July 24, 2007

Turkmenistan

I'll be going to Turkmenistan for my PC service. I will be in D.C. on September 29th for orientation, and then in Turkmenistan on October 3rd for pre-service training. My volunteer service ends December 21, 2009. So I'll be home for Christmas. I also plan at least one trip back to the states

Here's what I know about Turkmenistan and my service so far:
- Free water and electricity everywhere (vestiges of communism)
- Ashgabat, the capital city, is fairly modern and it's all white marble and real gold
- Turkmenbashi, the recently dead dictator/president-for-life, ruled with Soviet-style harshness
- The PC office there recently got satellite internet
- I will probably be in a rural area living with my host family for the entire two years.
- They eat lots of lamb and get lots of produce imported from Iran because the seasons are wonky. They have 100 degree summers but it also snows in the winter.
- I'm guessing that if the USA goes to war with Iran, I will be evacuated and my service will end, or they'll send me to Guatemala or something.
- 87% Muslim, though I hear it's not like Saudi Arabia. They are more culturally Muslim in the way that we are culturally Christian, someone said.

I have to go to work now. More later.

July 22, 2007

It should be here tomorrow

It should be here tomorrow.

July 18, 2007

Notified of my invitation

FINALLY.

After several months of checking my email first thing every morning, after expecting it to come by the time I finished school, then by the time I had my going-away party, then by the time I left Texas, I checked my email this morning and found this message from Peace Corps:

Peace Corps has updated your Application Status account. Log in to http://www.peacecorps.gov/mytoolkit to see the latest information.

This means that my invitation (exactly where and when I will be going) is in the mail. The mailman here is going to become shortly acquainted with me as I wait for him daily at the mailbox. What happens is I get the invite in the mail, and see what it says, and then respond within 10 days to either accept or decline the invitation. Should I decline, I would have to wait longer for another assignment to come up. This would annoy my PO because she'd have to do more work, and it'd annoy Kristofer and Ashley, since I would have to live here longer than expected.

Here is what I am predicting based on my internet research: Turkmenistan, departing for staging September 29th, returning to the States January 2010.

(this paragraph is mostly for Ben)
So. Turkmenistan. The large majority of the population speaks Turkmen, while a minority speak Balochi (Western) and Kurmanji. I am betting that I will not have to learn the minority languages. Turkmen is an Altaic > Turkic language, meaning it has strong vowel harmony, restricted voicing between vcd/vcl with few minimal pairs even intervocalically, short/long vowel opposition, and simple syllable structure (CVCC at the most complex). It might be agglutinative, I'm not sure. All nouns decline the same way; all verbs conjugate the same way. There are no classes. It has number and case, with a basic set of case markings (NOM/ACC/GEN/LOC/DAT/ABL). Its word order is strictly verb-final.

Thank you to Kerry, who was able to quickly get his recommendation stuff in before my PO went on vacation. I most likely would not have received this today if he didn't complete his shit on time. I finally get to update the timeline in the sidebar.

July 16, 2007

Finally a second nomination

My PO Julie Thompson called me this afternoon and gave me a more accurate nomination:

Late September 2007
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Central Asia


This is exciting because TEFL was my first choice of assignment because that would work better when I apply to grad school for linguistics. It's not that teaching science would have been bad, but I just would have rather taught English. Now I need my linguistics books! And I was also reading a book earlier this year by Comrie about Caucasian languages, which might be of use if I learn one of those.

According to the PC website, "Central Asia" is the following countries:

Armenia
Azerbaijan
Georgia
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyz Republic
Turkmenistan

July 11, 2007

A little closer

My PO called my Saturday afternoon. I was surprised she was working then, but she said it was busy season at the placement office.

We talked for an hour about how prepared I am to serve and several other issues like coping with stress, Kristofer, communication with people back home, and timelines.

She said she'd call me back this week, so this definitely means my application is in motion.