A Little Trip to Qax

I finally got the pleasure this week of going up to Qax, a region in what we call the "middle finger" of the country because if you look at the top of Azerbaijan it has 3 "fingers" going up and this is the middle one (duh)...plus it just sounds funny.  My friend Lori lives there and I had yet to go visit, but she was having a summer camp and I thought that would be a great excuse to get out there and see 1) her and 2) what is supposed to be one of the most beautiful regions of Azerbaijan (truth, it is gorgeous).

Being in Qax was great because I got to go hiking around, something I haven't done in a while given the summer heat!  We went out to a gigantic waterfall, a "river" (more like a dried up riverbed with a trickle, but still pretty), and some church ruins.  Qax is right in amongst the Caucasus Mountains, so you're constantly surrounded by these great, green mountainsides.  Very picturesque.

Ceyranbatan 1 cluster love by the waterfall

Helping at this camp was really interesting because Qax has a large population of Georgians.  Even though my home region of Tovuz is also close to Georgia, we don't have a large Georgian population like this and so I had no idea about the racism that goes on between the Azerbaijanis and the Georgians in the regions of the middle finger that have Georgians.  We were even dealing with the kids fighting about it at camp!  I won't get into it more here, but if you're interested send me an email.

And of course being in Qax was great because I got to hang out with other volunteers, watching way more Glee and friends than I would like to admit, eating way more ice cream than I would like to admit, and loving it.

Volunteers at the church ruins

Finally, a little funny story before I go.  I was walking to catch my marşrutka to Qax (well, my marşrutka from my village to Tovuz, where I caught another marşrutka to Gəncə, and then a final marşrutka to Qax) and my post-man drove up and handed me 4 pieces of mail.  One of them was a postcard my mom sent me in February, you know, only 6 months late, no biggie.  Moral of the story: if you send me mail and then never here from me about it, it probably got lost...or just really, really delayed!