Well I have arrived.
After leaving Michigan for Philadelphia I spent three days in Philadelphia meeting the other volunteers, learning about safety, Peace Corps policies, and various other information. We stayed in a very nice hotel and had our meetings in a downstairs ballroom. During this time I was able to spend time with some trainees, but still need to get to know more of them better (there are 60 of us).
After my staging in Philadelphia we got on a bus to drive to NYC and then hopped on a plane to Frankfurt. We were delayed for 8 hours in Frankfurt and then finally arrived in Almaty on the 21st at about 7 am local time. The first day was pretty tiring due to the fact I had been awake for roughly 40 hours. We were all mostly just zombies and went from meeting to meeting in a trance. We were greeted very warmly with a presentation with singing and dancing by our local staff. I cannot do this presentation justice with a description, let me just say it was fun, informational, and welcoming. We then had more meetings with information on safety, medical, etc, and then got our first vaccinations, whooohooo! Finally after medical interviews with the PCMO, Peace Corps Medical Officer, we got to sleep a bit. The next day we met the US Ambassador and then departed for our cities.
The Peace Corps has us split up in four different cities for our first three months of training. There are roughly 60 of us training for Peace Corps and in my city there are 12. We are then divided into groups of 6 for language training. I am in a small village outside of Almaty.
For the first three months of training I will be in this village and be living with a host family as I learn Russian, culture, safety, technical information, etc. Russian is extremely challenging. I love the sound of the language and am learning a few words, but I have miles and miles to go on my language ability. So far I have learned basic introductory phrases like hello, how are you, goodbye, etc. I am also picking up nouns from pointing to things and saying sto eta? (what is that?).
I will be posting more information on my village and my experiences soon!
-Jen
1 comment:
Wow, sounds like alot of fun!! I can't wait to hear more about the bonya! I hope you get to meet up with the rest of your new friends. Any chance you can post your pictures here? Keep us up to date.
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