Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Okay! So I’m a little late for the Christmas greeting, but here in good ole Kyrgyzstan, they don’t celebrate Christmas until January 7^th anyways…..so in my time zone I’m not technically late.

In my last update I wrote about my trip through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, but that still leaves November and December to catch up on. Gee, I really need to be better about keeping this blog updated!

Forget it! I can’t remember anything from November, but lots of interesting and not so interesting things have happened this month, so let’s begin with the good stuff which mostly has to do with work stuff.

Earlier this month, the coordinators from the 12 different CBT offices throughout the country came to Karakol for an annual meeting to discuss the results of 2005 and future goals and plans for 2006. During this time, CBT Karakol was awarded “Best CBT Group” and “Best CBT Coordinator” for 2005, which probably has something to do with what I have done, but also with the fact CBT Karakol had hired a new coordinator about the same time I started volunteering there, and she seems to be far less corrupt and far more honest than her predecessor; we had less tourists in 2005 than in previous years, but had 3x more income into the central CBT fund than the previous year. Other good news is that I was funded a grant to purchase quality camping equipment for our office that we will start renting out to tourists next year, and was also able to procure a computer donation from TACIS, another local project funded by the European Union. I’m currently working on two more grants, but I’ll talk about that more at a later time.

So, the bad news? This month I caught my little host sister (just turned 16) stealing from me when she was over at my house. The first time she was playing with my cosmetics, and the next day I noticed that something was missing – something I specifically remember her putting on herself. When I asked her about it she swore up and down that she didn’t take it, so I decided to let it go even though I had looked everywhere for it and she was the only one who had been over (and I had actually seen her with it in her hands). Then she came over another time and I decided to try to watch her because she was going through everything, but I was getting ready for work (it was early morning) and between running to the bathroom to brush my teeth or to the kitchen to get her tea, I couldn’t watch her the entire time – I could only note what she had been touching. Sure enough, later that day when I get home from work I go over and notice something else is missing – one of my necklaces is gone, one of my favorite ones in fact. Same thing happens, I look everywhere for it but it’s nowhere to be found. I ask my sister about it and she lies again, so I have to do the unpleasant thing and tell her not to visit my apartment anymore. I think I was more hurt that I was angry over the whole thing because I had really gone out of my way to do special things for her when she visited or on holidays – I trusted and loved her like a little sister and she turns around and steals from me, not only once, but twice! Not only that, but I also found out that my friend’s tent was stolen from our office at a time when both the coordinator and I were gone for different reasons. When I came back and saw the tent was gone, I thought my friend had picked it up – come to find out, someone else took it, so now we have this big office fiasco going on trying to figure out whom is responsible, who had a key, who was in the office, etc. It’s one giant headache.

So enough of the bad stuff, let me tell you that I had a fairly good Christmas here. I spent the afternoon baking cookies and the evening with other volunteers, of which one had made a fantastic dinner of pot roast with mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, corn, and we even had apple and pumpkin pie (I contributed cookies). During the day a few locals stopped by to wish me Merry Christmas and one even stuffed a small gift in one of my dirty socks when wasn’t looking…..said that was how they did it in the movies, only I didn’t have a fireplace.

New Year’s is just a few days away and I’ll be spending it with my local friends by exchanging small gifts, going to the center to see the city’s New Year’s tree and lights (just think Christmas in the States), eating lots of food and watching Russian concerts on TV.

Anyways, I hope this gives you a good update for now. I will try to be better next year at writing regularly (ha! almost sounds like a New Year’s resolution).