I'm a Real Teacher Now!

Sorry for my hiatus in posting, things have been so busy around here! I'm now teaching for real (not just training, not just observing, but teaching!). I teach 19 hours a week with 3 different teachers. My students are in 2nd, 5th, 6th, 9th, 10th, and 11th grades. And then after school I do conversation clubs for students in 6th through 11th grades and a separate one for English teachers. We pick a new topic to discuss every week, so if you have any ideas, send them my way! I try to write a text for the students to read before club to get them thinking (which is possible because I bought myself a wonderful printer to have at my house!), so this week I'm working on a text about American football/Superbowl and about Valentine's Day to follow. One of my co-teachers is out ill for the month of February with gallbladder problems, so for our English teacher conversation club, I have done research about gallbladders. Not what I expected to be doing in Azerbaijan, but I guess I'm learning too! If you have any good topic ideas that you think would be interesting for my Azeri youngsters, send them my way!

It's been getting pretty cold around here and I was realizing the other day that on a daily basis to go to school I'm putting on more layers of clothing than I used to when I would go watch Patriots games (which I shouldn't even be bringing up given the dismal end of the season that I have heard about). But luckily, just after New Years we did get gas at my house, so now I have a gas-fire stove heating my room! It can get nice and toasty! For most of December and some of January I was going out for some great walks out of town with a fantastic view of the mountains, but now I just can't will myself to get outside in the cold. But don't you worry that I'm being inactive because I have started doing my Biggest Loser Workout DVD in my bedroom. Haha, yes, you read that correctly. The best part is that my host sisters have started racing to see who can ask me first to join me in my workout every day (my room is really only big enough for one person exercising but we can make it work with two). And if I don't have time to work out for a few days, they'll even call me out on it and be all "um you haven't done your sports for a few days." Glad someone will keep me fit! My youngest sister is usually the one to join me and I was so proud of her the other day when she brought a thermos full of water into my room because I told her it was important to drink water after we exercise! My hope is that eventually I'll have her doing a proper jumping-jack. Right now it's a little interesting, but she'll get there!

Alright, sorry, this is a quick one! I need to try to track down a new print cartridge because I've already blown through the introductory one that came with my printer and still get out of the "big city" before dark! Miss you all!

A Very M-Azeri Christmas and a Happy Bak-New Year

I know, my title for this post is just so clever I have to congratulate myself on it to start haha.

I spent Christmas at my site in Tovuz. I sewed stockings for myself and everyone in my host family, so we hung those up the night before Christmas next to our New Years tree which we put up early so it could also be my Christmas tree. Explaining the concept of stockings is difficult, I'm just going to throw that out there. I told my family that Santa was going to come and fill them while we slept, but, as I said in my last post, Santa doesn't do that stuff here. Everyone kept telling me basically that's nice, but since he's not going to come, what happens? My neighbor even said to me "But what if Santa died?" I think my heart stopped on that one and I was like oh my god you just killed Christmas! No matter how many times I told them that I would play Santa and fill the stockings (which at one point I think my mother thought I was going to actually dress up like Santa haha), they wouldn't let it go and wanted to put stuff in too and were very concerned that you wouldn't know who gave you what and that you would see what people are giving you. Finally, I told them that I wasn't going to open my stocking because why would I put presents in for myself, so they could safely put their presents in without worrying that I would see. But the best part was that one of my co-English teachers really wanted to put something in my stocking too, so she got driven over to my house at like 10:30 at night so she could put a pair of socks in my stocking. Incidentally, I think socks are a really big gift item around here because I have received like 4 pairs of socks from Azeris. Either that or I just look like I have cold feet.

After we opened our stockings in the morning, my family all went off to school while I stayed home and made stewed apples to bring to another volunteer's house where everyone from nearby was getting together for Christmas. But before I could go over there, I had to stop by the school because my students had a surprise for me. They gave me a gigantic cake and wouldn't eat any of it! I had to carry it home and then to the other volunteer's house and let me tell you, that thing was heavy. My arms were literally sore the next day from the effort! But it was so sweet of my students and all the other volunteers were really impressed with how great my kids are.

