February 29, 2004
My pen pals
I received letters from a class in Vermont. We were hooked up through Peace Corps. I’m going to have some of my 11th graders write back, too. I’ll enclose my letter to them, too.
Salamatsingarbuh! That means “hello” in Kyrgyz. Thank you for your awesome letters! I was impressed with all of your good questions. Thanks also for the picture you sent. I will try to find some pictures to send you, too. Thanks for introducing yourselves, too. I showed your letters to some of my best English students, and it was interesting to them as well, because the things that you do everyday and are interested in are a lot different to what they do everyday and are interested in. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write back, but I don’t always have easy access to the internet. I will try to answer as many of your questions as I can. I hope it’s OK if I write one big letter instead of writing to each of you individually. This might turn out to be a really long letter! Feel free to skip around to the parts that are interesting to you, or to ask more questions!
ME and the PEACE CORPS
I’m 23, and I have two older sisters and one older brother, a mom, and a dad. I miss them a lot! I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I graduated from college in 2002. I studied international relations at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. I decided to join the Peace Corps during my senior year of college. I had done a year abroad in France, and enjoyed the experience a lot, but I wanted to go somewhere where the culture and living conditions would be really different. I also wanted to help people, since I think have been fortunate in my life and wanted to give something back to people who didn’t have as much as I had. Also, I was really tired of studying and reading books and writing papers, which is almost all of what I did in college.
I came with 64 other volunteers. We lived in cluster groups in different (nearby) villages for three months to study either Kyrgyz or Russian and get some teacher and cross-cultural training. It was a challenging time, but not as hard as the first month after I got to my village, when for the first time I was the only American around!
I decided to come to Kyrgyzstan after the Peace Corps offered me a spot here. Some people who join the Peace Corps have strong feelings about where they want to go, but I was open to going wherever the Peace Corps needed me, so it basically chose for me.
You asked if I enjoy being in the Peace Corps. I do, for the most part,. I am grateful to have this opportunity to see and become part of a place in the world that most people haven’t heard of. There are definitely good days and bad days though. Sometimes it’s frustrating because I don’t know how much of an impact I’m actually having, sometimes I get really homesick. But then there are some times when something good happens that makes up for the bad times, like when I see that my students are learning, or that I have made some really good friends. Even during the bad times, I am aware of the fact that I am learning and changing and growing from this experience, and I think I will be grateful for that for the rest of my life.
LANGUAGE
I learned to speak Kyrgyz. At first it was really hard, because Kyrgyz is like no other language I’ve ever studied. The alphabet is different, too. Now, I can speak it well enough to talk to my neighbors and friends, but I don’t understand everything. Most people can speak Russian, too, because during the Soviet Union, the official language was Russian and everyone had to learn it. A lot of Russian people still live in Kyrgyzstan, so Russian is still an official language. Ever since independence, Kyrgyz is spoken more. In my village, there aren’t any Russians, so the only places I really hear Russian are on television, or when I go to a city, where more Russians live.
RELIGION
The main religion here is Islam, but it doesn’t have a very strong influence. Almost all Kyrgyz people identify themselves as Muslims, but most people don’t go to mosque. Muslims usually don’t eat pork or drink alcohol, but most Kyrgyz people eat some pork products, and drinking is a major problem. Married women usually cover their heads, but they don’t wear burkas (those heavy, black veils). People don’t pray five times a day, which most Muslims do.
KYRGYZ PEOPLE
In general, I have found Kyrgyz people to be extremely friendly, hospitable, and curious. Most people are pretty poor, though they don’t consider themselves to be poor. There aren’t a lot of jobs in my village. You can be a teacher but the salary is very low. The money here is called a som. One dollar is worth about 42 som. A loaf of bread costs 3 som, about 7 cents. However, teachers only make $15 a month. People make a living by growing crops to eat and to sell, and some people do things like drive taxis or have a store. Kids go to school for about six hours, and then go home and help their families. Family and relatives are very important. People think it’s a good idea to have large families, and most people don’t leave the place where they grow up, so they know everyone else in the village. The youngest son and his wife usually stay with the son’s parents, so most houses have several generations of people.
