This Friday (as in 2 days from now) is the deadline for me to submit my SPA grant which will hopefully be getting money for my school's new resource room. Unfortunately, a large wind storm 2 nights ago left my village without power. Some sort of procrastination god hates me. My computer battery died yesterday morning and I have now been in the internet cafe for like 2 1/2 hours researching for the grant but also waiting for my battery to charge because who knows if we'll have power when I get back to the village! As I'm only at 83% full, I figured, what a great time to stop staring at book and computer prices and write to my family and friends :) Can you tell from reading this how exhausted but like giddy I am from sitting in this internet cafe surrounded by little boys playing computer games and blasting Azeri music?
When I got back Saturday morning from being in Baku/Sumqayıt for training, I saw my host mom as she was running out the door to go to a wedding in Baku Sunday night. She still isn't back. She's going to be arriving tonight though, so maybe she'll be there when I get home from the internet cafe. In the meantime, it was only me with my youngest host sister for 2 nights and then my middle host sister came home before my mom from the wedding so she has been with us for 2 nights as well. But basically this means that I get to play fake-mom and make sure the kids get up for school and that they close the chicken coop and walk them to the tualet (that's toilet for those of you who didn't get it) in the yard at night when they are too scared. And since my youngest sister wasn't in the best of spirits the first night, we got into a pattern of watching a Disney movie a night on my computer...well until I didn't have a computer thanks to the power outage. I really don't mind watching my sisters (or Disney movies), but I'm just too stressed right now with all this grant stuff to put more on top of it!
In happier news, on Saturday when I got back in addition to starting my babysitting duties, I started filming on a televised English course with 2 of my sitemates. The head of our local TV station (although I think it broadcasts to about half of Azerbaijan...) approached my Azerbaijani language teacher and me over the summer about starting "English for All" and we agreed to do it. We've been planning ever since and getting more volunteers involved, and it all really started this weekend! Our first show was only us introducing ourselves, although I think the episode will really be quite the comedy because they decided that we, the American volunteers, should introduce ourselves in Azerbaijani. Let me tell you, it is stressful enough to be on television, and then to add to that speaking in a foreign language! Now we are going to film every weekend (the volunteers will switch off weeks, thank goodness). This weekend I'm really begin the course by teaching the alphabet!
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