We had quite a vacation!
It started a week late because there were some other things we had to do. We didn't have a chance to call ahead and verify that we were coming because all of our Russian speaking office staff were already gone on their vacations. So, we got on a bus to Bishkek - the capital of Kyrgystan- and from Bishkek decided to take a taxi to our final destination on the lake because it would be faster than a bus. It was faster, until our driver tried to pass another car on the left while he was making a left-hand turn and we collided. Luckily we crashed just outside of Tokmok - the town where David was helping with the new school being built and the furniture factory - so we called up friends and someone came to get us. David had two cuts on his face, one over the eye and one under the eye, from his glasses.
Fortunately his glasses were fine, not even bent, good thing we bought glass instead of plastic, good things for the glasses at least, no good for his face. Anyway, I had whiplash and a concussion, bruised knees, and a cut inside my lip which swelled up nicely. The other passengers both had head wounds. The man in the front seemed to be fine except for a surface cut on the back of his head but the woman who had been in the back with us had a serious cut and a bad concussion. Both drivers were uninjured but our car was totaled. We weren't allowed to leave until the ambulance finally came and then we all had to go to the hospital and sit around there for several hours. David has some nifty Frankinsteinesque stitches framing his right eye, two on the bottom and three on the top.
The church members in Tokmok had an empty apartment they let us use for the night and we stayed there with the woman who had been in the back seat with us because she didn't have anywhere else to go. David's eye was a beautiful purple color but Nadia, the ADRA director, made some tea out of some weeds which David soaked cotton in and kept over his eye and that made the swelling go down. The color is almost normal now.
The construction manager in Tokmok is conveniently also a chiropracter/physical therepist on the side. I think it's more of a hobby than an occupation. He was really busy but he took five minutes to "pop" me because I was in a lot of pain from the whiplash. That was scarry. It sounded like "RELAX RELAX RELAX CRAKCRAKCRAKCRACKKKK "RELAX RELAX RELAX CRAKCRAKCRAKCRACKKKK "RELAX RELAX RELAX CRAKCRAKCRAKCRACKKKK. I wasn't relaxing very well. Amazingly! It helped. I haven't had stiffness or pain since. That afternoon, which was Tuesday, we caught a bus, not a taxi, to the Lakeside town of Bosteri where the church guest house is. We didn't leave till the afternoon because we heard that all the Pathfinders were there and we didn't want to arrive and find there was no room for us. When we finally contacted someone and were able to confirm that they were expecting us we jumped on the last bus of the day.
It was raining when we arrrived and armed with nothing but an address 
and our memories from a year ago we walked half way across town from the bus stop until we found the place. We must have been quite a sight, tired, swollen, bruised, and soaked to the bone.
The first thing we did was dry off, tell the whole saga in mime and poor Russian, and sit down to dinner with about 20 10-15 year-olds and their directors.
It was awsome! The guest house is a bit like camping
but with a nice big kitchen. 
There isn't any indoor plumbing
[with] hot water but there is a Russian sauna which usually had some residual hot water even several hours after the fire died.
One of my favorite parts of the guesthouse, after the sauna, is the flower garden
and several apricot trees
which are very fruitful in the summer. On Wednesday it was cold
but on Thursday we went to the lakeside - Issykul is a large salt water lake that is purported to have medical benefits for swimmers. David had been ordered to do some swimming for his eye. Unfortunately, our Kazakh sunscreen was ineffective and we returned from our day on the beach very burned. Friday we rode the largest ferris wheel either of us had ever seen,
David happily shot photos of camels, and we talked to a young man about bringing us two horses on Sunday because we wanted to spend the day exploring the mountains. Sabbath we were very glad to find our friends from Bishkek had arrived Friday night and even more glad to find they had brought aloe vera with them. We attended church, didn't understand much, tried to sing Russian Hymns Karaoke style, had a picnic in the back yard, and then enjoyed an English Bible study with our friends.
