One Year (?!?)

Happy one year in country to me! (and to all the other AZ7's too...).  I'm in a state of complete disbelief that I've been living here for a whole year.  That just seems absurd.  But to prove the point, a whole new group of trainees arrived in country about a week ago.  Next week I'm going to head back to the beautiful Sumqayıt to help the newbies learn fun things like how to write a lesson plan and work with the English textbooks.  I know you are jealous you can't sit in on these sessions, try to hold it in.

School started a few weeks ago, as I wrote, and has been amazingly smooth sailing so far, which is unheard of in Azerbaijan.  My schedule has only had one change, which I requested because two of my classes were at the same time.  And my classroom is shaping up (I finally got a bookshelf yesterday!  Tamilə müəllim went and "quarreled" with our director haha).  Work has even been started on our future resource room, which is exciting!

I've been playing catch up all this week because last week my good friend and language teacher, Nuranə, got married.  All the other members of my cluster from training came out to Tovuz and we had matching dresses made like bridesmaids.  Nuranə wanted her wedding to have some American flair to it!  In Azerbaijan at the bride's wedding (there are two weddings remember, one for the bride and one for the groom), the bride doesn't always wear a white dress.  I can just say that makes it more difficult to choose a color for a bridesmaid dress!  In the end, we ended up in the same color as the bride, bright red!  Everyone loved it and it made us very easy to spot anytime we did anything!  Nuranə was told by the owner of the wedding palace that it was the best wedding they had ever had their because of us (and I'll have you know that this was at the most expensive wedding palace in Tovuz, I'd never been before).  I don't know if it was the best wedding ever, but it was certainly the most fun wedding I've been to in this country. I could sit with all my friends and dance and really be genuinely happy for the couple because I actually really knew them (at the other weddings I've been brought to, I haven't known the people getting married).  All in all, it was a huge success.