What’s in the sack? There’s blood everywhere!

I have been here for almost two months and I am still surprised fairly often by all of the new things I have had a chance to participate in. I have been going to a sweet underground gym. Even here in Kyrgyzstan, Lil John and DMX are blared to motivate patrons. It’s hard not to be energized when you hear “HYEAH” and “HWAAAT” consecutively.

Today was Election Day here in Kyrgyzstan. The streets were fairly quiet and I hope that they remain that way. I have asked a lot of people what they think is going to happen when the results come in. Most people have told me that they really have no idea whether things here will be peaceful or not. Many people have told me that they don’t want to vote because “it will not change anything.” Many of them have said that people here will sell their seats to the highest bidder if they win. Many have said that, whatever party comes into power will do the same things and make the same mistakes as the last guy (Bakiyev). Time will tell, and this week will certainly be interesting.

Due to weather we were not able to make our climbing trip this weekend so I took full advantage of my down time on Sunday to sleep in. The night before had not been an incredibly late night but I was in need of a solid eight hour block of rest. Around 11 this morning, I woke up to someone knocking on the door. One of my roommates was already up, and he opened the door. Our friend Dave was standing there with a big white canvas bag wiggling in his hand, and a grin on his face.
(That is actually my roommate Aaro in the photo)

“I got two live turkeys for 600 Som each from the animal bazaar,” was his response to the look on my face. I had forgotten that Monday is Canadian Thanksgiving and we had decided to make turkey, from step one. He came in and placed the bag on the floor and the two turkeys kicked around a little bit. Although I have killed chickens before, killing a turkey was a new experience as they are quite feisty.

We were discussing how fast American Thanksgiving was approaching a few days ago, when the Canadian contingent of our group told us that their Thanksgiving was on Monday. Promises were made about the use of our kitchen and about helping prepare live turkeys. I made a mental note, but it apparently didn’t stick in my head.

As zero hour approached the cutlery was taken out, sharpened and inspected. We readied a bucket of hot water to soak the turkeys in after we were done, to help de-feather them. Dave and I pulled up our sleeves and slipped some rubber gloves on. We walked outside with a crew of six, carrying the bucket, the knives and the bag of Thanksgiving.

Dave untied the bag and pulled out the first one to go. He gently set it down and I firmly grabbed its head.

Our Kyrgyz neighbors watched and waved from the third floor as we were doing all of this.

Shortly thereafter, Ceci, our friend from Sardinia, decided she wanted to have a go. Dave pulled out the next one, I passed the knife and gloves to her, and she marvelously performed everything that I did not mention earlier.

After we bled them, we let them sit in the water for a minute or two and then started plucking the feathers out. In the backyard of our apartment complex it looked as though there had been a pillow fight that had gone terribly wrong. Once the feathers had been removed we dumped the water, collected the feathers for the trash, and went inside.

As we started to clean the turkeys we noticed something odd about their chests. When we opened them up, we found an incredible amount of seeds. Somehow the person who sold Dave the turkeys had managed to over feed them. We had been duped. Eventually they were all cleaned up and we set aside some of the organs to make gravy out of. Tomorrow, we are going to have an amazing Canadian Thanksgiving (Really just a dry run for the REAL ONE in November).






Pictures courtesy of Aaro Ylitalo