Sunday morning the boy did not come with the horses. We called several times. He didn't understand my Uighur. I didn't understand his Russian. We went to the bazaar
while we waited and bought honey. Tried Kymiz - fermented mare's milk- didn't like it. "Like beer" the smiling Kazakh man said in Russian, Yuck! Finally two boys came at 11 O'clock. They insisted on coming with us on our expedition so they climbed up behind us neatly seated on the world's most uncomfortable saddles and off we rode toward the mountains, bump bump bump bump.
The boys knew where a waterfall was. "It's very beautiful" they said.
High up the valley we came upon a Kyrgyz summer pasture, a yurt, a campfire, and several foals tied. "Come in and drink Kymiz" a smiling Kazkah man offered, he knew the boys and I heard him ask them in Kyrgyz how much money they had gotten from the foreigners for their excursion. We kindly declined his offer explaining that we did not like Kymiz. It took us three hours to get to the waterfall.
We climbed half way up
while our adventurous young guides climbed all the way to the top and happily waved at us. 
It only took us two hours to return trotting most of the way - the horses were clearly glad to be going downhill and toward home. My knees and calves gave out half of the way back and I couldn't post anymore so I sat limply in the saddle going bump bump bump bump. Even at a full gallop the ride was anything but smooth. We had to keep stopping to tighten the saddle because the horse knew how to hold it's breath when the boy was pulling the cinch. Once while remounting I got kicked. It was a good horse in the beginning and even responded to knee and reign commands but by the end of the trip it was clearly sick of the little boy with the whip who kept hitting it and telling it to go faster. The boys were fun, proof that you don't have to speak a common language to be friends. They giggled with boyish delight as they tried to get us to repeat bad words in Kyrgyz. I will never forget the picture of David bumping along on a trotting horse while wrestling with the boy behind him. Conclusion: Kyrgyz horses have attitude, and Kyrgyz boys clearly have unlimited energy and tailbones of iron.
We arrived back in Almaty on Monday morning after a ten hour all night bus ride with a drunk Russian man pressing his knees into the back of David's seat, saddle sore, sunburnt, bruised, and tired. We can't wait to just lie around home for a few days and recover from our vacation.
It started a week late because there were some other things we had to do. We didn't have a chance to call ahead and verify that we were coming because all of our Russian speaking office staff were already gone on their vacations. So, we got on a bus to Bishkek - the capital of Kyrgystan- and from Bishkek decided to take a taxi to our final destination on the lake because it would be faster than a bus. It was faster, until our driver tried to pass another car on the left while he was making a left-hand turn and we collided. Luckily we crashed just outside of Tokmok - the town where David was helping with the new school being built and the furniture factory - so we called up friends and someone came to get us. David had two cuts on his face, one over the eye and one under the eye, from his glasses.
Fortunately his glasses were fine, not even bent, good thing we bought glass instead of plastic, good things for the glasses at least, no good for his face. Anyway, I had whiplash and a concussion, bruised knees, and a cut inside my lip which swelled up nicely. The other passengers both had head wounds. The man in the front seemed to be fine except for a surface cut on the back of his head but the woman who had been in the back with us had a serious cut and a bad concussion. Both drivers were uninjured but our car was totaled. We weren't allowed to leave until the ambulance finally came and then we all had to go to the hospital and sit around there for several hours. David has some nifty Frankinsteinesque stitches framing his right eye, two on the bottom and three on the top.
The church members in Tokmok had an empty apartment they let us use for the night and we stayed there with the woman who had been in the back seat with us because she didn't have anywhere else to go. David's eye was a beautiful purple color but Nadia, the ADRA director, made some tea out of some weeds which David soaked cotton in and kept over his eye and that made the swelling go down. The color is almost normal now.
