Here we go again!

So I set up this blog to chronicle my upcoming adventures in Kyrgyzstan and around Central Asia. I had another blog when I was in Russia, but haven't done any blogging since, so I guess it's been about a year and a half since I stopped. Now I'm ready to get back to it, and I imagine I'll have all sorts of fun and interesting things to write about this time. The way I did the blog last time was by typing the posts out on my laptop at my host family's house in the evening, copying them to a thumb drive, and then uploading them to the blog either at the school where I was studying or at an internet cafe, and as a result the posts tended to be really long and rambling as I had time to just type out everything I did in a given day. I think the blog suffered a little in structure, grammar, and overall readability, so I'll try to do somewhat of a better job this time, but I still anticipate that the posts will end up being pretty long and rambling either way. As long as anyone doesn't mind reading through it all, I'm happy to write it.

A little more about what I'm doing: I'm flying to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan this Friday (in, like a day!), where I will be an interning English teacher at The London School (check the link on the side over there). I'll be in Bishkek through the end of March, staying with a host family and teaching classes. In April I'll be heading out for a backpacking trip around the rest of Soviet Central Asia, which promises to be a real adventure! So I'll be blogging here about my daily activities, experiences, and observations related to my internship and my explorations of the city/country/region.

I have a 33 1/2 hour flight itinerary ahead of my, including a 10 hour layover in Moscow that I'm really dreading. I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to start posting to this blog once I get there, but it'll probably be sometime withing the first week. So, check back in a bit, and in the meantime check out some of those links and my flickr pictures (mainly from Russia), if you haven't already seen them. Wish me luck!

-Austin