Peace Corps Loves Us, Finally

Well, Matt and I are gearing up to leave for Kazakhstan with the Peace Corps in just a few weeks. For those who don’t know, we are scheduled to begin staging on August 17^th in Washington D.C. and we actually leave for Kazakhstan in the evening of August 18^th.

Staging is PC slang for pre-departure orientation. We’re basically supposed to learn some need-to-know info about what to expect as soon as we get into KZ. For those of you who are interested in stalking us or for future PC applicants who can’t get enough of stalking PC blogs (trust me, we understand), the schedule looks like this:

KAZAKHSTAN Staging Event

Holiday Inn Georgetown

2101 Wisconsin Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20007

Phone: 202-338-4600

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

12:00 PM

Registration

Official registration as Peace Corps trainee -- turn in completed forms

2:00 - 4:25 PM

Who We Are

What's Expected of You

4:25 - 4:45 PM

Break

4:45 - 7:00 PM

• What You Expect

• What's Next

• Closing

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

12:00 PM

Check out of hotel

12:30 PM

Bus arrives for loading and departure to Washington Dulles Airport

5:45 PM

Flight departs for Kazakhstan

INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT ITINERARY:

18 AUG 10 - Wednesday

Washington Dulles to Frankfurt

Air United Airlines FLT:8826

LV Washington Dulles at 545PM AR Frankfurt 740AM (on the 19th)

19 AUG 10 - Thursday

Frankfurt to Almaty

Air United Airlines FLT:9116

LV Frankfurt 145PM AR Almaty 1205AM (on the 20th)

Notice that we have a 6 hour layover in Frankfurt. Word on the street is that we can’t leave the airport during that time. Oh. Joy.

We don’t have a lot of expectations for our lives in KZ. We like to travel like that. When we went to Japan, we just didn’t know what to expect and I think that actually prepares you to be ready for anything. The people I met in JP that had the most trouble were those who had fixed notions about the country. It didn’t matter whether the notion was that the entire country looked like Tokyo or that everyone sat around watching anime in their kimono while eating sushi or just that everything was going to be generally wildly exotic. Real life is real life everywhere you go and sometimes, it’s just not that thrilling, which can be a real downer for people. Soooo, we’re just expecting to meet some people, do our jobs and freeze our asses off 9 months out of the year. Sounds like a good plan to me!