18 students, most of them high-school age. It’s a 3-month training course at kloop.kg, and I kicked it off as the trainer for the first 5 days. My posse of translators (assistants, co-teachers, jokesters, coaches) were AUCA journalism students: Batyr, Elina and Masha. We talked in English, Kyrgyz and Russian about the who, what, when, where, why. And how. We talked about what it takes to be a journalist, what journalists do, what makes a story.
Today was Day 5: distributing press badges, rewriting Little Red Riding Hood into a news story (Hunter Saves Girl and Grandmother; Kills Wolf), breaking into story teams and going after the story topics they chose–homelessness, Bishkek’s construction boom, a look at how the city maintains its parks, safety issues for roadside food vendors, bicycle vs. car transport, a move afoot to ban cars with steering wheels on the right-hand side.
Why did I come to Kyrgyzstan? For this. For the everything of this.
untidy exuberances 
The world is so much better to have a Laura Kelly in it! They all look so excited and committed!