All The Goodbyes...and All the Welcome Homes

Well, I had every intention of writing a few more posts in my last weeks at site/in country, but I seemed to be in a perpetual race against the clock and I just never quite found the time/energy to do it.  So now I'm sitting here, in my parents' kitchen, fighting the intense urge to write this in a word document offline and copy-paste it in (who writes blog entries actually on the internet? haha, not people in rural Azerbaijan!).  While many of the people who read this blog have seen me by now so there really is no need to write this, I know some of you don't have the privilege of living in good old Massachusetts, plus I guess I should bring this thing to a close, so here it is, one last entry.

My last week at site is truly a blur.  I was racing around trying to get everything packed up (if you know me, you know that packing is not my strong suite) and putting the final touches on everything at school.  I couldn't help myself and kept making more and more visual aids and games for the resource room until I finally had to tell myself no more and I gave away all my magazines, markers, glue sticks, etc.  And the packing and organizing was broken up with goodbyes.

I left site on the morning of Saturday, December 10th, so I'm going to back up two days to Thursday, December 8th.  That night I went over for my last time at my close friend and counterpart Tamilə müəllim's house.  We had delicious kabobs and she cooked chicken as well (and almost burned it, which couldn't have been more appropriate because the poor woman always has so much going on while she's cooking that I don't think I've been there once when she hasn't had to leap up from the table to run and see if some food is burning or the çay is boiling over or something).  Some of her neighbors, including our other counterpart Ceyran müəllim, and our students came over and sat with us as well, so it was quite a nice party.

Tamilə müəllim gave me this evil eye as a goodbye present to protect me always.
 

Next was Friday, December 9th, where Tamilə müəllim and other teachers (including her incredible husband Yolçu müəllim) worked really hard to organize a huge going away party for me.  It was complete with a videographer, just like they have at all the toys (weddings), to film it!  All the classes made beautiful cakes so we had a lovely tea while everyone got up to make speeches and some of the students gave me little presents.  There were some tears, especially when Tamilə müəllim forced my mother (who is also a teacher at the school) to get up and speak.  And the whole thing culminated with me making a speech but, just as I predicted, I could barely get a word out because I was crying so much.  And it was the talk of the village that my speech (and party in general) made several of the male teachers and directors cry too.

After that party at school, I had an all afternoon party at my house where I received various guests who wanted to say their last goodbyes.  The highlight of the evening was when I got to walk over into the neighboring village, Xatınlı, and bring their new volunteer, Andrew, over my house to meet my family, students, and Tamilə müəllim.  He will be serving at Xatınlı School (which is about a 5 minute walk from my house) but he has agreed to help out in the resource room at my school and my students are surely going to force him to work with them in addition to his own students.  It was kind of a relief that I wasn't expecting to be able to pass the proverbial torch like that.  I had to work really hard to convince Peace Corps to send a volunteer to Xatınlı and I think I made the right call and Andrew is going to do a really awesome job there.

I only slept an hour and a half my last night because, although I swear I had been diligently packing and going through all the stuff in my room all week, of course there was always more to be done (little things like writing down the directions for ibuprofen that I was leaving behind for my family or putting photos on disks because I wanted to wait until the last possible moment).  My sisters tried to stay up with me and didn't quite make it but my mom went to bed only 15 minutes before I did.  I miss her so much.  The good thing about only sleeping an hour and a half is that that is pretty much exactly how much time it takes to heat a tank of water to take a shower at my house!  So I turned on the hammam (shower room) before I went to sleep and when I woke up everything was all ready for me!  I was able to take one final shower before getting ready for the hardest part yet, actually saying my goodbye.

 My room as of about 12:30AM.
They said it couldn't be done, but I proved them wrong!

The thing to realize is that I was leaving so much stuff for my family that the room never looked completely packed even when I left!

The marşrutka was coming to pick me up at my house so I had told everyone that they were welcome to come and see me off.  This meant that I had a whole crowd of little students and teachers to hug and I was crying long before the marşrutka even arrived.  I hugged all of them and then my family and finally my mom and got on the marşrutka.  It was a horrible, unbelievable sadness and I don't really want to describe it more than that because I'll just cry again.