At our volunteer party, we sat around and cooked and ate food all day. Our spread included cookies, fruit, candy, deviled eggs, potato salad, and jambalaya. Not really what I usually eat for Christmas, but it was really good. It was nice to see everyone and be with other Americans for Christmas (so they won't ask questions like what will happen if Santa dies haha).

The day after Christmas was my birthday party (my real birthday is a religious holiday here that marks a day when a lot of people were killed so it wasn't really the best day for a party). My party was about 7 hours of a constant stream of guests coming and eating with me. Let me tell you, I ate an awful lot of dolma that day. My mother also baked me a cake and I used the exploding candle that Mike gave me, which made the evening way more exciting! I also scored some really qəşənq (one of my favorite Azeri words that can mean everything from nice to beautiful to tasty but is really frequently used to call something cool, and frequently that cool thing is bedazzled in some way) presents from people in my community. It was really sweet of them and now I have a ton of little statues/figurines to put around my room!

Then came New Years for which I traveled down to Baku to meet up with a ton of other Peace Corps volunteers. My throat hurts and one night I almost froze to death sleeping on a really disgusting floor in a cheap hotel, but it was so worth it. This little vacation was just what I needed! I got to eat food like McDonalds (yes, we have 3 McDonalds in Baku) and nachos and we celebrated at this Irish pub place. And I got to see all my friends, which was great because after seeing so many of them every day during training, to now be at site without them is sad. And I got to meet a lot more of the AZ6's (the group of volunteers that swore in last year).

Alright, that's all I've got for now. In a few hours I'm going to take the night train back up to Tovuz. On my night train down, I ended up in a different compartment than all my friends and woke up to have a creepy guy sitting on the bed across from me staring at me. Nice. But a conductor came along and gave him an earful about how he shouldn't be sitting there and made him go away, so no harm done! So here's hoping that this night will be creeper free!

First Update from Site!

So, to say that a lot has happened since my last post is an understatement…seeing as I swore in as a Peace Corps volunteer, moved across the country, have been observing potential classes in a new school, and have been trying to integrate myself into a new community. I guess what I’m trying to say is this will be a long post, my apologies in advance if I bore you haha.

First, to go back to what feels to me like years ago, on December 9th we had our Swearing-In Ceremony. It was this big affair where we had to get all dressed up and all the news media came to video tape it (yes, our swearing-in made national news). We all invited our host families to the event and I was so excited that almost my whole family came. Even four year old Cavad was there and sat through the whole ceremony for me. My family had been telling me that after the ceremony they would have a surprise for me, so instead of staying at the volunteer party, I went home with them and, in my honor, my mother prepared a big “bayram” (holiday) dinner. It was super cute and made me even sadder that I was leaving them the next day. I miss them a lot.

The day after swearing in as a volunteer, I loaded all of my possessions, along with my friend Beth’s, into a tiny taxi and we made the 8ish hour drive to Tovuz with our taxi driver who spoke no English. The ride was cramped, but not too bad given that it was an 8 hour car ride and the roads in Azerbaijan do leave something to be desired of (there is a lot of construction, so while the drive apparently could be as little as 6 hours, it wasn’t…). Along the way, my Ceyranbatan host family called several times to check on me and to let Cavad say goodbye to me (we intentionally didn’t wake him up before I left because he would cry too much, he had even showed me how he easily fit inside my suitcase the night before). It was really sweet of them and made me “homesick” for my host home.

