Week One

Alright everybody, I'm in Kyrgyzstan, everything is going well and the PC staff is great. All the other trainees seem like a lot of fun, I will post more when I get a chance- I typed up a long post but I didn't bring it with me so in a couple of days expect something big. We are meeting our host families tonight so that should be awesome, I'm pretty excited but its definitely going to be a three month long game of charades while I'm living with them. I can say my age and some really basic stuff which is not going to go far. But so far this is a really interesting country and I'm excited to be here!

My last night in America

Today we had registration and staging in Philadelphia and tomorrow all sixty Peace Corps trainees, including me of course, are leaving early in the morning for JFK. Nothing too interesting has happened yet, all the other trainees seem nice and staging was uneventful, hopefully things continue that way until Kyrgyzstan. We have an eight hour layover in Istanbul and I still haven't decided whether I'll go out and see the city or stay in the airport and nap- I guess I can sleep when I get to Bishkek but I'm also worried about missing the flight from Turkey to K-stan and I don't think they'd leave me behind but who knows. Right now I'm sitting in my hotel room eating my last dinner in America and stressing about how much I've packed.

It still blows my mind every time I think that I am actually getting on a plane tomorrow and going to Kyrgyzstan to become a Peace Corps volunteer. A lot of the other trainees feel the same way; its exciting to have such a longstanding goal be so much more tangible now, especially after the application process where everything was so vague. And oh yeah, apparently I've been saying it wrong this whole time (Maggie you were right!) its pronounced Keer-gizstan.

Next post should be much more interesting because next time you hear from my I'll be in Kyrgyzstan!

5 Days!

Alright, so my first blog post- I'm doing this to keep everyone who's interested up to date on what I'll be doing while in Kyrgyzstan for the next two years! I'm not sure how often I'll have access to the internet once I'm over there but I'm hoping to be able to update at least once a week.

For now here's my mailing address:

KYRGYZSTAN
722140 Kant City
Lenina 97, RUPS
P.O. Box 22
ATTN: Allison Brieske

and in Russian:

Кыргызстан
722140 г. Кант
ул. Ленина 97, РУПС
а/я 22

Apparently it helps things to get there a bit quicker and more reliably if you include the address in Cyrillic.

So for the moment I'm just enjoying my last five days at home and trying to get everything packed and ready to go!