1) You’re giving an English lesson at the local school. Students are reading something when suddenly the local teacher walks in and asks you „Do you want to live with me?“. It turns out that she thinks you must be sad to live with a family who mostly cannot speak English. It doesn’t matter that for mutual understanding you need to speak Russian with the teacher as well.
2) You walk in the mountains when a man looking like a bank robber stops his horse and says „Davai, go and have a ride!“. After 200 meters he runs to you to take his horse back because his clever sheep used the moment to run away.
3) Everyone seems to know you but you don’t know anyone. If the group of the people you’re talking with in Russian suddenly changes to Kyrgyz you can be sure they are discussing about potential husband candidates to marry you.
4) While walking on the street there’s a constant choir following you: „Hello-what’s-your-name?“. If you at one point think that you’re alone and there are no children around, you hear a desperate knocking, someone is trying to open the window and when it finally happens you hear the most happy „HELLO!“ in your life.
5) When the children limit themselves with only saying „Hello“ then the adults… „Where are you from, what are you doing, where do you live, with whom do you live, do you have children, why don’t you have children, how old are you, do you like Kyrgyzstan, why do you like Kyrgyzstan, do you like horses, how cold is it in Estonia, do you come back in the summer, come to visit me“.
6) There’s a tap in the middle of the village which looks like a small hill of ice during the winter. A little 3-year old boy falls down, hits his head but doesn’t start crying (I would have). He just stares at you. It seems like he had found a golden fish from his bottle of water.
7) The local Muslim family you’re living with and who [according to their beliefs] don’t eat pork buys you really-who-knows-from-which-magical-place a ham made out of pork. It doesn’t matter that they know you usually don’t eat meat at all. You are from Europe and Europeans love meat, right?
8) Your neighbours come to visit you with local beer and nuts to ask if they can bring their children over to practice their English.
9) The community plans to make you play Santa Claus on New Year’s Eve [„You go door by door and give candies to the children!“]. [I was actually really sad that I couldn’t make it and had to leave before].
10) You gave your last English lesson at the local school and the older students ask for your Instagram. You write it on the board and the little students write it into their notebooks [„hmm, it must be a next task…“]. After some days you discover that some of them had made their own accounts just to follow you.
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