I milked a cow

It has been a very eventful day. It started off pretty slow. I woke up
at a quarter of six, finally dragged myself out of bed at 8ish, had my
coffee and then read til about noon. Apa called to me and asked if I
was free, which I was, so I helped her make bloshki (twisted bread
rolls) for a few hours, then taught Aidana a new crochet stitch.
Nargiza, (another teacher who also happens to be my director's
daughter and our neighbour) came over. I showed her how to crochet a
few months ago, and she wanted my help to learn a new stitch, too.
This afternoon, I went with Aiculu and Aidana to fetch the cows. In
the winter they stay at home, but the rest of the year, the shepherds
and cowboys take them to the fields for the day. We go to get them to
make sure they come straight home. (it makes the phrase "til the cows
come home" quite literal) We put them in the pen and I helped milk
them! It was so weird! And way, way harder than it looks. My host
sisters and I had a couple of great laughs. Our black cow nearly peed
on us all, and our white cow kicked the bucket and managed to get her
hoof stuck on the rim of the bucket. We fed the calf milk, and Azeez
has to be where everyone else is, so he succeeded in scaring the calf
so that it wouldn't drink, and scaring the sheep so that two jumped
out of the pen. We called Apa to feed the calf and took over watering
the garden, which meant hauling buckets of water out to water the
tomatoes. My poor family. They're gonna starve this winter because I
touched the plants. Just kidding. Hopefully they will dilute the power
of my black thumb. Back in January, I planted a flower. So did my
friend Heidi because she was here visiting. I had told my family about
my black thumb and Ata was determined to correct it, and show that I
could keep a plant alive. I think I even bragged a bit in this blog
about how it was flourishing. It is dead now. Not kidding. I watered
it the right amount, kept it in the right amount of sun, the whole
shebang. The flower that Heidi planted is doing great. Go figure.
Sorry. Random tangent. Anyways. After watering the garden, we named
the three kittens. Myshka (don't ask me what it means in Russia)
frances, and gato. You can guess which name I picked. Then my host
sisters and I tried to figure out a plan for our home-language club. I
want to learn Russian, but my pronunciation is horrible, not to
mention that there is this little thing called "will power" that I
apparently lack when I comes to learning languages, but if I teach
them English and they teach me Russian we will all push each other.
After that Aidana and I crocheted a bit. (I taught her bobbles) and
then Ata came in and wanted to talk which is my usual cue to leave.
Haha. So here I am sitting in my room and typing this blog to you
about my day. I still smell like cow, and my hands are super tired,
but it has been a great day and thought you all deserved to hear about
it.

Miss you
Love from Kyrgyzstan,
Jess

p.s. ONE MONTH FROM TODAY I LEAVE FOR AMERICA!