Azerbaijani Weddings

Having attended 3 in a week, I feel it is a good time for me to write a little bit about the Azerbaijani "toy" (wedding).

The first thing that you should know is that, here in Azerbaijan, we like the fun of our weddings to last as long as possible, so we have two weddings for every couple that gets married, the bride's wedding and the groom's.  I find them to be more alike than different, so I'll start with a general description of all the things that are the same and then get into the differences.  The wedding can either be at your house (you set up a huge tent) or at a wedding palace/restaurant (see the photo).  Either way, the family throwing the wedding still generally cooks the food (there is only one wedding palace - the most expensive - in Tovuz where they will do all the food for you...I haven't been to this one yet), which means they have all their friends and neighbors over to help them prepare.  As 2 of the 3 weddings I went to this week were for my cousin (remember, 2 weddings per couple!), I got to go help prepare for my family's wedding, the boy's wedding.  I was mostly just helping prepare food for the people preparing food (yes, you feed the workers that are working on the food...of course) although I really felt like the people I was making food for were really doing a lot more sitting and talking and playing nard - a game like backgammon - than preparing food.  But I  did watch a massive meat preparation process.  By the end of the night, 9 sheep had been butchered (I know because a meat rack was set up and they were just hanging up there after slaughter while we worked).

Toys generally have the same food (the photo is of the starter food...always crepes with ground meat - refried after they are filled to make them extra healthy, chicken, assorted salads - which usually means any type of salad with mayo, but this toy actually had some more vegetable, non-mayo salads...as a person who hates mayo, I was pretty psyched), but that does not make all toys the same.  I can always tell you afterward how good a toy was by how many kabobs I got to eat.  At a smaller toy, they bring one round of kabobs and maybe only one kind, but at others they bring out different kinds and many rounds.  Those toys are delicious, the others just leave you wanting more kabobs.  Most people don't stay until they cut the cake, because you have to last about 4 1/2 hours in for that.

Besides the food, toys are mostly just someone or groups of people coming up to the microphone, saying their "congratulations!" and "let you be happy"s and then that group dances.  So really you spend a lot of time just sitting at a toy unless it is your family, in which case you generally go and dance with each group of guests that dances.  I danced a lot this week as I was kind of family at the 2 weddings (not immediate family, but cousins are expected to dance a lot, let me tell you), and the uncle who was the father of the groom is also my school's director so all the teachers were there to do teacher dances with me.

And that's really all there is to say about the wedding party itself.  You really mostly just sit and eat.  And the music is too loud to even hear the person next to you, so you really just sit (let me tell you, at one toy I was seated right next to the speakers and a night at a toy is really like a less fun night at a rock concert, I left with my ears ringing).

Oh and how could I forget to say that you must go up to the dais where the bride and groom are sitting and have the photographer take your picture with them and then buy the picture for like a manat.  Then you can show all the visitors to your house pictures of all the toys you have been to.  Very important. 

Now for the differences between the two.

For the girl's toy, the groom's family comes to her house with a lot of presents.  They dance (because there is a little band running around with the family) and bring the presents into her house and take photos/video (because every toy has a multi-man camera crew) and then take her off to the wedding palace (or if it's at her house I guess they just stay there...I haven't been to a home girl's toy).  For this wedding, the bride can wear whatever color dress she wants.

For the boy's toy, his family again comes to the girl's house, but this time they take back the presents, dance again, take more photos and videos.  She must be wearing a white dress for this toy.  After her brother has wrapped a red ribbon around her waist and promised her things like to buy her a car or things for any kids she has (he never actually follows through with these promises I hear), the groom's family takes her back to his house.  There, they kill a sheep for her and wipe some of the blood on both the bride and groom's foreheads (side note: I've seen animals killed before, but I felt really badly for the sheep this weekend.  I saw him tied up waiting to be killed and he was shaking and peed himself.).  Then a red cloth is laid down over the blood and the couple walks over it to the house.  The bride must break a plate by stepping on it before entering the house.  And then she is taken into what will be their bedroom which her family has come and prepared sometime in the week-ish before.  The couple will live with the groom's parents for at least a little while after the wedding and the youngest son usually stays with his parents forever.  A few more pictures and dancing and then you go off to the wedding palace.

