About to begin Day 1 of Training

The Journey from Philadelphia to Baku was long, sure, but for the most part very smooth and easy. It is nice to finally be here though.

I really enjoy the other 58 trainees I'm with. It was great getting to know them for a couple days in the States and was wonderful having there company while waiting for our flights at JFK and Frankfurt. Everyone has a wonderful energy and excitement. It's been a pretty easy to strike up conversations and people are genuinely happy to talk and get to know one another.

We got to the hotel about 10pm (10am PST), and a lot of people zonked out pretty fast. However, I never slept better on buses and planes, so at the hotel I spent the night fighting to get to sleep while still being exhausted.

Today marks our orientation to Training for the next couple of months. Until next Monday, all 59 of us will be staying at this hotel outside of Baku, and from there on out we will be in groups of 5 or 6 dispersed around the area learning the culture and language. We will meet up as a large group once in a while during that time. Until Monday comes, we will start receiving our vaccinations. The immunizations I will receive are:

1) Tetanus and Diphtheria

2) Measles, Mumps, Rubella

3) Polio

4) Hep A

5) Hep B

6) Rabies pre-exposure series

7) Typhoid

8) Influenza



Right now we're just kind of going through the motions. we have our first meeting to kick everything off in just 30 minutes from now and that's when we'll get a much better idea of what to expect.

It's been