Peace Corps – Monday Bazaar: A Travel Blog

Mile 26: Reflections From My COS Flight

Published on 5 June, 2018 by Mark Jahnke2 Comments

Most of this post was written one year ago as I left Kyrgyzstan.

We touched down in Istanbul at about 9:30, and we all moved quickly to security, visas, and customs. One by one, as we cleared, each person, without realizing it, left our group, and I watched over my shoulder as the old man in the kalpak got his passport stamped and went off to his next destination. I was alone, without anyone from Kyrgyzstan, for the first time in months, surrounded by travelers from all seven continents. Continue reading “Mile 26: Reflections From My COS Flight” →

Back In Batken Oblast

Published on 1 June, 2018 by Mark Jahnke

On a hot Thursday one year ago, just over a week before I left Kyrgyzstan, I made a small piece of Peace Corps Kyrgyz Republic history: I became the first volunteer in nearly two decades to lead a project in Batken Oblast. It doesn’t sound like a big deal if you don’t know Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan very well, so let me start from the beginning with an overview of what Batken is and why it’s so cool. Continue reading “Back In Batken Oblast” →

Mile 25: It’s Over. Finally.

Published on 23 May, 201729 June, 2017 by Mark Jahnke

This post was written in real-time on May 23. I apologize for the delay in uploading!

I’m sitting at the airport in Bishkek. It’s 5:30AM. Over the next 31 hours, I will fly almost 10,000 miles to my parents’ house in Seattle, the last of the 67,067 miles I will have flown on a total of 74 flights during the past two years. I’ve been free of Peace Corps for 12 hours. And the sense of relief is overwhelming. Continue reading “Mile 25: It’s Over. Finally.” →

Mile 23: After The Finish Line, A Fulbright

Published on 6 April, 201724 April, 2017 by Mark Jahnke

March was the month when everything finally seemed to fall into place. When March began, I wasn’t quite sure about what was happening two months from now. And now as it ends, I can say with near certainty what I’ll be up to between now and 2020. Continue reading “Mile 23: After The Finish Line, A Fulbright” →

Mile 22: A Whole Lotta Kazakhstan (and a little bit of Osh)

Published on 6 March, 201724 April, 2017 by Mark Jahnke

February is the shortest month of the year, so that might be why it seems like I spent half of it in Kazakhstan with a few stops in Osh along the way. See, after the office rejected my plans to visit my friends and host family in Tajikistan last summer, I wound up with just shy of two weeks of vacation time with no way to use it but to burn it up before our COS conference, so I saved some of my local money (yes, I am able to save a little bit on an income of $250 a month living in the big city) and went on some adventures. Continue reading “Mile 22: A Whole Lotta Kazakhstan (and a little bit of Osh)” →

The Ultimate Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan FAQ

Published on 16 February, 201726 April, 2017 by Mark Jahnke

As my service continues to draw to a close, that means that a new group of volunteers is preparing to arrive. I’ve received a lot of awesome emails from newly invited PCV’s (both to Kyrgyzstan and to other countries), and I wanted to put together an FAQ to help answer some of the questions you asked (and that you didn’t know to ask)! ALL of this gets covered during your Pre-Service Training, but I know I had all these questions ahead of time and wanted to know everything there was to know. Continue reading “The Ultimate Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan FAQ” →

Mile 21: A Quiet Winter

Published on 30 January, 201721 April, 2017 by Mark Jahnke

Well, January came and went quickly. January is usually a very slow month in Central Asia because there’s a bunch of holidays and school breaks. With students out of school and universities closed, a lot of regular work stops as parents stay home with kids and people return to their villages from the city. Despite this, the month was still lively thanks to some beautiful snowfall and time with friends and a major work breakthrough. Continue reading “Mile 21: A Quiet Winter” →

Mile 20: Holidays and Snow

Published on 5 January, 2017 by Mark Jahnke

So, I’m beginning to get the impression that last year’s winter was an unusually mild one given that we had more snow during December of this year than we had in the entire winter last year. But that’s OK, because I like winter and I LOVE snow. Continue reading “Mile 20: Holidays and Snow” →

Mile 19: Hitting The Wall

Published on 28 November, 2016 by Mark Jahnke

Mile 19 is about where you start to hit the wall in a marathon, depending on your training. It varies from person to person, from marathon to marathon, and depending on how you’re doing physically and mentally. I’ve run races where I never hit the wall. In another I hit it at mile 16. It’s not enough to stop you, because you keep going. You have a job to do, a goal to reach. But it’s been hard, and November has been, I think, a proverbial hitting of the wall for me. Continue reading “Mile 19: Hitting The Wall” →

America Again: The Peace Corps Top Bloggers’ Tour

Published on 7 November, 201621 April, 2017 by Mark Jahnke

It’s going to take me a little while to process the incredible week that was my week in Washington, D.C. at the Peace Corps Top Bloggers’ Tour last week. As I’ve mentioned a few times, I was one of 8 amazing bloggers from across the Peace Corps world who won the 2016 Peace Corps Blog It Home blogging contest this summer, which earned me a trip to Washington this week to participate in this tour of trainings, professional development, and the chance to share the cultures of our countries with middle school students and Girl Scouts from across the DMV. I’m pinching myself so hard, because in the past six months, things have just gotten more and more amazing. Continue reading “America Again: The Peace Corps Top Bloggers’ Tour” →