Arrived in Kyrgyzstan...

Hello! I am hear in Kyrgyzstan, finally. It is 9:15 am Tuesday morning and I've been here since 1:00 am Sunday morning. After two days of a whirlwind orientation in Philly, all 66 of us new Peace Corps trainees arrived in Bishkek, after a brief layover in Istanbul. For the last couple of days we have done some in country orientation...about three hours of language training, some cross cultural info, and basically trying to get over the jet lag...right now i'm in an internet cafe in a small town outside of bishkek near our hotel, "The Hotel Issik-kol," a very nice place indeed I must say. For any and all of you trying to reach me via email I had some trouble accessing my gmail account this morning at this cafe which is why I'm posting this message. We don't have a whole lot of time here so i won't be able to put up any pictures although i have taken plenty and will upload them as soon as possible. Today we all go to meet our host families (with whom we will be staying for the duration of our three month pre-service training). Each volunteer has his/her own host family. We have been split up into about 12 or 13 groups consisting of 5/6 volunteers. Each group will be in the same small village outside of Tokmok, our training hub, which is in turn right outside of the capital of Bishkek. Mon, Th, Fri, Sat we take language classes in our small groups in our respective villages (mine being the town of Kashoi - don't know anything about it, have not been there yet) taught by our LCF (language/ cross-cultural facilitator) who also lives with a host family in the villages. My LCF's name is Ainura and she's a real cool cat. Tue, Wed, all the volunteers and LCFs meet at the hub in Tokmok for technical training which we all do together. Not exactly sure what technical training means, but hopefully they will tell me how to teach English using a language I don't speak. Hopefully. Anyway, so far Kyrgyzstan is pretty sweet, lots of mountains and other far out Asian stuff. Will have more info soon. Continue to email or leave messages on the blog here, but remember to keep them clean, my mother's watching. I'm having a great time and I am really enjoying myself. By the way, I was wrong, Kyrgyzstan is pronounced Ker, as in brrr, not kir as in beer. Minor, but important I think. Thanks, all...be in touch soon.