And the "pin" will now land on...
Trip Start
Jan 16, 2005
1
5
11
Trip End
Apr 17, 2007
Tashkent,
Uzbekistan
Saturday, March 19, 2005
I hope you are doing well and are enjoying a beautiful spring day like I am! Well, you are most likely to sleeping at the moment as it's 5am for you on Saturday morning! Either way, I wish you a beautiful day. It's been about 2 weeks since the last update and guess what? I now know where my permanent site will be for the next 2 years...Navoi.
This city is in-between Bukhara and Samarkand...the two most historical and tourist-type cities in Uzbekistan. You are probably saying to yourself, "great, thanks Amber, i still have no clue where the heck you are." Okay, so I'll be on the east side of the middle of the country and will have amazingly hot summers. Luckily there is supposed to be no humidity. The electricity, water, and gas are more reliable here than anywhere else in country. I will be very close to the Kizul Kum desert, which is the vast desert region of Uzbekistan
A Camel for you
. The city of Navoi has a little over 100,000 residents and is highly sovietized. This means it's a good thing I've been learning Russian and I do not have to start learning another language (like Tajik or Kazakh) like some volunteers. The city of Navoi was named after Alisher Navoi, a famous poet, but the city was not recognized by the former Soviet Union b/c it was a mining and higly industrialized place that was operating auspiciously. Okay, enough of that, on to business...my NGO will be Zebbuniso, The Womens Regional Center, which is supposedly a great organization! I'm definitely excited and ready to get started. By the way, this city has high-speed internet access so I should be able to tap in regularly.Oh, a juicy tid-bit about Navoi...it has lake w/ a beach and there are a few swimming pools in the city and I've been told they are nice. Woohoo. Oh, and I've met the other 2 NGO volunteers in Navoi and they are currently scooping out my host family digs and are trying to set me up in a nice pad. We'll see! It doesn't sound like I'll be suffering too much...but who knows! I'll definitely give you more details as time goes on.
I have had practically no access to internet for the past two weeks and so I apologize for the delay in not having responded to some of you (newbies to the site included)
Amir Temur Mausoleum
! Some of you know that I had a PCV visit last week and ended up going to Samarkand and had a marvelous time. I have more pictures that I will be posting to this today...lord of the internet willing. I stayed with a current NGO volunteer, Tricia, and she was a great hostess and totally went all out in fixing me Hummos, Banana Bread, took me out to nice cafes, etc. I even had Ranch dressing with carrot sticks!!! IF you know me, you know how much that meant to me!! This was ranch from a Hidden Valley packet and they found a sour cream distributor and wow did we enjoy this treat. It did rain a majority of the time we were there and the electricity and water was out in her apartment about 60% of the time, but it really didn't phase us too much and we just kept going. I try to not let minor inconveniences like that get to me, which takes a lot of effort sometimes. If I'm at my house in Chirchik and that happens it is sometimes harder to deal with b/c I might be studying when it happens and we have only a few candles. Okay, you try studying by candlelight and tell me how long YOU stay awake. With water being out, it only sucks if it happens on a day you were planning to bathe. However, I always have a reserve of water in my room for drinking, brushing my teeth, etc.
So, I only have 1 week of language training left and after that we start getting down to the nitty gritty details of site departure
Another one...
. I will leave for site on April 5th. Wow, the time has flown by. This fact hit me yesterday and I realized how much my world is about to change again. I have gotten a little comfortable with certain familiarities and having somewhat of a routine. The faces around me will all change very soon and for the ones I have spent a lot time with, this will be difficult. I'm not looking forward to another set of good-bye's as most of us will not see each other very often during the rest of our service. The challenging part of my life here is about to start and I enter it with excitement and open-arms. I also enter it with a strength that comes from the love of all those (you) in my heart. This will be the time when I know I will face great personal obstacles as I will have to tap into this strengh daily. This is the time when my patience and tolerance and wisdom and intuition will be attacked from the inside and outside and I will find out what I'm made of! With that said, wish me luck and a peaceful journey. I want to wish you all the same in your lives and always remember you are never far from my thoughts.
