Kyrgyzstan

This weekend was a holiday weekend here, in celebration of Victory in WWII Day (May 9th). I went to Kyrgyzstan for the long weekend with some local friends. There were 30 of us who went, 25 Kazakhs, 4 Italians who live in Almaty, and me. We stayed up at a camp in the mountains outside of Bishkek (the capital of Kyrgyzstan) that had a dormitory/hotel and a cafeteria.... and electricity most of the time (except midnight til morning) and hot water rarely. But no worries. It was a nice change of pace from city life in Almaty and the mountains and views were beautiful. The trip took about 6 hours each way (or would have without unexpected delays), including the hour it took to cross the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border, which we had to do on foot.

When my friends invited me on the trip, they explained that it was a retreat and that each year they do this annual trip and pick a "theme" for the trip. There turned out to be two themes this year. We played a lot of games and the theme of the games was the movie "I am Legend." The group was divided into 3 groups and were told that there was a virus on the loose, threatening to destroy humanity and we had to develop an antidote. Each game was supposed to be a step towards successfully developing this antidote, culminating in a big scavenger hunt on Sunday morning. We were sent on all sorts of crazy tasks to collect ingredients and supplies and then had to build a fire in an abandoned building and use the ingredients to make a stew-- i.e., the antidote. This was followed by a blind taste test, and the tastiest stew won. You'll be happy to know that my team was named the winners of the competition... no thanks to me! The instructions for the scavenger hunt were given in Russian. By the time I translated the instructions and pieced together what we were supposed to do, the rest of the team had taken off running and I ended up chasing after them trying to catch up. So, for example, we were instructed to gather between 2 and 4 kg of wood for the fire. But I didn't understand the word for "fire wood" so I took off running to gather something... but wasn't sure what! I had to look around and see what the rest of the team was looking for in order to follow along. Or otherwise, I understood the instructions, but didn't believe that I had correctly understood because it didn't make sense. So when we were instructed to tie ourselves together before setting off on the next task, I assumed I had misunderstood-- until I looked down and realized the guy next to me was tying some shoelaces around my wrist to link me to himself!

The second theme of the weekend was reflecting on what it means to be the "main character" in life. In other words, what it means to be yourself instead of being constantly judged by others. There were a few evening activities designed around this theme, including a presentation on an Italian singer whose songs were about such topics.

Overall, the weekend involved games, hiking in the mountains and a lot of group singing. These two activities were often combined, as we would hike into the mountains, play a game, and then someone would pull out a guitar and we would all sit around and sing, and then hike back. At one point on Saturday they suggested that we sing American spirituals in honor of me, as the American in the group. It was a different kind of vacation, but it was a fun time and I met some nice new people.