Today was my birthday: I turned the double nickle. It's pretty tough on me to spend my birthday away from my family, although I have done it for six years now. I still get really sad.

So the saving grace of the day was an invitation by an American ex-pat couple to come to their place for dinner. The home was in a development for locals who wanted a European-quality home in KG. It was beautiful. Rick and Laurie made me feel right at home. They haven't been all that long in Bishkek, and their kitchenware had just arrived, so they were ready for their first guests. (Alas, their other belongings are taking their time.) They had also invited a Brit named Dustin and his wife Albina.

Dinner was soft tacos. The meat was bought locally, but the flour tortillas were ordered from Amazon, and they were perfect for the occasion. Amazon will deliver you anything as long as you pay enough. Their kitchenware had arrived with some spices, so I gloried in the cumin. You know, theoretically, I despise the concept of comfort food, but their soft tacos were so much like what we might make back in Arizona that it made a perfect birthday dish. If I return here next year, I will have to bring them a container of ground chipotles to improve their pantry.

Both couples have travelled around the world, so they make excellent conversation partners. My contribution to the evening was a couple of bottles of wine. I had asked Rick previously what kind of wines his wife likes: dry whites. The embassy had given me a document that gave the "best of" locations of Bishkek, so I went to a place called «У француза», where you can buy French wines. It's not cheap, but the wine quality is quite good. I bought a French Gewürztraminer (2500 soms = $42), which was semi-dry, and a dry white named Mirabel (1800 soms = $30). Laurie liked the Mirabel better. I would never pay that kind of money back in the States cuz I'm a total tightwad, but I really like Rick and Laurie, and frankly it was worth it.

Dustin and Albina were also great conversation partners. I found myself a bit envious of their lives. So many places they have seen, and they have learned how to enjoy each new place and be content there, despite the fact that every country they work in is so very different from their homelands. Working in the fUSSR is not for the faint-hearted. I respected their every word.

Albina had brought with her a dog, Tempest, a frightfully inappropriate name for a toothless Yorkshire terrier. The cur loved being scratched by our stockinged feet under the table (one always removes one's shoes when entering a home in this part of the world), but when I blocked him from going out into the garden, he bit me. The bite of a toothless dog is not to be feared, but I was much amused.

So I am now 55 years old. Astonishing. I now see the ten thousand ways in which the young do not understand the old. In some ways I don't feel different from High School. In others I see so much more. Life goes so quickly that I find myself wondering how we can change the world in such a way that our older insights can inform the younger. Sadly, my own personality is not a world-changer personality. But I finally see enough to know how the world needs to change, at least in some ways. But can I actually have a positive effect? I just don't know.

Saturday I hopped on the bus with our first year students and headed for a town called Talas, which is about 200 kilometers from Bishkek as the crow flies, but it turns into a six-hour drive. We headed westward from the city around noon. 90% of KG is mountains, so you can count on going through some serious scenery go get there. The first part of our drive was hot and tiresome. And finally we got into the mountains and started the ascent. At first the ascent seemed reasonable, but then we got into this area where the switchbacks were endless. And our fellow drivers...

Well, do you remember back in driver's ed, how your teacher taught you never to try to pass when you could not see the oncoming traffic? The Kyrgyz think that rule is for cowards. Our own driver mostly followed the rule, although he passed much more aggressively than I liked. But then there was one moment where we were behind a slow gas truck. The road was curving to the right into a partial tunnel, and our driver just decided he had had enough. He pulled off to the left, and sure enough here was an oncoming car. Two of the girls in the second row shrieked. But the drivers of all three vehicles, gas truck and our van and the oncoming car, all took sensible last-minute action and our near death was averted. I told the driver to drive more conservatively, and he did not repeat that stupidity.

Bishkek has an altitude of 800 meters, roughly the elevation of Tucson. The mountain roads were leading us to Too Ashuu pass, over 11,500 feet. The air grew colder, the mountains were tightly packed and fiercely sloped, their tops scraping the bottoms of the clouds, ruggedly beautiful and amazing. At 11,150 feet we came to the Kolbaev Tunnel, built in 1961, which progresses through nearly 2 kilometers of solid rock. It reminded me of the Eisenhower tunnel, except it was quite a bit narrower with two-lane traffic, but no lane markings and fairly bumpy.

Out the other side of the tunnel we descended into a valley fed by mountain streams. Yurts housing families were here and there with their livestock, which was usually horses being raised for meat, but sometimes also cattle and sheep and goats. Where there was enough snow run-off, the grass grew ankle high, and occasionally there were low bushes, but almost no trees. This is all summer forage for livestock.

After passing along the length of the valley we ascended again through more mountains up to Otmok pass, which seemed fairly low but turned out to be 10,800 feet high. It only seemed low because we had already gained so much altitude. Then we descended again into the valley that was our goal. Traversed it took another hour or so. For the night we were staying in three separate homestays. My own hostess was a woman named Altyn, which literally means ‘gold’ in Kyrgyz. I forgot to bring my camera to the dinner table, but to say it was full would not be an understatement: we could barely make room for the tea cups. We ate till we couldn't move, at which point the whole family asked us why we weren't eating more. Typical, that. On the table was:

• Rice pilaf with mutton
• A salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, and dill with a sauce of sour cream, mayonnaise and garlic
• Chak-chak, which is little squares of fried bread covered with honey
• Lepyoshka, which is baked bread
• sliced watermelon
• a plate of golden raisins and dates
• bowls of raspberry syrup/jelly
• a plate of candy and cookies

Later we joined up with the rest of our students for a campfire behind the hosts' house. To my surprise we actually heard the call to prayer from the nearby mosque. It's the first time I've heard that in KG. (One of our students refers to the locals as “Muslim Lite.” It is quite atypical for them to go to the mosque outside of things like weddings and funerals.) And of course there were the standard campfire antics. At one stage, though, some of guys decided they wanted to break some branches with their fists and karate chops. This gave me pause. Normally my theory of college students is, “They are now adults. Let them make their own mistakes and learn from them. Minimal interference is best.” However on this occasion we were a six hour ride from the nearest hospital. If one of them broke a hand in the process, that would definitely compromise our weekend. I put my foot down. This, methinks, is what it is like to have children...

