Toe in the water

My first few days in Kyrgyzstan have been great.  It’s a beautiful country and we’re staying right on lake Issyk-kul; the view is amazing.

We arrived very early Monday morning, a little after 3AM local time.  I was thankful that all of my luggage made it, several of the other trainees weren’t so lucky.  We immediately boarded buses for a five hour trip to Issyk-kul and got to our hotel just in time for breakfast.  We’re staying at a resort right on the lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains.  This of course, is nothing like what our lodging will be like for the rest of our stay but they’re trying to ease us into our life in K.  I can’t decide if it’s nice or cruel to spoil us these first few days!

Our first days have been devoted to introductions and medical tasks (glad I’ve already gotten most of my shots!) and our first language lessons.  Kyrgyz is not going to be easy.  I'm longing now to be back in Spanish class, at least they're letters didn't look funny!

We've all been suffering from jet lag.  I barely made it through dinner last night and passed out before 8 while trying to study.  The food is going to take some getting used to as well.  They're are three other vegetarians in my group and the hotel has been great about making us special meals but it's still a lot of bread and a LOT of dairy. 

We leave our nice hotel today and will meet our first host families tonight, who we'll stay with for the first phase of training.  I'm excited!

Kyrgyzstan, here we come!

It’s finally happening! After over a year of waiting I am finally beginning my Peace Corps adventure.

We all met in DC on Thursday for our staging event.  It was kind of strange meeting all of these people in person for the first time because we’ve had a pretty active Facebook group and I felt like I knew many of them already.  We have 55 in our class, which is more than the two previous groups combined.  We're a mix of recent college grads, retirees, and everything in between, from all over the country (and even two from Canada with dual citizenship).

We just finished the first leg of our journey and are on a layover in Frankfurt right now, but we still have two flights to go, Istanbul and then Bishkek, followed by a long bus drive to the hotel where we will be staying for our first few days in country. I can't wait!