tomorrow is my sister Erika's birthday, only in Kyrgyzstan it's already the 10th... so I called her up, now that she finally has a new host family with a phone! it was 6:15 pm here, 7:15 am there, and she was getting ready to go teach for the day. we had a terrible connection, and got cut off before we were done, but I've already figured out that it's inevitable that we get cut off after 10 or 20 minutes, so I think we got the important stuff out of the way at the beginning. I tried calling back about 8 times, but got a weird signal.
She has a short wave radio now, so she can listen to the BBC and not feel quite so isolated. not that current events are exactly cheering... and her new host family is wonderful, at least comparatively speaking. I'm so relieved and thrilled for her. the bi-weekly baths, the language barrier, the isolation from friends and family is all bad enough, but when you add in a host family that's not hospitable, kind or helpful, I can only imagine how much harder that made it all.
Erika, if you get to read this- you're a rock star. I love you.