the one essay I had managed to mail him yesterday and strategizing about business school.

1/25/2010

Complacent Entitlement

This entry has a theme. I yanked the phrase “complacent entitlement” out of an article from this week’s issue of The Economist, and I managed to think of three ways that it applies to my life.

The first is my recent lack of water. I was in a bad mood for a lot of the day. My toilet was getting progressively more disgusting, my apartment was dirty and I was having trouble finding enough food to keep myself nourished without being able to cook. The water finally came on this evening, nearly two days after it first cut. Losing water was a pretty major inconvenience, and today was one of those low days where you really miss America. I seem to have less and less of them the longer I live here. I think one adjusts. I hadn’t really felt “low” like this since I had all those problems right when I got back from China (lost girlfriend, broken computer, etc…). Even when I was going through my court proceedings my mindset was more along the lines of “let’s get this over with so I can get back to work.”

I had grown complacent in Kyrgyzstan. Your scant luxuries can be taken away from you at any time here. I think the best way to go about life is to appreciate everything that is good and live life to the fullest, but to always be prepared to lose everything. You have to be able to adjust. Right before the water came back I was gearing up for a long period without running water. I had bought a bunch of food at the bazaar that required neither utensils nor dishes to eat (things like fruit, nuts and bread). I had borrowed a bucket from Brock and hauled some water in from outside in order to give my toilet a few flushes and ease the blockage. I was making arrangements to start cooking dinner with Brock at night, and to fill up my clean water jugs from his gravity filter. Just as I made these arrangements, the water came back on. It was as if it life was telling me “there you go… now don’t get complacent!”

The second example of “complacent entitlement” has to do with the American Democratic Party. Ever since the Obama presidency started I’ve been lamenting how Obama has deferred control to Democratic Congressional leaders instead of taking a strong lead himself. These leaders have responded by pushing a far-left agenda. I agreed on an ideological level with most of the bills they have tried to pass, but many of them were either poorly written, filled with pork or not strict enough to make any real difference. I really wanted Obama to take a stronger stance and force the Democrats to work more towards the center. Many volunteers in Kyrgyzstan told me that I was wrong… that Obama was right to be pushing a new far-left liberal transformation of the American government.

As it turns out, congress didn’t really have a popular mandate to enact these reforms. Many people were alarmed with the direction the country was taking, and now there is a huge backlash that just reached a new level of intensity with the Massachusetts senate election. Eliminating the supermajority in congress is going to almost completely annul the last year of work and force a new year of compromise on the major bills affecting the country. Hopefully the result will be something along the lines of the strong, centrist bills that Clinton was able to pass after he lost his congressional majority. A passing health care bill might now incorporate tort reform and stronger cost-cutting measures. The public option is probably dead. I don’t think that the death of the public option is necessarily good, but I think it’s what the majority of Americans want.

What makes me saddest is that the Democrats managed to acquire this complacent entitlement so quickly after the Republicans made the exact same mistake. Remember 2006?

The last example of complacent entitlement has to do with the future of employment in America. The prospects for job recovery are scary, since a lot of the jobs that were lost in the downturn were low skill – high pay jobs that are never coming back to America. The new jobs that will replace these jobs are going to be high skill jobs, and I’m worried about America’s educational system and its ability to train and re-train people that can perform these new jobs. I’m worried that not all of the people who are out of work will be able to adjust to this, and I’m worried that America will have more entrenched, long-term unemployment.

I think that my generation will have to accept some hardships that my parents’ generation was able to avoid. I think lifelong, stable employment is over. I think geographic stability is over. People in my generation are going to have to be willing to move to find work, and we’re going to need to constantly improve our skills and build our resumes in order to stay competitive. With globalization, my generation will have to compete with workers from all over the world, most of whom will be willing to accept lower wages and less-extravagant lifestyles than Americans are used to.

These changes will bring consequences. It’s going to be really hard to afford and raise kids. It’s also going to be really hard to own a house. I’m mentally prepared for a life where I might not be able to have children for financial reasons, and where I might need to move to advance my career. Kyrgyzstan has made me plan for contingencies and be more pragmatic. I think these skills will be really useful when I return to a drastically changed, post-crisis America. It’s going to be weird missing two such extreme, transformative years in American history.

I slept in today. I went to the internet pretty directly in order to mail off one Emory essay for editing. I stayed on the internet in order to fill out a bunch of the online portions of the Emory application. I managed to finish everything except for the employment history and extracurricular activities (frequently the two most time-consuming sections.)

I picked up some groceries at the bazaar and I tried to find a place to buy a new water jug. I lost one in the fall, and I could really use a third one. When I have lots of people over two jugs of distilled water isn’t quite enough. I was unsuccessful at finding one. I even tried going to the wholesale store.

Kristen came over in the afternoon to try to find a way to fill in a .pdf form on her computer. Her library school application doesn’t have an online component and she’s going to have to FedEx it from Bishkek. I’m glad that I don’t have to deal with that! Maybe all this online stuff isn’t so bad…

I went over to Brock’s briefly in order to shave and borrow his bucket. Right as I got back the water came back on! I flushed my toilet a bunch of times and used the bucket to scrub the disgusting entryway floor. I also cleaned almost all of my dishes. This made me feel a lot better!

I had made plans to have dinner with Brock, so I walked back to his place. He made an amazing calzone. It was really nice to be able to chip in money and have dinner prepared for me… I hadn’t really prepared to cook dinner today since I was starting to prepare for long-term water loss. Brock walked back home with me for safety since it was after dark.

I spent the rest of the evening compressing movies, reading the Economist and working on Emory essays. I have most of what I need for another essay, and I should be able to clean it up into something more coherent in the morning.

The power cut at 12:15. It was just late enough to give me hope that it might stay on. The water also cut again.