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Published: March 28th 2005
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So today is a better day, last week was rough, having to come back to training after seeing where I will be for the next two years. For any of you who are interested, here is how it will go when I move (if I move or whenever I move) to site. Swearing in is on the 5th and we go to site the next day. Leading up to the swearing in as volunteers, there is a counterpart conference that is the 3rd (just for our counterparts) and the 4th (us&them). The morning of the 4th we will leave our current host families (so sad about that), and go to meet our counterparts, have meetings all day (they put us up in a (pretty crapy) hotel that night so we will have a big last ha-rah that night Im sure) and then the next day its swearing in. Our current host families are invited, pc is sending vans all over to pick bring them to see the ceremony. My family is so great. Last week they gave me this beautiful, hand made Uzbek dress. The silk fabric is a pattern or style or whatev, called Atlas. Up until semi-recently women still
wore atlas on an ordinary day. Now its just for special occasions. Ill post a picture of it. Actually, Im going to probably wear it to swearing in so you will defiantly see it in those pictures. I might win the "most likely to go native" superlative if I wear it (I'm kidding, Im by far not the most likely but maybe just for the day), I don't know if anyone else will ware a traditional get-up. I'll still wear it no matter. Anyways, depending on if we all get our Visas renewed by then, I will leave the next day, the 6th, for my site with my counterpart. It is possible that instead we will be sent back to our current host families to "wait" for our visa issues to be settled. Hopefully they wont send us to Washington if it is going to take a while. THat would be a horible pain and we all would not be a very happy bunch of newly sworn in volunteers ready to get things started here. With the current changes in Kyrgyzstan (with the people of Kyrgyzstan having just over thrown the government, the President (former) currently in Russia, having fled
the country, and new elections will be held in June. All the violence was contained in the capitol Bishkek and the city of Osh and I think has subsided now. Hopefully the elections go well. You all probably know this stuff, but for those of you who didnt.) we may have a few more issues, problems convincing the Uz government that we aren't here to start a revolution. .....this is funny, I just had Aziz, a man that works for the pc stop by to pick up some paperwork from me and I just asked him if he knew anything about our Visas and he told me he had heard that our new country director (just arrived a month ago) got the government to agree to 1 year visas for all of my group. THis is great news, he said hes not sure, its just what he had heard. Ill find out for sure on Thursday, at our last Hub meetings as trainees. So thats how it will go down. We will take either a marshutka (a small bus/van thing, a routed taxi) or actually, on our way there we will probably take a regular taxi all to ourselves because
I have so much stuff. My counterpart will be taking us all the way to our houses (even though I could do it myself because Ive seen where I am going to be living.). She lives right down the street from me. Its a really small town. And then the next day or so I will start going to school, observing at first and then teaching maybe for the last month, and I am organizing a camp I am going to do myself at my site (the girl Jenni who was there before me did a camp the last two years so Im sorta "expected" to do one too. I dont really mind because it will give me something to do, it will be right after school ends, and then I wont feel like I didnt make a good impression, and leave for the three other camps Im going to help with in other towns without feeling like Im leaving my town kiddies hanging.
Heres what's coming up for my tentative spring/summer schedule for all of you who may wonder on occasion, "while I am laying on a beach somewhere close to paradise, what is JenHill doin' at her
current home in the middle of boiling, landlocked Uz?" Well, school ends on the 25th of May, I will give the kids two days break and the next week of put on a camp at my school. Ive got to recruit some volunteers to help me out! Then the next week, a girl in my region is having a camp at her school that I am going to help out with. The next week is a Volunteer conference in Tashkent. Break for a few weeks. Then on July 4th (yeah! Ill be with other Americans!) the English Emerson camp starts for Secondary students where I will be teaching "leadership," and the next week is the English Emerson camp for University students were I will be teaching "bookmaking" and, I know, get this, creative writing. It was my idea to add the creative writing, even though I cant write worth sh**, I figure it will be fine because of a few reasons. One, its just camp, its fun! Its ok that I suck, they can still be introduced to the ideas, the release, the enjoyment of creative writing by just given time and encouragement to do so. Right? I hope so. So if anyone out there has any suggestions on good "exercises" or activities to get their creative juices flowing, PLEASE share (Im talking to you Mike and Ulfras!!! Give it to me!). then after that it will be mid July and I will have The rest of the summer to prepare a bit for the upcoming year and maybe to travel a little, see other peoples sites. And really to settle in again. By then, Im hoping that my language has improved at least to the point of holding a conversation where I use full sentences and can go beyond "how are you? how are your children? How is work? What are your hobbies?"
So thats it for PST, PreServiceTraining. Now on to the next two full years of living and working in this land of sand, this home away from home, Uzbekistan. Over and out, peacelove, Jen.
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