The Pre-Holiday of All Pre-Holidays

This week was the fourth and final pre-holiday before Novruz (which actually starts tonight!), which means it was like a mega pre-holiday (I'd say it might even qualify as a holiday...but the term here is pre-holiday, so I won't fight that). From what I hear, it was just kind of like a warm-up for what will start tonight and we will do way more of a lot of the things we did a little bit of already.

To try to explain some of the traditions, I should start by saying that Novruz has some parts that make it a strange combination of our Halloween and Easter. For example, instead of Trick or Treating, we go around "throwing our hats" at people's houses. This means that we creep up to their door, put our hat (as in like a winter hat, I didn't see any baseball cap types, but I don't think you would be turned away for that or anything) by the door, knock, and run away. The owner of the house then has to open the door and fill your hat with sweets. I'm not going to lie, I do find it a little bit of a strange idea to put delicious, sticky paxlava (baklava) - one of the Azeri national sweets - in a winter hat where it is going to become covered in lots of little fibers, so I did my best to get my paxlava out of my hat as quickly as possible and into my plastic bag....and then put the hat back on my head? Again, not the most sanitary of holidays, but really, I'm not complaining as people were giving me lots of free paxlava, and what's better than free paxlava? So that's the Halloween part. Oh, and there is also this little song that we as hat-throwers were supposed to sing, but I don't really know when that was supposed to happen as we were hiding once the hats were thrown and then by the time we came out of hiding, we already had the goods, so it wasn't like they could be held hostage by the homeowner until we sang. But I did have to learn it while walking from house to house even though we never performed it for reals. And then for the Easter part, they color eggs like we do, but instead of hiding them like us, they fight with them (hey now, it's no less logical than hiding the things around your house, now is it?). Here's how the battle goes down: two people each have eggs, one person takes their egg and whacks it against the other person's, if your egg cracks you must give it to the other person. If you are a good egg cracker, you will soon have a lot of hardboiled eggs, a real treat. Unfortunately, I am not good at this egg fighting thing. I have yet to win...but give me some credit, we only fought with 2 eggs repeatedly so far (and in the end my student gave them both to me anyway out of pity haha), and I'm hoping to have better luck now that the big holiday is here.

There are some parts of the last pre-holiday that are apparently only on that day and we won't repeat them at the main event. One of those is that people go around eavesdropping at their neighbors' houses. The idea is that if you hear them say good things, you will have a good year (Novruz is a kind of New Year celebration). When I was going out to do my listening, I realized that this was going to be a little difficult for me as I still have trouble understanding people who are actually speaking TO me, let alone when I'm struggling to hear them through a door. Lucky for me, my people were watching TV and all I had to translate was a laugh. Pretty standard. Laughing = Good things. Yessss.

In preparation for all these pre-holidays, we have done some cooking of sweets and my host mom has been making some dinners that are a bit more special than usual, but now that the real deal is here, we've been pulling out all the stops. We have been in baking overdrive at my house for basically this entire week. I learned how to make şəkərbura (one of the national sweets) a few weeks ago, so those skills were tested, and I was also taught how to make paxlava. The whole process was made a little more difficult by the fact that we lost power in the middle of our preparations and then had to bring our paxlava to a house in the neighboring village to bake it because the power didn't come back on for about 18 hours (stupid windy day), but I can tell you after extensive taste-testing that although we were a little worried about it, our paxlava came out just fine in the end. Phew. I think the şəkərbura are also fine, but I haven't eaten any of them yet. I'm definitely more of a paxlava fan. I'm going to assume that most of you know what paxlava is, but that you probably don't know şəkərbura (pronounced "shekerbura"). They are half-circle shaped cookie things that are filled with a mixture of sugar and grated nuts. It's actually the same nut/sugar mixture that we use for paxlava (some old xanam was really smart when she created these treats because she saved everyone a lot of work by making the two most popular sweets have the same ingredients! Even the dough is the same! Making them together is a snap).

Alright, I have to rush home before my family gets cranky that I'm spending too much time away from home just before the holiday, but to all of you bayramınız mübarək- happy holiday!Decorating a şəkərbura
Some şəkərbura before baking: one undecorated so you can see the before and after!
Our delicious paxlava

