Yes, I Have Arrived...

Step 1:
Sorry for the long absence! I arrived in Philadelphia on Saturday,September 20th and was there until Monday, September 22nd. During that time I met the rest of my training group (there are 61 of us) and went through Peace Corps "Staging," which is essentially new employee orientation. None of the information was specific to Azerbaijan, but to the Peace Corps as a whole: policies, procedures, get to know each other exercises, etc. There's a variety of people in our group – just graduated from college, mid career, retired, single, married, etc. Monday we traveled by bus to New York City and flew from there to Frankfurt,Germany and then on to Baku, Azerbaijan. Let me tell you, it is not a quick process for 61 people to check in at the airport.

Step 2:
We were greeted at the Baku airport by some of the Peace Corps Azerbaijan staff as well as a few current volunteers. Right now there are about 45 volunteers in Azerbaijan that arrived in June 2007. We traveled to a hotel just outside of Baku and stayed there until Saturday afternoon. During that time we covered things that are specific to Azerbaijan – host family requirements, schedules for the next three months, etc. We also started our language training. The first language lesson was in random groups, but after that we met in our assigned clusters, which are the training groups that we are in for PST (Pre Service Training). PST will last until the middle of December or so, and the 61 of us are divided into groups of 5 – 6 trainees. These are also the people that we will live near during training. During the rest of these few days at the hotel we spent more time getting to know each other, the Peace Corps staff in Azerbaijan, culture and other information. Ramadan was on September 30th, so we had a session on that too. On our last night at the hotel we had a cultural event that was traditional Azerbaijani dancing– it was beautiful. I'll try to post some pictures when I have a chance. And lastly, we recovered from our jet lag. Azerbaijan is nine hours ahead of home (Eastern Standard Time); we left New York City Monday evening and arrived in Baku Tuesday evening, but it was really only 13 – 14 hours of travelling. One nice thing during this time was that the Peace Corps (PC) arranged to have 5 – 6 current volunteers at the hotel with us to be available for questions and to hear about their experiences as a volunteer. That was definitely an added bonus.

Step 3:
Saturday afternoon we were transported to our host families. I am in a community near Sumgayit, which is north of Baku. In my host family there is a mother, father and three children, although the eldest son is married and lives in the next apartment building. The remaining kids at home are a 17 year old daughter and a 26 year old son, and so far they've been really helpful in learning the language. It was definitely overwhelming on Saturday, but I'm becoming accustomed to not knowing everything I hear, yet being able to pick out words that I do know, and I'm picking up more vocabulary and knowledge each day. The food is wonderful – fresh and varied (lots of fruits, veggies, bread and potatoes), and I now have a new favorite fruit (the pomegranate). On Monday our normal schedule started. I have language class every morning Monday thru Saturday (except this past Tuesday, which was Ramadan) from 9am – 1pm and then in the afternoon we either have time set aside to work on our sector assignments (I'm in the Community Economic Development (CED) sector) or we meet as a group in our sectors. There are 18 of us in the CED program and there's a variety of experience – banking, HR, accounting, non-profits, real estate, insurance, IT, etc. We've had a busy first week with different events – getting our local cell phones (a Peace Corps requirement), learning our way around, how to take a local bus, and on and on. Each training group is assigned a Language & Cultural Facilitator (LCF) who is both our language teacher and who we go to for everything else we need or have questions on. We also learned in more detail about what some of the potential permanent site assignments are, but nothing will be determined/assigned until early November. I don't have internet access at my site but am able to check it at least once a week, so there will hopefully be another update soon. A lot has happened in the past two weeks!