Settling Back In

I've been back in country for a week now...gradually getting used to the Kyrgyz pace of life again. Before I got back to site, I visited some friends in Issyk-Kul (the giant lake in the northeast). Not sure if they were happier to see me or the Jack Daniels I brought, but we had a great time. The day before I left, we went to a resort area called Jeti Ogyz ("Seven Bulls"). Jeti Ogyz is pretty famous around here, not only for its natural beauty but also for being the site of Yeltsin's first meeting with Akaev (K-stan's 1st president) post-Kyrgyz independence. There, huge red rocks thrust themselves from the ground -- pretty striking, really. I suppose they kind of look like bulls, especially if you think Cubism and deconstructionist art instead of "big animals with horns." The coolest rock formation -- the Cloven Heart -- is this giant red rock that looks like, well, a broken heart. Some serious seismic activity must have gone on to get that huge rock to stand vertically. Actually, something I didn't know about K-stan until I'd lived here for a while is how many earthquakes we have. This spring, we had probably 4-6 little ones in my village.
So after wandering around the slightly dilapidated resort area for a while, we went hiking up one of the adjacent hills. Two of us, however, didn't really think about what direction we were headed and ended up in a giant thorn patch, a-la-Brer-Rabbit. This was particularly unfortunate because we were wearing sandals and shorts. I'm still picking thorns out of my feet 3 days later. I eventually turned around once the prickly bushes reached my head. The view was pretty sweet, though. The day became an officially perfect Kyrgyz day when we heard the Akon classic "I Wanna F--- You" drifting through the valley to the mountain peaks.
I finally made it back to my site and was greeted by my exuberant host siblings (who, for fear that I am going to abandon them once again, refuse to leave me alone...yet I can't stay annoyed because they are just so darned cute). The two four-year-olds wowed me last night by reciting Manas (the Kyrgyz epic poem -- the longest of its kind in the world). And the baby has grown into a tiny person who can answer yes-or-no questions and toddler-run. Had yet another language flub-up yesterday when I told her, "Don't lick the wall!" -- I realized afterward that the phrase might mean something more like, "Don't be a whore!" (since the word for lick and whore are one and the same). Ah, well.