Coming to the groom's house.  Please notice how poofy the dress is.  This is a requirement of the dresses for both the bride and groom's toys.  It is also mandatory to have lots of fake jewels and sequins of course.

I'm going to be honest here and say I really don't understand the need for two weddings.  They really are basically the same thing, and especially in a place like a village where, since all your friends and neighbors and relatives come to your wedding and they probably know the bride and the groom, that means the same people are at both!  And for my cousin, both weddings were even in the same wedding palace!  As they are only 2 days apart, they aren't even separate in my memory of it!  It felt like deja vu all night the second time around!  The only thing I can think of is that the bride's toy is like a dry run.  This time the groom doesn't completely steal her away, he just drives her around town, sits with her a while at the wedding palace, and brings her back.  But the next time he comes, he brings her to his house, scars her for life by killing a sheep in front of her and wiping the blood on her face, and then who'd want to go home after that?  So he gets to keep her. 

Oh, I also forgot to say that at both toys, there are 2 attendants who stay with the couple.  One from the groom's family who carries a big mirror and the other from the girl's family who carries a lamp.  I don't really know the significance, but I've been trying to learn more.  I'll keep you posted as I learn more.

After the wedding day, the wedding lives on forever because you get a video of the toy from the camera crew and you can then make un-suspecting guests who come to your house watch the video for months to come.  This video follows everything from the stuff I talked about at the houses to repeatedly scanning person by person across all the tables as people eat and to getting close-ups of people dancing (remember how I said in another post about dancing the cameramen love to follow a dancing American?  I've had people run across the room to get the cameraman when I've started dancing haha).  These videos thrill Azerbaijanis.  I find them more uncomfortable, but I watch anyway.

Alright, I guess that wraps up my little (big) lesson about Azerbaijani weddings.  Any questions class?

My Life’s Little Successes and Failures of the Week

1.  I got a haircut for the second time in this country and I don’t hate it, even if it is a bit more layered than I would have liked – SUCCESS

2. I spoke at graduation in Azerbaijani without getting laughed off the stage and apparently danced well afterwards (yes, part of the ceremony is every teacher that speaks taking a few minutes to dance with the students) – SUCCESS

3.  I later learned that the microphone was so quiet, barely anyone could hear me talking at graduation - FAILURE

Son Zəng - Graduation

4. I made it to 7 different parties on Graduation Day and another the next day – exhausting SUCCESS

5. My computer class for teachers was supposed to start this week, but my counterpart told all the other teachers the wrong time and I waited at the school for an hour and a half doing nothing – FAILURE

6. I got a group of girls to play football (read: soccer) for like an hour when they had never played before and it’s not really socially acceptable for them to just come out and play, but with me it seems to be olar (ok) – SUCCESS

7. The ball I bought for volleyball split a seam within the first 3 hours of playing with it.  I guess that’s what you get for 2 manat - FAILURE

8. All of my summer activities seem to be pretty popular, but the most popular so far was the very first activity I had.  It is an activity for us to all go out for a walk, designed because people don’t really walk here and thus don’t see the really pretty views outside of town except by a car.  I had 32 students walking with me.  Knowing that I get stared at a lot when I’m by myself and walking for fun is socially strange in Azerbaijan, imagine what happened when I was leading a group of 32 students down the road.  But I managed to walk with them for about an hour and a half without losing anyone or having anyone get hit by one of the crazy drivers - SUCCESS

9. I got a letter from my dad which I immediately noticed was very late in coming (mailed April 27^th), but I initially just wrote it off as the quirks of getting mail here.  Then later that night, when the envelope was sitting on my desk, I noticed that it was stamped as having arrived in ZAMBIA on the 6^th of May.  I guess I can see them getting Zambia from Azerbaijan...but regardless, I think it is pretty cool that my mail got to me even though it first went to Zambia – eventual SUCCESS