But now, I’m in Tovuz! My village is really a sprawl of villages, but let me tell you, they make it feel pretty small. If one person learns something about me in the morning, you can bet that the whole village will know by lunch time. For example, the whole town knows that I like to eat an apple for breakfast and twice now huge bags of apples have been sent to my house for me. Everyone knows that my mother doesn’t think I eat enough because I’m afraid of getting fat and when they tell me to eat something will tell me it’s good for me and won’t make me “kцk”. They know I don’t like mayonnaise or fish and when they have me over tell me proudly that their salad is made with cream and no mayonnaise because I am there. They all watch me run (especially because for a few days they were telling me I should only run on one field…which happens to be in the village center) and tell me for days afterwards that I run well. And, when I go for a walk, my school director calls my host mother to see if I am angry with my family because I am “wearing pants and walking fast.” It’s comical really.

My room at my new house is gigantic and my family has been gradually giving me more furniture, so now I have almost more than I need. My house doesn’t have gas (although there is the promise that gas will come) even though it seems like every other house in the village does. But I do have an electric space heater in my room that I sit in front of whenever I’m in my room and just yesterday Peace Corps sent me a hot water bottle for my bed, so that is super exciting.

My house is very close to my school, which is convenient because I really hate waking up for school (it’s still really dark…to the point that I have to carry a flashlight when I go to our latrine, to me that means it’s still time to be sleeping). After my apple breakfast, I go to school and observe classes. I will start co-teaching in January, which will be exciting because just watching classes gets old very fast. In Azerbaijan, Peace Corps volunteers always co-teach (the idea is that we will also help the teachers improve their English and show them new teaching methods), so I will be working with three of the English teachers at my school. When I start teaching, I will also be getting my own classroom even though other teachers don’t have rooms but move to the students. What I mean to say is, I’m really lucky. And, my room has even recently been wired with electricity for me, a luxury not many rooms in my school have, because (as my one of my co-teachers told me) the director is afraid that if I have to make a fire in a wood-fire heater like the other rooms have, I will light the school on fire haha. He’s probably right. In January I will also be forming conversation clubs which I can have in my classroom after school. The students are very excited about this and I get asked questions every day as to when they will begin, how I will form them, etc. It’s good that the students are so excited, but at times it is overwhelming! I particularly enjoy when they ask very simply “How can I learn to speak English?” as if I should be able to give them a list of maybe five things and magically they will be fluent.

Speaking of languages, I’m still working very hard on my Azerbaijani and am told I am doing a good job and “speak sweetly.” But I certainly make my mistakes, and I have to tell you that my favorite one was in the teachers’ meeting they had when I arrived. In my speech to introduce myself, I told all the teachers I would be living in the village for four years instead of two…oops. A teacher interrupted me to ask if I meant four, and even though I corrected it then and there, I was asked for the rest of the day if I was really going to stay for four years. Even by my host mom, who is a math teacher at school.

My host family tries very hard for me to feel welcome and comfortable, which is more than I could ask for. They have planned a big birthday party for me and my mother is constantly asking me how to make recipes more American since the party is for me. They are also very excited for Christmas and my mother is even going to cook me a turkey because I told her that’s what my family does in the US. They are also getting a new New Years Tree (yes, here they have small, fake Christmas trees which are for New Years instead of Christmas, and the fact that we have trees for Christmas not New Years to them seems very strange). I also really like the Santa Clause (or as we say, Şaxta Baba – which means Frozen Grandpa) decorations everywhere that prominently say “Merry Christmas” even though no one celebrates Christmas. I have asked what Santa does around here, since he doesn’t come and give gifts. From what I can find out, he is unemployed in Azerbaijan and has no real purpose (except to have a great name, in my opinion, and to have mini chocolate versions of him sold…next to the mini chocolate Easter Bunnies – I don’t want to know if they are left over from this past Easter or tester versions for the next!).

On that note, I’m gonna head out and just say Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all of you! I hope you are all healthy and happy and that Şaxta Baba brings you everything you want!

So, to say that a lot has happened since my last post is an understatement…seeing as I swore in as a Peace Corps volunteer, moved across the country, have been observing potential classes in a new school, and have been trying to integrate myself into a new community. I guess what I’m trying to say is this will be a long post, my apologies in advance if I bore you haha.

