Site Visit Summary

I'm back in my PST training village for the last few weeks of training before moving permanently.

I spent almost a week at my new village in Issyk-kul. In my "completely unbiased" opinion, Issyk-kul is the most georgeous oblast in this country. i WILL post pics soon, i'm not lying, i promise.

It took about 8 hours to get to my village by mashruka, but we made a ton of stops.

My village is nice. Tiny, but nice. it is about 1400 people. my school has less than 300 students. it wasn't the best time to observe classes because they were in final exam week... but i still got a pretty good feel for the school

my village has been trying to get a volunteer for the last 4 years, so there is something to be said for being wanted :-D they all seem really excited to have me

my new host family is a lot bigger than i'm used to. i'm the youngest of 2 at home, but have 5 younger siblings there. i'm gonna have to adapt to that.

i'm about half an hour from the nearest big city where there are like 13 vounteers, and i have to go there for my banking and mail (i'll have a new address soon) so i'll hopefully get to see a lot of the other volunteers.

i was told that my village is about an hour hike to the lake. i can totally deal with that haha.

the summer is probably going to be difficult because i will have a lot of free time, and we all know that i don't deal so well with free time, but if i can lounge by the lake and go swimming, i can probably pass a little bit of time ;-)

i'm hoping to conduct some english clubs and work on learning russian, since most of my village speaks more russian than kyrgyz. (great use of my 2 months of language studies, right? haha) this is where being flexible comes in i guess. some of the teachers have told me that we can trade tutor hours haha

it was a long week visiting. its the first time i've been so completely isolated from other americans.

i also hit the first downward emotional slump of my trip. not fun. the pc actually has a scarily accurate little chart thingy describing the emotional ups and downs of being a trainee and a volunteer, and lets just say that the downs are... down. luckily tho, i have made some pretty awesome friends here so far and we help each other through the down times. also, my family is fantastic, as usual, and called just when i needed reassurance and reminders about why i want to do this. gotta love 'em

coming back to my training village, we took a taxi, and lets just say that it is so worth the few extra som because we got back in less than 5 hours.

my host mom here is sweet. she really missed me while i was gone and is so happy to have me back. i'm gonna miss her when i go for good to my new site.

again, i apologize if i've not been emailing a lot lately, i've been super busy and haven't had a lot of time to read/respond to emails. but i'm working through my packed inbox (which i love) and will get back to you all soon.

also, since i've had several questions about the address thing, now would be a good time to quit sending mail until i get my new address because it takes about 3 weeks to get here and about that time i'll be moving. but emails are always awesome!

miss you!
love from kyrgyzstan!
Jess