Heading to Our Host Families!

The buses are all packed and we're getting ready to meet our host families. Not sure if there will be wifi for a while!

Finally in Bishkek!

After 34 hours of travel we finally arrived in Bishkek early this morning. PC let us sleep in our hotel for a few hours before our first day of training. Day one is complete and we've all learned a few phrases in Kyrgyz. We're staying in a rather Western style hotel, complete with hot showers and sit-down toilets (two things we're told will not exist at site). We've been stuck in the hotel all day so no real insights into Bishkek as of yet.

This was apparently the breakfast we had this morning, of course I got there after 30+ people went through the buffet so I'm looking forward to trying some of these tomorrow morning.

The flights here were nice actually, Lufthansa gave us ample amounts of free alcohol to make the 8 hour flight to Frankfurt bearable, and there were over 100 empty seats giving me this view from my window seat:

Only one other person in my row. Of course we moved around during flight so we could chat, so this setup did eventually change.

Turkish air provided some rather nice meals on the flights to Turkey and Bishkek, in addition to free booze.

Tomorrow we have another full day of training with more language and culture lessons. Sunday we head to our pre service training (PST) sites where we will stay the first night with our PST Host Families. Armed with a few phrases in Kyrgyz, a water filtration system, and ORS tablets, we should be ready for anything!

More to come later, for now it's lights out Bishkek.

Countdown to Kyrgyzstan

I have created this blog to keep family and friends updated on my Peace Corps service in the Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyzstan). My plan is to include information about what I am doing as well as insights into Kyrgyz life since Kyrgyzstan is a bit of a mystery to most of us. If you have any questions about the Peace Corps, my role in Kyrgyzstan, or life in Kyrgyzstan, or if you have picture requests, please ask me in the comment section of any posts. I will do my best to reply to them.

Also, I'm not sure if this is obligatory, but I noticed some other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) doing it: This blog reflects the experiences and opinions belonging exclusively to me (Sean O'Reilly). This blog does not reflect the opinion of the Peace Corps or the United States Government. 

Kyrgyzstan is famous for its horses, here's three of those horses:

30-40 soon-to-be volunteers, including myself, will leave home for Staging in Philadelphia early in the morning of April 16th, spend the day in Philly (where I can only assume we will be eating cheese steaks, signing forms for the Peace Corps, and comparing luggage weights), hopefully sleep a few hours during the night, then we'll be off to JFK airport. We'll fly as a group to Frankfurt, Germany and spend a few early morning hours at the airport (maybe go into the city if the Peace Corps allows it, or "not" go into the city if PC forbids it) then catch a flight to Istanbul, Turkey. Quick layover in Istanbul before hopping on our last leg of air transport to Manas International Airport.

We'll spend three days in Bishkek at the Sayakat Hotel before making our way to the Peace Corps Training Village of Voenno-Antonovka. We'll all be training in the Voenno-Antonovka area from April 21st until June 11th. Mail can be sent to 

Sean O'Reilly  Кыргызская Республика Сокулукский район Село Военно-Антоновка Ул. Фрунзе 118 Военно-Антоновский Детский Дом Индекс 724-806

Sean O'Reilly Sokuluk rayon 724-806 Voenno-Antonovka 118, Frunze str. Voenno-Antonovka Orphanage Kyrgyz Republic

Mail can take up to a month to arrive, so please do not send anything after May 11th. (Mail forwarding apparently doesn't exist yet in Kyrgyzstan so they'll return any letters/packages to the sender if I am no longer there.) Thank you in advance for your letters, I'm sure I will relish reading them.

Remember, please leave any questions or requests in the comment section. Thank you!