Day 5: Bishkek, Birthday

[this was written some time before I was able to post it] On Tuesday, we awoke at the house of our new friends in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, grateful to be out of the transit terminal. In the afternoon, I walked down the street to buy plane tickets for the evening flight to Osh, and for the first time on this trip, I really knew I was back in Central Asia. The familiar smells, sights, sounds, languages, and people reminded me of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. However, not everything here is as we knew it in Uzbekistan. Most notably, I saw a political demonstration walk down the street. One man would shout the name of the Kyrgyz president, and hundreds would reply, “GO AWAY!” Such a demonstration would hardly be possible in Uzbekistan (they actually tried it once in the spring of 2005, and the death toll was estimated between 500 and 2000 after the military was done). So, while political demonstrations can be concerning in this part of the world, it is also a sign of a level of freedom nonexistent elsewhere.

In the evening we flew to Osh, Kyrgyzstan, a predominantly Uzbek city near the border. We got in late, and arrived in the home of some of our former colleagues from our time in Uzbekistan, where we plan to stay during our time in Osh.

One other interesting note: when we flew into the Bishkek airport, we found about a dozen US Air Force Jets on the tarmac. A strangely comforting site.

Ella turned 4 months yesterday, and here is the birthday picture I promised in the last update. We have a little tradition of taking a pic of Ella with her Ella-phant on the 16th of every month.