Small American Treasures Can Brighten Your Day

I slept over my sitemate Beth’s house this week and we made Kraft macaroni and cheese (Toy Story shapes – I think the shapes really makes quite a sizeable improvement over the normal Kraft macaroni and cheese noodles, don’t you?) and Duncan Hines cupcakes (yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting).  It was a culinary delight of an evening.  And then I followed that up the next day by opening a jar of peanut butter Beth had bought in Baku for me.  I had been waiting to get apples (I know they are in season and at people’s houses, but they aren’t at the stupid village shop yet) so I could put peanut butter on my apple slices (I feel like some of you are going to judge my peanut butter eating habits, but I say don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, it’s fantastic), but then I realized that my mom had bought the nice soft bread from the store (she usually buys the lame hard bread) and we had plum jam that my co-teacher Tamilə müəllim had given me.  It was potentially the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich I have ever had.  And then I had like 3 more.  And then I have been having them for breakfast ever since.  But I have been sharing my peanut butter with my host sisters and teaching them how to make a peanut butter and jelly (they also think it is heaven…or at least I’m sure that is what they would say if they knew how to express that level of love in English or I knew it in Azeri).  It is a big step for me to share something as holy to me as peanut butter.  I think I can now graduate from kindergarten.

School starts on Wednesday the 15^th, which is super soon!  They are painting and fixing up my classroom (inşallah) so that I can go on Tuesday and hang up all the cool new posters I have been making.  And I found out my director really is going to give me a whole wing of the school as he said at the beginning of summer but I didn’t really think was happening (I was just hoping for one room and the big open foyer area).  I get a classroom, the foyer, and another classroom to make into a resource room for teachers and students!  And the director says he will put a sign outside the hallway to the wing naming it the English Wing.  Not really necessary, but pretty sweet!