So I was off to Baku.  I got to spend a few days there, seeing the doctors and various staff, having final meetings and signing tons of papers.  I also got to say more goodbyes because, while my site was in Tovuz, I had developed really close friendships with some ex-pats living in Baku from all the times I had to come in to buy books or go to meetings, etc.  Trust me, the goodbyes were just never ending!  I got on my plane at 4:50AM on December 14th and that was that.  I said my final goodbye to Azerbaijan.

Should I end it on that last, sad note?  I guess not.

After many very depressing hours of travel (where I mostly slept because, as I think you saw, I didn't sleep much my last few weeks) I arrived in Boston and found my wonderful welcome party of my mom, dad, and Grandma Pat.  They were decked out with signs, balloons, the whole nine-yards.  They brought me home where I'm having a really hard time wrapping my mind around everything.  I simultaneously feel like I was only gone for a semester at college and like I have been gone forever.  Everything seems normal, but then I can't remember the names of the streets in my neighborhood, or how to get to the mall, and I basically wanted to give up on the TV the minute my mom started trying to explain that we were in the 800 channels because that is where the hi-def is!  But I'm getting used to things and eating more than my fair share of the food around this house.  So far my little brother Jimmy is home, my mom and I went and picked him up from school the other day.  He's the only member of my immediate family who didn't get to visit me in Azerbaijan so I was really excited to see him.  My older sister Naima came home yesterday and then we only have to wait for the final piece of the Farrell/Bloomquist puzzle, Miss Kimberly to come in just before Christmas.  And then, I am very proud to say, our family will all be together for the first time since the summer of 2008.  :)

I'll leave you with that, a much happier ending!

Final Letter Walls

Believe it or not (well, if you know how stubborn I can be then you probably aren't surprised) I continued to put every letter I received on my walls for the entire two years of my service.  I owe a huge thank you to all of you who wrote to me over these years, you have no idea how much I loved being surrounded (literally) by all of your letters!  Here is what my room looked like by the end:

Wall 1

Wall 2

Wall 3

Wall 4

 

Wall 5

 

Wall 6

I told you I was surrounded by letters!

The Beginning of the End

(I wrote this yesterday and my hands are too numb in the frozen resource room to adjust it...so pretend I posted it yesterday!)

Everything has been wrapping to a close for me here in Azerbaijan.  I’ve had the first of my goodbye parties (more to come!) and yesterday I had to say my first real final goodbye.  I went into Tovuz city to see Nuranə who I have known since my first week in Azerbaijan.  She was my language teacher during our Peace Corps training and so I really owe much of my success here to her as without her I wouldn’t be able to speak!  But more than that, she was my good friend because she continued to teach my Azerbaijani for about a year in Tovuz (her hometown) which gave us lots of time to hang out and talk.  My first goodbye party was last weekend.  My 11^th grade students, who I have been teaching since the very beginning of my time in Qədirli, took me to our beautiful park in Tovuz city and then back to one of their houses for düşbərə (a soup with little ravioli like things – see the photo below!).  The whole day was wonderful and I thought it was really sweet that they decided we would have düşbərə because they somehow remembered me saying that I liked it but I had only had it once or twice when I first arrived.  That has been my only “party” so far, but I have also had my last English teachers’ lunch at Tamilə müəllim’s house and I went guesting for a final time at my aunt’s house, my grandpa’s house, and Jalə’s house (she is one of my best and favourite students).  This means that I have been eating a lot of Azerbaijani food, which is good since in the very near (unbelievably near in fact) future I won’t be able to have all my Azerbaijani favourites!  This means I’ve been making sure to get my fair share of mürəbbə (a sort of jam that we eat with tea), kabobs, kutlets (a patty of ground meat and vegetables – my mom undeniably makes them better than anyone else), nar (pomegranates), xurma/karaliyox (persimmons), köftə (meatball soup).

It is really starting to hit me that I’m leaving and today I’ve reached the point where tears are constantly just under the surface.  I had my last lesson with my sister Nuranə’s 9^th grade class today and as they went to leave I wanted to stop them and tell them what a pleasure it has been to teach them but I knew I would start to cry, so I decided to save it for the final party we are going to have at school on Friday (at which point I will certainly be crying the whole time so it won’t matter haha).  I should also say that I know nothing about what will happen at this party (well, that’s a lie, there have been some leaks) because everything besides its existence is supposed to be a surprise, so you’ll just have to stay tuned to find out what’s in store for me!

