Seeing traces of autumn in august is such a strange feeling. Leaves have already started changing colors and this morning I was greeted with a thin layer of frost on my windowsill. I don’t know if I will be able to get used to already changing into wearing winter clothes but it seems like I have no choice. The weather here has already gotten cold and that’s how it looks like it will be for the next nine months.
However before the weather gets too cold all of the children around ex-Soviet countries will be starting their first day of school in two days on September. Yes, September First is a legacy from the Soviet Union which marks the first day of school for all students from Kyrgyzstan to Hungary. And with the new school year comes new clothes, new books, and new friends – the town has just been thrown into a frenzy which you cannot imagine with anticipation for this magical September First.
Now why is this you may ask? So about 4,000 people live in my village and out of that 4,000, 900 are students at the school and another 70 are their teachers. Now with about ¼ of the town’s population carrying out their daily routine at school it is pretty easy to imagine why there would be all this excitement about school starting. After all it is the center of the town.
I do not know if the situation of having a quarter of the population working at the schools is a great deviant from the percentage of the population who conducts their daily routine at schools in the USA but since there is only one big school and all of the activity happens surrounds that school it sure can sure feel claustrophobic. Especially when you look at the backwards classroom to student ratio rate.
The school has twenty-four classrooms for nine hundred students and as you can imagine now matter how much you try to fill those classrooms to the brim there simply is not room for one thousand people to be at the school at one time. So what does the school do? It divides the students into two groups the morning group and the afternoon group. The morning group (Grades 1 – 6) goes to school from 7 AM – 12 AM while the afternoon group goes from 1 PM– 6 PM. It is not a horrible solution but looking at the following factors this situation could be pretty unbearable:
• In the winter the sun does not rise until 10 and it sets around 4
• Some teachers have to work all day
• There is no cafeteria which serves food
• Some students walk more than an hour to school
However, what is even worse though is that despite this splitting the day into two sessions there is still a lack of classrooms and for the first couple weeks of the year this turns into a sort of tug-of-war amongst teachers who are looking to just find space to hold their class. I am prepared for chaos 
Anyway, even though I can count the days I was able to wear shorts on two hands in my village North of Issyk-Kul the school year and the cold weather is already starting. With a newly funded Disney Grant and assistance from the BeEvolution Yoga Center I am ready to tackle this school year and construct some toilets (that will have to wait until next time though)…
……..”construct toilets”?