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