New Peace Corps Blog

Hi, friends and family. Peace Corps stipulates that I have a password-protected blog to record my experiences related to my next two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Azerbaijan. Please visit http://AndreasOdyssey.shutterfly.com/ for my photo gallery and http://AndreasOdyssey.shutterfly.com/blog for my Peace Corps blog. The password is my first name.

See you there!

Just in Case

Hi folks, I am taking advantage of the internet access at our hotel one last time before we depart tomorrow. We've packed (repacked, I should say) our bags along with the heavy-duty sleeping bags, smoke detectors, water filters and medical kits we've been issued and are excited to move in with our first host families.

Orientation Week has gone well. I am getting to know my fellow trainees better, feeling slightly more comfortable with basic phrases in Azeri (thanks to 2 hours a day with Sabina and Elshad), and understanding a little more about what it will mean to be a Peace Corps trainee and volunteer. My body has not quite adjusted to the new time zone (10 hours from home), so I am a bit tired. Nonetheless, I am excited about jumping in to the next phase!

As I mentioned before, I will be grouped in a "cluster" of a few other volunteers who are also in the Community Economic Development (CED) Program. We will spend 4 hours a day working on language and culture with Elshad followed by afternoons with our fellow CED trainees for pratical training and exercises. From a rough map of the community where we will be living, it will be easy to get around and in the afternoons, we will only have to take a short bus ride to meet up with the other CEDs. I think our community may also have an internet cafe! I have not idea what to expect at the moment, so I find it best to try not to expect anything and be pleasantly surprised. ;)

On a side note, due to Peace Corps policy, I may have to make this website password-protected. If that is the case, the password will be my first name. I apologize in advance for the inconvenience if it comes to that, but I will do my best to ensure that checking in on my blog is easy and convenient.

Week 1 in Azerbaijan

After two tiring days of travel, 61 new Peace Corps Azerbaijan volunteers arrived in Baku late Tuesday evening to be greeted with several current volunteers and key staff members. We traveled by bus to our resort/ hotel approximately one hour from the capital along the Caspian Sea.


This week ("Orientation Week") we have a fairly rigorous schedule of training seminars, introduction to the language and culture, and opportunities to talk with current volunteers and staff. Despite the entire group being a bit jet-lagged, we are all holding up pretty well, just excited at this point to learn the ropes and meet our host families this weekend. We've already gotten a handful of vaccinations and talked over safety, health and security procedures at length.

We will move in with our host families this weekend and begin the awkwardness of trying to communicate with them given such a significant language barrier. For the training period of almost 3 months, I will be living in a community with a number of other volunteer trainees, including the 4 who I will be training alongside with a native Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator. We will have language lessons 4 hours per day, followed by lunch with our host family and an afternoon of work training or practice sessions. This will occur (most weeks) 6 days a week with Sunday to rest although during the next 3 months, there are a few outings to Baku or days in which all 61 of us meet up in Sumgayit scheduled.

All in all, things are going great, and I am both excited and nervous to meet my host family and really experience Azerbaijani living! Unfortunately, it looks like our internet access will be somewhat sporadic during training, but I hope to be able to post once 2-3 per month.

And We're Off!

Along with my fellow 60 future Peace Corps Azerbaijan volunteers, I spent the past two days in Philadelphia doing general Peace Corps orientation and preparing for our next three months of training in Azerbaijan. It seems like a great group of people of all ages and from a variety of walks of life coming together for the common mission of development in Azerbaijan! Approximately 15 of us are Community Economic Development volunteers, there is a group specifically focusing on Youth Development projects and, of course, a large number will be teaching English. It has been such a relief to finally meet some of the people I will be working alongside, and I can already tell we are going to establish some amazing friendships over the next 27 months!

As I have visited with many of you over the past few months as I have prepared for this adventure, I have been unable to specify exactly what I might be doing in Azerbaijan and what my life there may be like. Unfortunately, I am still unable to answer many of those questions, but I can share with you what I know to expect of the next 3 months:

Tomorrow we will ride a bus to JFK Airport, from where we will depart for Frankfurt, Germany and unltimately Baku (the capital of Azerbaijan). After approximately 2 days of travel (fun!), we will arrive in Baku Tuesday evening and remain in Baku for Orientation Week at a local hotel. On Saturday, we will be taken to the communities where we will live during training and meet our host families. All 61 volunteers will be training in communities near the city of Sumgayit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumqayit) north of Baku, and we will be broken into "pods" of 5-6 volunteers per community. For 11 weeks, we will train in the language, culture and various aspects of our positions and are encouraged to spend a lot of time with our host families to better understand the culture and practice the language. On December 10th, we will graduate from training and be sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. At that point, we will be taken to our posts around the country and begin 2 years of service.

I know there are still a lot of unknowns, but that is as much as I know at the moment. I want to thank you again for your encouragement and support. I am very excited about this adventure and cannot wait to dig in and see what happens! At least for the next week, I will not have internet or phone access, but I promise to blog about my first experiences in-country as soon as I am able.

Finally, two great quotes about tackling scary circumstances:

"I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do." -- Georgia O'Keefe

"The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A Shout Out to My Peops!

Just days before lift-off, I am feeling amazingly prepared for my upcoming journey. My bags are almost packed, I have said most of my "good-byes" and, regardless of what is done or undone, I head to Philadelphia Friday morning for a few days of orientation before flying to Azerbaijan early next week.



I want to say a quick thank you to my family and friends, who have gone out of their way to help me prepare both physically and emotionally over the past weeks. The outpouring of love I have received has been overwhelming and truly gives me a sense of peace about what I am about to do. It is through such support and encouragement -- people going out of their way to show they care -- that I am able to take this bold step.



Friends, I will do my best to keep blogging, so that you know how and what I am doing but, as you know, I have no way of knowing or promising that I will have frequent internet access. I will appreciate your continued thoughts and prayers for myself, my new community and my family here at home. I encourage you to send me emails and leave comments on my blog posts as a way to remind me of your support. When I have a more permanent address, I will disperse that for mail and care packages. ;) For more information on what to expect, visit the "Family & Friends" portion of the Peace Corps website at http://www.peacecorps.gov/. If you would like to get in touch with my parents for any reason, you may also post a comment to one of my blogs.