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!