First, to go back to what feels to me like years ago, on December 9th we had our Swearing-In Ceremony. It was this big affair where we had to get all dressed up and all the news media came to video tape it (yes, our swearing-in made national news). We all invited our host families to the event and I was so excited that almost my whole family came. Even four year old Cavad was there and sat through the whole ceremony for me. My family had been telling me that after the ceremony they would have a surprise for me, so instead of staying at the volunteer party, I went home with them and, in my honor, my mother prepared a big “bayram” (holiday) dinner. It was super cute and made me even sadder that I was leaving them the next day. I miss them a lot.

The day after swearing in as a volunteer, I loaded all of my possessions, along with my friend Beth’s, into a tiny taxi and we made the 8ish hour drive to Tovuz with our taxi driver who spoke no English. The ride was cramped, but not too bad given that it was an 8 hour car ride and the roads in Azerbaijan do leave something to be desired of (there is a lot of construction, so while the drive apparently could be as little as 6 hours, it wasn’t…). Along the way, my Ceyranbatan host family called several times to check on me and to let Cavad say goodbye to me (we intentionally didn’t wake him up before I left because he would cry too much, he had even showed me how he easily fit inside my suitcase the night before). It was really sweet of them and made me “homesick” for my host home.

But now, I’m in Tovuz! My village is really a sprawl of villages, but let me tell you, they make it feel pretty small. If one person learns something about me in the morning, you can bet that the whole village will know by lunch time. For example, the whole town knows that I like to eat an apple for breakfast and twice now huge bags of apples have been sent to my house for me. Everyone knows that my mother doesn’t think I eat enough because I’m afraid of getting fat and when they tell me to eat something will tell me it’s good for me and won’t make me “kцk”. They know I don’t like mayonnaise or fish and when they have me over tell me proudly that their salad is made with cream and no mayonnaise because I am there. They all watch me run (especially because for a few days they were telling me I should only run on one field…which happens to be in the village center) and tell me for days afterwards that I run well. And, when I go for a walk, my school director calls my host mother to see if I am angry with my family because I am “wearing pants and walking fast.” It’s comical really.

My room at my new house is gigantic and my family has been gradually giving me more furniture, so now I have almost more than I need. My house doesn’t have gas (although there is the promise that gas will come) even though it seems like every other house in the village does. But I do have an electric space heater in my room that I sit in front of whenever I’m in my room and just yesterday Peace Corps sent me a hot water bottle for my bed, so that is super exciting.

My house is very close to my school, which is convenient because I really hate waking up for school (it’s still really dark…to the point that I have to carry a flashlight when I go to our latrine, to me that means it’s still time to be sleeping). After my apple breakfast, I go to school and observe classes. I will start co-teaching in January, which will be exciting because just watching classes gets old very fast. In Azerbaijan, Peace Corps volunteers always co-teach (the idea is that we will also help the teachers improve their English and show them new teaching methods), so I will be working with three of the English teachers at my school. When I start teaching, I will also be getting my own classroom even though other teachers don’t have rooms but move to the students. What I mean to say is, I’m really lucky. And, my room has even recently been wired with electricity for me, a luxury not many rooms in my school have, because (as my one of my co-teachers told me) the director is afraid that if I have to make a fire in a wood-fire heater like the other rooms have, I will light the school on fire haha. He’s probably right. In January I will also be forming conversation clubs which I can have in my classroom after school. The students are very excited about this and I get asked questions every day as to when they will begin, how I will form them, etc. It’s good that the students are so excited, but at times it is overwhelming! I particularly enjoy when they ask very simply “How can I learn to speak English?” as if I should be able to give them a list of maybe five things and magically they will be fluent.

