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Hello all! I've been lurking on this forum for awhile now but finally registered once I realized I now visit it every day. I've definitely been enjoying all the photos posted here and I wanted to share my own (I shared these elsewhere but no longer visit that place as much). I used to shoot Nikon but before this adventure I sold my D700 and all my lenses, I now shoot with an X-E2 and a variety of lenses. 2 years ago my wife and I applied for the Peace Corps. It took 18 months but in April, 2014 we finally were on a plane and headed to our new home, Kyrgyzstan. The last two months have been a crazy whirlwind of travel, language learning, awkward moments and a lot of fun. Now I'm at my permanent site and plan on updating this thread over the next two years with photos. For more photos and stories, you can follow us on our blog at http://www.ericandtaylor.com. On each photo I'll also link it to the blog post that tells more about what was going on at the time. Some of these photos will be snapshots but hopefully help tell part of the story. Others will hopefully be decent shots. I'm hoping to have more free time here than I did in the states to really work on my skills. With that said, here's a few shots of what's happened so far: 1) Leaving Portland, OR. Part of what I loved so much about living in the Northwest are the volcanoes. I love hiking, backpacking and climbing, these volcanoes shape the landscape of the PNW. I expect this to be my last glimpse of these for at least two years. 2) Washington D.C. It seemed fitting that our staging would be in our nation's capitol. It had been a long time since I'd been here. I forgot how beautiful and impactful the city can be. It's hard not to feel patriotic walking around. 3) Turkey. This is a country I badly want to visit however we only got to stop over in the airport this time. Good news is it's close and hopefully during our service we'll get to vacation here. Next stop, Krgyzstan. 4) We arrived to Kyrgyzstan in the early hours of the morning, before the sun had risen. After 3 hours in the bus we took a break from driving and had our first look at one of many mountain ranges in this small country. 5) Our first few days in country were spent at one of the nicer hotels on the shore of Issyk Kul lake. Wanting to ease us into the country gradually, Peace Corps chose to let us stay at this nice hotel on the shore of a huge lake with snow-capped mountains on all sides. Not a bad way to start.