My Second Home

Warning: I’m gonna brag a little bit in this post.

When you’re a Peace Corps volunteer, you are often told that your work is going to be very hard and you need to be satisfied with small successes.  I was very lucky in my service to have fantastic, hard-working counterparts (co-teachers) and students and I was able to see some really amazing results (when my program manager visited my classes she even made my 11th form/grade stay after the bell to tell them that she had never, in all her years as a teacher and traveling the country for Peace Corps, seen a class that could do what they were doing – which at the time was reading and discussing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in English).  That would have been enough in and of itself, but I was blessed in my personal life outside school as well.  My host family was better than I ever could have hoped and I had great friends in my counterparts and students.  Since I’ve returned to Azerbaijan, I’ve been constantly reminded of how awesome my service was on that front.  On the first night I was back in the village, my host mom looked at me and, with tears in her eyes, told me that I had completely changed their lives.  Since then I’ve heard her tell many people the story of how when I came she had so many problems and worries, that she would get angry with her daughters and didn’t know what to do about her money problems, but that once I came, all that stopped.  I don’t think that they realize, and sometimes I don’t even realize myself, how much they changed me as well.  Yesterday when I was talking with Tamilə müəllim she told me that when I came to the village, they thought of me as an American who came here to work, but by the time I left, they now think of me as an Azerbaijani who has gone somewhere else for work but will always come back.  She and I were joking how Azerbaijan (well really Qədirli village) is my second home, but it’s really the truth.  I’ve lived a number of different places in recent years – from St. Louis for college, to Liberia for Peace Corps Response, to Minneapolis now for my PhD – but coming back to Azerbaijan just felt right.  I love this quirky little country :) and it really holds a special place in my heart.