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.