“This one time in Kyrgyzstan I was late for a meeting with the U.S. Ambassador because...”

Okay, so here’s the story: Sarah, I, and 57 other volunteers are checking into a local hotel in Bishkek prior to leaving for our permanent-site visits, we have a meeting with the U.S. Ambassador in 10 minutes, our room is on the fifth floor, we have over 60 pounds of luggage with us to leave at our permanent-site, and there are only two of four closet-sized elevators operational. We are next in line for the elevators and there is room for one more person on the elevator, so I give Sarah our room key and she gets on. I take the next, adjacent elevator and reach our room uneventfully, but Sarah is nowhere to be found. I figure she has already come and gone so I leave our luggage in another volunteer’s room and head back down to our meeting, but, to my surprise, she’s not there either. That’s when another volunteer told me that there were four volunteers stuck in the elevator. And, of course, Sarah was one of them. Since the elevator never left the ground and there wasn’t much to worry about, we couldn’t help but laugh. The meeting started without them, and then ten-minutes into the ambassador’s speech, Sarah and three other sweaty, red-faced volunteers dragged themselves into the auditorium trying there best to hold in their laughter after their true Kyrgyz experience.

Speaking of our permanent-site visit, we returned from Jalalabad City (or Jalalabat) last week. It’s an interesting city in the southwest region of Kyrgyzstan. It is known for having the world’s largest natural walnut forest and many natural hot springs, which is why one of the branches of the Silk-road passed through the region. Sarah will be working at Jalalabad State University (www.jasu.org.kg) teaching English and teaching methodologies. I will be working with Rural Advisory Services (http://www.atc.kg/eng/about/service/) and was asked, time permitting, if I could teach a class or two at Jalalabad State University, too. We’re both excited and a little nervous about the move. Only six days until we swear-in as official volunteers. We’re done with our final language exams and excited to continue our learning. We’ve even been waking each other up at night by shouting random Kyrgyz words in our sleep. Another fact about Jalalabad, it has a very high Uzbek population, so the dialect is definitely not what we’ve been learning in our language classes. Actually, many words we’ve learned just aren’t used there. The culture and language differences between the northern and southern regions of a country the size of South Dakota are incredible. I guess in America we have television and movies to help “zero-out” many would-be cultural differences. Well, television and the fact that we have paved roads. Our plane flight to J-bad took 45 minutes, whereas, on a good day, a taxi ride would have taken 12 hours. I’m glad Peace Corps decided to fly us. Although, I do want to make the drive at least once. I heard it’s beautiful.

Also, for anyone interested in mailing us anything, our new Jalalabad address is listed on the right-hand side of the webpage under mailing instructions. Thanks Mom and Dad Lyle and Flores for your packages. You’re awesome.