last night we had dinner at the undeland's house along with our directors and their son. as mentioned in earlier posts... charlie (undeland), sasha and i were in a "biggest loser" contest for the past month to see who could lose the most weight. charlie and i both thought for sure that sasha would win (he is 10 years younger than us and a bit more spry) but come weigh in this past sunday... we were all shocked when charlie won. but it was close. charlie lost 7 kilos, sasha lost 6.5 kilos and i lost 6.2 kilos (that is almost 14 pounds). so i guess you could say that we were all "winners".
so of course to celebrate our new girlish figures... charlie had us all over for a feast. crazy amount of food. grilled pork, chicken and shrimp. salads. rice. garlic bread. too much vodka. and the highlight was a cake made in the shape of a guy with a big fat belly. i of course am still on a diet while those guys pigged out... so we will see who ends up being the biggest loser/winner.
charlie has a pretty amazing family. his wife is kyrgyz and she runs a ngo (non-government organization) and travels all over the world (she is currently in the states giving a presentation at havard). they have two kids who go to bishkek international school (one of whom is in jen's class). his nephew and niece... in typical krygyz fashion... practically live there as well... as does his sister-in-law who is a doctor with the world health organization. all of which is a fancy way of saying that there are people running around everywhere all the time. a very wonderful, welcoming, family place.
after dinner... the whole lot of us ended up around the television watching the "sound of music". three krygyz kids (ages 5, 9, 13), a russian/american kid (age 2), four americans, two krygyz, and a russian from moldova... and we are all singing along with the movie.
chalk up another surreal central asian moment.
speaking of surreal and the hills being alive... charlie, who works for USAid and who also happens to be really connected with locals in the know, has said that we can expect some level of civil unrest in the next week or month. total crystal ball kind of guess on his part but he feels fairly certain that something is going to happen. might be nothing more than peaceful demonstrations against the current government (which is quiet corrupt) or full fledge riots with fighting in the streets, looting, etc that was similar to the "revolution" here three years ago.
of course... this lead to a long discussion and questions on our part such as "what do we do?"... "will we be safe?"... and "can we join in the looting and get a new, flat screen tv?".
the answers were "stay home and stay calm"... "folks here like americans they just don't like the corrupt government"... and "yes... but we will most likely be shot".
should be interesting. we will see what happens.
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