We've Landed!

We made it! Landed safely in kyrgyzstan, so let me tell you about the journey: we had a 9 hour flight from LAX to London, Heathrow on British Air. This airline was amazing, i've never flown in such luxury. If you've seen the movie Wall-E, it felt just like that. evey seat had a built in TV screen with a selection of music and movies to watch. did you catch that? a selection, seriously. then they gave us this gourmet airflight meal, amazing. so, things went smooth with our connection flight from London with another 9 hour flight in the Kyrgyz capitol of Biskek. But, (ya here it is) they misplaced all of our luggage. all of it. until, today that is; we finally got our bags, we able to shower and change clothes. not too bad, only 3 days without a shower in contrast to the 6 weeks that i did not have one at the beginning of this deal.

so, kyrgyzstan: man, this place is run down, which doesn't say a lot for the country considering its the capitol. everyone here speaks russian and when we leave for the Naryn region (tomorrow) hardly anyone there will speak russian and most will speak Kyrgyz. it's actually really cool hearing the differnce in language and no matter where we go everyone knows we're american and they stare (not too many tourists around here). most of my time spent the past few days has been walking around town shopping for food for the team and checking out the local bazaars. i love bazaars, they tell so much about a culture. they are always less clean and less selection, but they are also so authentic and because of the differnet standard that the US the beautiful colors of fruit stand out so much. they take pride in their stands whether they sell bread, meat or produce. it's beautiful, it's their life.

yesterday i spent some time in the Russian Orthodox church, which was really more like a shrine. this place was beautiful. it was decorated with paintings and iconography and it was dusty so the light that shined through the windows was caught and suspended in the air. i watched people pray and light candles in honor, but i think the best thing was watching the women clean the place. they cleaned old school with feet scrubbers and rags; something about that seems so much more sacred.

the weather here is not bad; the worst is at night when it gets down to about 20 degrees. but we're heading out tomorrow and to about 7,00 ft elevation and it'll be much colder (bout an avrg of -20), but that's not so bad considering i now have my warm clothes. thanks for all your thoughts toward us! keep it up.