Fountain Square in the snow!
A view from the trainSo I was sitting here, thinking to myself that my life is boring and I have nothing to write about...and then I realized that I mean, well for one, I live in Azerbaijan - how is that not always exciting? And two, I just spent my weekend in Baku!
I was coming into town because we had a meeting this weekend about our summer camp for girls. The meeting was supposed to be on Friday afternoon, so those of us from Tovuz jumped on the Thursday night train. Now, usually the night train takes 12 hours, which is already long for the fact that you are only going about 250 miles, but we won't get into that. Instead, we'll talk about the fact that this time, the ride took 20 hours! It started snowing during the night and that meant that instead of arriving at 9:30AM, we spent the day just stopped in the middle of nowhere! And then we'd go a bit further...and stop again. There were a bunch of us traveling together and between a group of 5 of us I think we had only 2 apples, 2 packs of peanut butter crackers, a package of twizzlers, and 10 peanut butter patty Girl Scout cookies. I'm just saying, we were a bit hungry. And a bit bored. And maybe you are saying to yourself that we should have been more prepared, but usually you arrive bright and early in the morning with just a bit of hunger that makes you even more excited to run right over to some coffee shop and to begin to enjoy the wonders of Baku! But no. We didn't arrive, which meant no wonders.
We eventually made it into Baku, the meeting having been canceled because no one was there for it. The roads were treacherous because the snow was just melting and then freezing, so we were told we weren't allowed to go anywhere outside the city. I've managed not to fall as I've run around town all weekend (I know you're impressed), but I can tell you that many people have not been so lucky and we've had a number of people wipe out (including my sitemate Beth who, while we were literally just standing and talking while waiting for a bus, suddenly just disappeared as she fell on her butt!). I also have to say that I wrote this sentence about not falling and then went outside to the store and had my closest call all weekend, go me.
I got to watch the Superbowl! We all went over the Hyatt, which is way too expensive for us to actually stay there, but great for us to use as our late night football watching spot (and I mean late, kickoff for us was 3:30AM...I got home just before 7 haha). I was cheering for the Saints, so I really enjoyed the game, despite the extreme exhaustion.
Well, I'm going to be getting on the night train home in only about an hour now (my concentration today is just gone, maybe it's the lack of sleep, but this post has taken me forever to write!). Let's hope this one isn't another 20 hours...it did just start to snow. Again.
I'm going to add some pictures to this post when I get back to site, so check back to see the pretty, pretty snow!
I was coming into town because we had a meeting this weekend about our summer camp for girls. The meeting was supposed to be on Friday afternoon, so those of us from Tovuz jumped on the Thursday night train. Now, usually the night train takes 12 hours, which is already long for the fact that you are only going about 250 miles, but we won't get into that. Instead, we'll talk about the fact that this time, the ride took 20 hours! It started snowing during the night and that meant that instead of arriving at 9:30AM, we spent the day just stopped in the middle of nowhere! And then we'd go a bit further...and stop again. There were a bunch of us traveling together and between a group of 5 of us I think we had only 2 apples, 2 packs of peanut butter crackers, a package of twizzlers, and 10 peanut butter patty Girl Scout cookies. I'm just saying, we were a bit hungry. And a bit bored. And maybe you are saying to yourself that we should have been more prepared, but usually you arrive bright and early in the morning with just a bit of hunger that makes you even more excited to run right over to some coffee shop and to begin to enjoy the wonders of Baku! But no. We didn't arrive, which meant no wonders.
We eventually made it into Baku, the meeting having been canceled because no one was there for it. The roads were treacherous because the snow was just melting and then freezing, so we were told we weren't allowed to go anywhere outside the city. I've managed not to fall as I've run around town all weekend (I know you're impressed), but I can tell you that many people have not been so lucky and we've had a number of people wipe out (including my sitemate Beth who, while we were literally just standing and talking while waiting for a bus, suddenly just disappeared as she fell on her butt!). I also have to say that I wrote this sentence about not falling and then went outside to the store and had my closest call all weekend, go me.
I got to watch the Superbowl! We all went over the Hyatt, which is way too expensive for us to actually stay there, but great for us to use as our late night football watching spot (and I mean late, kickoff for us was 3:30AM...I got home just before 7 haha). I was cheering for the Saints, so I really enjoyed the game, despite the extreme exhaustion.
Well, I'm going to be getting on the night train home in only about an hour now (my concentration today is just gone, maybe it's the lack of sleep, but this post has taken me forever to write!). Let's hope this one isn't another 20 hours...it did just start to snow. Again.
I'm going to add some pictures to this post when I get back to site, so check back to see the pretty, pretty snow!
omg I love that you're so far away and yet you still go to watch the superbowl... truly amazing.
ReplyDeleteyay saints!!!
~heather
I missed you at our superbowl party!! I was reminiscing about last year's party where we went and nathaniel told me he had met me before and dave convinced us to join the silly betting pool. I won $5 in that silly betting pool this year :)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, glad you are alive and sorry about the way too long train ride--I hope your next experience is not as bad!
xoxoxo