10. I bought a dress I actually like in Ganja, something I didn’t think I could find in an Azerbaijani store – SUCCESS

11.  I found out that the grant I wrote to get money for our nationwide girls’ summer camp got approved.  And it wasn’t even just a grant from Peace Corps! And it drove me really crazy writing it, so I’m pretty happy it was worth the time – SUCCESS

12. I am already tired of mosquito bites and this is just the beginning.  It promises to be a long summer, especially if they continue to succeed in biting me on areas of my body that are always covered with clothing...how do they do that? – FAILURE

13.  I cooked a dinner that my family actually liked!  It is just a pasta with a tomato sauce that I made with a lot of vegetables...and my mother actually ate it in its entirety, one sister only picked out the eggplant, another sister picked out all the vegetables and left them on her plate, and the third sister strategically scooped only the tomato sauce out of the dish (after scowling when she learned she couldn’t just use tomato paste because I had finished the jar while cooking...oops). But, they requested that I cook it again (I’ve actually cooked it twice now) and they were raving about it around the neighbourhood, so I’ve already had to write it out in Azerbaijani for one neighbour– SUCCESS 

14. My dream has finally come true.  For those of you who I haven't dared admit this to yet, since arriving at site in December, I've been living the Azerbaijani life of showering only once a week.  If that.  But there has always been the promise of this magical time called "summer" when we can shower everyday!  Turns out that just means rinsing off with a little soap and not washing our hair, but I will take it!  I got 2 (count 'em TWO) half showers between real showers this week.  Feeling clean... - SUCCESS

15. I've developed this ridiculous chest cough and was seriously weirding out the Azerbaijanis when I was shopping in Ganja because in Azerbaijan you aren't really supposed to show you are sick in public, so things like coughing are a little olmaz (not ok).  I was looking a bit like a pis qız (bad girl) - FAILURE

A Few Little Glimpses Into My Life

Ok I'm too lazy to write a coherent post, so here are just a few little bits to update you on what's going on:

1. Yesterday was the last day of school for the year (woo hoo!) and today is Republic Day.  On Monday we will have "son zəng" which means "last bell" and is when the 11th form students graduate (they only have 11 grades here).

2.  A few days ago I was guesting (which just means going to someone's house to be their guest) at this house where the father keeps bees and is obsessed with them.  He wanted to show me the bees, so I got all suited up in the bee suit and went out to see them.  One of the stupid little jerks stung me through my sock right on the tip of my big toe.  I was really pissed.  And then since then, I somehow got like 3 other bug bites on the same toe.  It really sucks.  I think this country hates my left foot because when some other bug stung/bit me a few months ago and my whole foot swelled up, that was also my left foot.

3. I have watched a Rocky movie a night for the last three nights and plan to continue one a day until I finish all of them (can you tell that I'm avoiding planning for my summer activities?).  I'd never watched any of them before, so at least they are new for me and I'm not wasting my time watching things I've already seen (that's a lie, I've also watched a few episodes of Sex and the City and we know I've seen all of those before).  Anyway, because my dad loves to quote Rocky constantly and now I actually know what he is talking about, I have to throw out an international "Yo, Adrian!" to him.

4. I got to videochat with Dan Minot tonight, a very special treat.  I should be getting to the internet earlier in the day now that school is out, so maybe I'll get to talk to more of you!  Miss you!

