I've been living in a madhouse for the past few weeks, as all adults (save my sister-in-law and me) fled to the health resort and a multitude of children (various cousins all) arrived. Remind me never to have more than three children. One day, we all went to the health resort for a Sunday afternoon....I thought the ride over was crowded, what with 3 adults, 3 children, 1 teenager, and a baby inside the VW Golf. That is, until the ride back, when we had 5 adults, 4 children, 1 teenager, 1 baby, and 1 unborn fetus crammed inside. Yikes.
My host mom returned (incidentally, the same day that all the extra kids left...coincidence? I think not.) this week, so things have been relatively normal. Except that she has a newfound love of exercise -- she's been doing aerobics and jogging in the mornings at the village stadium. This may not sound all that strange for those of you living in health-obsessed America, but here this is straight out of left field. The average Kyrgyz person (especially women running households and those working in the fields) expends a significant amount of energy simply living his/her daily life -- doing laundry by hand, fetching water, gardening, carrying big loads of stuff from the bazaar, and other such activities take their toll. As a result, the idea that you make yourself extra tired on purpose by exercising seems ludicrous. Runners get lots of quizzical looks and the occasional ferocious canine follower. So to hear my middle-aged, grandmother-to-four host mom go on and on about how she loves to lift weights and wants to drop at least 8 kgs (about 17 pounds) was pretty entertaining. To cap it all off, just as Apa finished her monologue, the kids started doing their versions of push-ups and crunches. The little boy's push-up was particularly awesome -- something like a cross between doing the worm and making a lewd gesture. I love my family.
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