a great highlight in a pcv's life is to recieve care packagages and letters from america. i dont really NEED anything, but anything from america would be amazing; anything really, suprise me. its not that expensive and i would love you forever, would make me feel very loved. so if you feel lilke sending me anything, even just a postcard my address is

Anais Surkin

Merkezi Post

Teleb Edilender

Zaqatala, Azerbaijan

AZ6200

and ofcourse you can always call or text 011-994-050-775-7129

oh and now that i have internet at home you can easily reach me online. gotta love technology :)

On Friday I found out that I will be spending my two years here in Azerbaijan in a city of 100,000 called ZAQATALA.

I am extremely happy, it is exactly where I wanted to go. It sounds even better than I imagined. I will not be in the actual city, I will be in a village called TALA. But my village is a 20 minute walk from the center of the city, so it is more like a suburb. It is perfect because I will have the best of both worlds, the resources of a city, but the safety and familiarity of being known by everyone in the village. Zaqatala is a region in the extreme North Central part of the country, located in between Georgia and Russia. I have been told that it is the most beautiful part of the country. It has not been affected by the environmental degradation of most of the country. It is in the greater caucaus mountains and has seven rivers. It is also extremely diverse culturally. There are 30 ethnic groups there, the largest ones being Avar, Lezghin, Georgian and Azeri, in no particular order. Russian is widely used as the language of inter-ethnic communication.

My school is relatively small. There are 500 students, 80 teachers and 6 english teachers. The director is a woman, which is pretty rare here. I have heard that it is a very good school and that the director and english teachers are very enthusiastic.

My host family is comprised of a father, mother, son and daughter. The children are 11 and 13 years old but will not be there because they are at boarding school in the UK. The father is 40 years old and owns a number of nut factories. The mother is 33 years old and does not work. I have been told that they are very nice, open-minded people. The house is also apparently very large and very nice.

Tomorrow and Tuesday we will have a coordinators conference and I will meet a representative from my school. Then on Wednsday I will go to visit Zaqatala for four days. Then we come back to Sumqait for 2.5 more weeks of training before swear-in on Sept. 12.

I am extremely happy and excited!

hey ya'll today i have a little bit more time to write.... yesterday i was in an internet cafe that was so slow i was gonna throw the damn computer out the window. ha. well i have been here less than a week but it already feels like a lifetime. the first three days all 54 of us were at a resort which was pretty nice. it was a sort of orientation with all of the staff and everything. we got lots of shots and basic language lessons. on saturday we moved into our host families homes. i have two host sisters, a 20 year old and a 15 year old. my family is very nice and the food is very good.... everything is great, but the whole gender thing is tough.. there are so many places that girls arent supposed to go and arent supposed to do... there is even an internet cafe a block from my house but i cant go there/.. girls cant really drink or smoke either and we have to dress pretty conservatively. it is difficult for pretty much everyone in our group to figure out how to negociate this....... well thats it for now, i will post my phone number here as soon as i get my cell connected. you will be able to text me. hollai am with my teacher right now. will be with her for another 2 or 3 hours. i cant use my computer at apartment for email because they do not have a land line phone. host family has two girls, one 15 other 20. they are very nice. room is ok, uncomfortable bed.. no closet.... but fine. they have a real toilet which is good. i am learning azeri. communicate with family with mix of english, russian and azeri.... my teacher is very nice. she is 24, today i am at her apartment in sumgait, we came to see if someone here can figure out to unlock phone, she is also staying with host family in village so she is getting her things together while i use her computer. the village is actually not really a village, just a bunch of kruechev era apartments by the sea. about 20 mintues on marshutka from Sumgait city. everyone is very nice. there are 4 other people in my training group, rachel, the jewish girl who you met at airport, Vy, the vietnamese girl, jeff- a boy from portland-- we are all in early 20s. then there is james a man in his 50s

I have accepted an invitation to serve in Azerbaijan, staging June 24 and I am stoked! More details to come.

So I got a tattoo last weekend. I have been wanting one forever and have been imagining this design for years. But, I can't draw for shit, so the idea has remained in my head and I have been scared to go to just any tattoo shop to get it done. On Saturday my homegirl Mercedes had a tattoo party and I knew that this was the right time to get it. In going to the Peace Corps, I know that the likelihood is that I will have to hide certain aspects of my identity, so this tattoo was an important to me as an act of self-affirmation. It is on my upper back, on a place that will remain hidden to the world but loud and clear to me. Anyways after getting it, I was a little bit nervous that it could present problems as far as medical clearance. I worried that I would be required to take new blood tests to be sure that I didn't contract any diseases or anything. So yesterday I called the OMS and told them that I quit smoking (will be a month on Friday) and that I got a tattoo. It was no big deal, they just noted it on my file and that was that. So I am still waiting...... waiting... for my medical clearance. June is only 3 months away.

