I seriously wish there were 8 days in a week at this point. I have been so busy, all I have time to do is film shows and write scripts. I slept for 13 hours yesterday. NTV came to do a story on me from Wednesday and left Friday. I was stressed out having them follow me and try to keep up with my hectic work schedule.So, here's what's been going on ....
2 weeks ago I met Aiyna Isaeva in the lobby of Dom Pichate. She has the best voice. She sings opera and studies in Moscow.
Photo: Myself and Aiyna Isaeva
Here she is singing:
I finally milked a horse! It was so weird. I made Kumis. To be honest, the horse milk tasted good, but when it was churned into kumis...I could hardly swallow 1 sip.
I can't remember the order of the next events, but.... sometime last week I was fit for my first national costume.
It looks awesome, I can't wait until it's finished! Hopefully it will be completed by Thursday because I want to film it for my show.
Last week I decided to get accordion lessons from Ramzan Paskaev. He is one of the best accordion ( pondar ) players in Chechnya.
Photo: Ramzan Paskaev and Me
My lessons didn't go too well. I don't think I am destined to play the accordion, but it was interesting learning about it.
So, on Thursday things got interesting. I decided to travel to Sharoi. It is the most remote and hardest to get to places in Chechnya. It's elevation is over 3000 metres ! I thought it would take 3 hours to get to but it took over 5 hours each way! I was stressed, I had a camera crew from NTV following me , we were traveling over the worst roads in the middle of nowhere! I was exhausted by the time i got back to Grozny. That didn't matter though - because I had to get to editing and keep working until midnight. I was toast.
NTV crew and myself ( when I thought there was only another hour of driving ahead ) We have just passed Shatoi.
We're almost there...I have no clue where we are in this photo. Ruslan was the cameraman.
Here we are in Sharoi after a grueling drive...and we have 5 grueling hours to drive back to Grozny - but it was worth it!
There are locusts in Grozny at the moment. They come out every summer and especially at night. When i leave the TV studio at midnight - they jump in front of me or on me!!!! They freak me out!!!! I can't wait until they're gone!
Oh, I forgot - I have a new editor. His name is Islam. He's cool and a great editor. He listens to good music - he was playing California Love by 2PAC and singing it on Sunday.
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Photo: Islam the new editor.
When I get home late Saturday night, I ran into Muslim the guard. This week he shared some of his food with me. It was fish on bread. I ate it - it was good.
Photo: Muslim
And last but not least - I have become obsessed with this ice cream cone. Then I realized it was 18% cream! Forget it, I was eating 2 at a time. I better slow down on that.
