Philly-NYC-Istanbul-Ashgabat

Hello all,

Rebekah and I have been having a great time in Philly during staging the last couple of days. We said goodbye to Seattle and all our friends and family :( and now we have been in Philadelphia enjoying meeting all of our fellow Peace Corps volunteers going to Turkmenistan. It is a huge crew! There are 44 of us flying to Turkmenistan to replace half of the volunteers currently serving there. We have been learning a ton in training about the country, training, and what to expect when we get there. So here is the low down: Tomorrow we will take a bus in the morning to JFK in NYC, from there we fly to Istanbul (10 and a half hour flight). In Istanbul we will have an 11 hour layover and so we have been able to get in contact with Rebekah's cousin, Adrienne Clark, who just moved there and she is going to show us around the city. Then back to the airport and we fly into Ashgabat, Turkmenistan arriving at 3 in the morning. We will be there for 3 days to get immunizations and then on to a village for language training. Rebekah and I will be living with a host family together! This is wonderful news as we thought we may be separated into different host families during language training. Thats as far as we know for now, but I guess thats enough. We have been running around trying to finalize last minute things before taking off so it has been a whirlwind. We will be out of internet and phone access at least for the first two to three weeks after we arrive so do not expect to hear from us. Thank you so much for all of your prayers.

Joshua