Home » Uzbekistan » bulk thoughts: oyvind & gunda (12)

From: Anna Kirtiklis
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 02:14:47 -0700 (PDT)

bulk thoughts: oyvind & gunda (12)

Anastasia Kirtiklis
2006-06-29 10:40:11

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www.kirtiklis.com

Dear Friends,

Silk Caravan 220700 is over; Gunda and Oyvind leave for Oslo tonight. My next tour begins Wednesday but the group is already here. All one of her. Sigh.

I commend your decision to stay home and enjoy the beauty of indulgence in personal habit and fancy, the semblance of control. While you travel vicariously through me, I try like hell to routine, socialize, and drink a decent cup of coffee vicariously through you. Your email is very appreciated.

My last group provided a strange turn of events. If you recall, it was only the two Norwegians. On the first night at dinner, Oyvind announced sheepishly that, “We do not speak English well.”

They understood enough to enjoy the trip, but after 45 meals together trying to converse, we are all tired. Sitting at a dinner table in Khiva with a wife and husband chatting away in Norwegian is strangely lonely, I learned.

They grew weary of English about a week into the tour and, happily, darted off on their own quite a bit. This left me with some unexpected time on my hands. Delighted, I was, but also very frustrated.

It's impossible to write long-hand. I tried and tried, because I have so much nonsense to catch up on and the stories multiply by the moment, only to stare down in confusion at the scratches and scribbles that would only be rewritten when I eventually typed it. Alas, the beauty of instant editing possible on a computer cannot be verbalized.

So I took notes and wished for a laptop. And read. And longed for Tashkent.

Now I am home (Tashkent, I mean) and seated uncomfortably but delightedly at a computer where it has come to my attention that although I have been here for four months, you may not know quite where Uzbekistan is. I won't take this personally—I will lecture.

Uzbekistan is smack in the middle of the five Central Asian ...