Another airport!

I know these frquent updates must be less than interesting, but I#ll miss the internet at some point,# I#msure. We#re in vienna, about to leav e for Tbilisi (apparently pronounced 'Bilisi') and this keyboard is terrible, so I#ll go now.

At the airport

Well that sounds like the beginning of an exciting post, doesn't it? Kinda like today... how we checked out at 8 AM, sat around for two hours, rode a bus for three hours (why do staging at Philly if we're flying out of JFK? Maybe it's better... NYC staging would have consisted of me hanging out with existing New York friends instead of all this networking stuff), and now have sat around the airport for 4 hours. At 6:15, we will sit on a plane for 10 hours, have a layover in Vienna for 14 hours, sit in another plane for like 4 hours, and then hopefully Tbilisi will bring an end to the waiting. Training doesn't technically start till like Tuesday, but there's gotta be something we'll be doing... like learning the language perhaps...

On another note, I'm happy to point out that I'm way less miserable than I was when I first left for Philadelphia, and I'm actually excited to be going now. Maybe I like waiting...

Training commences

So we don't leave till tomorrow morning, but I'm thinking the whole traumatic part about leaving friends and family is over, soon to be replaced with chronic homesickness, which is hopefully more manageable. Maybe.

As a surprising turn of events, I seem to like most of the people here, which is always a plus. Everybody seems nervous, but even the general Peace Corps-based training without specific information on Georgia makes us feel a bit better. We're actually supposed to be taking a lunch break now, but it's the only time I feel like there's gonna be nobody trying to use the one computer in this giant hotel.

I don't know when I'll be able to send any more e-mails or make any calls or post on this or anything, but as default, just assume I'm okay.

Bienvenue, bienvenidos, wilkommen, etc.

You'll notice not one of the title "welcome"s is in Georgian; that could be because I can't distinguish between letters of the Georgian alphabet yet, much less speak the language. This blog's here for the benefit of you who wish to casually follow my Georgian Peace Corps adventures while you're bored at work, with the benefit of avoiding spam-my, impersonal e-mails with few relevant updates ("I still don't speak Georgian. Today it was cold.").

I hope this blog will capture your mild interest, and I promise here and now not to turn it into a publishable Peace Corps memoir when I get back.* There seems to be a market glut of those, and I think I'd only publish one if I had the notion to sell even fewer copies than Laveidem did.

I don't know how often I'll be able to update, nor where I'll be, nor much else... but I would appreciate comments on posts. Or letters. Or Swedish Fish. Or consistent access to electricity.

*Note: if something really cool happens that makes a memoir unavoidable, like me coaching the Georgian taekwondo team to world championship or becoming a star on Georgian reality TV, then this promise is null and void. I'm just saying that the likelihood of a book about "personal growth" and such is fairly minimal.