Welcome to Kyrgyzstan

[rworo]

Hello,
Welcome to my first post about my Peace Corps journey! I am new to blogging, so please forgive my rambling or lack of rambling posts. Many people have asked me how to keep up with my adventures, so this is my attempt to inform everyone who might be interested. I think you can bookmark this post and check in with it periodically if you'd like.

I have been in Kyrgyzstan (also called Kyrgyz Republic) for 3 weeks. My group of Peace Corps volunteers consists of 26 fellow trainees. Getting here, we spent two nights on a plane, one from Philadelphia to Istanbul, the second from Istanbul to Bishkek, the capital of the country. They we drove for two hours to a lovely remote guest house (Ashu), where we did lots of 'get to know you' type activities.

After the first week, we had a 'Matching ceremony', where we met the host family we will be staying with for the next 10 weeks. I am staying with an older couple, who have a 19 year old granddaughter who helps out quite a bit. It is very rural here. My family has sheep. Walking around the town, I see cows, chicken, more sheep, and horses. The family has a small store, which means that their dinner is often interrupted by a buzzer, when someone wants to enter the store. I help out with washing dishes and peeling potatoes, which I like, as it gives me something to do, besides study Kyrgyz.

Learning the language is difficult for me, but I think I am keeping up so far. Every night I review the grammar we learned, as well as a list of new vocabulary words. My language group consists of 3 other students and one teacher. My classroom is in the teacher's guest house, which is across the road from where I stay. Twice a week we have 'tech sessions' which are actually lessons in 'how to teach'. For example, how to give proper instructions, how to create a lesson plan, classroom management, etc.

I am very excited about this new phase of life! Look for another post in a week or so.....
Please comment any questions, or email me at ruthworoch@hotmail.com.
I will try to answer questions in my next post.

"The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government
or the Peace Corps."

Comments

[pegkerr]

Congratulations on your new adventure, Ruth! I’ll be very interested in following along.

If you have any questions about blogging or Dreamwidth, just shoot them my way—I’ve been on this platform for years.

[rworo]

Hi Peg! Your recent DW post inspired me to look into this platform. I am confused as to how to instruct people to ‘subscribe’ to my blog. Do they have to create an account? And when they do subscribe, do they receive an email with a link to the new entry? Thanks for your help! Ruth

[pegkerr]

Here is the Dreamwidth FAQ list.

Dreamwidth uses two types of filters: access filters and reading filters.

Access filters control who you allow to read what you have written.

Reading filters control what you choose to read from other journals. There is more information about the difference between access filters and reading filters at the links at this FAQ.

When you create a post, you have the choice of who is allowed to see it (again, this has to do with Access filters). If you choose "everyone," you are making a public entry: anyone can look at the post--they don't have to have a Dreamwidth account. See this FAQ for more information.

If you'd like to limit access to allow just a certain circle of people to read your post, they would have to have a Dreamwidth account and you would have to set up an access filter and add them to it. You have set up multiple access filters and choose who you'd like to add to each.

(Note that you can also control who can comment on your posts--whether anyone can, with or without a Dreamwidth account, or whether only people who have a Dreamwidth account can comment, or only certain people, on a particular access filter, can comment.)

I suspect you'd probably do most of your entries as public--that's the default mode. But it's entirely up to you.

If people wish to subscribe to your account so that they are notified every time you post, then there are several ways they can do that.

They can, if they choose, set up a Dreamwidth account, and then subscribe to your journal. That is what I have done. Then, I can see your posts when I check my reading page.

They might then choose to add your journal to one or more of their reading filters. I have added several different reading filters, and I have added your journal to my default reading filter.

But there is another way that a reader can see your posts if they don't have a Dreamwidth account:

1) they can just periodically check your journal to see if you have posted anything new.

2) if they have a blog on another platform that uses it, they can subscribe with OpenID. See this FAQ.

3) If they use an RSS or ATOM feeder, they can add the link for your ATOM or RSS feed and then read the post in their own reader. This is a way that people can collect all the links for all the blogs they'd like to follow from all over the internet and read them all in one place. See this FAQ. Your feeds are

https://rworo.dreamwidth.org/data/rss

and
https://rworo.dreamwidth.org/data/atom

Here's an article about RSS readers if you are not familiar with the concept.

4) You can also, if you choose, push your posts by email. If you have collected the email addresses of people who have said they would like to follow your blog, then once you have made your post, you can click "Share this entry" and put in the email addresses you'd like to see it.

These are just the ways I can think of to share your posts off the top of my head; there may be others, too, if you poke around in the FAQs a bit.

Let me know if you have any questions.

[pegkerr]

Oh, and another way if your reader is on Dreamwidth: they can track your journal--that way they'll receive a notification every time you post. See this FAQ.

[pegkerr]

Also: this is a helpful introduction to Dreamwidth: https://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/42429.html