I live with a relatively wealthy family. They have the main store in the village. It’s one small room that’s part of the house, and it’s like a general store you might have seen in old movies. People knock on the door at all times of day to buy things. They have three adopted children. My little host brother’s name is Elderbek. He’s six, and smart but a little spoiled. My host parents names are Azimkan and Keshimjan. There are also two teenage boys (my host mother’s relatives) who live here and help take care of the store and the animals. Their names are Melice and Zamir.
FREE TIME/HOBBIES
Let’s see- sports and hobbies. I see that you play hockey, basketball, baseball, soccer, lacrosse, and football, dance, sing, act, play video games, and lots of other things. The kids at my school don’t have a lot of equipment, so for gym class they usually play volleyball or run. I think some people can play soccer, but they don’t know about football, lacrosse, or baseball here. Sometimes there’s a “disco” at one of the schools, and all the kids love that. Also, there are concerts that the kids put on for different holidays, where they dance, sing, lip-sing, and do comedy skits. Other than that, there aren’t a lot of activities for young people to do. Even small children are expected to do work to do at home, so they don’t have a lot of time to hang out. Almost everyone watches TV in the evenings.
WEATHER
The weather here is a lot like it was where I grew up in Pennsylvania. In winter it snows every week or so, and in summer it gets hot, though it doesn’t get humid. Right now it’s pretty cold, but today was a beautiful, sunny day.
CONDITIONS
At first it was really hard to get used to the fact that the electricity goes out often. It usually goes out for five hours or so, but we don’t know exactly when it will go out or come back on. Most houses have coal ovens to heat and cook with in the winter, but for people who can’t afford to buy coal, it gets cold.
Something else that was hard to used to was the fact that most people only bathe every one or two weeks! There is usually a separate house, and the family heats up a big tank of water. The banya house gets really hot, like a sauna, so it’s really nice. My family doesn’t actually have a banya, so I bathe with a bucket and a basin! Sometimes I go to banya at friends’ houses.
I have a water filter, so that I can drink safe water. There is a superstition here that drinking cold water is bad for you, so people mostly drink tea, tea, and tea. The superstition is true in a way, because once you boil the water to make tea, the microorganisms that can make you sick die. No one in the village has running water, hot or cold. We have a pump that brings up good, clear, water, but some people don’t have pumps or wells, so they carry water from streams, which can be dangerous for your health.
I sleep on a bed. Some people sleep on padded mats on the floor that they fold up every morning. These are actually pretty comfortable. Families often sleep together in one room.
PETS
A lot of you asked about pets. This is actually a really interesting question, because the way that people look at animals is a lot different than how they do in America. My family has two dogs, but they are guard dogs. Most dogs here are DANGEROUS. They are not raised to be friendly. They are chained up all the time and are fed really yucky food leftovers. We borrowed a cat for a while because we had a problem with mice. My family recently bought nine calves. Livestock is a good investment for people. We have some sheep and two cows, which supply our milk. I tried to milk the cow once, but I wasn’t very successful. Everyone has a milk cow. The cows get rounded up in the morning by a shepherd, go to fields or into the mountains to graze, and then come home in the evening. It was strange at first to me ride in a car or bus and have to slow down to get through a big herd of sheep or cows. People wait for the cows to come home at night, and the cows always know wh!
ich house is theirs. There are also lots of horses and donkeys that people use for transportation and field work.
FOOD
I like the fresh homemade bread, and some of the national dishes like plov, which is rice, meat, and carrots. The main national dish is called Beshbarmak (it means five fingers) which is noodles with boiled sheep meat. Honestly, it isn’t very good. It’s a big honor if they give you the sheep’s head to eat, especially the eyeballs! Luckily, women don’t usually get this honor, so I’ve never been offered the eyeballs. Meat is very important; it’s actually shameful to serve food that doesn’t have meat in it. In winter, there isn’t a lot of fruit or vegetables, but there are homemade canned “salads” that can be really good. In summer, there is lots of fresh fruit and vegetables to enjoy.
HOLIDAYS
Nope, no Christmas here! I had fun Christmas celebrations with some volunteer friends. New Year’s is a big holiday though, and they celebrate New Year’s Eve with a New Year’s Eve tree, which looks pretty much like… a Christmas tree! The next holiday is Noorus, which is the Kyrgyz New Year. It’s in March, which in my opinion is a good time to celebrate a new year, since it’s spring.
I haven’t answered all your questions, but this letter is long enough! Feel free to ask me anything else or re-ask something you think I haven’t answered well enough.
