Thursday, June 11, 2009

First update on thy travels

Yo - so, as of now I am in the Istanbul airport. 

The trip started from me flying into Philly, having staging for a day, then taking a bus to JFK in New York. The bus took us on an odd route right through Brooklyn which was kind of cool since I've never been anywhere near. When we arrived at JFK something pretty funny happened.

We did not have our Peace Corps passports (which are different than regular ones I guess) and we had 'team leaders' that had to pass them out when we got there along with our tickets. There were about 60 of us volunteers so you can imagine it got a little hectic for the Delta Airlines staff. Anyway, when I did get my passport/ticket it was handed to the Delta lady, and then I checked my begs, grabbed my ticket and passport and headed to security. On my way I looked down to check out my passport and I realized that whoops, this is not Christopher, this is somebody else. Not good, just checked the bags..... but it was a fellow volunteer and we cleared up the problem pretty quickly. 

So here we were in JFK at 10AM, and our flight did not leave until 4PM - yucky. When it was time to board we had an 11 hour flight to Istanbul (where I am presently) and it is 11AM here now. Oh also what was awesome in New York is that I happened to throw on my Notorious B.I.G. t-shirt, and a lady just pointed at it and shook her head in aggrements which was awesome. 

On my flight here my seatmate and I had some wine so I was pretty thursty upon arrival, dropping seven dollars on a water and green tea. I do not have my next flight to Moldova until 4PMish, so I have a lot of time to kill - yikes, just get me there already. 

Upon arrival to Moldova I'm supposed to have all that I need in my carry on for the next three days and all I have for shoes is my sandals, so I hope that I can grab my shoes quickly from my regular baggage since it will be shipped to the Peace Corps headquarters and such. If not able to get shoes I may be in a bit of trouble, these Moldovans dress nicer than us, and wearing sandals would be disrespectful and sloppy I believe. Not the end of the world by any means though.

All of my fellow volunteers seem pretty awesome, and I have began to get closer to a few as I have spent time with them between Philadelphia and between flights.