magda's travels

After a year at home in San Diego I picked up and moved to Tanzania, so I thought I would dust off the old blog again so I could keep people up-dated on my life. But as always its content is not a reflection of the U.S. government, Peace Corps or anything else.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

first entry

So I has come to this I am creating a blog, it maybe loathsome and many of you may have heard me rail against the media known as ‘on-line journals.’ What can I say inconvenience has made me a hypocrite.

I have been living in my new home for about two weeks and I have been settling in nicely. I love my room, it can only be described as a pretty pretty princess bedroom. If you can not imagine what that looks like, mores the pity, but rod iron bed covered by a room dictate the décor and decorated in fairies- fairy pics, and fairy accessories!


Another new addition to my life, is in fact the new love of my life. Yes, you can all stop taking bets I found true love in the Peace Corps. He’s a younger puppy named Alca (meaning sour cherry) an appropriate name for such a small and wiry beast.

At this point I am at am impass as to try to catch up on stories or just begin from here which is what I will do because the other way would be longer and probably boring


So here’s a quick sum up:
I got here, made friends soo fast it was silly. It is still amazing that people I met the first night are still the people I am in virtually constant contact with (thanks to our cell phones!) In this way it seems a lot like college. There’s a welcome week you meet everyone have fun, make friends- that was the beginning of peace corps. Like I said, I am still friends with those people I hung out with before we even flew over here.

What else did we do? Language classes everyday but Sunday. Weekly day-long sessions on how to be effective in our jobs, and learn rules. There are in fact a great many rules to learn. And after 12 weeks of this we we’re sworn in. And are now peace corps volunteers!

So after seeing the same friends that they’ve begged you to become rediculuously close with, and you have. After three months of intense bonding on a daily level, we are given separate assignments all over the country and asked to stay there all but one weekend a month. It is a strangely hard thing to do. Hearing it, you’d think once a month that is more than you saw most of your friends in California, and much more that I can see any of you for the next 2 years –and it sounded that way to me too, but now I find it too be a real challenge and excited by the fact that I am currently working one day a week in another city where a close friend lives! Hurray! I get to see Ben once a week for the next six. I have people who live in my city too, so in that I am very very fortunate. Josh lives in the same city as I do and is one of the most cheerful people you’ll ever meet! Additionally, there’s Charlie who is super cool, from Chicago and just to prove the world is tiny stayed at Sam Trad’s place while visiting his friend in Prague.

Where I live is one of the more beautiful regions of Azerbaijan. Flowers grow everywhere, there are trees it is set against the mountains and I love it.