Just Call Me Owen Wilson

Remember that movie Wedding Crashers? Well, I certainly did this past weekend, when I became a sort of Kyrgyz Wedding Crasher myself. It all started last week, when I was riding in a shared taxi with a woman who turned out to be my neighbor. After I figured out that she was telling me about her son’s upcoming wedding (and not that she wanted me to marry her son), I told her that, if she wanted, I would come. She kind of nodded at me and I figured that would be the last I would hear of it.

Flash forward to Sunday, when my parents tell me that they want to take me to this wedding. It’s that evening in Osh city, so around 7 pm we bade the kids and daughter-in-law adieu and set out. The wedding is at this giant cafe – basically a big courtyard and even bigger indoor dance hall, complete with neon lights and singing DJ. When we sat down, my parents abandoned me, leaving me by myself at a table full of our middle-aged neighbors (I knew one of their names). Nevertheless, as is typical at Kyrgyz social functions, we quickly became friendly after several rounds of vodka shots and dance breaks. And holy hell, do Kyrgyz people like to dance. ESPECIALLY the middle-aged ones. I had three nice grey-haired men as partners for most of the night. And it was so fun – no creepy old man vibes at all. Dancing Kyrgyz-style involves a lot of wrist flipping and feet kicking – imagine some sort of Bollywood/Riverdance hybrid. I was cracking up watching the crazy dancers – especially my host mom, who was spinning around the dance floor like one of those fairy godmothers from Cinderella. I kept waiting for her to sprout wings and start turning pumpkins into horse-drawn carriages.

At weddings, Kyrgyz people also give many, many toasts to the happy couple and their parents. The parents of the bride and groom went first – after their toast, they did this dance where they stand in a circle in the middle of the room and guests come up and stuff money in their shirts and pockets. Later, the parents give some of this money away to guests that they think are doing a particularly good job at dancing (I won 20 som, thankyouverymuch). I figured that since I barely knew the parents and had never met the bride or groom, I’d be excused from giving a toast. This, of course, was an erroneous assumption. When my table got up to give our group toast, I found myself being pushed toward the microphone. I decided to explain very quickly who I was (because, I mean, I clearly wasn’t just some random Kyrgyz person who showed up) and then give a short toast to the bride and groom. Unfortunately, I was cut off by the emcee before I could get to my actual toast. So, what the crowd of 300 heard from this random red-headed girl was:
“Hello, I am Teresa. I come from America. Today is a very happy day for me because it is my first Kyrgyz wedding. I congratulaaa---....”
Then the emcee grabbed the mike and launched into a short speech about how I had come all the way from America to teach their children and even learned how to sing Kyrgyz songs. I was mortified. And then, of course, various people came up to me to ‘speak English.’ At one point, the mother of the groom dragged me across the room to meet a guy who graduated from the English faculty at university two years ago. He turned out to be a really nice guy who spoke English fairly well. I’m sure we started some rumors about Teresa finally getting a Kyrgyz boyfriend. My host mom keeps asking me about him with things like, “Soooo, where was that boy from again? Does he work?” Sigh.

As dinner’s 7th course was finally served at 12:30 am, my host dad decided he’d had enough and that we should head home. As we drove through the dark valley home, I had this sense of belonging to this place – a feeling that doesn’t happen very often. I was the only American in a room full of partying Kyrgyz people and I had a fantastic time. If Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn ever decide to do “Wedding Crashers – Kyrgyzstan,” they should give me a call.