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!