Ever since I sent my medical/dental package to HQ last week I have been anxiously waiting to hear that they recieved it. Being that I work overnight, I have noticed that all of the toolkit update emails always show up at exactly 5:00AM which is probrably the time that the system updates. This morning at 5, I was esctatic to see that not only did they recieve my package, I was already dentally cleared! Now I am just hoping that medical doesn't take too long...

So, I finally mailed off my medical and dental clearance package today. I don't remember it being this difficult and drawn out last time. I recieved the package a few weeks after my nomination, while I was in Ithaca over the holidays. With my birthday and my brothers visiting, I wasn't able to get started on it until mid-January. The medical part went fine, until I saw the part of the form asking about any other issues that were not mentioned and I thought of the mole that I had removed back in July. It was what is called a dyplastic nevus, which is a pre-cancerous mole with irregular skin cells and a lot of melatonin in it. According to my dermatologist it was no big deal, most people with fair skin and a lot of freckles have them. Just to be safe, I called the OMS and they said that I would need to fill out extra paperwork for it. I recieved the form in the mail a few weeks later... and it was the form for skin cancer, so I got a little bit worried that this will become a big issue but I think they probably didn't have a form for my specific condition and skin cancer was the closest thing to it. So I had to go to both my dermatologist and surgeon to get all the papers for that. Then I also had to get my immunization records from my pediatrician. Since it has been quite a few years since I have been to that office, they had my records in an archive or something so I had to fill out a ton of paperwork to get them and even though they promised that it would only take a week, it ended up taking about a month to get them.. they never answered my phone calls, so I had to chase after them (remember I work overnight so I had to do this all in the middle of my sleep-time). The real headache though was the dentist. I expected it to be as simple as my doctor's form but when I got my teeth checked, turned out that I needed a bunch of work done. Firstly, I had a cavity under a filling that I had done last summer, which makes me think that they didn't drill deep enough the first time. Then, I needed my crown replaced. And last but not least, I needed one of my wisdom teeth pulled. So all of this work took about a month. When I went to get my wisdom tooth pulled they told me that my insurance was refusing to pay for any of it. I am still under my mother's insurance because it is free for students but turns out that rather than requiring verification of being a full-time student once a year, like my medical insurance, they now want it every semester. I am only taking one class this semester, so I have no dental insurance and if I sign up for dental insurance at work, they obviously won't pay for any of the work I had done before they insured me. To make a long story short, right after I got my wisdom tooth pulled, I had to pay almost $1,500 for dental work. Not a good day. The best thing that came out of the wisdom tooth is that I decided to quit smoking and it was the opportune moment to do so. Friday will be two weeks without a cigarette. So finally I got it all together and mailed it off today. I am hoping that I will be cleared quickly so I can get my invitation soon!

The day after I got home from Russia, I started my new job as night auditor at hotel QT. I am still there, and will be until I leave. As night auditor, I work overnight, 5 nights a week and am basically in charge of overnight operations and accounting at the hotel. I love my job, its a great environment and I have fun there... and the money is good, so I am almost finished paying off my credit card debts. But anyway, this blog is about my PC experiences not QT-land... So, by the time I got back from Russia, my excitement and determination about going to PC was re-invigorated but I was seriously considering getting my Master's first. After a few months back at Hunter, in the undergrad grind... plus full-time work, I realized that I don't want to postpone any longer. I am 100% ready for the next step in my life. Unfortunately more than a year had passed since my application had been de-activated, so I had to reapply. I sumbitted my new application in November '06. I was assigned to the same wonderful recruiter who I had two years earlier, so the interview and nomination process went very smoothly and I got the nomination that I wanted: Central Asia/Asia TEFL for June 2007. Honestly I prefer not to go to Asia but my recruiter actually took the extra step of calling the placement officer in DC for the program and she said that I will most likely be invited to Central Asia since most people prefer Asia... so its perfect!

My trip to Russia in May of 2006 had great impact on me. It raised my conciousness of my internal disconnect and lack of a complete identity. I also remembered what it is like to be in a country where I do not speak or understand the language. All of my travels in the past ten years have been within Latin America and the Caribbean; to countries whose languages I speak. My level of fluency in Spanish is such that I can switch back and forth between English and Spanish effortlessly. It requires no thought or translation for me to use the Spanish language. In addition, I am extremely comfortable in the cultures which I have recently spent time in. I feel totally at ease and at home in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. I had forgotten what it is like to really feel like a foreigner. Despite (obviously) my awareness that in Russia, I would not know the language, upon arrival, I was taken aback by the realization that I really did not understand. (My mother was born and rasied in Russia and we were visiting family... who I could not communicate with)

This experience with language compounded by all of the people I met and places I visited, made me acutely aware of the importance of learning the language and garnering a greater understanding of the culture(s) of that part of the world.