Potentially My Best Day Yet...And Then I Got Sick

This weekend, my friend Connie who lives in a nearby region asked if she could come down to Tovuz and go for a walk/hike with me.  I’d told her many times how Beth and I walk out towards the river and it’s absolutely stunning, so she had been vowing to come down for a while.  We decided that the three of us would pack some food and try to make it all the way to the river on Saturday, something so far we had only done in a car.  We set off at about noon through the now dried but previously ridiculously muddy roads.  They were difficult to walk on as the road had been so destroyed by cars and sheep when it was muddy, but once we got out of town and more into the rolling hills, there were no problems.  Besides a few cars that went by bearing people to their “country homes” by the river and the stray shepherd, we were totally and wonderfully alone.  The weather was fantastically sunny but not too hot (yes Dad, I wore my sunscreen, and yes I still got a sunburn, but not too bad...).  We seemed to hit a snag when we were finally making our descent towards the river about 2 hours later, because we found that our road really only led to some homesteads instead of to a place to picnic on the banks (the other times when we had gone by cars we took more real roads, but this way was more fun for a walk).  At first we had dogs starting to come at us barking menacingly from the closest house and we began to think crap, we have to go back..and probably fast.  But then we noticed a nice man on horseback in the yard calling off the dogs (literally) and motioning for us to come.  It was a very nice little house where an extended family from my village had come out for the day to make “yuxa” (think a gigantic tortilla-ish bread...like 2 or 3 feet in diameter, I have put in a picture from watching my aunts make it in the village).  It was so strange to have walked for two hours and then to have people just be like “oh, it’s Jess!” and have them introduce me to one of my student’s fathers and ask me how my co-teacher is doing (I impressed them by saying it was her son’s birthday and they were all like oh my gosh, she knows better than we do!  As they had forgotten and they are even related).  They helped us climb through their paddock, after giving us çay and trying to feed us, but settling for giving us a ton of cheese and yuxa to carry with us to the river.  We made our way down to the banks, having to jump over a little stream that I inevitably stepped in while jumping across (who’s surprised?).  We picnicked by the river and Beth nearly gave me a heart attack pushing away clumps of dirt where the bank is eroding and could potentially drop off at any time (in fact we were even sitting on a sort of bench like area where a lot of land had fallen away so as to create a lower level leading closer to the water).  On our way back, a man from the next homestead who was visiting his neighbor at the house where we had had çay, helped us up to his house to protect us from dogs.  He even gave Connie his horse and walked her along on with it (that horse was booking it, let me tell you, Beth and I were trotting behind panting).  When we got to his house, we again had çay and were offered another meal and a ride home, which we declined and set out for our walk back, making it home at about 6:30.  It was just such a nice afternoon of Azerbaijani kindness.  Here we were, the crazy Americans just appearing out of the hills, and trust me, everyone in this area thinks we are absolutely insane for walking that whole way on foot, but they didn’t even lecture us on how we were doing things we shouldn’t be doing and we were going to die or be eaten by dogs (yes, I do usually have these conversations when people from the village see me walking).  They were so sincere and sweet and happy to see us and gave us some good joking conversation too.

You’d think my day would be complete when I got home, but no.  I had been planning to cook ratatouille all week for myself and my family, and the timing couldn’t have been better as it ended up that both Beth and Connie were there to enjoy the “American” (read really just non-Azerbaijani) food.  We wolfed it down, laughing as we saw my sisters’ disgusted faces (they weren’t big fans…).  And then the day was rounded out with a little guesting adventure to my counterpart’s house to say happy birthday to her son…and to try to be fed a whole other meal.  We were able to get away with pretty much just the cake, but not by any fault of my teacher’s to food-push her hardest!

It’s days like this that I like the best.  I get to remember that where I live is beautiful and not always muddy and disgusting.  I get to enjoy Azerbaijani hospitality when I actually need it and not when I’m having to wrench my arm away from a well-meaning xanɩm (woman) who is dragging me to eat dolma at her house and making me late for class.  And I get to find a good balance between fun with my American friends and sharing them with my family/village so they can enjoy their company too.

 Connie and Beth

Beth and me at our happiest!

Connie and Me

Connie getting a ride to protect her from dogs...taken while Beth and I ran to keep up

Notice the thistle that is literally is tall as that man!

