Azerbai-Awesome

After staging in phili, hanging out in JFK for 5 hours, traveling for what felt like forever (really it was about 12 hours of flying... could be worse), I'm in Azerbaijan!  We just finished the first day of training and so far I love it!  The people in my group (~60 trainees) are amazing.  I'm lucky to be around them! So great!
We're restricted to the hotel for these first few days to get used to life here, let our bodies adjust and get some basic language down for a few days.  Then we go to live with our first host family.  Very exciting!

I'll work on a longer post in a word document and then update in a bit.  Just know that everything is going great! I'm tired as all hoo ha.. but awesome. Once I figure out the postal system, look for letters back to the states.

and an interesting tid bit? I just had my first decent cultural interaction. Cleaning staff at the hotel. nice. :-)

packing - my least favorite thing

So you know the song in The Sound of Music where Maria is singing about a few of her favorite things? And she mentions some horrible things to show a nice contrast (bee stings, etc etc)... this is SO much worse. Trying to pack for 2 years to a place you've never been to is super tricky. I had this beautiful vision of only having one checked suitcase, which would allow me to check my guitar. No such luck.  After successfully packing one suitcase (win!)... i was still left with a rather daunting pile on my bed.  There was no way it would all fit into my delightful backpacking pack with that bag being carry on size at the end of it.
So. Guitar is staying at home :-(. But!!! There's hope! I think I can get one in country at a bazaar hopefully early in training.  Moral of this story - i. hate. packing.  so overrated.

On a lighter note - here's some trivia.  one of my favorite things in a day is how my feet feel when i just get out of bed.  try to remember to notice it sometime... pretty dang awesome :-)

Last day in CO tomorrow... staging here I come!

T-1 week!

So I leave CO in one week from today! Holy. Moly. So... this is actually happening? k. cool. Just checking.
I'm really excited to meet my fellow volunteers and get this adventure going, etc etc.  I'm stoked to figure out just what "youth development" means and do some quality work. win.  See ya, unemployment-ville!
Here's what's left on the preparation agenda:
-Take the dang GRE tomorrow (vom? vom... but it needs to be done.. dang it)
-Scrapbook college to take with me. After all, it was a fabulous 4 year adventure!
-Finish getting the last minute goodies to pack
-Actually pack. (daunting task, really..)
-See the friends that are still in CO... WA kids... mega missies.
-Make a cake. (necessary? probably not. inevitable? oh yeah)