My Current Situation

As you all know, I up and joined the Peace Corps. That’s the whole reason I started this whole blog thing. I wanted to share experiences and pictures with the non-Central Asian world. I figured I would start by telling everyone what I am doing now:
First off, I am not yet officially a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). Currently, I am a trainee during Pre-Service Training. I go to language class for a minimum of 4 hours a day, 4 days a week. The other two days are called Hub and Technical days. Hub days center on medical seminars, safety and security seminars, cultural awareness seminars, and seminars about seminars. Hub days are the length of an Arizona work day (about 7 hours), but become brutal because the small school we rent is far from air conditioned. 3 PM in Kyrgyzstan in August is not a comfortable situation. Technical days are centered around training for my actual job once I become a PCV (more on that later!). They are very similar to Hub days, but only the 12 SOCD trainees are there. It makes it more bearable, sometimes.
The rest of my day centers on my host family. I have a wonderful host father and mother (lovingly called Ata and Apa, respectively), a 20 year old host sister, and a 17 year old host brother. I also have an extremely large extended family throughout our small village. It seems that everyone I meet is a relative of some kind. I have my own, very large room. It is far from ornate, but it is certainly nicer and bigger than anything I had in college. We have electricity (most of the time) and a running water hose in the back of the compound. There are systems in place that make the lack of indoor plumbing quite unnoticeable. To put it simply, I have no complaints about either my family or my living accommodations.
I am in training to become a Sustainable Organization Community Development (SOCD) specialist. What that means, I’m not really sure. I will be working with a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) of some kind in some manner. My job primarily will focus on individual capacity building. The idea is to help the people here help themselves. It should be interesting to see exactly what that all entails. I will be moving at the end of September to my new, permanent site. I do not know where that is, but needless to say August 30th is circled on my calendar! Once at site, I become a community resource. I work for a specific organization, but I am really there for the entire community. It really means that I am always working, even when I’m not at work!
Well, that’s it for now. From experience, I can tell you that the brain stops paying attention after 500 words. That means I have 10 more words to make an impact: be safe, don’t do drugs, I love you all. Kaleidoscope.