Stealing a Third Grader's Thunder

On Monday I got to go to my very first “kiçik toy.”  Those of you who have been trying to learn the few Azeri words that I sprinkle throughout my posts will recognize the word “toy” because it is the Azeri word for wedding.  But, although the literal translation of “kiçik toy” is “small wedding,” it is unfortunately not a wedding that happens to be small.  It is a ritual circumcision party!  In this case, the young boy going under the knife was about to start 3rd grade, which seems to be a fairly typical age for having this ceremony.  First there is a big party where, much like a wedding, everyone you know comes and has a big meal.  There is music and dancing, the whole nine yards.  The little boy has a sort of godfather who comes with his whole family and brings lots of presents for the little boy.  For this toy, my host cousin was this godfather figure, so I got to come into the party bearing a huge gift of candy for the poor child and dance around showing this pretty present.  Most of the time, the actual circumcision doesn’t happen until the next day, I guess so that the kid can enjoy his party (he kind of knows what is going to happen to him, but not really how much it is going to hurt…), but this time, because his godfather guy had to go back to Baku, they did the cutting day of and I, as the American guest who should learn everything about Azerbaijani culture, was brought into the room to watch the circumcision.  At first I was totally fine.  I watched them set the kid up on the table and hold him down and soothe him so he wouldn’t freak out as they gave him a big shot and then snipped him.  But then, as I was watching them kind of sew him up, I started getting all woozy.  My head was spinning and I knew I was on the verge of passing out.  Of course I thought “no way, I’m tough, I can handle this.  I’ll just go stand by the window.”  Unfortunately standing by the window wasn’t enough and before I knew it, as I was having my mother take me outside for more air (yes, amazingly enough, in my half unconscious state I was still able to articulate myself in Azeri enough to ask for help to go outside), I passed out.  I woke up on the floor, surrounded by large xanıms who were splashing water on my face.  They even took the doctor away from his penis operating procedure to come over and look at me.  How ridiculous is that?  This little 3rd grader was stronger than I was.  I sat in a chair, drinking tea to revive me, as they got him re-dressed post-cutting and brought him out to dance again in front of the party (see the photo).  Nice, Jess.  And in the process of falling, my mother scratched the heck out of my chin, so I have 2 nice gashes to show for my adventure.  I guess I just didn’t want the little kid to be the only one giving a little blood for the party.

On Wednesday school started again.  I am so blessed to have the school that I do.  While a lot of other volunteers had no idea what their schedule would be and are having fights with their directors about it, I sent a note to my assistant director over the summer explaining what classes I wanted to teach and when I wanted to teach them.  He arranged the schedule just to my liking and everything is perfect.  I'm sure there is still the typical Azeri practice of teachers duking it out over their class hours going on at my school, but I don't think anyone will let them touch my hours.  My classroom is not quite ready yet, but it should be for Monday and we can start real classes at that time!

A shout out to Little Jimmy!  Happy birthday!! I’m so sorry I can’t be there to see you turn 18!!!  It seems like only yesterday I was coming to hold you at the hospital (who are we kidding, you were too tall for me to hold you even then and Dad would barely let me because he thought I’d drop you!).