So that was Saturday.  On Sunday I started to feel a little bit sick and by Monday I felt like complete crap.  Now it is Wednesday and I feel much better (thankfully we had Monday off from school because it is our beloved former president - and current president's father - Heydar Baba's birthday...which meant I got to sleep a lot), but in the time I was sick I got a lot of reminders of the interesting ideas Azerbaijanis have about illness...

Reasons I was Told I Got Sick:
1. I took a shower on Sunday
2. I walked all the way to the river
3. My new jacket for spring suits me too well and everyone is looking at me with jealousy
4. I wore sandals outside without socks
5. I drank cold water

Ways to Get Better:
1. Drink tea with one/all of the following fruit jams - blackberry, raspberry, cherry, and other fruits I can't translate
2. Don't stop drinking tea until you are sweating out the illness
3. Wear a safety pin under your clothes to protect you from other people's jealous/evil thoughts 

Rain, Rain Go Away

We have had a very depressing few weeks of rain here in Azerbaijan.  It has been so wet and muddy that I've had to start walking a different way to school because the field I usually cross I now refer to as a sea (you can see it in the picture for proof).  I'm lucky though because many parts of Azerbaijan have had a lot of flooding and landslides.  Even here in Tovuz one village had a landslide that killed a family, but it wasn't where I am, no worries.  We've just had inconvenient mud, which is especially inconvenient when being muddy is apparently a sign of being a "bad girl" (and here I just thought it was a sign that I had walked to school!).  I just say I'll clean my shoes when they won't get covered again the second I step out of my house's entryway.  The rain seems to be finally going away a bit though, so keep your fingers crossed!

Along with the rain, spring has brought many very adorable baby animals to the village.  At my house we have like 10 little baby chicks who have been living in a box in the kitchen with their mother because the rain has made it too cold outside.  They smell a bit when they are let out of the box to eat, but I think it's forgivable because their just cheeping balls of fluff and don't mean to make our dinner table smell like a chicken coop.  I am not as forgiving of the geese though.  I already didn't like geese before, but with their babies they are really spiteful creatures!  Give them the biggest berth possible when you are passing them on the road and they will still come at you hissing and menacingly elongating their neck as they charge.  I'm just glad we don't have any at my house because I've heard stories of other volunteers having to viciously fight their way to be allowed into the bathroom because of a territorial goose.  Spiteful, I'm telling you.

Pen Pals In America

This week has been very busy for me because my students received answers from their pen pals in America.  Peace Corps has a program to connect volunteers with classes in America so we can help spread information about the country where we are serving.  The classroom I was assigned is a 5th grade class in Cohasset, MA. Figuring that I would try to keep the kids a similar age, when I set up our pen pal program, I had my 5th grade class and a few members of my 6th grade class (because my class is smaller than the American class) write letters.  As we were writing our second set of letters this week though, a lot of my older students have learned about the program and gotten very jealous!  They also want pen pals in America!  I told them that I didn't really think they wanted to be writing to American 10 and 11 year olds, but if they wanted I would put out a call on my blog to see if anyone wanted to be pen pals with one of my Azerbaijani students.  No, this does not get you off the hook for writing to me and I will be very sad to hear that my students are hearing from my friends more than I am, but if you want to add an Azerbaijani student to your list of correspondents, let me know!

Mouse Trap

Unfortunately, I'm not talking about the family fun boardgame, but rather my bedroom.  When I was in Baku, our house and specifically my room, got mice.  Fun right?  Wrong.  Those little bastards managed to eat there way first through 2 layers of thick plastic bags into my instant oatmeal packets and then, when I got home and cleaned up the oatmeal mess, my tampons (tasty??) and my stationary (so if you get a letter from me that looks a bit eaten, know it wasn't me that got hungry enough to eat paper, it's just my little buddies saying hi).  I have put down a number of traps in the form of mouse glue on pieces of cardboard, but so far I've proven a very bad mouse trapper.  I know they are around though because 2 nights ago I was up half the night listening to them scratching around in my desk and I think my wardrobe.  Last night I bailed and went over to Beth's house to sleep.  The thing is, I don't really know what I will do if I ever find one of the little buggers stuck to my traps because, fun fact: I'm really scared of mice.  Yes, I know they aren't going to hurt me, but they freak me out.  I'll keep you posted, wish me luck.