Happy Rooster Day!

Yesterday I celebrated my third and final Thanksgiving here in Azerbaijan.  My host mom slaughtered my rooster (for those of you who didn't know, in the spring I got a gift of two roosters - the other one we ate a month or so ago for my sister's birthday) to serve as our turkey, so we had Snow White (when I named him I thought he was a hen) for dinner.  I also made garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, garlic bread, apple crisp, and opened cans of cranberry sauce (I can't really take credit for "making" that).  Plus my host mom made cutlets (ground meat patties - my mom makes them better than anyone else) and gave us kompot (really sweet, AWESOME juice that she made) and turşu (pickled cabbage) and she cracked a bunch of nuts.  One of my counterparts and two of my best students came over to join my family and another volunteer, Connie (you've heard about her before, she is the one with the bike club in Qazax where I took my sisters to learn to ride) came down to my house too.  Connie helped me with some of my cooking and helped to keep me from stressing out cooking for so many people.  And my students and sisters helped to decorate our table with the various decorations and crafts sent by my mom and the ever wonderful Mrs. Collins.  It was a really nice, delicious night!

Cold FREEZING Cold

I am currently wearing boots, 2 pairs of socks, a pair of leggings, a pair of sweatpants, a sweater, a fleece jacket, a wool jacket, a thin scarf, a knit hat, and finger-less gloves.  I am also shivering cold.  Why, you might ask?  Because we have a policy here of not putting the heaters into the schools until November 15th and, unfortunately, this November is ridiculously cold (we've even had snow!).  I've only been at school for 2 hours because we have a random school break this week (we've never had it off before so I don't know why) but I had to come in and open the resource room this afternoon.  I'm trying to think warm thoughts.  Wish me luck!

Coming Full Circle

This week I began the final stage of my Peace Corps service, observations of my counterparts.  When I first arrived at my school I spent a few weeks observing classes to get a feel for how my soon-to-be counterparts taught.  Now, here I am, almost 2 years later, repeating the process to see how far they've come.  I'm pleased to say that after only a few days, I can definitely say improvements have been made.  I unfortunately also must say that this process is going to be the death of me.  Why?  Because this is really the beginning of the end.  I've given up my classes!  I'm a teacher with no classes to teach :(  And I have to sit and watch all the classes that only last week I was teaching be taught by my counterparts.  Not that we haven't been sharing the classes all along because we have, as "team teachers," but now I just sit there, unable to help with anything or jump in with a random comment (although I still do...and I need to stop!).  I think this is going to be Azerbaijan's ultimate test of my patience!  Good thing I've had 2 years of training in building up my patience to prepare me!

And FYI I wrote a draft of this post while observing a lesson.  I can't just sit there!

Happy Halloween - Azerbaijan Style

I'm happy to report that even though I'm overseas where we technically don't celebrate Halloween, I was able to have a pretty awesome Halloween celebration anyway!

First was my friend Eric's birthday party (if you don't remember, he is my friend who works at the US Embassy in Baku).  The party was a costume party where we were all encouraged to wear 70's outfits because Eric was born in the 70's.  Realizing that we couldn't find 70's outfits very easily in Azerbaijan, Beth and I decided to get creative.  We made a little harmless joke at Eric's expense by dressing as cave women and saying that, as neither of us were alive in the 70's and it was just SO long ago, we could only imagine that this was how people dressed!  He loved it.  And we were the hit of the party, winning "spicy-est" costume (our prize was a thing of spices from America!).

Beth and I with our spicy prizes!

Then I came home just in time to celebrate the real holiday with my host family.  It was a nice change from the crazy Halloween party that Beth and I had last year at my school.  This time I stayed home and my host sisters and I carved three pumpkins, with the help of my counterpart Tamilə müəllim.  And thanks to my mom sending an awesome pumpkin carving kit, we had all these sweet little carving knives that worked wayyy better than our big kitchen knives did last year.  Our jack-o-lanterns were pretty sweet, if I do say so myself!

