Pen Pals In America

This week has been very busy for me because my students received answers from their pen pals in America.  Peace Corps has a program to connect volunteers with classes in America so we can help spread information about the country where we are serving.  The classroom I was assigned is a 5th grade class in Cohasset, MA. Figuring that I would try to keep the kids a similar age, when I set up our pen pal program, I had my 5th grade class and a few members of my 6th grade class (because my class is smaller than the American class) write letters.  As we were writing our second set of letters this week though, a lot of my older students have learned about the program and gotten very jealous!  They also want pen pals in America!  I told them that I didn't really think they wanted to be writing to American 10 and 11 year olds, but if they wanted I would put out a call on my blog to see if anyone wanted to be pen pals with one of my Azerbaijani students.  No, this does not get you off the hook for writing to me and I will be very sad to hear that my students are hearing from my friends more than I am, but if you want to add an Azerbaijani student to your list of correspondents, let me know!

Mouse Trap

Unfortunately, I'm not talking about the family fun boardgame, but rather my bedroom.  When I was in Baku, our house and specifically my room, got mice.  Fun right?  Wrong.  Those little bastards managed to eat there way first through 2 layers of thick plastic bags into my instant oatmeal packets and then, when I got home and cleaned up the oatmeal mess, my tampons (tasty??) and my stationary (so if you get a letter from me that looks a bit eaten, know it wasn't me that got hungry enough to eat paper, it's just my little buddies saying hi).  I have put down a number of traps in the form of mouse glue on pieces of cardboard, but so far I've proven a very bad mouse trapper.  I know they are around though because 2 nights ago I was up half the night listening to them scratching around in my desk and I think my wardrobe.  Last night I bailed and went over to Beth's house to sleep.  The thing is, I don't really know what I will do if I ever find one of the little buggers stuck to my traps because, fun fact: I'm really scared of mice.  Yes, I know they aren't going to hurt me, but they freak me out.  I'll keep you posted, wish me luck.

Golden Fish, Please Help Me!

I know, it's crazy, I'm posting again and I only posted 2 days ago!  And I changed the format of my blog! (Yes, that is a picture from Tovuz up at the top) That's because I'm in Baku, the capital, but more specifically the land of plentiful internet!  I have been staying at a hotel with the best sitemate ever, my friend Beth.  It was her birthday this weekend, so we made the trip down to Baku.  First we helped score essays for that English writing competition I mentioned before.  While this was certainly boring and stressful at times, it was also really fun just hanging around the Peace Corps Lounge reading essays with other volunteers and laughing at some of the really fantastic things our students wrote.  Some of the best quotes of the day:
1. See you soon, famous.
2. I must see Jeff Hardy.  I must go to Smack Down.
3. THESE ARE MY THINKS!
4. I must be my friend America.
5. Golden Fish can give me a computer. I have 4 wish.  It's no many.
6. Golden Fish, please, help me!
7. Do you know what happens if all the colour are mixed?  You can check it.
8. I don't live little.  Butterfly always dead.
9. If women were in the army, it would be better.  And, better, honestly awesome.
10. I want to buy knowledge in America country.

Then, after we had finished judging, we set out to have a great birthday weekend.  I have to send out a big, big thank you to Beth's fiance Dennis who gave us money to do her birthday up right (yeah, it was her birthday present, but I so reaped just as many benefits).  We went to nice restaurants, stayed in this nice hotel with free wireless, and just went around the city enjoying ourselves.  In other words, it was awesome.  Just the break we needed.  Today we are going to go off and do our own things for a few days (I'm going back to Ceyranbatan to see my old host family), and then we have 2 days of training for all the teacher volunteers here in Baku before I go home.

Beth in our hotel room.  That's happiness, right there.