Golden Fish, Please Help Me!

I know, it's crazy, I'm posting again and I only posted 2 days ago!  And I changed the format of my blog! (Yes, that is a picture from Tovuz up at the top) That's because I'm in Baku, the capital, but more specifically the land of plentiful internet!  I have been staying at a hotel with the best sitemate ever, my friend Beth.  It was her birthday this weekend, so we made the trip down to Baku.  First we helped score essays for that English writing competition I mentioned before.  While this was certainly boring and stressful at times, it was also really fun just hanging around the Peace Corps Lounge reading essays with other volunteers and laughing at some of the really fantastic things our students wrote.  Some of the best quotes of the day:
1. See you soon, famous.
2. I must see Jeff Hardy.  I must go to Smack Down.
3. THESE ARE MY THINKS!
4. I must be my friend America.
5. Golden Fish can give me a computer. I have 4 wish.  It's no many.
6. Golden Fish, please, help me!
7. Do you know what happens if all the colour are mixed?  You can check it.
8. I don't live little.  Butterfly always dead.
9. If women were in the army, it would be better.  And, better, honestly awesome.
10. I want to buy knowledge in America country.

Then, after we had finished judging, we set out to have a great birthday weekend.  I have to send out a big, big thank you to Beth's fiance Dennis who gave us money to do her birthday up right (yeah, it was her birthday present, but I so reaped just as many benefits).  We went to nice restaurants, stayed in this nice hotel with free wireless, and just went around the city enjoying ourselves.  In other words, it was awesome.  Just the break we needed.  Today we are going to go off and do our own things for a few days (I'm going back to Ceyranbatan to see my old host family), and then we have 2 days of training for all the teacher volunteers here in Baku before I go home.

Beth in our hotel room.  That's happiness, right there.

To take a step back to before I came to Baku, last week in my village, a litter of orphaned wild puppies were found.  While I'm usually just ambivalent to the wild dogs, not being mean to them or scared of them like most of the Azerbaijanis, I just couldn't stand seeing these little abandoned puppies!  I was happy to find out that a lot of people around the village were adopting them, so by the time I actually saw where they were (because I saw little boys playing with them and carrying them around by their legs...) on Thursday afternoon, there were only 4 left.  I was really worried about them because it started raining later in the afternoon and I knew they would be hungry, so I started caring for them.  I can tell you, this is not normal in Azerbaijan.  I made quite a site when I first went to feed them and stood there holding them in a towel (as in the dogs were in a towel, I was clothed, that would have made it way more scandalous).  But while some people just laughed me off as the crazy American, I am very happy to report that my family and our family friend the local shopkeeper really helped me take care of them.  My sister Nuranә, who is deathly afraid of dogs, even puppies (she would hide behind me when we used to see the puppy at my host grandpa's...past tense as that puppy died in a mysterious week when 3 puppies on that street died...I'm thinking bad canal water) was the one who suggested going to the shopkeeper and trying to get a crate and filling it with unwanted clothes from our house.  And then my host mom even let us bring out this old winter coat she didn't want any more!  But even though they were very supportive of me helping the first day, I think I overstepped it a bit when some kids brought one of the puppies to my house on Friday (they were trying to take the last un-adopted puppy to their house, so I asked them to tell me if they had to return it so I could bring food, but instead they just returned the puppy to me).  Well this little puppy, who I named Malako (Azerbaijani for the color beige and also cream as in milk...and what I was feeding them), was shivering and scared and I just couldn't have that.  So I got a towel and used it to hold her against my stomach like women do with their babies on their backs...and then I brought her in my house that way.  She was a perfect angel!  She didn't pee on me or anything, and she got so much better, warm and more energetic and comfortable.  But my family was clearly thinking oh no, she wants to keep this one.  I have a theory that they started calling everyone around the village trying to find an adoptive family.  Luckily, they were able to find homes for the last two remaining puppies (eventually a second puppy returned, who I had named Çirkli, Azeri for dirty, because his fur looked dirty...and he threw up on me the first night) on farms in a neighboring village, so I guess this story has a happy ending, even if it doesn't involve me getting to keep Malako.  My host mom told me I can go visit, but she might have just been softening the blow of my dog being taken away.  My family told me I was happier and more energetic when the puppies were around.  I think that is a good reason to let me keep one!  We have an extra chicken coop she could have lived in! haha

