The Selfless Nomad: 27 Months in Kyrgyzstan: PST this is Madness

Pre-Service training has been going on for about a month and a half now and it will soon be ending, on June 10^th to be exact! It has been an adventure!!! During PST we have an incredibly structured schedule, barely any free time, a curfew of 9 pm, and only have 1 day where we are semi-free. Along with that we learn A LOT!, along with practicums, and other cultural events. This part of PST I am more than ready to end. I’m stoked to feel like a free person again!!! At the same time I’m going to miss my village (Studenchaskaya) a lot, my current host family, and the trainees that are in my village. We have grown incredibly close in a short amount of time and when we leave for our permanent site’s chances are we will not be in the same place. One thing I’ve already learned about Peace Corps is they are really good about forcing you to build very close relationships then breaking them down, over and over again. It’s tough! I know I haven’t updated my blog in a while and that’s because I’ve been too busy riding the roller coaster of life and loving every high and low of it.

A lot has gone on so I don’t even know where to try and start. Within our village we have bonded with a lot of the kids and other host family siblings. We’ve attended birthday parties, gone to talent show (kinda) graduation celebrations, a school disco, and the last bell ceremony (high school graduation). These relationships are amazing and while I know new one’s will be made with my future community it will make leaving my current village difficult. I’ve also gone on runs with the kids, played lots of volleyball, and just had a blast attempting to talk to them in my very broken Kyrgyz. Language learning is a continuing struggle that will not be going away any time soon. The Peace Corps training’s that we are required to do are a mix of important, repetitive, and a really big waste of time but because we technically work for the Gov. we’ve got to do it! Yay bureaucracy. I’m excited to learn more job specific and health related topics. A few weeks ago we all did practice lessons first for our fellow health trainees then at are local school. My friend Fornia and I worked together and put together a lesson on the differences between exercise and physical fitness. The idea of exercise is practically non-existent in Kyrgyzstan! It was a lot of work translating posters into Russian, trying to speak a little bit in Kyrgyz and preparing a lesson for approximately 15 students and then having about 30 show up! It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it, but I realized how difficult lesson planning, and execution is, especially in a foreign language with very different cultural attitudes towards everything!!!

I plan on uploading all of my photos from PST as soon as I have enough internets to do so. This will probably be mid June. Here are some random photos from the past few weeks!

I’m ready for PST to be over, but NOT ready to leave the village and the people I’ve grown so close to over the past month and a half. I miss everyone back at home but am beyond ecstatic with my life here, the new adventures that happen everyday and all of the opportunities that await me. For now I’m just going to hold on tight and enjoy this amazing ride!