This Week We Started Jumping Fires

The biggest holiday in Azerbaijan is called Novruz. It is coming up on the 21st of March, so I'll write more about that when it actually happens (although I get told about it pretty much every day by just about every person in the village, so I think by now I could narrate you the whole day without having experienced it), but leading up to the holiday we have 4 weekly mini-holidays. Every Tuesday starting this week, we get to eat lots of sweets and desserts and all that normal holiday stuff, but we also get to jump over bonfires. Yep, that's right, I actually jumped over a fire three times the other night (I don't know why 3, but it has to be in sets of 3 they told me) and I didn't fall, light myself on fire, burn myself, or any other assorted disasters you might be envisioning knowing my history of being extremely coordinated. Thank you, I know, I'm incredibly impressive. This week's holiday was also our neighbor's birthday, so I don't know how typical it was of the pre-holidays, but I spent the night sitting with him and about 10 other young guys in their 20's while they drank vodka shots and told me to stop speaking English to my friend Beth (who ended up celebrating the holiday at my house because the marşrutka - van, bringing us from town broke down on the road so my students' father saw us walking down the road, took pity on us, gave us each an orange for the holiday, and brought us to my house, where the bonfire was already blazing, so she just stuck around and showed me up by jumping the fire before me - and when it was blazing much stronger than when I jumped haha). Every one of these Tuesdays is devoted to a different element: water, fire, air, and earth, in that order. I'm not sure how that changes the holiday though, because there wasn't anything water-y about the other night. I'll have to investigate this further. Good thing I have 4 weeks of holidays!

I've been realizing recently that I drink a lot of çay (pronounced the same as chai but in Azerbaijan that is just the word for any tea). And I mean a lot. For a while I was able to convince myself that while some days I certainly imbibed an excessive amount, there HAD to be days when I didn't have any, so it evened out. But then I tried to think of days when I didn't drink any...and I couldn't think of any. So I started keeping track of how much çay I have (yeah, I made a list, it was a very me thing to do I know). Get this - over the course of 7 days:
Maximum cups in a day: 9
Minimum cups in a day: 3
Average daily cups: 5.4
It was a very scientific study of course, and now I've officially concluded that I'm constantly hopped up on çay and I will eventually drink myself to death. Stage and intervention if you will, because even though I have realized how much I am drinking, it hasn't even slowed me down...I've even started craving the stuff, which is just strange because in the states I never drank coffee and only drank tea when I was sick, so this is really new for me.

Moment of the week: Taking a shower. Put a ton of shampoo in my hair. The motor for the water breaks...which means no more water from the shower. Please imagine me standing in my towel, my hair completely sudsy, yelling out the door of the hamam (shower building/room) across the yard to the house for someone to come and rescue me. And please know that my yard is just off the village center where there is a computer club where all the young boys of the town hang out...and they like to stand outside. I don't know that they saw me, but I can tell you there is a decent chance they heard me yelling and glanced over. My mom and sister eventually heard me (when I got up the guts to yell loud enough) and, after they laughed at me, gave me two buckets of water to finish my shower. Luckily it wasn't a very cold day, so standing around waiting to finish showering wasn't the hell it could have been!

I Love Letters!

I got a letter this week, and I think it's a great example of the interesting postal situation I find myself in. For one thing, it's a joke around my village that the post office didn't have to work until I arrived. I guess no one else has a mom in America who likes to send them fluoride mouthwash and hand sanitizer. Go figure. Maybe that also explains the prevalence of gold teeth. Anyway, now that the post office has sprung to life, and I mean that in the sense of a sluggish existence, I can get letters and packages all the way from that distant land called America brought straight to my village center! It's actually really great when I think about it, especially because a lot of other volunteers have to go into the cities to get their things. But perhaps my favorite part of the process is how I find out that I have mail. It's usually something like a student coming to my classroom, interrupting my class, asking me to come into the hall, and telling me that there is something for me at the post office. It's a very urgent process, you see. As the letter has already taken a million years traveling to me, those extra seconds matter! After that though, it's a game of cat and mouse between the postal staff and me.I think they quickly dead bolt the door to the building whenever they think I might be coming. Even the meat business that someone runs from the post office suddenly disappears (and yes, I mean like a butcher shop...well just a table of meat...in the post office...because "mail" and "meat" both start with m? I don't know). SO this particular letter was from the ever wonderful Heather. It was a birthday card. For those of you who have forgotten in my prolonged absence, my birthday is December 27th. Now, I will admit that Heather was a bit late in mailing it, as it was sent out on January 4th, but that doesn't really change the fact that it came into my possession on the 17th of February, over 6 weeks later haha. But, always trying to look for the bright side, I just thought it was great that I could basically have a second birthday! Because really, opening the card and seeing that it said Happy Birthday, even I took a second to ask myself when my birthday is! Now, you may be reading this and thinking "well then I'm never going to send you anything as it's going to take so long to reach you that it'll be outdated," but to add to your confusion, and mine, about how this system works, you should know that on the 9th of February I received a Valentine's Day card from my mom...sent from the same state as Heather's card, but sent 18 days after Heather's. Hmm. And then there is the other mystery that when my mom decides to send me a big box of goodies, those can miraculously make the journey faster than any small envelopes. The only thing I can think of is that the postal gods here in Azerbaijan are real jokesters who like to play games with my mail. So, in conclusions, I think you should all get out there and see if you are in the favor of the Azerbaijani postal gods. I promise to always write back, so you can join in the fun of seeing how long this process really takes! Plus (added bonus!) I'll put your letter on my wall of mail and then you'll be famous here in my village because not only does the whole village seem to know when a letter arrives for me, but they afterward find out who it was from and all visitors to my room ask who wrote each card (Heather, your card with the shoes on it is a big hit, as is yours Jane with the cakes). If you want to be guilt tripped into writing to me, you should know that at one point my sisters laughed ab me because they said that my friends don't love me since the majority of the cards are from my mom (don't worry Mom, I still love everything you send me, keep it coming!). Clearly this means you guys need to help me out, my reputation is suffering. My family also has a tendency to compare people's handwriting, probably because they can't actually read what any of it says, so make sure you write neatly! Happy writing!

