There And Gone Again

The first part of our epic 24 hour journey to Almaty is underway. The bus left Philadelphia at 1pm and left us with a five hour wait for our 9:35pm flight from JFK to Frankfurt. From there, we have a 90 minute layover, followed by an eight hour flight to Almaty. Arrival time: 11:40pm local time -- or 1:40pm EDT on Wednesday. It's going to be a rough transition, especially because I am guaranteed to completely botch sleeping at the opportune time on the plane.

Staging flew by. Fears were lessened, anxieties assuaged, jitters calmed, and butterflies minimized. I have an advantage over many of the people in my group because I have traveled fairly extensively abroad and more importantly, I have experience in a homestay from my Italian study abroad program. There is still the minor of issue of language and communication and the fact that we all know basically nothing, but it does sound like the Kazakhstani host families know what they are getting into.

We covered a lot of standard Peace Corps topics that every PCV has to learn whether they are going to Kazakhstan or Vanuatu or Cape Verde. Obviously, the more interesting part was getting to know the other 61 PCVs in my training group. It's a young group with nobody older than 29, so everybody is in a relatively similar stage of life, although we have come from many different places across the country. I think everybody has been encouraged and inspired by the friendliness and level of enthusiasm we have found in each other. It's the first time any of us have been completely surrounded by people who don't think we are crazy or who ask us why or what we are doing. Borat jokes have been extremely minimal.

By Saturday will we be living in host families outside Almaty. Our Kaz-20 group will be divided into training groups, each of which will train in their own village. I will be training with the entire OCAP group, which seems to be somewhere between a quarter and a third of the whole group. I've heard that the teaching groups will be much smaller, so I am looking forward to the opportunity to get to know a larger group of PCVs well during training. We have heard rumors of an epic feast that will occur when we arrive in the home of our host family. Let's hope it isn't as hard to convince Kazakhstanis that I am not, in fact, still hungry as it was to convince Antonietta Esposito, my Italian host mother, of the same idea. Let the clash of cultures begin!