My pen pals
I received letters from a class in Vermont. We were hooked up through Peace Corps. I’m going to have some of my 11th graders write back, too. I’ll enclose my letter to them, too.
Salamatsingarbuh! That means “hello” in Kyrgyz. Thank you for your awesome letters! I was impressed with all of your good questions. Thanks also for the picture you sent. I will try to find some pictures to send you, too. Thanks for introducing yourselves, too. I showed your letters to some of my best English students, and it was interesting to them as well, because the things that you do everyday and are interested in are a lot different to what they do everyday and are interested in. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write back, but I don’t always have easy access to the internet. I will try to answer as many of your questions as I can. I hope it’s OK if I write one big letter instead of writing to each of you individually. This might turn out to be a really long letter! Feel free to skip around to the parts that are interesting to you, or to ask more questions!
ME and the PEACE CORPS
I’m 23, and I have two older sisters and one older brother, a mom, and a dad. I miss them a lot! I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I graduated from college in 2002. I studied international relations at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. I decided to join the Peace Corps during my senior year of college. I had done a year abroad in France, and enjoyed the experience a lot, but I wanted to go somewhere where the culture and living conditions would be really different. I also wanted to help people, since I think have been fortunate in my life and wanted to give something back to people who didn’t have as much as I had. Also, I was really tired of studying and reading books and writing papers, which is almost all of what I did in college.
I came with 64 other volunteers. We lived in cluster groups in different (nearby) villages for three months to study either Kyrgyz or Russian and get some teacher and cross-cultural training. It was a challenging time, but not as hard as the first month after I got to my village, when for the first time I was the only American around!
I decided to come to Kyrgyzstan after the Peace Corps offered me a spot here. Some people who join the Peace Corps have strong feelings about where they want to go, but I was open to going wherever the Peace Corps needed me, so it basically chose for me.
You asked if I enjoy being in the Peace Corps. I do, for the most part,. I am grateful to have this opportunity to see and become part of a place in the world that most people haven’t heard of. There are definitely good days and bad days though. Sometimes it’s frustrating because I don’t know how much of an impact I’m actually having, sometimes I get really homesick. But then there are some times when something good happens that makes up for the bad times, like when I see that my students are learning, or that I have made some really good friends. Even during the bad times, I am aware of the fact that I am learning and changing and growing from this experience, and I think I will be grateful for that for the rest of my life.
LANGUAGE
I learned to speak Kyrgyz. At first it was really hard, because Kyrgyz is like no other language I’ve ever studied. The alphabet is different, too. Now, I can speak it well enough to talk to my neighbors and friends, but I don’t understand everything. Most people can speak Russian, too, because during the Soviet Union, the official language was Russian and everyone had to learn it. A lot of Russian people still live in Kyrgyzstan, so Russian is still an official language. Ever since independence, Kyrgyz is spoken more. In my village, there aren’t any Russians, so the only places I really hear Russian are on television, or when I go to a city, where more Russians live.
RELIGION
The main religion here is Islam, but it doesn’t have a very strong influence. Almost all Kyrgyz people identify themselves as Muslims, but most people don’t go to mosque. Muslims usually don’t eat pork or drink alcohol, but most Kyrgyz people eat some pork products, and drinking is a major problem. Married women usually cover their heads, but they don’t wear burkas (those heavy, black veils). People don’t pray five times a day, which most Muslims do.
KYRGYZ PEOPLE
In general, I have found Kyrgyz people to be extremely friendly, hospitable, and curious. Most people are pretty poor, though they don’t consider themselves to be poor. There aren’t a lot of jobs in my village. You can be a teacher but the salary is very low. The money here is called a som. One dollar is worth about 42 som. A loaf of bread costs 3 som, about 7 cents. However, teachers only make $15 a month. People make a living by growing crops to eat and to sell, and some people do things like drive taxis or have a store. Kids go to school for about six hours, and then go home and help their families. Family and relatives are very important. People think it’s a good idea to have large families, and most people don’t leave the place where they grow up, so they know everyone else in the village. The youngest son and his wife usually stay with the son’s parents, so most houses have several generations of people.
I live with a relatively wealthy family. They have the main store in the village. It’s one small room that’s part of the house, and it’s like a general store you might have seen in old movies. People knock on the door at all times of day to buy things. They have three adopted children. My little host brother’s name is Elderbek. He’s six, and smart but a little spoiled. My host parents names are Azimkan and Keshimjan. There are also two teenage boys (my host mother’s relatives) who live here and help take care of the store and the animals. Their names are Melice and Zamir.