The construction manager in Tokmok is conveniently also a chiropracter/physical therepist on the side. I think it's more of a hobby than an occupation. He was really busy but he took five minutes to "pop" me because I was in a lot of pain from the whiplash. That was scarry. It sounded like "RELAX RELAX RELAX CRAKCRAKCRAKCRACKKKK "RELAX RELAX RELAX CRAKCRAKCRAKCRACKKKK "RELAX RELAX RELAX CRAKCRAKCRAKCRACKKKK. I wasn't relaxing very well. Amazingly! It helped. I haven't had stiffness or pain since. That afternoon, which was Tuesday, we caught a bus, not a taxi, to the Lakeside town of Bosteri where the church guest house is. We didn't leave till the afternoon because we heard that all the Pathfinders were there and we didn't want to arrive and find there was no room for us. When we finally contacted someone and were able to confirm that they were expecting us we jumped on the last bus of the day.
It was raining when we arrrived and armed with nothing but an address 
and our memories from a year ago we walked half way across town from the bus stop until we found the place. We must have been quite a sight, tired, swollen, bruised, and soaked to the bone.
The first thing we did was dry off, tell the whole saga in mime and poor Russian, and sit down to dinner with about 20 10-15 year-olds and their directors.
It was awsome! The guest house is a bit like camping
but with a nice big kitchen. 
There isn't any indoor plumbing
[with] hot water but there is a Russian sauna which usually had some residual hot water even several hours after the fire died.
One of my favorite parts of the guesthouse, after the sauna, is the flower garden
and several apricot trees
which are very fruitful in the summer. On Wednesday it was cold
but on Thursday we went to the lakeside - Issykul is a large salt water lake that is purported to have medical benefits for swimmers. David had been ordered to do some swimming for his eye. Unfortunately, our Kazakh sunscreen was ineffective and we returned from our day on the beach very burned. Friday we rode the largest ferris wheel either of us had ever seen,
David happily shot photos of camels, and we talked to a young man about bringing us two horses on Sunday because we wanted to spend the day exploring the mountains. Sabbath we were very glad to find our friends from Bishkek had arrived Friday night and even more glad to find they had brought aloe vera with them. We attended church, didn't understand much, tried to sing Russian Hymns Karaoke style, had a picnic in the back yard, and then enjoyed an English Bible study with our friends.
Sunday morning the boy did not come with the horses. We called several times. He didn't understand my Uighur. I didn't understand his Russian. We went to the bazaar
while we waited and bought honey. Tried Kymiz - fermented mare's milk- didn't like it. "Like beer" the smiling Kazakh man said in Russian, Yuck! Finally two boys came at 11 O'clock. They insisted on coming with us on our expedition so they climbed up behind us neatly seated on the world's most uncomfortable saddles and off we rode toward the mountains, bump bump bump bump.
The boys knew where a waterfall was. "It's very beautiful" they said.
High up the valley we came upon a Kyrgyz summer pasture, a yurt, a campfire, and several foals tied. "Come in and drink Kymiz" a smiling Kazkah man offered, he knew the boys and I heard him ask them in Kyrgyz how much money they had gotten from the foreigners for their excursion. We kindly declined his offer explaining that we did not like Kymiz. It took us three hours to get to the waterfall.
We climbed half way up
while our adventurous young guides climbed all the way to the top and happily waved at us. 
It only took us two hours to return trotting most of the way - the horses were clearly glad to be going downhill and toward home. My knees and calves gave out half of the way back and I couldn't post anymore so I sat limply in the saddle going bump bump bump bump. Even at a full gallop the ride was anything but smooth. We had to keep stopping to tighten the saddle because the horse knew how to hold it's breath when the boy was pulling the cinch. Once while remounting I got kicked. It was a good horse in the beginning and even responded to knee and reign commands but by the end of the trip it was clearly sick of the little boy with the whip who kept hitting it and telling it to go faster. The boys were fun, proof that you don't have to speak a common language to be friends. They giggled with boyish delight as they tried to get us to repeat bad words in Kyrgyz. I will never forget the picture of David bumping along on a trotting horse while wrestling with the boy behind him. Conclusion: Kyrgyz horses have attitude, and Kyrgyz boys clearly have unlimited energy and tailbones of iron.
We arrived back in Almaty on Monday morning after a ten hour all night bus ride with a drunk Russian man pressing his knees into the back of David's seat, saddle sore, sunburnt, bruised, and tired. We can't wait to just lie around home for a few days and recover from our vacation.
