After KG became independent, they began to rename many of the old streets with new names. For instance, what used to be called Soviet Street (ул. Советская) was renamed Baitik Baatyr Street (ул. Байтика Баатыра) in honor of a Kyrgyz national hero. All the maps reflect the change, even Google maps. But here's the scoop: even though the street has been renamed, most people still call it Soviet Street. Some online maps, including Google, do not include the old names, even though everybody, both Kyrgyz and Russian, still uses them. So essentially a foreigner has to pick up those differences bit by bit.

What a pain. I think I'll have to add a little reference for those purposes so I can keep track of this stuff. Take a look in the right sidebar of the blog to find it.

Tonight I had a get-together at a coffee shop in a part of town I had not been to yet, so I called a cab to get there. I gave the driver the address, but he wanted to know the intersection, not the address, but I hadn't written the cross-street down, which rather irritated him. Back in Kazan taxi companies always wanted the precise address, and the drivers were irked if you told them how to get there. I asked the driver about that. He told me that they generally do not know addresses and generally prefer to work with intersections.

I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that addresses in Russia actually increment by one according to the number of buildings on a block. In other words if you start counting from the address #1 on the first block of a particular street, and there are five buildings on the east side of the street, the their addresses are 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9, respectively. If on the opposite side of the block there are ten smaller buildings, then they bear the even numbers from 2 to 20. Sometimes those differences add up to quite a bit. On Friday I was looking for 43 Sovetskaya street, and across the street from it was building 93. So the nice coordinate system that makes younger American cities relatively easy to navigate does not exist here.

The second reason has to do with modern databases. Here is a Google map of the area near my Kazan apartment:

Note how the buildings and their addresses are indicated. Now look at the Google map of the intersection where my apartment is in Bishkek at the same resolution:

Note that the vast majority of the buildings are not indicated, and addresses are only indicated if some institution is also noted. My conclusion: the publically available databases for Bishkek are not nearly as complete for Bishkek as they are for other cities. I'm not all that surprised. The other day I wanted to download an app called 2gis, which was really useful for navigating Kazan. They don't even have one yet for Bishkek, and the absence of publically accessible databases would explain that. Plus street view is available on Google Maps for Kazan, but it still is not for Bishkek.

So for now I must get in the habit of telling my taxi drivers the cross-roads while I'm in Bishkek.

Each summer when I have been in Kazan, my apartment has been without hot water for a period of time. I wondered whether it would be the same here in Bishkek. When I arrived, I was told that the summer maintenance of the water system had already been completed, which means I have hot water all summer. I'm quite pleased. Nothing reinforces my sense of well-being quite like a hot shower.

Today I did laundry for the first time in this apartment. Considering the state of the apartment's furniture, etc., I had worried about the washer's functionality. It worked great. It's one of those small front-loaders. The amount of water they use seems significantly less than our American top-loaders, which makes good environmental sense.

My brother is a frequent world-traveller. He mentioned to me the other day that melatonin helps him more rapidly adjust when he is dealing with jet lag. I'm not a fan of using non-medical herbs, but my jet lag is still a bear. I'll start going to the gym on Monday. Hopefully the elliptical running machine will exhaust me enough to finish the adjustment. If not, I may have to seek out the melatonin.

The last of our students have arrived at Manas Airport without major incident and are now being escorted to their host families. Poor things. Their flight arrived at 2:40 a.m. They get just a brief time with their host families, and then we will put them straight to work in a few hours.

Over the weekend a few students arrived in town, and this morning the major group arrived. Student travel here was without major incident: although one student had to do some last minute flight juggling in Dallas, and another had her luggage waylaid. The latter might take a day or three to work out.

The students arrived around three in the morning, were transported to their host families for a few hours, and then the host families brought them to the school. Then there was a walking excursion of the city that included a trip to the bank to use the ATM; the Vefa center, which is the lovely little mall catty-corner to the school; TsUM, the enormous main department store; a visit to the eternal flame; and a visit to the main square. The latter is visually impressive. Alas, our group got split up into two, so I didn't manage any big group pictures yet. (Note to self: don't include TsUM next year.)

We returned to the area of the school. The students grabbed lunch, and then we had confirmatory placement testing, after which there was a local orientation. Then the students headed homeward.

I quite dislike it that travel arrangements were such that students arrived on Monday and the first day of class was Monday. It would be much better for the students to arrive on Saturday and then have an entire day for their bodies to start adjusting. I'll have to see if we can somehow arrange things differently for next year.