Permanent site placement!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Exactly one week after the announcement of our permanent sites we are disembarking for a visit to our homes for the next two years! Yikes! Last Wednesday, our permanent sites were announced in a draft style fashion. Program Managers (PMs) announced names and handed out envelopes and we were to stand on a large map of Kyrgyzstan according to our placements. After weeks of anticipation I was placed in ..... ISSYK-KUL OBLAST!!!!

Tasma village, northeast of Karakol is a village with 3 or 4 stores and a post office, will be my home for the next 2 years! I actually couldn't ask for more. I am in a village about 45 minutes away from a major city, in the mountains and close to the lake, there are 3 other volunteers within 30 minutes and a good friend from my language group within an hour from my site. Sounds perfect to me! I will be working with a handicrafts organization who produces scarves, gloves, purses, and other felted souvenirs (taking orders soon!). My PM has told me they need help with accounting but I'll find out more as soon as I visit the site, permanent sites are rarely that straight forward. A volunteer from the previous year also working in handicrafts was able to create a web site and has been selling bulk handicrafts back to the states.

Everyone is pretty nervous and excited about meeting families and visiting the our new homes. It will be a similar event to the matching ceremony in March. Gathering together, matched and sent off by taxi or other public transportation to far ends of Kyrgyzstan. Mine is a 6 hour drive, to the other side of the country. We are visiting for a few days, staying with our new host families and visiting our permanent sites, to see what we are in for for the next 2 years!