Almost 6 months in Kyrgyzstan!

We have now been at our permanent site for about 3 months. Nothing too eventful to report, just an update on how we are doing.

Mike's honeymoon period at the school is over and his students are starting to see him as just another teacher. Although some students give him a hard time in class, he is still enjoying teaching. Over the past 2 months, he has raised enough money from friends and family to buy 600 new English textbooks. This is good news for the school, but bad news for his students because now they cannot use the excuse "I didn't do my homework because I didn't have a book."

Work is finally starting to pick up for me at my NGO. With the help of Mike's sister and her college friends, and with additional donations from the family, I have enough money to buy therapeutic toys for the crisis center. Our main priority is to get a Sandplay Therapy set up for my counterpart so her and I can start doing sandplay therapy with the kids. We also have enough money to buy several other toys for the kids.

Today is World AIDS day. The local youth all took part in a march through the city to honor the day. It was great to see the youth take an active stance on this issue. I have applied for a grant provide trainings at the local schools on HIV/AIDS. If it is approved, my counterpart and I will start the trainings this month (and I will be doing my part of the presentation in Russian- uh oh)

Mike and I are in the process of moving to another host family. We will be renting a very large room and will live with a Kyrgyz woman and her daughter. This is a family that we will actually get to interact with (we barely saw our last host mother) so we hope our Russian will improve. We are fortunate because our new house has an indoor toilet and shower (so no outhouses in 10 degree weather, plus the wind chill, brrrrr).

Mike and I are both healthy and doing well. We both appreciate the generous donations for the toys and textbooks and thank everyone who donated.