Cяossing Ovёr

The time has come. Tomarrow morning we drive to JFK airport and at 4:30 we take off for Istambul, Turkey. These past couple days have been pretty packed. I've met all 62 fellow Kyrgyzstan trainees and all of us are pretty amped to get over to Kyrgyzstan. We are the K-16s. The K stands for, well, Kyrgyzstan and the 16 means that we are the 16th group of volunteers to serve in Kyrgyzstan. For the past two days we've been just going over the basics. It would probably take me a few hours to go over all the material we covered so in short the Peace Corps has been trying to instill in us that not only are we crossing over to another culture, we are actually going to be LIVING it. We are going to have to learn to open our minds in ways we never expect. The very smallest of behaviors we have can come accross as disrespectful in the eyes of a foreigner. Even being culturally sensitive on what I write in the blog entries is very important. Last thing I want is to be sent home for writing something offensive about the Kyrgyz culture. It's going to be a walk on the wild side! That is a guarantee. We have a 10 hour layover in Istambul tomarrow which leaves a solid amount of time for us all to check out the city. We need a visa and it only costs about 20 bucks or so. I'll be sure and take some sweet pics and post some up here. In less than 48 hours we will have landed in Bishkek and I think we get in at about 3 AM. The VERY next day we start training! This next week just might be the craziest week of my life. We'll stay in a hotel over there for the first couple nights and then on Wednesday we meet our host family. Absolutely wild. I'm not sure what my internet access will be like but as soon as I get I'll be sure and put in an update. See YOU all on the other side!