Speaking of languages, I’m still working very hard on my Azerbaijani and am told I am doing a good job and “speak sweetly.” But I certainly make my mistakes, and I have to tell you that my favorite one was in the teachers’ meeting they had when I arrived. In my speech to introduce myself, I told all the teachers I would be living in the village for four years instead of two…oops. A teacher interrupted me to ask if I meant four, and even though I corrected it then and there, I was asked for the rest of the day if I was really going to stay for four years. Even by my host mom, who is a math teacher at school.

My host family tries very hard for me to feel welcome and comfortable, which is more than I could ask for. They have planned a big birthday party for me and my mother is constantly asking me how to make recipes more American since the party is for me. They are also very excited for Christmas and my mother is even going to cook me a turkey because I told her that’s what my family does in the US. They are also getting a new New Years Tree (yes, here they have small, fake Christmas trees which are for New Years instead of Christmas, and the fact that we have trees for Christmas not New Years to them seems very strange). I also really like the Santa Clause (or as we say, Şaxta Baba – which means Frozen Grandpa) decorations everywhere that prominently say “Merry Christmas” even though no one celebrates Christmas. I have asked what Santa does around here, since he doesn’t come and give gifts. From what I can find out, he is unemployed in Azerbaijan and has no real purpose (except to have a great name, in my opinion, and to have mini chocolate versions of him sold…next to the mini chocolate Easter Bunnies – I don’t want to know if they are left over from this past Easter or tester versions for the next!).

On that note, I’m gonna head out and just say Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all of you! I hope you are all healthy and happy and that Şaxta Baba brings you everything you want!

An Azeri Culinary Lesson

This week was really busy because of our final language test on Friday. We had 2-3 hour long tutoring sessions every night, in addition to our normal 2-4 hour language classes during the day. But, thankfully, after this week, I do actually feel very comfortable speaking Azeri. I just can't understand when other people speak it back to me...but that's only half the conversation right??

One night when coming home from a tutoring session, I came in through my family's front gate into our yard and smelled the most amazing barbeque. I walked through to my house cursing the family that lives in the smaller house in front of us thinking without a doubt that it had to be there food...and I was super jealous. But then, when I got inside, my sister walked by me and was like "I'm going to go get the food from Dad"...turns out my family has a huge tandir oven (which is a mud oven where they cook special delicious bread and kabobs and lavangi - like the most wonderful fried chicken stuffed with walnuts and other deliciousness) that I had no idea existed!?! That night we had the fantastic chicken kabobs you can see in the picture that I took when my sisters took me out to see the tandir that I knew nothing about, and then last night my father made some pretty great tandir bread. I don't know why he is suddenly cooking out there all the time (especially since it is now winter and so we would be expected to use the tandir less frequently...), but I am certainly not complaining.

In other Azeri food news, I had my first experience helping my mother cook dolma (one of the big Azeri foods, it's ground up meet, spices, butter, salt, pepper, rice, etc all mixed together and then wrapped up in an assortment of things like cabbage, grape leaves, whatever). She had already made the meat mixture, but she let me help her wrap them in the grape leave and let me tell you, I am a pretty fierce grape leave wrapper. My mom was even calling in my sisters from the other room to come see my work. Yes, I have found my calling, I will now leave Peace Corps to be a dolma wrapper.

And my final food note, it was super adorable: after my exam, my family went out to get a surprise, and in my honor we had just cake for dinner.


I must be really hungry or something. This whole post ended up being about food. Haha

Another Silly American Bayram (Holiday)

Happy Thanksgiving! I know it's a little late, but I haven't been on the internet, and I'm about to write about how I spent Thanksgiving, so it seems fairly appropriate.