My mail wall. If you don't see your letter, the postal system either really hates you and it never arrived, or you really hate me and you never sent one haha.

A Winter Wonderland

Fountain Square in the snow!

A view from the train

So I was sitting here, thinking to myself that my life is boring and I have nothing to write about...and then I realized that I mean, well for one, I live in Azerbaijan - how is that not always exciting? And two, I just spent my weekend in Baku!

I was coming into town because we had a meeting this weekend about our summer camp for girls. The meeting was supposed to be on Friday afternoon, so those of us from Tovuz jumped on the Thursday night train. Now, usually the night train takes 12 hours, which is already long for the fact that you are only going about 250 miles, but we won't get into that. Instead, we'll talk about the fact that this time, the ride took 20 hours! It started snowing during the night and that meant that instead of arriving at 9:30AM, we spent the day just stopped in the middle of nowhere! And then we'd go a bit further...and stop again. There were a bunch of us traveling together and between a group of 5 of us I think we had only 2 apples, 2 packs of peanut butter crackers, a package of twizzlers, and 10 peanut butter patty Girl Scout cookies. I'm just saying, we were a bit hungry. And a bit bored. And maybe you are saying to yourself that we should have been more prepared, but usually you arrive bright and early in the morning with just a bit of hunger that makes you even more excited to run right over to some coffee shop and to begin to enjoy the wonders of Baku! But no. We didn't arrive, which meant no wonders.

We eventually made it into Baku, the meeting having been canceled because no one was there for it. The roads were treacherous because the snow was just melting and then freezing, so we were told we weren't allowed to go anywhere outside the city. I've managed not to fall as I've run around town all weekend (I know you're impressed), but I can tell you that many people have not been so lucky and we've had a number of people wipe out (including my sitemate Beth who, while we were literally just standing and talking while waiting for a bus, suddenly just disappeared as she fell on her butt!). I also have to say that I wrote this sentence about not falling and then went outside to the store and had my closest call all weekend, go me.

I got to watch the Superbowl! We all went over the Hyatt, which is way too expensive for us to actually stay there, but great for us to use as our late night football watching spot (and I mean late, kickoff for us was 3:30AM...I got home just before 7 haha). I was cheering for the Saints, so I really enjoyed the game, despite the extreme exhaustion.

Well, I'm going to be getting on the night train home in only about an hour now (my concentration today is just gone, maybe it's the lack of sleep, but this post has taken me forever to write!). Let's hope this one isn't another 20 hours...it did just start to snow. Again.

I'm going to add some pictures to this post when I get back to site, so check back to see the pretty, pretty snow!

Just a Quick Message to Say Hi!

After I posted last time about being cold, I went home and had two big packages from my mom waiting for me (please note the picture I included of the bags that the Azerbaijani post system put them in, and note that my host sister here thought that was how my mom mailed them...I was like umm, no, she didn't put them in gigantic bags). In the boxes were a ton of toe warmers, enough, in fact, to keep my poor toes warm for I believe I counted 21 days! You have no idea how excited I was haha. I have also perfected the art of layering long underwear pants under 2 pairs of spandex pants, topped off with a skirt (during school) or sweat pants (after). I will tell you though, that many elastic waistbands can really start to dig into you by night time!

Highlight of the week: My school director gave me a key to the school yesterday! I guess hew as tired of me calling him all the time to get the building opened for my conversation clubs. But whatever the reason, I'm really happy. Now I don't have to stand out in the cold waiting for a key to come! And I don't have to watch my students climb in through school windows to try to get us inside...and then watch them get yelled at by the groundskeeper afterwards haha. I also have a promise for a key to the computer lab which is usually always locked. Keep your fingers crossed!

I've had a cold for more than a week now. It's really getting old. Especially because of things like when I use the fluoride mouthwash that I just got in my mom's package, I almost choke and die because I can't breathe through my nose. I know, you can feel bad for me now. At least because I have to brush my teeth at the tap in the yard I get to look at the stars when I'm suffocating. It's the little things.

On that note, I'm gonna go brush my teeth (I'm writing this the night before I'm going to post it...or at least before I plan to post it, as long as I survive another round of mouthwash).

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