Job Discussion Forums

brasilstu · Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 271 Location: China

Hello, is anyone living in Bishkek or Kyrgyzstan at the moment? Or left very recently?

To quote Dr. Christian Szell, 'Is it safe?'

I am seriously considering a job there, and I want to know what the local climate is before I go any further.

Also, can anyone tell me how to pronounce it. Is is 'Krig z stan' or something. I have a phone interview and I really should be able to say the name of the country.

One more thing, anyone who is or has been in the PRC, have you noticed that 'Kyrgyzstan' and 'Bishkek' are both blocked by those nice internet censoring folks in Beijing.

Note to anyone that feels inclined to tell me to search for previous topics:

a) The last one was from April 2004 and deteriorated into a flame war.
b) The search funtion on this site is hopeless.

Kent F. Kruhoeffer · Joined: 22 Jan 2003 Posts: 2129 Location: 中国

^ Try posting your questions on the Russia & CIS Forum.

CIS = Commonwealth of Independent States, the loose federation

of former Soviet States created in 1991 after the breakup of the USSR,

which also includes Kyrgyzstan.

note: The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was established in December of 1991 and includes the following 12 countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

brasilstu · Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 271 Location: China

Kent F. Kruhoeffer · Joined: 22 Jan 2003 Posts: 2129 Location: 中国

^ Don't mention it. Very Happy

Good luck!

dreadnought · Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 82 Location: Sofia, Bulgaria

Yep, I'm living there right now, having just finished my two-year contract with the Soros Foundation working as a teacher trainer. I'm staying on here for a bit to run SIT TESOL certificate courses.

Is it safe? Yes, most definitely. Even the revolution, which looked terribly dramatic on TV, took place in a very confined area of the city in front of the parliament building. Bizarrely, if you walked just a hundred yards to any parallel street you would have seen life going on as usual. My flat is about 500 metres from the parliament, so I had front row seats!!

A couple of weeks ago they had elections here and they passed without incident. There doesn't seem to be any indication that there are going to be any further problems and life is back to normal.

As for the pronunciation, the closest approximation I can get to it without using phonetic script is 'Kir-gi-stan'. But don't worry - every foreigner seems to pronounce it differently and the locals don't seem to mind.

Really nice play to come to by the way. Beautiful countryside, very cheap, people very friendly. Hey, I've got a Kyrgyz wife and child, so it must have some attraction for me.