For Thanksgiving, we all went over to my friend Mike's house. His father had killed a turkey (hinduşka) for us the night before and Mike had cooked it in his mother's oven. He also made some pretty fantastic garlic mashed potatoes. His mother thought he was a bit crazy with his American cooking techniques, but she was extremely proud of him when she tasted the results and kept saying how he is such a good cook. Mike wasn't the only one to have an Azeri think he was insane for how he prepared food though, because as I cooked up some stewed apples for us (the closest we could come to apple pie), my mother stood by and just kept saying "interesting... interesting" ("maraqlı... maraqlı"). And afterwards, one of my sisters tried the apples and said they tasted bad and then said the kitchen smelled awful (and let me remind you that people in America buy candles to make their houses smell like that kitchen...and I was loving it) and my other little sister wouldn't even try them. I just tell myself it was their loss because we certainly downed the stewed apples at dinner. When I brought the dish back, my mother looked in it and was like "you guys ate all of that?" That's right, fatty Americans don't mess around with Thanksgiving. We could barely move when we were done eating. Oh, and I found cranberry sauce in Baku, don't worry (if you're in my family, you probably were actually worried I couldn't survive Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce haha). Although it was no Ocean Spray, it was nice and processed and we tried to get it out in the shape of the can (because that's how all the classy people do it). Unfortunately, since to get the can open Mike's mom had to saw the end off with a knife, it was a little mangled (Look at the photo and you'll see that's kind of an understatement haha). His mom also didn't understand why I wouldn't just scoop the stuff out. She didnt' appreciate the can shape Mike and I were trying to achieve.

My Beautiful Cranberry Sauce...haha

Besides Thanksgiving, this week was just classes. And while that sounds boring and you are probably wondering why I am mentioning it at all, the reason I'm talking about classes is because all of the sudden at the end of this week, our school seems to have become the home of a sizable rat population! The other day during class we heard scratching near our trash can and, while I stood on a chair, everyone went over to see what was going on and a big old rat scurried behind our kitab şkafı (bookcase)! While that left me sufficiently freaked out (I really do not like rats), the rats weren't done with me. The next day was a holiday for Azeris but not for us Peace Corps volunteers, so we had to have the school opened especially for us. Just as Mike and I discovered that the doorman relocked the door after letting us in so we were trapped, two big rats started running right at us across the entryway! Don't worry, I found another chair to stand on until we climbed out one of the windows because we were tired of waiting for the doorman to come from his house to unlock the door. I don't like rats, but I'll admit it was fairly comical.

At the end of this week we have our second and final language test, which means we are starting up nightly tutoring sessions in addition to our normal language classes. Luckily I did well on the last test (I was deemed an "intermediate mid" Azeri speaker...if that means anything to you) and actually my score on the first test was higher than what I need on this test to become a volunteer. Just when I was starting to feel pretty good about myself for that one, I was on the phone with my mom and she put me right back in my place by saying "well yeah, but doesn't that just mean they had really low expectations for you?" Thanks Mom. (Haha I know you are reading this Mom and going "No, that's not what I meant!" and getting all embarrassed. I just think it's a funny story. And so do all the people in my language class. Who laughed at me a lot over your show of support. Haha)

Alright, I'm going to get to bed so I can wake up early and get to the internet cafe to post this, but before I go, I think I just have to mention (since you all seemed to love learning about my mysterious ankle ailment) that I woke up this morning to find that my right hand was partially swollen from another bug bite. It's nothing in comparison to the cankle I was sporting a few weeks back, but I'm a little concerned that there are some genetically modified post-Soviet bugs out to get me. It's not like I'm a Peace Corps volunteer in AFRICA where this stuff is expected (haha yes that was my obligatory dig at my wonderful sister in Benin who has informed me that she is walking around telling all her friends about my cankle. Not fair, this is my second crazy bug bite in a month and she is walking around Benin swollen-body-part-free!).

Miss you all!

Qədirli, Tovuz

To start with the important stuff, I have been placed in Qədirli, Tovuz. It’s in Northwest Azerbaijan (the red region on the map) and you can try googling it, but I’ll tell you right now that there is not much out there, even about Tovuz city (region's in Azerbaijan are called by the name of their biggest city). I’ll be the first volunteer in my specific village, but they were supposed to get someone last year and he went home after about a week of being at site. I have heard rumors it had something to do with having to chop wood every day, so maybe I’ll just have to become super jacked so I don’t freeze to death! And yes, I did learn how to say “I’m freezing to death” in Azeri class the other day haha.