To take a step back to before I came to Baku, last week in my village, a litter of orphaned wild puppies were found.  While I'm usually just ambivalent to the wild dogs, not being mean to them or scared of them like most of the Azerbaijanis, I just couldn't stand seeing these little abandoned puppies!  I was happy to find out that a lot of people around the village were adopting them, so by the time I actually saw where they were (because I saw little boys playing with them and carrying them around by their legs...) on Thursday afternoon, there were only 4 left.  I was really worried about them because it started raining later in the afternoon and I knew they would be hungry, so I started caring for them.  I can tell you, this is not normal in Azerbaijan.  I made quite a site when I first went to feed them and stood there holding them in a towel (as in the dogs were in a towel, I was clothed, that would have made it way more scandalous).  But while some people just laughed me off as the crazy American, I am very happy to report that my family and our family friend the local shopkeeper really helped me take care of them.  My sister Nuranә, who is deathly afraid of dogs, even puppies (she would hide behind me when we used to see the puppy at my host grandpa's...past tense as that puppy died in a mysterious week when 3 puppies on that street died...I'm thinking bad canal water) was the one who suggested going to the shopkeeper and trying to get a crate and filling it with unwanted clothes from our house.  And then my host mom even let us bring out this old winter coat she didn't want any more!  But even though they were very supportive of me helping the first day, I think I overstepped it a bit when some kids brought one of the puppies to my house on Friday (they were trying to take the last un-adopted puppy to their house, so I asked them to tell me if they had to return it so I could bring food, but instead they just returned the puppy to me).  Well this little puppy, who I named Malako (Azerbaijani for the color beige and also cream as in milk...and what I was feeding them), was shivering and scared and I just couldn't have that.  So I got a towel and used it to hold her against my stomach like women do with their babies on their backs...and then I brought her in my house that way.  She was a perfect angel!  She didn't pee on me or anything, and she got so much better, warm and more energetic and comfortable.  But my family was clearly thinking oh no, she wants to keep this one.  I have a theory that they started calling everyone around the village trying to find an adoptive family.  Luckily, they were able to find homes for the last two remaining puppies (eventually a second puppy returned, who I had named Çirkli, Azeri for dirty, because his fur looked dirty...and he threw up on me the first night) on farms in a neighboring village, so I guess this story has a happy ending, even if it doesn't involve me getting to keep Malako.  My host mom told me I can go visit, but she might have just been softening the blow of my dog being taken away.  My family told me I was happier and more energetic when the puppies were around.  I think that is a good reason to let me keep one!  We have an extra chicken coop she could have lived in! haha

The Easter Bunny Found Azerbaijan!

Ok, so maybe this "Easter Bunny" was a bit more like me running around my house in the middle of the night hiding Easter eggs my mom sent to me, but I think it still counts. My mom was great an sent me all kinds of Easter stuff, so I was able to create my typical Easter morning (only this time I wasn’t the one running around trying to find the East eggs...I felt really old an kind of like a mom hiding them myself I won’t lie). My host family was really excited about it. I had been telling them for days that Sunday morning I would have a surprise and they were not disappointed. First they found the Easter eggs I had hid around the dining room sort of room in our house. This was hilarious as they had never done it before and at first didn’t know how to tactically accomplish the task of stealing eggs out of their sisters hands, something my family has been training me for since before I can remember (I’ll tell you, Kim can be pretty ruthless, Naima is more sneaky, and then there’s Little Jimmy who we try to be nice older sisters too...but we’re a bit competitive about Easter egg hunts). In the end, of the 57 eggs I hid, my little host sister Gülnar came away the sure winner with 27 eggs, kicking her sisters butts. And she was very proud of this fact. I also even hid 3 eggs with qəpik (the Azerbaijani coins) like my mom does with quarters (well, she hides more than 3 eggs with money, but I’m on a volunteer salary here). Of course Gülnar found 2 of them and Raminə found none haha. I figure I did my part, 3 sisters, 3 money eggs. It’s their job to do the finding! Then after the hunt was over (they needed a little help at the end, but we got it done), we went to my room where I had put down trails of jellybeans for each of them like my mom always does leading to a communal Easter basket (read Easter box, I had no basket). Over breakfast they sampled the various forms of Easter candies and are really big fans of the M&M peanuts and regular M&Ms as well. People also seem to really like jellybeans, and I say people because basically everyone who has come to our house the past few days has been allowed to taste test with their çay. Although we have yet to use the Easter egg dyeing kit my mom sent me, we did build the foam bunnies/chicks/etc that she sent and our house is now festively decorated, so I think I have successfully shared Easter.

