Qədirli, Tovuz

To start with the important stuff, I have been placed in Qədirli, Tovuz. It’s in Northwest Azerbaijan (the red region on the map) and you can try googling it, but I’ll tell you right now that there is not much out there, even about Tovuz city (region's in Azerbaijan are called by the name of their biggest city). I’ll be the first volunteer in my specific village, but they were supposed to get someone last year and he went home after about a week of being at site. I have heard rumors it had something to do with having to chop wood every day, so maybe I’ll just have to become super jacked so I don’t freeze to death! And yes, I did learn how to say “I’m freezing to death” in Azeri class the other day haha.

In other news, I have recently discovered the wonders of running in the karate gym in my basement. No, it does not have a treadmill, actually strangely enough I hadn’t even considered anyone interpreting me saying I ran in my basement that way until I told Nathaniel and he asked if it was on a treadmill…I guess I’m more used to Azerbaijan than I thought. But really I’m just running laps of my basement with my ipod. Yes, the laps are very small (they take me about 10-15 seconds…and I’m being generous), but having this as my little escape to unwind is fantastic. Some days when I’m not in the mood for a serious run, my exercise time devolves into me just playing tag with my brother and sisters or rocking out with them to my ipod. But generally my siblings get bored of watching me after a few minutes, or I should say Cavad is kicked out by his sisters because he runs around almost tripping me. Funny story about that: I tried to tell Cavad today that he could run with me but he had to let me run in front because my legs are longer (in fact my legs are his whole body…), but instead I told him “Cavad, my shoe is cheap.” Oh Azeri, how much I screw you up. Really the sentences are fairly close (“Mənim ayaqqabım ucuzdur” instead of “Mənim ayaqlarım uzundur”…valid mistake right??), but Asya still looked at me like I was insane and was like “Cheap??” Anyway, once they’re gone I’m left alone with no one watching me except the excessive posters of Bruce Lee and Jean-Claude Van Damme, but at least they can’t yell at me when I pass by and wonder what the crazy American is doing now! Plus this way I can run for as long as I want without my family getting worried about me, even if they find it hard to comprehend that I am running down there the whole time when I’m gone for an hour (Ayna even asked me “How many laps did you do? 10?”…I had to tell her more like 100).