We’ve had a real humdinger of a week out here.
We started out the week with a team of wool specialists from Ohio who came out on a fact finding mission on the possibility of setting up a mill here. After copious village visits, plenty of meat and greets, and a whole handful of fiber samples, they said,
“Carl, how has no one discovered the potential of this place already?”
“Because,” I told them, “this is Naryn.”
In truth, it was more than that. Not a lot of folks with this kind of know-how are willing to relocate their families all the way out here. But, for the few that are, like these, the potential is endless.
Next, my grandmother came back to Naryn from her wintering in Bishkek. It’s just for a visit, though. She’s in town for a wedding.
See, it’s my father’s little brother’s wedding. Now, while he (thankfully) didn’t steal his bride, that tradition did play a part. First, surely, as was mine, your curiosity is piqued. “Why,” you must be asking, “is this young fella’ getting married in the winter? The sheep are expensive now!” I asked these questions myself, and discovered, among other reasons, the timing of this wedding was dictated by his fiancé getting stolen, by another man.
“It’s a funny thing,” the groom told me, “if he had gotten her past his house, there would have been nothing I could do. But my friend stopped them on the road. Then I got there, we talked for maybe 20 minutes, and then I got her back.”
“Did you go alone?” I asked.
“Oh no. There were 20 of us.”
I can only make inferences as to what happened behind those decidedly casual sentences. But either way, he then went on to tell me how wonderful she is, and how much he loves her. And unlike an American wedding, she spent the whole weekend whisking around, quietly busy, cutting vegetables and pouring tea. And she did it all with an ever present smile. As my little sister and I headed out of the house one day together, and I asked her,
“Do you like the bride?”
“Yes, I do,” she said.
“Do you think they will be happy?” I asked.
“I think so,” and she smiled, “the borsok was good. That’s a good sign.”
And if all this magic wasn’t good enough, I’ve also succeeded in one of my other, long standing 
goals: to enrolled at Naryn State University. While “enroll” is really a strong word, what I mean is that I finally got the nerve to ask if I could sit in on a college level Kyrgyz language course. In my experience, the greatest obstacle to language acquisition is getting too comfortable with your abilities. This course, thus far, is proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to show me how limited my knowledge really is.
