One staging, two goodbyes, two countries, and two weeks later...

I AM HERE IN AZERBAIJAN!!!!

It's happened. I reached a foreign country. After all the disappointment, chaos, and stress I have finally made it to a Peace Corps country and my new home for two years... Azerbaijan.

I left for DC early Wednesday morning (was that really only four days ago??) and after a nerve racking conversation with the lady behind the check in counter and an emergency call to SATO about not having a ticket issued out for me, I boarded the plane with 10 minutes to spare. There. I met up with some fellow trainees and an old camp friend. By the way there is nothing to do in northern Virginia. I repeat... nothing. Good thing the hotel had a complimentary wine and cheese hour.

The next morning we met with the rest of the AZ7 (or AZ7 1/2 as we like to call ourselves) group and the Ukraine group in front of the Lufthansa counter at Dulles Airport. We were given our passports, tickets, and instructions on what will happen when we arrive. We were still all hopeful that we would arrive without any more mishaps.

Our flight to Frankfurt left around 5:30pm. So we had our last American meal (unfortunately airport food) made our last calls (I was the biggest phone slave as I was on the phone for two hours calling various people) and said goodbye to America. The flight was uneventful. Eight hours later we landed. Unfortunately us Azerbaijan bound had a five hour layover which was spent watching Gossip Girl.

I had decided not to sleep on the plane but during the four hour flight to Baku I passed the eff out. We were all exhausted. When we got out of customs, a great cheering group of PC staff and a couple AZ6 volunteers came to greet us. We actually made it. We stuffed all our luggage and ourselves in a van and headed to this fabulous hotel. (Seriously it's fabulous.)

Today was spent with an intense training/orientation. We had to cover two and a half days of material into one and a half. This included safety, medical safety, emergancy action plans, langauge, getting vaccinations, learning Azeri customs, and finding out where our host families are. I am tired. Excited, ecstatic really, but tired.

Tomorrow we leave our fabulous hotel to meet our host families. Since they had to scramble to find homes for us, we aren't all in the same town or even language cluster. Us five girls (out of seven with the other two being boys) are in one language cluster but three of us (myself included) will have to travel to a different town for language and another for technical training. So I will be living in Saray, my language lessons will be in Masazyr, and the TEFL lessons will be in Dzeyranbatan and will be taking the bus to travel to all these different places. Each of the day I'll have four hours of Azeri lessons and the rest TEFL. Training will commence on December 9th with us swearing in as volunteers. The next day we are moved to our sites.

This is just as thrilling as I had hoped it would be, maybe even more. I am ready. I just wan to jump into everything. I am a little nervous about living with a host family due to the gender divide and implications it means for me. As an Asian, they also might think that they didn't get a "real" American. (Funny related side story: In the hotel bar in Virginia, this man came up to me and another trainnee and asked "So where in Asia are you originally from?" I said, "America." He asked again, "What? Beijing?" "No. UH-mare-i-kah." "What was that? Shanghai, Taiwan?" "Sir, Shanghai is not in Taiwan. It's in China." We've been laughing about this since. This just proves that Americans desperately need other countries to do a cultural exchange as well. Back to the main story...) I am also nervous about finding my way around the town and getting the unwanted attention for being American and I think more importantly in my case Chinese. But like I said, I am so excited and so emotionally and mentally prepared!! Hopefully I'll get some internet soon to keep posting about these next events. I might not be able to get until Sunday when I have a break though.

Always thinking about and missing you all!