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| Katran, Kyrgyzstan |
Although I'm not sure I really learned too much about it, I was interested in seeing if there were any comparisons to be made between the colonization of Turtle Island by Europeans and the colonization of Kyrgyzstan by the Russian Empire. The biggest difference I could tell is that in North America, the Europeans stuck around permanently, while the Russians basically left. Although Russian is still one of two official languages, there are very few actual Russians living in Kyrgyzstan. We both studied Russian a bit before the trip, which became less helpful as we began traveling into less cosmopolitan areas that spoke more Kyrgyz.
