First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for your overwhelming responses to my last email. Who knew I could get such a boost by just admitting to feeling under the weather.
The response to my illness by the locals, now, was a bit different. My favorite came from the stoic, Russian teaching woman who makes my laptop sleeves.
“I know what the problem is,” she said through her steely eyes. “It is cold, but is hasn’t snowed yet. It is always like that, for us Kyrgyz people. When the snow comes, it makes everything clean.”
But consider the world healthy again, folks; we got our first treatment of snow last night, and I’m feeling the healthiest I’ve felt all week.
Furthermore, the rapidly shortening days paired with this crisp snowy air are bringing me back to last winter, when I might wake up to a host-sister, ruby cheeked, rubbing her face in snow telling me that, “this is the best way to rise.” With the cold most assuredly set upon us now, we may soon slaughter another cow, and definitely will hearken in the days of warm sheep and noodle soup to end every (single) day. I know more of what to expect this year, and that comes with its pros and its cons.
Indeed, my friends, I am already making plans to be home next Spring. I can already feel my Peace Corps service winding down before me. With around six months remaining, the time for starting new projects has largely come and gone. Now is the time to fulfill the many grandiose plans I have made, to consolidate my connections, and impart as much wisdom as I can muster.
One exciting project that is currently barreling down the pipeline is a shyrdak design course underway at the University of Paderborn in Germany. Last year, a budding German entrepreneur approached me and asked if I’d help her execute a course at the textile design program at her local university. After plenty of emails, this course description is what emerged. For you eager beavers, run that little German gemstone through a translator, and you’ll notice a whole bunch of references to local Kyrgyz co-ops preparing the designs that the course produces. That, friends, is yours truly, hard at work. The course itself is underway as I type this. I’ve been told that participants boast old Soviet era ties to this part of the world. The best designs will come to me, and the local ladies will make them into reality.
Later this month we will winterize those trees from the spring, and come January next year, I’ll start telling you all about the (vastly increased number of) trees I’d like to plant to 2011. That plus a couple of local trainings seem to be how my service will finish up out here. It’s been a long road thus far, folks. I’m not quite on the final stretch, but I can see the last curve before, and even as I write, twilight is coming down over the city.
We’ve been together for 20 months so far my friends. I feel somewhat like Yossarian as Catch-22 winds to a close: of the 60 of us who convened in Philadelphia, only 27 remain; the faces of the new group now seriously outnumber the old. This time is a quiet and reflective time. And as just another chapter, it is exciting all the same.
P.S. Happy Thanksgiving! And how come nobody told me there’s going to be a new Mayor in Chicago?!