To make a long story short.. well not short.. less long rather... due to my building's eh, uncomfortable.. unhealthy.. conditions, I had to move. I was unprepared to move back in with my mother at that point, so I decided to get out of New York for a while. My wonderful friend Cynara, who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana offered her home to me. Also my father was getting ready to settle (for the moment) in Sun Valley, Idaho (a mountain resort community). I seriously considered both options but I had some instict that Louisiana would not be right for me at that moment. Despite the fact that if you had ever told me that I would move to Idaho at the age of 20 and celebrate my 21st birthday there, I would have thought you were crazy, I decided that Sun Valley was the best place for me. The same week that I flew West, Hurricaine Katrina hit. In any case, the beautiful natural surroundings, tranquility, fresh mountain air and time spent flying down the slopes did me well. I matured, became reenergized and re-focused. So, in mid April of 2006, I packed all my belongings in my trusty Jeep and Angel (my cat) and I hit the road and headed home to the Big Apple. The drive was great. I loved being on the open road, seeing America, alone with my thoughts, my music, and ofcourse plenty of coffee and cigarettes. I drove 2,500 miles in three driving days, plus a three day stop-over in Chi-town to visit my homegirl Michelle (who I met at UPR). Once I got home, I relaxed, oh for about a day, and then got right down to business. Even though I left for Russia just 10 days after I arrived, in that time I got everything set up to return to Hunter and got a job lined up for myself for my return from Europe in late May.

It has been a while since I have been able to update. I have been busy with my brother Jordi and his wife Katerin and daughters Micaela and new baby Kyara visiting from Bolivia, my brother Marc visiting from Barcelona and my father from Boise, ID... and ofcourse the holidays and my 22nd birthday on Jan 2nd. Marc is still here but i am back at work in my regular routine.

I have been planning to join the Peace Corps for a number of years. I see it as the natural next step for me in this road that we call life. Despite the detours which I have taken, the intermediary destination has always been to become a PCV. I first applied to the Peace Corps in November of 2004; I planned to graduate from Hunter in May of 2005. Initially, having spent the Summer of 2004 in the Dominican Republic, I had my heart set on returning, or at least being placed in Latin America. In January of 2005, I was given the choice of going to Francophone Africa in June of 2005, or Central Asia in August of 2005. After much consideration, I chose Central Asia. Over the next few months I went through the tedious medical and dental clearance proccess. In early April of 2005, I recieved an invitation to Uzbekistan, TEFL, departing August 17, 2005, I accepted. But it was not meant to be. In December of 2004, in the gay room at Hunter College, someone offered to read my Tarot Cards. Now, I generally do not place a high level of credence in such things, especially when read by a 20 year old college student using a book, but his reading turned out to be right on the money. His words of two years ago remain vivid in my memory. He told me that there would be a glitch in my plans, that something would hold me back. I asked him if it would be in my power to make it happen. He said that it was in my power but that it would be an internal not external force which would hold me back, thus it was extremely unlikely that I would be able to. Well, he was right. Looking back on it all, the prize was within reach, if I had just focused for a few more months, I would be finishing rather than beginning my Peace Corps service in a few months. But it was not meant to be. I was unfocused, got involved with a girl, and really just screwed around, shooting myself in the foot. I did not graduate in May of 2005, as planned. In June of 2005, I recieved a call from my Peace Corps Placement officer informing me that the Peace Corps was withdrawing from Uzbekistan, thus the program for which I had been invited had been cancelled and offering me an alternate invitation to Ukraine, TEFL, departing September 20, 2005. By this point, as my Obá, Julio, put it, my head and feet had switched places... I was totally upsidedown. I was unable to accept this invitation and I knew it, so I declined. I spent the rest of the summer almost in a daze, lost and screwed up. I was unable to hold down a job, my apartment was invested with bedbugs; I was totally out of it. TO BE CONTINUED. AS

Welcome to my blog. This is to serve as a journal of sorts, chronicalling my thoughts and feelings particularily relating to my upcoming service in the Peace Corps. I hope that it will be a good way to record my experiences for my friends & family, for myself to look back upon and for anyone else who may be interested. Please note that this blog reflects my opinions and my opinions only, not those of the Peace Corps, the United States government or any other government, entity, person or fairy. Enjoy.