Just a quick post to catch up
In general life has been going faster than it is possible to post. I realized that I have not posted in over a month, but haven't written about things happening since March. Spring came, and life got a whole lot more interesting. :-)
We celebrated Easter, coloured our eggs, made piragi, had friends over for lunch, and the Easter bunny came:
After Easter things warmed up. We started setting up our kurpachas outside and eating outside. Nona made plov (a rice dish) many times, and it has become the boys' favorite Uzbek dish. Ahat has made shashlik for us several times and it was the most delicious sashlik we have ever eaten. The literal translation is five fingers and lamb ribs are skewered together on five shashlik sticks and cooked as one entity like a hand.
After Easter at work I was responsible for helping Elementary Student Council to organize the lock-in. An exhausting process that left me rethinking being the advisor for the group. But the kids all loved it, and I guess that is what it is all about. Because I was so busy I had no time to take pictures.
The following week my students and the other grade 5 class went on an overnight field trip from Friday morning to Saturday night. We traveled by bus all the way to a town called Nurata. We had the opportunity to eat with local Uzbek families, learn about the local communities and really experience the life that Uzbek nomads would have had by sleeping yurts and riding on camels.
One of my favorite visits was to a community called Sentyab: Shining Mountain Top. A community that was formed due to the discovery of gold. They had built an impentrable fortress only to be destroyed by the sharing of the secret entrance to the fortress. Everyone in the fortress was killed except a preganant woman. All of the gold stolen. She survived to remain in the community alone. Later strangers from Bukhara came looking for the legendary city only to find a lone woman. They resettled there and created the spread out town of Sentyab. The people living there today are the direct descendants of these people and have over the years formed specializations in the community each generation. We walked a full 3 km to get to the home where we ate lunch. All the while, we were the full attraction for the whole village. Children especially came running to see who all these foreign kids were.
The yurt experience was great. It was a cold night, but the kids had a fire with a Kazakh musician, they danced and enjoyed the evening. They got to ride camels the next day too. You can see pictures of the outside and inside of the yurts.
After the camels we went to a lake, then to Alexander the Great's Fortress - it is just piles of sand ontop of a hill, so I didn't put in any pictures. The lake was interesting as it is found in an area that used have little if no water. At one point a stream changed direction and combined with a small lake that had been drying up. The result was an enormous lake. The lake can be seen behind us in the picture.
We took the train home after a long drive to Samarkand, and arrived back fairly late.
After the trip, I was quite happy as we had had no problems with the students and I hope that once we return to Uzbekistan in September that I will be able to take the same trip with the boys.
Since then I have just been trying to catch up with work, writing report cards and getting ready to finish out the school year. It is all a bit crazy, but the boys and I are looking forward to the upcoming holidays in Latvia. We look forward to the cool weather!
We celebrated Easter, coloured our eggs, made piragi, had friends over for lunch, and the Easter bunny came:
After Easter things warmed up. We started setting up our kurpachas outside and eating outside. Nona made plov (a rice dish) many times, and it has become the boys' favorite Uzbek dish. Ahat has made shashlik for us several times and it was the most delicious sashlik we have ever eaten. The literal translation is five fingers and lamb ribs are skewered together on five shashlik sticks and cooked as one entity like a hand.
After Easter at work I was responsible for helping Elementary Student Council to organize the lock-in. An exhausting process that left me rethinking being the advisor for the group. But the kids all loved it, and I guess that is what it is all about. Because I was so busy I had no time to take pictures.
The following week my students and the other grade 5 class went on an overnight field trip from Friday morning to Saturday night. We traveled by bus all the way to a town called Nurata. We had the opportunity to eat with local Uzbek families, learn about the local communities and really experience the life that Uzbek nomads would have had by sleeping yurts and riding on camels.
One of my favorite visits was to a community called Sentyab: Shining Mountain Top. A community that was formed due to the discovery of gold. They had built an impentrable fortress only to be destroyed by the sharing of the secret entrance to the fortress. Everyone in the fortress was killed except a preganant woman. All of the gold stolen. She survived to remain in the community alone. Later strangers from Bukhara came looking for the legendary city only to find a lone woman. They resettled there and created the spread out town of Sentyab. The people living there today are the direct descendants of these people and have over the years formed specializations in the community each generation. We walked a full 3 km to get to the home where we ate lunch. All the while, we were the full attraction for the whole village. Children especially came running to see who all these foreign kids were.
The yurt experience was great. It was a cold night, but the kids had a fire with a Kazakh musician, they danced and enjoyed the evening. They got to ride camels the next day too. You can see pictures of the outside and inside of the yurts.
After the camels we went to a lake, then to Alexander the Great's Fortress - it is just piles of sand ontop of a hill, so I didn't put in any pictures. The lake was interesting as it is found in an area that used have little if no water. At one point a stream changed direction and combined with a small lake that had been drying up. The result was an enormous lake. The lake can be seen behind us in the picture.
We took the train home after a long drive to Samarkand, and arrived back fairly late.
After the trip, I was quite happy as we had had no problems with the students and I hope that once we return to Uzbekistan in September that I will be able to take the same trip with the boys.
Since then I have just been trying to catch up with work, writing report cards and getting ready to finish out the school year. It is all a bit crazy, but the boys and I are looking forward to the upcoming holidays in Latvia. We look forward to the cool weather!
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