Ninja vs Penguin

Penguin July 25th, 2008

Arrived at church at 4:45pm. Loaded up the van, prayed, didn’t leave until 5:30pm.

At Newark Airport, went to Charlie’s Cheese steak for dinner. It was expensive, like 5$ for a small cheesesteak.

We played Taboo while we waited to board the plane.

British Airways is nice. The seats recline a good amount. They also have these things that you can pull down next to your head to keep it from falling over. It was a pleasant flight and slept most of the way there.

We had a 4.5 hour layover in Heathrow. The exchange rate was about 2.1:1, Pounds to Dollars. But I couldn’t help it, I had to have myself a guinness for 3.30 pounds.

We walked about the concourse, looking at the expensive stores and realizing it was even more expensive because of the exchange rate.

There was this southern/mexican restaurant called Giraffe that we went to for lunch. As you would expect, the prices were insane, but we needed to eat something. I had myself Japanese Fried Tiger Prawns. It was pretty expensive and we didn’t get much. The prawns were okay.

As we prepared to board the plane for Kyrgyzstan, we were surprised at how many people were waiting. The plane was going to make a brief stop in Amaty, Kazakhstan, where a good majority of the people were flying to. We saw the Great Britain Volleyball team going to what looked to be some sort of tournament.

We ended up being delayed on the tarmac for a 1.5 hours because some people decided not to fly. As a result, they had to dig up their luggage which made us miss our takeoff window. We were further delayed when they sent the wrong cars to push the plane to the runway.

I popped some sleeping pills for this leg of the trip, but it didn’t help too much. I switched between trying to put my head on the tray and putting my knees on the back of the seat in front of me, but I couldn’t get comfortable for more than 40minutes of “sleep”.

The jump from Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan only took 30 minutes.

When we arrived in Kyrgyzstan, it took us about 1.5 hours to go through immigration and customs. Preston and Jon got yelled at by security because thye were hanging out behind the customs booth.

MCCF (Mercy Christian Charitable Foundation) was waiting for us at the exit. We loaded up the vans and began our 1.5 hour drive to Tokmok from Bishkek.

During the trip, I began talking to our driver. I was lucky to have someone who spoke English. I decided to turn the camera on and start doing some interviewing.

I got some decent material, but he wouldn’t let me tape the good stuff. He started talking about bribes and corruption in Kyrgyzstan, but clammed up when I turned the camera back on.

We got to the office and moved our stuff into our rooms, then went to breakfast. We got fresh pan-fried eggs, it was great. Then I got a chance to shower, which was fantastic. We met Daniel Ohm, one of the coworkers at MCCF. It was interesting coming to a predominantly Russian country and hearing/speaking Chinese.

At 9:30, we went to Sunday service. The songs were in Russian, but the message was in English, translated to Russian, and translated to Chinese.

After service, they took a walk to the school. I grabbed the camera and started shooting local people. I felt weird about it, almost like I was invading their space. Some people would notice and run away. Others just stared at the camera. It was hard, because people would start saying things to me in Russian, and I had no idea what they were saying.

I eventually met up with the rest of the group and went back to the office for lunch. While we waited for lunch, there was this young girl who talked about a concert. At first, we thought she was asking us if we were playing the concert. Then we heard something about Jay-Z. She showed us some of her breakdancing and Bo tried to imitate and failed.

While we waited for lunch, we found a place to practice the skits the rest of the team had prepared.

For lunch and had chicken noodle soup. Apparently, chicken is expensive in Kyrgyzstan.

After lunch, we had a big meeting at 2pm with the staff of MCCF to discuss the schedule and plan for the next two weeks. At 3:40pm, we had a second meeting to discuss the documentary. It was encouraging to know that they were going to assign 2 or 3 people to help me with the documentary. But since Christa and John Tsai were back in the states, it was hard to discuss the goals and purpose of the documentary. I was pretty much on my own given the freedom to shoot what I wanted.

We got some stuff done, but after the long meeting earlier, people were tired. We decided to reconvene at 8:30am the next morning.

After the second meeting, I went back to the room to work on an updated document based on what we had discussed. Then I joined the rest of the team as they tried to practice their skits. They kept having technical issues with the laptop CD drive.

At 6pm, we went to this concert the little girl had talked about. They sang “From Heaven to Earth” with hand motions and taught the kids. Then they performed the Mission Impossible skit and did introductions. Afterwards, they played games with the kids. First, they played Duck Duck Goose, and then Tag, and then a traditional Kyrgyz game.

You stood in two rows and then held your partner’s hand and raised it up, forming a small corridor. One person would walk underneath the arms and pull one person out. The left over ran to the back of the line and repeated.

Then we had dinner of potato and beef stew.

By 8pm, I was beat. Took a quick shower to rinse and cool off and went to bed.

Related posts

• Kyrgyzstan: Day 9 - 7/15/08 (0)
• Kyrgyzstan: Day 8 - 7/14/08 (0)
• Kyrgyzstan: Day 7 - 7/13/08 (0)
• Kyrgyzstan: Day 6 - 7/12/08 (0)
• Kyrgyzstan: Day 5 - 7/11/08 (0)

Tags: Documentaries, Kyrgyzstan, Trips

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