FREE TIME/HOBBIES
Let’s see- sports and hobbies. I see that you play hockey, basketball, baseball, soccer, lacrosse, and football, dance, sing, act, play video games, and lots of other things. The kids at my school don’t have a lot of equipment, so for gym class they usually play volleyball or run. I think some people can play soccer, but they don’t know about football, lacrosse, or baseball here. Sometimes there’s a “disco” at one of the schools, and all the kids love that. Also, there are concerts that the kids put on for different holidays, where they dance, sing, lip-sing, and do comedy skits. Other than that, there aren’t a lot of activities for young people to do. Even small children are expected to do work to do at home, so they don’t have a lot of time to hang out. Almost everyone watches TV in the evenings.
WEATHER
The weather here is a lot like it was where I grew up in Pennsylvania. In winter it snows every week or so, and in summer it gets hot, though it doesn’t get humid. Right now it’s pretty cold, but today was a beautiful, sunny day.
CONDITIONS
At first it was really hard to get used to the fact that the electricity goes out often. It usually goes out for five hours or so, but we don’t know exactly when it will go out or come back on. Most houses have coal ovens to heat and cook with in the winter, but for people who can’t afford to buy coal, it gets cold.
Something else that was hard to used to was the fact that most people only bathe every one or two weeks! There is usually a separate house, and the family heats up a big tank of water. The banya house gets really hot, like a sauna, so it’s really nice. My family doesn’t actually have a banya, so I bathe with a bucket and a basin! Sometimes I go to banya at friends’ houses.
I have a water filter, so that I can drink safe water. There is a superstition here that drinking cold water is bad for you, so people mostly drink tea, tea, and tea. The superstition is true in a way, because once you boil the water to make tea, the microorganisms that can make you sick die. No one in the village has running water, hot or cold. We have a pump that brings up good, clear, water, but some people don’t have pumps or wells, so they carry water from streams, which can be dangerous for your health.
I sleep on a bed. Some people sleep on padded mats on the floor that they fold up every morning. These are actually pretty comfortable. Families often sleep together in one room.
PETS
A lot of you asked about pets. This is actually a really interesting question, because the way that people look at animals is a lot different than how they do in America. My family has two dogs, but they are guard dogs. Most dogs here are DANGEROUS. They are not raised to be friendly. They are chained up all the time and are fed really yucky food leftovers. We borrowed a cat for a while because we had a problem with mice. My family recently bought nine calves. Livestock is a good investment for people. We have some sheep and two cows, which supply our milk. I tried to milk the cow once, but I wasn’t very successful. Everyone has a milk cow. The cows get rounded up in the morning by a shepherd, go to fields or into the mountains to graze, and then come home in the evening. It was strange at first to me ride in a car or bus and have to slow down to get through a big herd of sheep or cows. People wait for the cows to come home at night, and the cows always know wh!
ich house is theirs. There are also lots of horses and donkeys that people use for transportation and field work.
FOOD
I like the fresh homemade bread, and some of the national dishes like plov, which is rice, meat, and carrots. The main national dish is called Beshbarmak (it means five fingers) which is noodles with boiled sheep meat. Honestly, it isn’t very good. It’s a big honor if they give you the sheep’s head to eat, especially the eyeballs! Luckily, women don’t usually get this honor, so I’ve never been offered the eyeballs. Meat is very important; it’s actually shameful to serve food that doesn’t have meat in it. In winter, there isn’t a lot of fruit or vegetables, but there are homemade canned “salads” that can be really good. In summer, there is lots of fresh fruit and vegetables to enjoy.
HOLIDAYS
Nope, no Christmas here! I had fun Christmas celebrations with some volunteer friends. New Year’s is a big holiday though, and they celebrate New Year’s Eve with a New Year’s Eve tree, which looks pretty much like… a Christmas tree! The next holiday is Noorus, which is the Kyrgyz New Year. It’s in March, which in my opinion is a good time to celebrate a new year, since it’s spring.
I haven’t answered all your questions, but this letter is long enough! Feel free to ask me anything else or re-ask something you think I haven’t answered well enough.