In other news, I have recently discovered the wonders of running in the karate gym in my basement. No, it does not have a treadmill, actually strangely enough I hadn’t even considered anyone interpreting me saying I ran in my basement that way until I told Nathaniel and he asked if it was on a treadmill…I guess I’m more used to Azerbaijan than I thought. But really I’m just running laps of my basement with my ipod. Yes, the laps are very small (they take me about 10-15 seconds…and I’m being generous), but having this as my little escape to unwind is fantastic. Some days when I’m not in the mood for a serious run, my exercise time devolves into me just playing tag with my brother and sisters or rocking out with them to my ipod. But generally my siblings get bored of watching me after a few minutes, or I should say Cavad is kicked out by his sisters because he runs around almost tripping me. Funny story about that: I tried to tell Cavad today that he could run with me but he had to let me run in front because my legs are longer (in fact my legs are his whole body…), but instead I told him “Cavad, my shoe is cheap.” Oh Azeri, how much I screw you up. Really the sentences are fairly close (“Mənim ayaqqabım ucuzdur” instead of “Mənim ayaqlarım uzundur”…valid mistake right??), but Asya still looked at me like I was insane and was like “Cheap??” Anyway, once they’re gone I’m left alone with no one watching me except the excessive posters of Bruce Lee and Jean-Claude Van Damme, but at least they can’t yell at me when I pass by and wonder what the crazy American is doing now! Plus this way I can run for as long as I want without my family getting worried about me, even if they find it hard to comprehend that I am running down there the whole time when I’m gone for an hour (Ayna even asked me “How many laps did you do? 10?”…I had to tell her more like 100).

Haven't you heard? All the Americans have Donuz Qripi!!

It's been a slow week for me here in Azerbaijan. We were supposed to have 3 days of practice teaching to finish that portion of our training, but instead the school in Ceyranbatan where I live and have been working was closed for 2 of the days. So instead I was forced to hang around and watch lots of the show Dexter on my computer (I became addicted to watching it when my foot was fat and I had to lay in bed all the time...I've now watched the whole first 2 seasons haha).

We've heard conflicting things about if this is a school vacation that happens every year or if school was specifically closed because of swine flu (or as we call it here, donuz qripi). We haven't had any actual cases in Ceyranbatan, but supposedly today they are spraying down the entire school to disinfect it (my host mom even used the word "prophylactic" so I guess that translates to Azeri?? who knew?? I can't successfully communicate simple sentences most of the time, but now I can talk about prophylactics). One of my little sisters specifically is super paranoid about getting sick. She was giving me daily donuz qripi updates last week about how many people in AZ are sick and has been asking to eat fresh garlic so she'll be protected. She has also been begging my mother to buy her one of those medical masks to wear. She even pretended the Peace Corps had called to say that the family needed to buy a mask for me so that then she could steal it...pretty creative if you ask me! Oh 11 year olds haha.

Unfortunately the big event this week was that one of the girls in my language group had to go home (as in to the US home). Poor Mary was literally allergic to Azerbaijan itself and was just coughing and sneezing the whole time she was here. It's really strange with her gone because our language group really spends all day together...and there is no one to cough and sneeze through every language class! The extra nice twist is that there were already rumors going around Ceryanbatan that all of us Americans have swine flu and are going to make people sick, so Mary leaving probably confirmed the idea that we are all sick in their minds! The concept of allergies doesn't really seem to translate as well as prophylactic...

