Classes went normally today. Nothing special to report.

I've always been linguistically curious, so any time I see a an exception or a concept, I immediately want to bring it into a comprehensive whole. I build mental structures that make everything hold together. I can't avoid doing it. My brother does the same thing for mechanical systems. I do it for linguistic systems. It's always astonishing to me that not everybody does it.

After classes I met with students Wendy and Jeremy. They are two who have perfectly good brains, but they don't have the habit of building linguistic systems. I can help them do that. You have no idea how incredibly satisfying it is to work with a student, have a crystal-clear vision of where they need a bit of structure, and then help them to build that structure in. It takes surprisingly little time (because they do have good brains), but it just wouldn't have occured to them to structure things that way. I think this is one of the things that makes me a good teacher.

That, and of course the fact that I want them to succeed.

Tomorrow Ramadan ends. I noted with interest an article about this in a Ukrainian source. I sorta laughed at the article. I don't know anyone in Bishkek who is fasting during Ramadan. I don't know a single example among our host families. It is true that you see a few Islamic headscarfs here among women, which makes some of the locals scratch their heads. It's not really a Kyrgyz thing. Although general peasant-style scarves are still common among elderly woman, but those are rather different things.

There is a significant divide between the north and south of this country. The northern part is more Russified. The mosques are few, certainly fewer than in Kazan. Friday is officially a holiday for the country, but I'll be quite interested to see if any businesses I normally frequent are actually closed.

The southern part of the country is more conservatively Islamic. Some people have gone from there to join ISIS, though the majority of them have not been ethnic Kyrgyz, but rather ethnic Uzbek. If I come again next summer, I'll have to get to the southern part of the country. I suspect that it, too, will be significantly less radical than some might believe. I sort of think this is like many people in the US who associate themselves with Christianity. Do they actually attend church? Can they explain the doctrine of the Trinity? Such people are “cultural Christians,” but day to day they are not practically different from a non-believer.

Before I got here, I rather expected to be uncomfortable in Kyrgyzstan, both ethnically and culturally. The majority of people here in Kyrgyzstan are of Turkic or Asian descent. I stick out like a bloody sore thumb. But has anyone ever made me uncomfortable? To my surprise, no. Sure, people occasionally gawk, but I'm taller than average and blond, so that's no great surprise. Kyrgyzstan is a culturally Islamic country. I attended a Protestant church here two Sundays ago. Did I feel oppressed? Nope. So I'm really a bit surprised. Living here has been fairly pleasant from the cultural point of view. That rather defeats my previous expections.

I don't mean to make this a generalization to other Islamic countries. Each country (just like each human being we know) must be judged separately. But I do want this post to be a contribution to the idea that the world is full of complexity. Sure, as we slowly learn to think, we must start with gross generalizations, but from there we must graduate to more complex thoughts.