A Day in Baku

I'm currently in Xirdalan, a suburb of Baku, because I have come in to conduct sessions for our new trainee group this week.  I was supposed to have to work all day yesterday to prepare for my sessions, but getting locked out of the training office gave me the great opportunity to go into the city and meet up with four of my students who are now in university.  We had a great day eating at McDonald's, walking around the seaside, and taking a boat out on the Caspian Sea.  I was so happy to have time to see them because I was worried that my schedule would be too full this week to give me the chance.

My students with their bunny balloons that the boys bought for them.

Famous

I have had friends at Türkel TV (our semi-local TV station with its studio in Tovuz but which broadcasts to I would guess about 1/3 of Azerbaijan) for a while and last winter we filmed a show called "English for All" a few times.  It was my LCF Nuranə, me, and 2 of my sitemates (Josh and Beth).  We PCVs took turns going in to teach a lesson with Nuranə, but we only made 3 episodes.  The station has decided to start filming again, and this time in their newly built studio.  I went in yesterday and this time they even sent me to their stylist for hair and make-up (I'll tell you right now that Azeris like to wear a lot more make-up than I do, but I let the guy do his thing).  In addition to English for All though, the station has been eager to have me do a whole bunch of other things for them.  This week Beth and I went in on Wednesday and were guests on their live morning show.  They asked us our thoughts about Azeri culture and about our lives here in Azerbaijan.  We even had one person call in, although his question was only would we marry Azerbaijani guys (so typical...and funny because the host had actually already asked us that!).  And now the station also wants me for a new show they are making, Banu-çiçək, which from what I understand is going to be sort of an Azerbaijani version of The View.  We are going to have bunch of women sitting around talking about women and our "world."  We are going to film the first episode this week and the topic is going to be the treatment of children.  They also want to film some other clips of me, first showing me teaching my kids first aid (to show that there are important health lessons we should be teaching our kids) and second showing me at an Azerbaijani wedding.  So basically what I'm saying is soon I'm going to be an Azerbaijani celebrity and the Azeri paparazzi are going to be following me around the village, obviously!

But regardless of how often I am on our little regional station, my fame will never compare to my friends whose music video you have to see.  It has become a huge sensation in Azerbaijan and you should totally watch!

Baku State of Mind

A Weekend Getaway to the Village!

This weekend I was lucky enough to have 2 wonderful guests visiting from Baku, my good friends Evangeline and Eric who work at the US Embassy.  They are the very sweet and wonderful people who let Beth and I stay with them whenever we come into Baku and I was finally given the chance to return the favor.  We had a hectic weekend trying to squeeze seeing everything of importance in the village into a 2 1/2 day trip, but I think we did a pretty good job.  Evangeline got cooking lessons from my mom (3 sisters dolma, plov, and paxlava) and Eric got a saz lesson from Beth's friend Estella.  Plus we went to a wedding where Eric narrowly made it out without having his new best friend Vaqif drink him under the table and we went up for a drive/walk in the mountains where we freaked out some locals who don't get many foreign guests and they watched one of my classes where they learned about real conditional sentences (very thrilling stuff).  It was fun showing them the "real" Azerbaijan and I give them serious credit for wanting to come out and see it!  Not many ex-pats do!

A Sad Day for Peace Corps

Last night, our TEFL program manager, Gülnarə, passed away in her sleep.  I can't even believe it.  She was a really wonderful woman and I loved getting to know her.  I was lucky enough to get the chance to work very closely with her because I was the TEFL representative to the Programming and Training Committee etc.  And I'm just about to go in to work at Pre-Service Training for our new trainees and I was looking forward to seeing her!  It's really sad and my thoughts are with her family.  Allah rəhmət ələsin.

The List Begins

As I was walking through the village the other day, I began to think about some of the things that I will and won't miss when I've gone home.  Here is a the very incomplete list I came up with during this particular walk:

I'm going to miss:
- seeing random women walking around holding chickens upside down by their legs as if this is the most normal thing in the world.  And the chickens just hanging out as if to say "yep, this is life."
- going to people's houses and coming home with an entire tree's worth of fruit without having to even ask for a single piece.
- being able to see what seems like every one of my students by simply taking a 5 minute walk across the village.

I'm not going to miss:
- having to be constantly vigilant to protect myself from goose attacks.  I hate geese, I have never gotten used to them and I doubt I ever will.  They are spiteful creatures.
- needing to wash my feet constantly because the dirt roads kick up so much dust.
- procrastinating washing my underwear until every single pair is dirty and I have to hand-wash the whole load of it until my fingers are red and sore.