Eventually it was time to break up. We all went back to our homestays. The place was quieter that any place I've been in decades. Not a single vehicle sound. We slept like the dead.

I awoke in Altyn's home rather early and read a bit on my Nook. Then we had breakfast of mostly leftovers, plus some fried eggs. This morning I actually remembered my camera, so here are a few shots.

The first thing one notices in coming to Altyn's home is the flowers. Every family I have ever met in Russia or KG who has their own home plants flowers, and Altyn's garden is full of roses and zinnias and pansies and other flowers I don't recognize from my cactus-enriched but flower-deprived childhood.

Right next to the flower garden is the outside kitchen, which they use in the summer.

The family has a large garden and a couple of fields. In the garden grow raspberry plants, from which she made the raspberry jelly/syrup we ate yesterday and today. They raise corn. They have a couple of horses for farmwork, not for meat. And they raise sheep for meat as well. Most amazing, though, was that they just this last year planted 250 apple trees in their main field. Three years from now they should have their first harvest. That will be a big deal financially for the family. In the meantime the rows of apple trees are interspersed with rows of potatoes and carrots and cucumbers and tomatoes and peppers and heaven knows what else.

At breakfast's end, student Will successfully performs the gesture they usually use to thank someone for a meal: you start with your hands near your face and draw them to your heart. This brings big smiles and a «Молодец!» “Well done!” from the family. I am abashed to be out-cultured by a student. How did he manage that? Oh, yeah, he has been living in a Kyrgyz family for three weeks, whereas I have been living in a lonely, barren, heart-breakingly empty apartment all by myself abandoned by kith and kin and shown no respect or love for seven weeks. Ah, there. Now I feel better about myself.

Our purpose for this weekend excursion was to visit Manas Ordo, the purported burial place of Manas, hero of the Manas dastany, a piece of epic poetry that they Kyrgyz passed down orally. The longest version is half a million lines, although of course nowadays at least 65 versions are written down. This is the tomb of Manas.

The place is associated with healings as well. Our guide, Danar, recounted that when he was born he was quite sickly with a bad skin disease. The family went to Manas Ordo, made a sacrifice, read verses from the Koran, and bathed him in one of the local holy springs. This cured the skin disease. At the age of 18 he returned again to the place for another sacrifice and to drink water from the spring.

The area, like all of KG, is dreadfully dry. There is a hill nearby that hosts a KG flag.

From there you can see one of KG's many and fascinating burial grounds.

Then looking toward the park you see a circular rose guard with dozens of varieties of roses.

Around the circle are many statues with figures portrayed from the Manas epic in striking heroic poses. I suppose there are people who are steeped enough in cynicism that they would consider it tacky, but frankly it really worked for me. It produced a curious sensation in me, though. Most of the statues I have seen have been in the US, and thus most of them have portrayed people with European features. Here all the statues, not surprisingly, have Kyrgyz features. The sensation wasn't a bad one, but it did reinforce to me the idea that ethnic presentations really do have an emotional force, so in a plural society public displays of various ethnicities does seem to me fairly important.

Surrounding that is a well-irrigated park that is very nice.

Then we headed to the museum. The museum housed on the first floor all sorts of memorabilia of various Manas scholars. The second floor had a striking painting depicting the Manas epic (though it had obviously been partially influenced by Orthodox art from iconostases). There were also some weapons and armor from Manas's time, including some clubs that frankly I would expect to be yielded by the Uruk-hai. Grim. We were supposed to get a tour by a Manas expert, but he had run off to Mongolia for some kind of conference. In a way that was a bummer, but on the other hand

Then it was time to hit the road again. We headed back towards Bishkek, stopping off on the way at a couple of yurts run by a particular family. Essentially they serve as a roadside restaurant. Notice that they have a little washstand just outside the yurt. Water is stored in the upper part, flows out the tap, and then is gathered into the lower part for other uses.

Let me tell you, this meal probably had the freshest meat we will ever have in our lives: they slaughtered the ram just moments before we arrived, and they skinnned and butchered and cooked it as we started in on our bread and tea. For the bread they provided сары май “yellow butter”, the KG version of clarified butter that is made by heating sour cream; clarified butter has a much longer shelf life than regular butter. So our luncheon was mutton with mashed potatoes, tomatoes and onions, bread and tea.

From there we headed back to Bishkek.

One might ask whether this excursion was really worth it. A six hour drive there, another six hour drive back, and that just to spend a couple of hours at the museum? But add to that a dinner in a Kyrgyz home far from the city life. Add to that a lunch in a yurt with newly slaughtered meat. Add to that seeing a set of mountains on the opposite side of the planet that, most likely, these students will never see again. That last point weighs heavily. Yes, I think it is worth keeping on the plate for next year.

Classes as usual. All the students are in a «чемоданное настроение» “suitcase mood,” that is, in the mood to travel. What things are they wanting?

• a real salad with leafy vegetables
• In’n’Out Burger
• American Pizza

Classes as usual.

One student damaged her eye when taking out her contacts. We had to arrange an appointment with an opthalmologist. Dealing with doctor's here is frustrating: they haven't learned to communicate well with their patients. Sort of like doctors in the states before the 80s. Nonetheless a diagnosis was given, and the prescriptions seemed to help almost instantaneously.