Saying goodbye to Mary! (sorry, the picture is kind of blurry)

Mary - Azerbaijan style: always with a tissue haha

I miss all of you and love hearing from you, so send emails, letters, blog comments, and all that good stuff! I tend to make it to the internet cafe most Sunday mornings (what in the US is Saturday night, around midnight on the East Coast and 9PM on the West...you can figure it out if you're in between the two) so if you're around you can find me on gchat and usually even video chat (I know, it's pretty crazy, I can video chat at the internet cafe here) at that time.

To keep you in suspense for my next post: I find out Wednesday where my permanent site for the next two years is....!!!

I'm Totally Going to Be a Black Belt Before Long

This week my host father put down a new mat in our karate studio basement where he used to teach karate lessons (have I mentioned that he used to be a karate instructor? I think he is going to start up again). We celebrated by him teaching me and my host siblings some moves, we busted out the boxing gloves and everything. Cavad even came down wearing the most adorable little karate suit. After our lesson, my father started showing off by doing some crazy kick moves into the punching bags (and I was able to catch him in a photo mid-jump...thank you very much, it took skill on my part too to capture that!). I think spin-kick-jumps will be the next lesson though, I wasn't really ready for intensity of that yet believe it or not... (and yes, I know most of you who know how incredibly uncoordinated I am are having difficulty even imagining me trying karate in the first place, but I'll tell you, I was kicking some major butt).

Our Halloween celebrations continued into this week when my friend Mike and I got our host families together to carve up the pumpkins he bought. But let me just tell you that pumpkins here are not like US pumpkins. They are crazy shapes...and Mike intentioinally picked some weird ones. Of course the one he gave me to start cutting had this long neck that I had to cut through to get to the seeds and it took me FOREVER. And then, even though Mike and I were supposed to be sharing the pumpkin, only my hand fit down the narrow neck of it to grab the seeds, so I seeded the whole thing and then Mike got most of the fun of carving it...thanks a lot Mike haha. But even though I bruised my hand getting the seeds out (yeah I really did bruise from it, I guess I'm super delicate here in AZ I don't know), carving these pumpkins was one of the best things I have done since I've been here. My two sisters came with me over to Mike's house to do the carving and then we carried their pumpkin home to show the rest of the family. I have never seen my host mother's face light up like it did when she saw this jack-o-lantern. She kept telling me how she had never seen anything like it and my host sister kept blowing the pumpkin kisses and stroking it, it was hilarious. They kept it on the kitchen table for like two days and just kept lighting it all the time (and then blowing the candle out so it would last longer of course) and now it is sitting outside the house where I think it will stay until it is totally rotted out haha.

True Life: I Have a Cankle

It's true. My left ankle doubled in size yesterday and now if that was the only part of me you saw, you would think I weigh about 300 pounds. Trust me, it's real cute.

It all started when I was mysteriously bitten by a bug (or so I assume) INSIDE my boot while walking home from school Friday. Yes, not only did the little sucker get in my boot, but he found the 2 inch wide band of exposed skin between my sock and my spandex pants and he got me good. My ankle didn't start swelling until that night, but it didn't waste any time once it got started. By the time I woke up Saturday my ankle had ballooned and then throughout the day on Saturday the rest of my foot followed suit. Right now my ankle has deflated a bit, but the rest of my foot is still going strong. I can sort of feel it jiggle when I walk. Did you get a good image there?

Besides my fat foot, life in Azerbaijan is good. Yesterday was Halloween in the states, which isn't celebrated here, but I got to tell my host sisters all about it and they came Trick or Treating at my bedroom door wearing a strange Santa mask thing haha. They also watched a lot of Disney programming that was clearly supposed to be for Halloween in the states but somehow made it over here and was translated into Azeri...I don't ask questions. The American TV we get here can be so bizarre. I have been watching Corwin's Quest where Jeff Corwin has been hanging out with baby elephants, Guinness Book of World Records where some idiot dove from 30 feet into a foot of water, and the Dennis the Menace cartoon. And yes, someone has taken the time to dub all of these shows into Azerbaijani.

I hope all of you are doing well and your ankles are a normal size!