.and I am listening to the dial tone and getting nowhere with you

Tiny bits of serendipity make me happy.

In other non-gag-order news, I got accepted to help train kids who are going off to America for a year. There's a non-profit government organization here called American Councils, or ACCELS, and they run a program known as FLEX, or the Future Leaders Exchange Program. (Er, Future Leaders EXchange, I guess.) The director of ACCELS came to speak with us during our In Service Training back in January, and in the little packet of information he gave us was a flyer advertising the training position.

FLEX is pretty well-known in schools here. It's essentially an exchange program - kids take tests in English language and go through the whole application process, and the lucky and qualified get to go to America for a school year. One of my first projects back at my original site was to help interested students prepare for the FLEX exams. The training that I applied for happens at some point in June, where the chosen students go to a retreat for cultural traning. Basically the reverse equal to our Pre Service Training, only it's in Kyrgyzstan and only for a couple of weeks, as opposed to three months.

I applied for the program because I thought it would be something interesting to do, and it would also convieniently give me something to do when school was out. But, turns out that there's a hell of a bonus that comes along with it: the trainers, of course, get to be trained themselves before taking on the job. And where is the training, do you ask? Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Almaty is like, a real city. Maybe this comes from having Bishkek at my fingertips constantly, but I've kind of gotten over it. It's a relatively nice city, as far as cities in Central Asia go, but there's not much to it. It's a luxury to be able to access it whenever I want, and being so close to Bishkek is useful because it means that I know Bishkek. Whatever this country can offer in ways of resources and creature comforts, I can access it. (Of course, this is also a double-edged sword, because a lot of the really nice things in this city I can't afford. It's one thing to be in the middle of nowhere and not have a shower or constant electricity or climate control when nobody else has it either, it's another to not have all those things and then be constantly in a place where other people do and not be able to get it.)

So for a week in April, I will be up in Almaty getting my training on, but probably also hitting up clubs and going on shopping sprees and maybe even drinking a latte or seven. Or twelve. Even better is that the hotel we're being put up in apparently has an indoor water park of some sort. Even better, my transportation, lodgings, and visa costs are all paid for, and we also get a per diem that's supposedly pretty good. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I can't be directly paid for the work I do, but there are other ways to be appropriately compensated. I've heard that the per diem is pretty generous, since we can't be handed a paycheck for the actual training itself.

But in order to do all of this, I have to get the Kazakh visa. This was very conveniently handled for me - I just had to provide ACCELS with my passport, some passport photos, and fill out the form. They took it to the embassy for me and did all the footwork. All I have to do today is go over to pick it up.

The problem with this is that the Kazakh embassy is pretty persnickety about giving out visas... you can only go on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6pm. ACCELS said all I had to do was show up at the office before six, and their driver would take me there. Great.

The problem with this is that the last public transportation to my village leaves at 6:30, which would either leave me stranded in Bishkek or forced to shell out around 400 som for a taxi ride. 400 som is like ten bucks, which is not too much for a forty-minute taxi ride, but to put it in perspective I went from Naryn City to Bishkek for 300 som, and that was a five hour taxi ride. Yeah.

So I called up ACCELS, and they were all like, "No problem. We'll just have one of our drivers take you back to your village after you're done at the embassy."

Sweet. Free taxi ride. This absolutely means I need to capitalize on this, so I went out and bought myself a second oven (hopefully this one will not explode...), since if I've got a free ride that is not on an overpacked minivan, might as well take advantage of it and haul some awkwardly-sized boxes with kitchen appliances, right?