It’s been about a month since my last post, and I really haven’t much to say other than training is nearly over. All the Americans will ship out to their permanent sites on Saturday after we swear in and become legitimate volunteers.

It’s been a great last few weeks. We’ve all gotten so close. Everyone we ever thought would “couple” has gone and “coupled” already. It seems that we are all kind of flailing at this point… reaching out and latching on to one another while we still can.

I’m freaking out, man. This is real. And the holidays are coming.

Interesting things I’ve done in the past week:

1. Ate my first persimmon ever

2. Ate my first pomengranate ever (strange that I had to come all the way here to eat fruits that are readily available in the States). Oh, and the bloody red of a pomegranate juice pod is my new favorite color.

3. Made 15 different mix CDs in one night

4. Listed every person I’ve ever known and saved you all in a WordDoc

5. Had the realization that blogging is like confession. By the way, it was hugely pretentious of me to attempt to translate Brodski and then brag about it online. Sorry.

6. Examined peyote growing in a terracotta pot (one of my local green-thumbed theologian friends is intrigued by the mysticism and lore of it). Funny-- it looks nothing like I thought it would… it’s an effing cactus!

7. Fell in love with David Bowie. I’m a late bloomer…

8. Rode a ski lift up into the Kazakhstani Alps and paid 100 tenge (a ridiculous sum) for a cup of chai to warm myself afterward

9. Cut my own hair without a mirror

10. On the way to Almaty today, I traced every dirty English word I could think of onto the fogged windows of a marshootka just cuz I could. Muhaha. (marshootka: Russian word for taxi-van).