Photos of Summer

As I settle into my normal school-year life, I was taking a few minutes to look back over pictures from the summer and thought I would put up some of my favourite summer moments for your viewing pleasure.

June: Kim came to visit and found out just how much she loves outhouses.

June: Another delicious cherry season in Azerbaijan.  Don't let that inviting dish fool you, they are chock full of worms.  And as I was discussing the other day with some other volunteers, I can measure my growth here in Azerbaijan by how little that grosses me out anymore haha.

June: Welcome to Turkey and my first real vacation since coming to Azerbaijan.

June: I fell in love with all the beautiful tiles in Turkey.

July: Noticing the "Stalker Internet Club" in Tovuz for the first time made my day.

July: At summer camp we learned about countries and holidays from around the world one week.  The kids were all talking about it when they came back to school last week.

July: Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) summer camp, a collaborative project for volunteers all across the country and our awesome counterparts.  This year my host sister went and had a great time.  We are actually getting together with some of her GLOW friends this weekend!

August: I loved seeing all these little guys guarding the construction areas in Fountain Square.

August: One of my favourite places in Baku is the front of this museum.

August: My last trip to Qobustan? (our outdoor museum with petroglyphs)  I only went four times...for Naima and Jessica's visit the guy working there was trying to have me give the tour!

August: Matching pj's for girlie sleepover nights with Naima and Jessica.

August: So many beautiful tomatoes!  My mom was preserving them for winter for days.

August: Proud volunteers as our Close of Service Conference in their sweet shirts! (Thanks to Alex and Beth!)

August: Getting ready for a hot air balloon ride over Göreme in Cappadocia on my 2nd trip to Turkey this summer.

August: Some of the cool (and less phallic) rock formations in Cappadocia.  Do a google image search and you'll see what I mean about the phallic ones, it was pretty ridiculous!

August: Sunrise from a hot air balloon.  Does it get much better than that?

I got a bit carried away so there were a lot of pictures!  Hope you liked them!

Another School Year Begins

School has officially begun!  Today I taught my first real classes of the year because last week was mostly going over classroom rules and getting the kids to talk about summer.  I was very proud to see how many kids talked about coming to my summer camp and how they were still excited about it 2 months later.  And then I didn't have to teach on Friday (I was supposed to have Fridays off but today I just added another class so now I have one lesson...of course).  Today Tamilə müəllim (my counterpart) and I also opened the resource room for the first time this year and we already had 4 kids come to borrow books!  At least now they'll have something to read because my school seems to be having an extreme shortage of textbooks (which doesn't seem to be worrying anyone but my counterparts and I) so the vast majority of my kids aren't getting books so far!  As you may suspect, yes, this makes it very difficult to teach!  But my counterparts and I are powering through.  Tamilə müəllim and I have an adorable 5th form class (this is the youngest that Azerbaijani kids start seriously learning English, before that it is only once a week and they start fresh in 5th anyway) that I'm really excited about.  We started the alphabet today!  For some reason the Azerbaijani textbook doesn't teach the letters in order, so today was E, B, D, N, P, and T.  I also found it very interesting that my kids couldn't say the Azerbaijani alphabet.  When we were planning for the lesson I saw that Tamilə müəllim didn't know it because every time she tried to say it she said the Russian alphabet not Azerbaijani (which makes sense as she grew up in Soviet times).  I guess that's what happens when you change your lettering system like a million times, but I hadn't really thought about it.  I knew that my kids were really bad at using dictionaries, but I just thought it was lack of knowledge of the English alphabet.  I guess not!

This weekend I went to two weddings and I believe that I have now officially attended 20 weddings in Azerbaijan (which really just means I remember going to 20 weddings but there could be some less memorable ones in there somewhere haha, by the time you get to 20 that is highly possible).  My host mom is already stressing out about having to go to weddings alone after I go home (I finish here December 14th!) so now I really have to go to all the weddings with her (although it may not seem like it seeing as I have gone to 20, I have managed to get out of several more).

The First Day of School is Quickly Approaching!

