the END is the beginning is the END

Tonight I am leaving the nation of Azerbaijan as a RPCV. I will leave on a midnight train (ok, it actually is supposed to leave at 10pm, but whatever) to Georgia (the nation, not the state obviously).

The end is a strange end and it truly feels more like a beginning. It feels like the long awaited authorization to move ahead to new areas of my life. I've been thinking about my goodbyes and my accomplishments and my failures for months now. Finally, I get to start anew and move on with my lessons in tow. I'm sure these next few months will be reflective and I hope this three month span of traveling will give me the space I need to honestly think about my service. In every Peace Corps service there is good and bad, easy and hard, and, as I said, success and failure. I want to draw out as much self reflection from it as I can.

Here are my upcoming plans as I know them:
Baku-Tbilisi November 21st night train
I will meet up with an AZ 7 volunteer named Jessica and I'm very excited to see her...makes me happy just thinking about it. A few days later two other new RPCVs will finish their service and join us (Rachel and Charlie). We will leave Tbilisi for Turkey on the 28th. Jessica will head back to AZ a few days before Rachel, Charlie, and I head for Trabzon, Turkey.

Some time around the 29th/30th we three will be in Trabzon for a couple of nights. This city is on the coast on the eastern portion of Turkey. Around Dec. 1st we will travel inwards towards the center of Turkey in an area called Cappadocia:
To be honest I let my friend Rachel plan Turkey, so I'm a little hazy on details. I do know we arrive in Istanbul on Dec 7th.
Dec 10: I fly out to Phuket, Thailand. I thought my layover would be in Dubai, but nope...it is in Abu Dhabi. My layover is between 2:30am-9am. YUCK. Then I connect to Phuket via Bangkok. Chris arrives in Thailand the night before.

After that, well...no real decisions have been made. We probably won't spend that much time in Thailand and will be in Cambodia by Christmas/New Years. We will continue to travel in that area of Southeast Asia until the first week of Feb. After, I am headed to Wisconsin to meet Chris's family. Then, back HOME TO SEE MY FAMILY! Then Chris and I will probably settle in DC to find actual jobs.

Ohhhh please hire me someone.

I will keep this blog active until I'm actually home in DC. So mom, dad, and kind others who read this...I'll keep you posted.

Love,
Alexis