The other day, because the weather was really beautiful, we took a drive down to the Kur River. Even though it is only like a half an hour drive (and only that long because the roads are bad), I had never been out there yet. It is farther along the road that I typically use when I go out for a walk though, so I have been out of the village in that direction. In fact, I found out that if I had gone only about a minute farther on my longest walks, I would have seen the water, albeit from a distance. The Kur was really pretty and I was happy that I went, seeing as I was exhausted and considered staying home to nap. We just walked around and took a whole bunch of pictures and my sisters played a bit with a ball that they brought...until it went into the river and we had to say goodbye to it (they actually turned to me and were like “Jess!” and pointed as though I could do something like jump down the 3 ft bank into the swiftly moving current and retrieve the ball. I’m good, but I’m not that good haha). So now my new goal is to take a day with Beth (my closest sitemate) to walk all the way to the river and have a picnic. Beth and I also found a road we like better for walking the day after my trip to the Kur, so I don’t know which road I’ll want to use for my day long excursion, we’ll see.

Novruz Holiday Finally Arrives

I feel like I have to start out by talking about Novruz as I built it up for weeks talking about the pre-holidays, but honestly there isn't much to say that I didn't say already about the pre-holidays (they are kind of like spoilers because you do everything before the main event...). We spent days cooking food and baking sweets like I said. Then we had our bonfire and my sisters and I did our jumping. We went inside for our big meal that we'd slaved over, except that my sisters were really excited to get to the party our street was throwing, so they wolfed down their food and scampered off. This left my mother and I sitting and eating alone, until our local shopkeeper came over and then my host grandmother stopped by. So I stayed with them and helped my mom serve food, pour çay, and slice fruit. I also got to give sweets to the little kids that came by for their hat throwing (although, these kids just held out bags for me to put stuff in, more like Halloween, so I don't know, maybe if you wait a week and don't do your trick-or-treating on the pre-holiday you don't have to let them put food in your hat? And can get it in a more "normal" way...like in a plastic bag?). I did eventually make it to the party in the street where I did a bit of dancing, but not much. The neighbors had hired someone to video tape the party (they do this for all Azeri weddings and big parties) so that they can have a keepsake. I'm really not a big fan of this because Americans are apparently really interesting for these cameramen and if I do anything remotely worth watching, they don't take the camera off me. Dancing is certainly considered something remotely worth watching. It makes dancing really awkward. (Heather - fyi it's really hard for me to even follow my own dancing advice in these situations haha)

Having a long vacation from school, I took one trip away from site and went to Ağdaş for my friend Beca's birthday. It was really nice to see everyone, especially because some of the people from my training language cluster I haven't really seen since December when we moved out of Ceyranbatan. And I think that a lot of the construction that has been happening on the one main road that I have to use to go anywhere is getting better, because the trip went surprisingly quickly. A good sign!

We are now back in school and I have started new conversation clubs. I decided that I would restructure my clubs after Novruz because before I just let any students come who wanted to and, as a result, I was teaching 10 clubs a week, which is way too much. I've downsized to 6, assigning students to groups based on their level and their willingness to try to speak English etc, so I'm hoping that will work well. I've also started having 2 basically office hours a week so that any student who wants to come and ask me questions, speak to me in English, use my Azeri-English dictionaries, etc can come. I think it is going to devolve into me just playing games with students though, and I'm pretty ok with that.

I've also been especially busy this week because tomorrow is an English writing competition put on by Peace Corps Volunteers in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova. There are prizes for the best compositions at the regional, national, and international level. I've been helping my students prepare for a few weeks now, but we've really kicked it up a notch this week and I've had extra activities every night! I won't lie, I'm pretty excited for it to be over tomorrow. Well, over until I go to Baku next weekend to help with the judging.