School starts here every year on September 15th which means this Thursday I will be starting my last school year in Azerbaijan!  (For those of you who don't know yet, my close of service date is December 14, 2011!).  I'm excited for school to begin because it will put me back on a normal schedule, but not looking forward to losing the freedom of being able to stay up until 2AM watching Mad Men or whatever TV show I'm addicted to (and I take way too much advantage of that freedom haha).  I'm busily working to try to get all the lesson plans my counterparts and I have developed over the past year and a half compiled into big, complete sets.  It is quite a monumental task! To give you an idea of how big these sets of plans will be, I'm closest to finishing the 7th form book where I am on Unit 6 of 8 and the plans are already 51 pages long.  Yikes.  And I'm doing this for 5 textbooks, with hopes to do 2 more this fall.  I have no hope of getting it finished by the start of school (which had been the plan, unfortunately I like to procrastinate and do other things with my summer time!) but I will have at least the first lesson for each book done, inşallah! 

Other than the textbooks, I spent most of my day yesterday helping Tamilə müəllim, my counterpart, prepare jars of food for winter.  I cut about a million peppers, tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes and in the process made a lot of little cuts on my thumbs!  Here the knives are super dull so we just cut things into our hands instead of using a cutting board, which is fine when you are only cutting for one meal but mass production takes its toll!

Belated Post: Naima and Jessica Came to Peace Corps It Up, Azeri Style!

I should have posted about this a while ago, but I think we can all see that my posting record isn't the most consistent!  My older sister Naima and Jessica Bruce, her best friend from Peace Corps, came to visit me from July 31 st to August 11th.  We got off to a bit of a rocky start when Naima's plane from America was delayed so she didn't meet up with Jessica in London to fly to Baku (Jessica was sitting at Heathrow longing looking about the terminal for Naima, she even bought Naima lunch...and then had to take one for the team and eat it herself haha).  Instead of arriving with Jessica at 9:30PM, Naima arrived at 4:30AM but then didn't make it out to us until about 5:30...without any bags.  The next few days turned into us making several trips to the Turkish Airlines office where I horrified the staff by listing off all the items of my clothing Naima was wearing because she had none of her own.  By the end of the few days every member of the staff seemed to know who were, would come in to check on the progress of our case, and would tell me how great it was that I could speak Azerbaijani...so that I could yell at them.  We did eventually get both bags back.  After Baku we went down to Lerik (which is a mountainous region down south) and to Lenkeran (which is down south on the Caspian).  In Lerik we did a homestay through Community-Based Tourism Azerbaijan (http://www.cbtazerbaijan.com/) which is a project PCVs started.  And then in Lenkeran we stayed with some volunteers.  Naima and Jessica were really struck by how similar the housing could feel to the volunteer houses they stayed at in Benin.  After that we went up to my site for a few days to meet my students, neighbors, family, friends, etc.  We went to the mountains, my school, my counterpart's house, the bazaar, etc.  It was a really nice few days that passed all too quickly!  It was really nice to have the two of them visit because their perspectives as returned Peace Corps volunteers were really refreshing to have and I appreciated being able to show them all my work and get their feedback.  I'm at our Close of Service Conference now and we have been talking a lot about how once we return home some of our best support systems will be other RPCVs (from all countries, not just Azerbaijan) and having them here could really make me see how that would be helpful!  Makes me feel really lucky to have an RPCV sister!

The Saga of the Dead Dog in a Sack

So I definitely owe you all a post about my sister Naima and our friend Jessica's trip to Azerbaijan, but first I have a more current story to share, the story of the dead dog.

