Archive sections: ‘Life In Kyrgyzstan’
A few years ago, in 2005, the Malvern Gazette ran a story about the Tulip Revolution here in Kyrgyzstan. It might seem a bit odd that a local newspaper in Britain ran a story about events here in Central Asia, even if they did result in the fall of the government, the president of the [...]
One of the most enjoyable extra curricula activities which I used to participate in when I was a schoolteacher back in Britain, was taking a group ice skating. Now, I am not a particularly good as an ice-skater. There is no way that I could perform figure skating, ice-dancing or play in an ice hockey [...]
A week has passed since the events of the Easter Revolution which took place on April 7th … and life in Bishkek is returning to normal. How can I tell?
In English, we have a number of phrases which we use when we feel that we are being told something that is untrue, such as: having the wool pulled over our eyes; having our leg pulled. Here, there is a similar phrase which can take people by surprise: “having noodles laid on our ears”. The [...]
Saturday was one of the few days in the year when you wouldn’t have found me in the office. Well, that’s not quite true - I arrived, as usual, at six o’clock and spent three hours going through the emails and some of the routine weekend tasks … but at nine o’clock I abandoned the [...]
Tatiana is a common name in Russian and is often shortened to Tanya, and affectionate nicknames such as Tanyushka, Tanechka, Tat’yanka.
Although the Constitution declares that the Kyrgyz Republic is a secular state, it may be surprising that a number of religious holidays are commemorated. As the majority of the Kyrgyz, themselves, are nominally Muslim, it is understandable that amongst the national holidays are Muslim festivals such as Orozo Ait and Kurman Ait. What might be [...]
Christmas has come and finally come … and gone. It’s has always been a hectic time of the year and, especially in my time as a school teacher, I was all too familiar with the traditional build up to Christmas – and the round of special events to mark the occasion.
Christmas is not the only festival that we experience a surplus of in Kyrgyzstan – there’s also New Year. The history of the Calendar which we use is a long and complex affair. At present we tend to mark the beginning of the New Year on 1st January. It has not always been so … [...]
When I first arrived in Kyrgyzstan, some fourteen years ago, I stood out from the crowd in quite a number of ways: … For a start, I was a foreigner. Nowadays there are so many of us that, although people are still interested, few really pay any attention to this fact in everyday life … [...]
