I am alive!!

Alright, so where to begin?  I left Alaska the night of the 23^rd and what an emotional rollercoaster that was.  Saying “see ya later” to everyone was just as hard as I imagined plus some.   Thankfully I was able to see most everyone (there were a few I missed and I am super sorry that the timeline didn’t work out for that) and we even had a taco night at my parent’s house for the final round of goodbye’s.  After the tears were shed and I was on my way to the airport things started to sink in the wow, I was really getting ready to leave Alaska…  That is when the freak out of packing began.  Thank heavens for Timothy’s patience as I sat on his living room floor and flung things out of my bag and packed and re-packed things into different ways.   But everything worked out and I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. 

Next came the 10 hours of flying to get to staging in Philadelphia.  There was another PC Trainee who was on my Phoenix to Philly flight and that was a blessing.  Since neither of us knew what exactly we should do with our 2+ years of baggage and a hotel that was 20 minutes away.  Our minds combined got us there and so began the staging portion of my PC adventure.  After we checked in Matt (from Flagstaff, Arizona) and I went to dinner and did some last minute shopping before passing out for the night.  I woke up in the morning to my roommate showing up from Montana.  Kimi is awesome and I totally lucked out having her as my roomie for the next week. 

That afternoon was the staging event.  I won’t bore with details of how that was.  It was a lot of “this is your future” and “you need to know this information before we let you leave America on our dime” sort of stuff. 

And I am just going to jump forward since I am running low on time.  Kyrgyzstan is amazingly beautiful and I am having a great time here.  The other trainee’s are awesome.  My language group (ie the people I spend a majority of everyday with) are bomb.  Couldn’t ask for a better group.  I have a great teacher too, so the language is coming along.  Sometimes it is still frustrating, but we keep reminding each other that we have only been in the country for a week and half.  It is HARD, but it is starting to make more sense to me.  Thank goodness, because living in a house with my host family not being able to speak more than like 5 words was getting old.  Language lessons have been intense, but VERY helpful.  We go to school full days 5 days a week and half day on Saturday.  8:30 – 5pm.  But we have 2 tea breaks for 30 minutes each and also an hour long lunch.  Food and drink are SUPER important here.  No wonder they tell us we will gain weight.  It is delicious and they force it on you.  Fresh made non (bread) every two days at my house.  YUM! 

Thankfully, I am starting to be able to form sentences though.  And while I still depend on hand gestures and my English-Kyrgyz dictionary A LOT it is getting better and easier to communicate at my home-stay.  Speaking of which: My family is awesome.  Men Ata (my dad), Ruslan, is an upper something or other in the militsia (their police) and men Apa (my mom), Aigul, stays at home to care for the 6 month old baby, Daniel.  There is also 15 year old boy, Asamat and a 12 year old girl, Aidi.  Both are super cool kids and they help me with Kyrgyz and I help them with English.  Great teaching relationships.  They treat me so well.  It is pretty nice.  I get along with them well.  Thank heavens. 

I don’t know much more about my job yet.  We won’t know where we are going until May 4^th.  At that point I can give you more info on how the next two years will be for me.  We will just have to wait and see.  We have interviews in the next week or two about where we would like to be placed.  I am pretty open to all the different options.  More on that later when things start to get figured out. 

I am going to get going now since I am writing this at night and I am uber tired.  They told us to expect to sleep between 10 and 12 hours a night during the first few months, but I didn’t believe them.  Holy hells were they telling the truth.  Learning a new language and being constantly on mental awareness trying to figure out what is going on really takes it out of ya. 

I will update more later.  It looks like I will only have internet access every few days.  It may only be once a week.  So if you are sending me emails, I am not ignoring you.  I promise.