February 23, 2004
The concert was very well done, though we did not raise enough money to meet our budget goal. We will do the lottery on March 8, and then decide if we have to do another concert or not.
Yesterday Nate from Kyzyl Adyr and John, one of the new volunteers in Kyzyl Adyr, came to Ming Bulak. We went hiking up over the mountains near my house. It is lovely to go hiking! I was wiped out physically, and was sorry to be the slowest of the group, but it was worth it. We were underway for about 6 hours. The weather was a little bit hazy, but that made for some different views from the top. On the way back we descended the foothills with one of my seventh grade students, who was helping to lead an enormous herd of sheep. I am stiff today.
Today was “men’s day.” It is also Veteran’s day, to commemorate those men who fought for the USSR in the “Great Patriotic War Against Fascism.” It’s a bit confused now, because the USSR hasn’t existed for quite a while now. That’s why it’s also men’s day now, to complement women’s day on March 8. It’s hard to do away with the patriotism for the USSR that was steeped into everyone for so many years. One of the volunteers did some informal research about the generation that lived through WW2, and found that every family she talked to lost a father to that war, and that the generation after the war grew up fatherless. In honor of men’s day, at school today there was a competition between two groups of boy students. There were trivia questions, a silly sports competition including a one-legged relay race, and a singing contest. One of the older teachers gave a speech in which she honored the red army. Of course these festivities meant that some of my classes were canceled.
I cleaned my room today –with my grass broom- and did my laundry, including my sheets. I will never complain about doing laundry with a washing machine again, washing sheets by hand is such a pain! One of the reasons I want to go to Paris is to get my clothing actually clean.
My host father is in the hospital for a week- I don’t think it’s that serious, people seem to go to the hospital for periods of recuperation- so my family isn’t making regular meals because they don’t have time. This is fine with me, because I’d much rather cook my own food than the fried or boiled noodles and meat they cook up.
Another example of cultural difference- I asked my host parents what I should bring back with me from Paris. For some reason I thought they’d request something like fine wine or cheese. What was I thinking! After reflecting for a minute, Keshimjan said, “we’d really like a VCR.” Geez.
The concert was very well done, though we did not raise enough money to meet our budget goal. We will do the lottery on March 8, and then decide if we have to do another concert or not.
Yesterday Nate from Kyzyl Adyr and John, one of the new volunteers in Kyzyl Adyr, came to Ming Bulak. We went hiking up over the mountains near my house. It is lovely to go hiking! I was wiped out physically, and was sorry to be the slowest of the group, but it was worth it. We were underway for about 6 hours. The weather was a little bit hazy, but that made for some different views from the top. On the way back we descended the foothills with one of my seventh grade students, who was helping to lead an enormous herd of sheep. I am stiff today.
Today was “men’s day.” It is also Veteran’s day, to commemorate those men who fought for the USSR in the “Great Patriotic War Against Fascism.” It’s a bit confused now, because the USSR hasn’t existed for quite a while now. That’s why it’s also men’s day now, to complement women’s day on March 8. It’s hard to do away with the patriotism for the USSR that was steeped into everyone for so many years. One of the volunteers did some informal research about the generation that lived through WW2, and found that every family she talked to lost a father to that war, and that the generation after the war grew up fatherless. In honor of men’s day, at school today there was a competition between two groups of boy students. There were trivia questions, a silly sports competition including a one-legged relay race, and a singing contest. One of the older teachers gave a speech in which she honored the red army. Of course these festivities meant that some of my classes were canceled.
I cleaned my room today –with my grass broom- and did my laundry, including my sheets. I will never complain about doing laundry with a washing machine again, washing sheets by hand is such a pain! One of the reasons I want to go to Paris is to get my clothing actually clean.
My host father is in the hospital for a week- I don’t think it’s that serious, people seem to go to the hospital for periods of recuperation- so my family isn’t making regular meals because they don’t have time. This is fine with me, because I’d much rather cook my own food than the fried or boiled noodles and meat they cook up.
Another example of cultural difference- I asked my host parents what I should bring back with me from Paris. For some reason I thought they’d request something like fine wine or cheese. What was I thinking! After reflecting for a minute, Keshimjan said, “we’d really like a VCR.” Geez.
