weekend update

we had a great weekend. the weather was perfect as it warmed up a bit and fall made a wonderful comeback.

friday after work, jen and i checked out a local bazaar that is really close to our house. we grabbed some veggies, went home, cooked dinner, and watched the movie "into the wild". had some good conversation (it is amazing how much good conversation you have with someone when you don't have internet and only have one cable channel that is in english). and it typical bishkek adventure fashion... we were in bed by 900pm.

saturday was a bit more eventful.

i am still in search of that ever allusive adult basketball game here in bishkek. working for the past four years at two different universities (based out of the recreation centers) and the three years before that at a middle school in austin... pretty much provided me the opportunity to play basketball everyday. and i mean everyday. i just to joke with the students at the university of houston that i was a "professional basketball player" as i was playing will on the clock and being paid for it. besides being my only form of cardio exercise and the only hope i have of keeping my pant size in the low 30s... playing basketball is an important stress release for me. not that i would go home and yell and jen and kick boone if i didn't get to play... but basketball allows me to unwind. plus... i like to kid myself that i got game.

anyway... basketball has been hard to come by in bishkek. gyms here tend to cater to leagues and not open gym. i have been to four different ones looking for a game. and other than discovering some really cool, old, don't fall down or you will get splinters all in your body courts... i haven't had much luck.

until saturday when i played with the kids (and some adults) from hope academy. we played at the "sports palace" which looks like at one time it could have been a really nice facility. and by "one time" i mean back when the soviets were in charge. but that is the case with most things in bishkek and worthy of it's own post later. it took us about 30 minutes of driving around the same block to find it. we tried asking people for directions and kept getting a response in russian that translated into "the opposite corner of this building". we would drive to the opposite corner, ask someone else, and be directed to "the opposite corner of this building". jennifer is so much better than communicating than me and is picking up russian really well. i tend to resort to the "speaking slowly and loudly in english" method which never works although i am being persistent about it.

we find the gym and show up just in time to play. the quality of ball was lacking but it still felt good to get a couple of runs in. jen made a couple of connections with some ex-pats who live here in bishkek and was invited to be a member of the bishkek international woman's club.

after ball, we headed over to the metro pub (which we heard was the closest thing to american food here in bishkek) and ate for the first time.

wow.

wow.

jen got french toast (yummy!) and i had a honest to god (real beef and real bacon!) bacon cheese burger with fries. it was heavenly.

we were so happy and so overwhelmed by the discovery of american food... that we rushed home afterwards and napped for two solid hours. good stuff.

saturday night found us at the home of an embassy parent from our school for a dinner welcoming our director to bishkek. more good food and the cool part was we got to meet the new american ambassador to kyrgyzstan. super nice woman but the best thing about her was that she was wearing berkenstock sandals. berkenstock sandals. i told her that she was the coolest ambassador that jen and i had ever met (never mind that she was the only one).

after dinner... we headed over to sasha and marykays for a game of nickels and an abundance of microwave popcorn and peanut m&ms. a great evening.

sunday, we headed back up to chui (it is so wonderful having a car) and decided to hang out at the metro while we did some school prep. but as fate... or more specifically... as is becoming par for the course in a country with serious power issues... the metro was open but didn't have power. that totally trashed the plan of two days in a row of bacon cheese burgers.

so instead we headed to fatboys, a british pub. comfortable couches, decent food, and a much better place to do school work.


we were there for 15 minutes and the power goes out.

work, work, work (jen is a superstar teacher... i am such a slouch) and then we head back home for my 400pm tennis match at the tennis center across the river from our apartment.

the courts, which we can see from our bedroom, are clay courts and really nice. i played with charlie, who is a bis parent who also works at the us embassy. he totally owned me on the court but we had a good time playing.

jen and i finished the evening by heading up to the vefa center (the local, western style mall... again... it is great having a car) where i got a haircut and we did some food shopping at the ram store.

it was one of our best weekends yet here in central asia.