A few days ago as I went to school, cutting through the bushes behind my house, I noticed a big grain sack in the little canal.  These canals are part of the irrigation system we have so sometimes water flows in them but generally they are just stagnate water or mud or dried up.  As you can imagine with the stagnate water and goose poop and trash, these canals aren't always the most pleasant places, but this day it reached a new low.  I could see that something was in the sack and at first I thought it was a sheep skin because often times the nearby butcher throws a gross skin from an animal he butchered (or random stomachs, etc) in the bushes.  Then I realized the fur didn't look sheep-like.  No, it was a dog, a dog dead folded up in a sack.  Both gross and really sad.  I immediately told my host mom when I got home and we both started ranting about all the disgusting things that people throw in the bushes by our house.  Apparently just a week before my mom had to go throw some dirt on a dead cat that she could smell in our backyard when she went to the latrine (I missed that loveliness, but I did see the dead goose in the canal a few weeks before that, although that dead animal ended up thrown into the basement of the school to rot...but that's another story).  As the days passed, the stink from the dog got worse (really? a dead dog in stagnate water/mud smelling bad? never!) and the breeze so nicely wafted his odor into our backyard.  By yesterday morning it was getting really strong.  I was trying to sit outside and work on my computer where it was a bit cooler than my room, but the smell was just rank.  Finally I gave my mom a manat to go pay some kids to bury the thing.  My mom and I vowed that we would go over to the mayor's office today or tomorrow to complain about the government's neglect (this is public land on the edge of a soccer field and connecting to the school property).  But before we got a chance to go today, my wonderful and highly respected neighbor Hüsəyn müəllim called the mayor himself.  My mother reported back the conversation to me and I found it quite funny.  Here's my cliff notes version "People keep putting bad trash there behind their house.  It is smelling so much that Jess müəllim can no longer do her work outside!"  That's right, it's not important that putting dead animals in the water is just asking us all to get diseases, no problem that kids play on the soccer field next door every day, no problem that there are another 4 people living in my house with the smell, what's important is that I cannot sit outside and comfortably work on my computer!  It leaves me with the following thoughts: 1) I'm glad that they respect me so much that they wouldn't want anything to be offending me, 2) I'm happy with anything that will stop the litany of dead animals that have been showing up near my house!

Super Volunteer

This post is a testimonial to how awesome one of my fellow volunteers is.  For a long time I have been promising my host sisters that I would take them up to Qazax (a region about 40 minutes away) to visit one of my friends, Connie.  My sisters love her, but even more importantly, Connie has been doing an awesome job developing a killer bike program to teach the kids of Qazax how to ride and how to do it safely and my sisters really wanted to learn how to ride.  Wanting to be true to my word, I arranged for us to go up to see Connie the day after camp ended, knowing that I wouldn't really have that much free time at site for awhile after.  Connie said that day was fine and I told my sisters and they got all excited.  Unfortunately, I woke up the morning of with a bad stomach virus.  Gross.  Being the dumb idiot that I can be, I thought that I would be fine and had gotten everything out of my system (along with my breakfast) and decided to go to Qazax anyway.  Boy was I wrong.  I showed up in Qazax in pretty rough shape, but Connie didn't hesitate one second in helping get me settled and then teaching my two sisters how to ride bikes all by herself.  I lay in the shade of her school's courtyard while she ran around with them for about 2 1/2 hours in the hot Qazax sun of late July.  I was so impressed by her dedication (and the fact that she never said to me "you're an idiot, you are ill and still came up here, loser" or something to that effect).  And this was the first time that I was able to see the bike club I have been hearing so much about and let me tell you, it was fantastic.  So basically what I wanted to say in this post is that Connie is a super awesome volunteer and my hat's off to her.

Connie helping my sister Gülnar learn to ride.

Turkey, Bulgaria, and Camp!

Alright, I promised a post about my travels in Turkey and Bulgaria with Kimmy, so here goes, but I’m going to keep it short and sweet.

Turkey

• Our trip was 4 nights in Istanbul, 2 nights by Ephesus (staying in Selchuk), 2 nights in Fethiye, and 1 night in Antalya.
• Ephesus was cool but had way too many tourists.  And I must say, the picnic that Kim and I put together to have at the end of our walk through the ruins was phenomenal.
• Fethiye was gorgeous, just beautiful.  And our day long boat cruise around the Mediterranean was awesome: stunningly clear blue water to swim in, distant mountains on the coastline, hilarious British tourists sitting by us who smoked like chimneys, super interesting father son pair from America who had been travelling for 5 months, etc.  Only downside: I got ridiculously sunburned.  Like ridiculously.  Big time ouch.
• In Antalya I accidentally made Kimmy walk way too far to go to a museum.  There was a very convenient tram that could have taken us.  My bad.  My continued apologies Kim L  But the museum was pretty awesome right??  And the tram back was like a nice treat! Haha
• Between Turkey and Azerbaijan, I have never had so many people fight with me over the fact that Kim and I are sisters!  I get it that we don’t look much alike (except we both have blue eyes) but I guess I never realized we were so shockingly different.  Didn’t help that as the trip progressed my hair was starting to bleach to be lighter brown and she was getting more freckles on her face…just soooo different!

