I spent my first night with my host family last night, and it went really well. I hope everyone also found success with this pivotal moment in the Peace Corps adventure. I imagine we're all having different experiences. After staging, two days of travel, and three days in the Hotel Issyk-Kul, a lot of us became instant friends. There have been so many new experiences packed into the last few days, I can't believe that it has been less than a week since Philadelphia.
Our six-hour layover in Istanbul had been a highlight. Barely knowing each other at all, but feeding off of the profoundly strong bond shared by Americans oversees, we bought day visas, exchanged some money, and put our heads together to figure out how to get to the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque and back, in time for our flight to Bishkek.
Ten of us decided to accept an offer from a local near the exit of the airport to share a van, who may or may not have ripped us off. We piled in, and the driver gunned it through the streets of Istanbul as if we were in a drag race, weaving through traffic and honking his horn, just barely missing the cars in the other lanes. Of course, this is totally normal just about everywhere outside of the U.S. The wreckless driving made some of us nervous, but I decided to just let go and accept whatever was about to happen. I had my seatbelt on. What more could I do, than scan the Turkic roadside scenery as it went by in a blur? As we crossed from Europe into Asia, on the way to our destination, I checked out how the people on the street were dressed. Mostly jeans and sweaters, with small, Euro sneakers. Then, suddenly, the van came to an abrupt stop, and we spilled out and onto the streets of central Istanbul, Turkey.
The architecture around us was dumbfounding. The towers of the Blue Mosque punctured the sky, and inside, where everyone was required to take their shoes off, and women were asked to cover their shoulders, tourists like us walked around in admiration, snapping group pictures as Muslims in one end of the room prayed, facing Mecca. I didn't know a thing about this place, but it seemed pretty cool. Humbling.
Outside, messages of Islam, written in English, scrolled across an electronic sign in red letters, and my new friend, Jia, wrote some of them down. We didn't linger there for too long, because behind the sign, across a concrete courtyard filled with street vendors, stood the Hagia Sophia. I'd heard that you've got to check it out if you're in the neighborhood, so we strolled over to it as a loud call for prayer suddenly filled the area. It was one of those surreal moments that I tried to savor, but just didn't know how to enjoy it any more than I actually was. It was transformative. If anyone would have told me a year ago that I would be listening to a Muslim call to prayer in person…I looked around at my new friends, who yesterday were complete strangers, and savored the moment before the familiar sounds of the city returned.
I didn't know anything about the Hagia Sofia's importance in world history. I didn't know what it was, or that I was going to go there that day. I went in totally blind; I was probably one of the only people there who would have to learn about it after visiting it, instead of vice versa.
I might have picked up something, though. Turns out, I think, Istanbul used to be the center of the Roman empire, and great emperors were the only ones allowed to enter the halls of the Hagia Sofia. I wondered if Alexander the Great had invited any ladies in there with him. I'm sure he did, right? How could anyone keep a place like that to themselves? Today, it's a museum, and, walking around on little sleep and stimulation overload, Jia and I pondered how they could build such a huge, intricate dome back in 500 A.D, without it collapsing on itself. She said her boyfriend, who was an architect, would have been wildly impressed. I had to agree.
We only got a small taste of that extraordinary place, because we had to get some lunch and grab a cab back to the airport. We ate some mystery meat wrapped in a gyro or something, and served with a cup of sour milk yogurt that we couldn't decide whether to dip our food into, or drink. I took one sip, gagged, and tossed mine into the trash.
We hailed a cab and stuffed four of us into the back seat, while I sat shotgun. The cabbie, who spoke zero English, lit up a cigarette and offered me one. First time that had ever happened. But that was nothing compared to one of our friends, in another cab, who had been offered to drive! Hey, American, welcome to my cab! You want to drive? They do things differently on the other side of the world.
Soon we were back on a plane, and would be landing in Bishkek at two in the morning, local time. No one really knew what time it was back in Philly, or what day it was, or anything. Had we lost a day? Didn't really matter. Our steady regimen of cautiously moving forward, East, had brought us here, and all 70 of us were still accounted for. Delirious, sleep-deprived and punch-drunk, we were greeted at Manas Airport, outside Bishkek, by a few volunteers and two buses the Peace Corps had chartered.
Pre-Service Training (PST) officially began with us drilling one of the volunteers, named Brad, with questions that would prove to be meaningless, since everyone's experience is different, and there was nothing we could do to prevent our own experience from beginning. He just kept telling us that it was all good. We checked into the hotel, wrestled our bags up to the fifth floor, and finally crashed in a bed, instead of an airplane seat. I drifted off, hoping that the kids were representing well at Nationals, and making new friends. Four hours later, at 7 a.m., we reported for duty to begin learning how to speak Kyrgyz.
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