Daily life: Mon. and Tues.

Well, Monday was relatively uneventful except that it was marginally cooler here—thank goodness! Wow, it was nice to have a day that didn’t reach 104 degrees. I walked to work with the other two interns and had a meeting with the woman who is my supervisor here, as well as with Meerim, who is the person I’ll be working with most closely. It was a good day for learning about the current situation here, regarding their information systems, the current design, available information, their goals for a new system, the constraints, and my role in preparing for this new information system.

At lunch, Meerim and Sarah (the intern who rooms with me) and I went to lunch at a nearby outdoor restaurant that reminded me a little of where Idai and I went Sunday. It had the same covered outdoor booths with brightly colored cushions covering the rough wood benches. We had plov, a traditional dish of rice and a few veggies (mostly carrots) and fatty bits of beef (which I scraped to the side). It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t my favorite dish. It wasn’t too flavorful, but I’ve been told that it’s usually swimming in grease and that the plov we had was “too dry.” I should be thankful; I prefer dry and not too flavorful to swimming in grease. So far my favorite dishes are shashleek (the meat skewers grilled outside, see photo)…

…and logmon, which is a noodle dish with bits of meat and flavorful broth and bits of veggies. I love, love the bread, called leepairshka. They cook it outside in a big clay cylinder with a fire at the bottom. They place a round of dough on a big wooden paddle and wet the top of the dough. Then they put the paddle inside the cylindrical oven and stick the dough to the side of the cylinder. The water they apply first helps it stick. Then when it’s done, they reach into the cylinder with long metal tongs and pull it out. Delicious! A big one (about a foot in diameter) is 40 cents; a little one (about 6 inches in diameter) is 20 cents. I’ll try to get some pics of this soon so you can see.

After work we went home and discovered that I still cannot get online. Bummer. So we made dinner (actually, John, the third intern, made dinner, and Sarah and I washed veggies and tried to help) and then I talked to Tony on Skype using John’s computer.

Tuesday, yesterday, was a good day but very, very hot. I walked to work by myself with no trouble and felt awesome about that. For lunch, we went to what is my favorite restaurant so far and had logmon. Yum. After work we slogged home in the extreme heat to find the electricity off, so we took showers and Sarah and I got dressed up cute. Then we all three met some of our coworkers at a concert. It was an American bluegrass band and then a famous traditional Kyrgyz music band, and then the two played a few songs together. It was loads of fun though the performance hall was boiling hot—closed up and unair conditioned. Afterwards we sat around and had a beer and then hiked home in a big group. By then it was a little after 10 p.m. and had become comfortably warm. Much better… I’ll work on the photos from the concert tonight and get them uploaded tomorrow. Signing off for now…