February 19, 2004
In Kyrgyz, the proper way to address a teacher is not “Mr/Mrs.” plus last name, but “ejeh” for women (it means “older sister”) and “ag-eye” for men (it means something like “respected male teacher”). It would be weird and impolite for them to call me just “Erika,” so instead of calling me “Erika ejeh” or “ejeh,” they call me “Erika teacher” or just “teacher.” I half-heartedly tried to teach them to say “Ms. Erika,” but it never took. I know it’s wrong but I’m used to “teacher” and kind of like it. I got a new title today that made me smile, courtesy of Timur. Timur is a 10th grader of mine who by any usual measure can only described as a bad student. He doesn’t do his homework, misses a lot of school, and spends a lot of class time drawing elaborate pictures in his notebook and not paying any attention at all. Nevertheless, I am very fond of him. He obliged me once by drawing a fantastic set of flashcards for a transportation unit, and was extra grateful that he got to go on the most recent trip to the IREX center. He is mischievous but somehow hard not to love. Today I gave the 10th graders a vocabulary test, and was doing my best imitation of a strict I-will-tear-up-your-test if-you-even-think-about-cheating teacher, but it was hard for me not to break out in full grin, when Timur called me “techinka,” a Russian-ish diminutive for “teacher.” How could you fail someone who calls you “techinka?”
I haven’t even told you about this yet, but my students Mirbek, Aiperi, and Kubanichbek, came to me a long time ago, wanting to do something for the school. With their help to assemble a list of books and budget, I wrote a partnership project to help our school acquire Russian and Kyrgyz literature books, and a microphone system that will be used at assemblies. Partnership requires that we contribute 25% of the total budget in work or cash. Besides repainting the school library, we’re going to hold a concert for which the students will pay money and a lottery with various prizes. The concert is tomorrow. Eleventh graders and ninth graders will perform. There will be dancing, singing and lip-singing. I’m even going to play my flute. It will be the first time Bach is played in Ming Bulak. I hope they won’t be disappointed- the request was for me to play an Enrique Iglesias song, or something of equally generic international pop culture. I said it’s going to be Bach, take it or leave it. The tickets will cost 10 som, which is 5 som more than usual. We’re very worried about attendance, because if not enough people come we won’t make enough money.
In Kyrgyz, the proper way to address a teacher is not “Mr/Mrs.” plus last name, but “ejeh” for women (it means “older sister”) and “ag-eye” for men (it means something like “respected male teacher”). It would be weird and impolite for them to call me just “Erika,” so instead of calling me “Erika ejeh” or “ejeh,” they call me “Erika teacher” or just “teacher.” I half-heartedly tried to teach them to say “Ms. Erika,” but it never took. I know it’s wrong but I’m used to “teacher” and kind of like it. I got a new title today that made me smile, courtesy of Timur. Timur is a 10th grader of mine who by any usual measure can only described as a bad student. He doesn’t do his homework, misses a lot of school, and spends a lot of class time drawing elaborate pictures in his notebook and not paying any attention at all. Nevertheless, I am very fond of him. He obliged me once by drawing a fantastic set of flashcards for a transportation unit, and was extra grateful that he got to go on the most recent trip to the IREX center. He is mischievous but somehow hard not to love. Today I gave the 10th graders a vocabulary test, and was doing my best imitation of a strict I-will-tear-up-your-test if-you-even-think-about-cheating teacher, but it was hard for me not to break out in full grin, when Timur called me “techinka,” a Russian-ish diminutive for “teacher.” How could you fail someone who calls you “techinka?”
I haven’t even told you about this yet, but my students Mirbek, Aiperi, and Kubanichbek, came to me a long time ago, wanting to do something for the school. With their help to assemble a list of books and budget, I wrote a partnership project to help our school acquire Russian and Kyrgyz literature books, and a microphone system that will be used at assemblies. Partnership requires that we contribute 25% of the total budget in work or cash. Besides repainting the school library, we’re going to hold a concert for which the students will pay money and a lottery with various prizes. The concert is tomorrow. Eleventh graders and ninth graders will perform. There will be dancing, singing and lip-singing. I’m even going to play my flute. It will be the first time Bach is played in Ming Bulak. I hope they won’t be disappointed- the request was for me to play an Enrique Iglesias song, or something of equally generic international pop culture. I said it’s going to be Bach, take it or leave it. The tickets will cost 10 som, which is 5 som more than usual. We’re very worried about attendance, because if not enough people come we won’t make enough money.