Bulgaria

• Our trip was 6 nights in Varna at Kim’s friend Vesko’s house and 2 nights in Sofia at Vesko’s friend’s apartment.
• Varna was really pretty on the Black Sea coast and we drove north to see more of the coast, which was great.  It was way colder than I expected and since I idiotically lost one of only two cardigan sweaters that I brought on the trip during a night out in Istanbul, I was constantly relying on Vesko and his friends to lend me various clothing.  And we all know that I’m constantly cold regardless of if it is actually cold, so this was just a bad situation haha.
• We went on a walking tour of Sofia with one of Vesko’s friends and saw the really pretty downtown.  Then we went to a really cool lookout over the city at sunset.  Again, I froze.
• Vesko’s friends were all really great to us and we loved meeting them.  They were so welcoming!

And now back to my real world where it is all about camp, camp, camp!  On Friday of this week we finished off our Healthy Bodies, Healthy World week by talking about the environment and trash.  Our activity for the day was to make creative things out of trash.  Luckily for my kids, I’m an incredible pack-rat and I have been saving “interesting trash” for them basically ever since I arrived in the village.  The result was 1) some pretty cool creations from the kids, 2) my room is cleaner because I finally got rid of all that stuff!  I’m going to put up some photos of their projects and your job is to deduce the contents of all the packages my mom sends me from America!  (I thank you for the real stuff Mom and my students thank you for their packaging! haha)

With all the trash explaining the activity

A lowly tube for glowsticks becomes glasses

The sign reads "Most Beautiful City" and another sign that you can't see from this angle explains that it is Harry Potter City (that's Harry Potter wrapping paper underneath it, very timely!).  My vitamin bottles and orbit boxes make the buildings, bottle caps are the people.

This kid jumped up first thing to grab this box and was like "I'm gonna make a car."  It ended up being a bus, and I really liked it.  I also really liked the Reeses eggs that originally came in that box haha.

Houses, cars, and boats.  Mostly out of Orbit boxes.  What is my favourite type of gum again?

At camp we have 3 teams (Awesome Team, FCB - Football Club Barcelona, and Bomba) so we were counting up their points for the week.  They get points for almost everything we do.  So far FCB is in the lead...but there's one week left!

All photos courtesy of my awesome week 2 photographer (and all around awesome person) Peggy!

Back in the Land of A

I realized just now as I'm online for my daily 20-ish minutes of internet that I never got back on to write another blog post about Turkey or on to write any blog post about Bulgaria!  And now that I've been back in Azerbaijan for 2 weeks, that all seems like a distant memory, especially since those 2 weeks have been spent doing summer camp here at site! Camp has been going really well and the kids have been really enthusiastic.  I've had some great other volunteers up to help (so far I've had Moses, Alec, Julie, Peggy, Mariel, and Lori!) and my kids have been so happy to meet some other volunteers.  Last week our theme was countries and their big holidays and then this week we have been doing stuff about health.  We're going to finish up next week with arts and crafts.  I'll try to remind myself to write a post about Turkey and Bulgaria at home to put up the next time I come online, but I can't make any promises as I've already been forgetting to do it for so long now!  Sorry for being such a lame blogger :(

Hi from Turkey!

I got a panicked email from my mother this morning because my sister Kim and I apparently haven't been checking in enough as we travel through Turkey (sorry Mom) so I thought maybe it was time to put up a little post to let the rest of you know where and how I am!

I'm currently in Fethiye, Turkey (on the Mediterranean) watching my sister sleep because even though for my entire life I've never been a morning person, on this trip I can barely sleep past 6AM (which is 8 on Azerbaijani time, so I guess it makes some sense).  Today we are going to go on a boat cruise to a whole bunch of little islands and swim and see ruins, etc.  Try not to be too jealous :) Before Fethiye we first traveled to Istanbul and then on to Ephesus, but I'll write more about everything later (remember, this post is just so you don't all start sending me panicky emails!).  And from here we are going to Antalya so we can fly to Bulgaria and meet up with Kimmy's friend from school!  So that is my itinerary, you can all feel properly informed now and I'll write more detailed accounts of our journeys later.  For now I'll just say that we are having a great time and everything here is just so beautiful!