The Easter Bunny Found Azerbaijan!

Ok, so maybe this "Easter Bunny" was a bit more like me running around my house in the middle of the night hiding Easter eggs my mom sent to me, but I think it still counts. My mom was great an sent me all kinds of Easter stuff, so I was able to create my typical Easter morning (only this time I wasn’t the one running around trying to find the East eggs...I felt really old an kind of like a mom hiding them myself I won’t lie). My host family was really excited about it. I had been telling them for days that Sunday morning I would have a surprise and they were not disappointed. First they found the Easter eggs I had hid around the dining room sort of room in our house. This was hilarious as they had never done it before and at first didn’t know how to tactically accomplish the task of stealing eggs out of their sisters hands, something my family has been training me for since before I can remember (I’ll tell you, Kim can be pretty ruthless, Naima is more sneaky, and then there’s Little Jimmy who we try to be nice older sisters too...but we’re a bit competitive about Easter egg hunts). In the end, of the 57 eggs I hid, my little host sister Gülnar came away the sure winner with 27 eggs, kicking her sisters butts. And she was very proud of this fact. I also even hid 3 eggs with qəpik (the Azerbaijani coins) like my mom does with quarters (well, she hides more than 3 eggs with money, but I’m on a volunteer salary here). Of course Gülnar found 2 of them and Raminə found none haha. I figure I did my part, 3 sisters, 3 money eggs. It’s their job to do the finding! Then after the hunt was over (they needed a little help at the end, but we got it done), we went to my room where I had put down trails of jellybeans for each of them like my mom always does leading to a communal Easter basket (read Easter box, I had no basket). Over breakfast they sampled the various forms of Easter candies and are really big fans of the M&M peanuts and regular M&Ms as well. People also seem to really like jellybeans, and I say people because basically everyone who has come to our house the past few days has been allowed to taste test with their çay. Although we have yet to use the Easter egg dyeing kit my mom sent me, we did build the foam bunnies/chicks/etc that she sent and our house is now festively decorated, so I think I have successfully shared Easter.

The other day, because the weather was really beautiful, we took a drive down to the Kur River. Even though it is only like a half an hour drive (and only that long because the roads are bad), I had never been out there yet. It is farther along the road that I typically use when I go out for a walk though, so I have been out of the village in that direction. In fact, I found out that if I had gone only about a minute farther on my longest walks, I would have seen the water, albeit from a distance. The Kur was really pretty and I was happy that I went, seeing as I was exhausted and considered staying home to nap. We just walked around and took a whole bunch of pictures and my sisters played a bit with a ball that they brought...until it went into the river and we had to say goodbye to it (they actually turned to me and were like “Jess!” and pointed as though I could do something like jump down the 3 ft bank into the swiftly moving current and retrieve the ball. I’m good, but I’m not that good haha). So now my new goal is to take a day with Beth (my closest sitemate) to walk all the way to the river and have a picnic. Beth and I also found a road we like better for walking the day after my trip to the Kur, so I don’t know which road I’ll want to use for my day long excursion, we’ll see.

Novruz Holiday Finally Arrives

I feel like I have to start out by talking about Novruz as I built it up for weeks talking about the pre-holidays, but honestly there isn't much to say that I didn't say already about the pre-holidays (they are kind of like spoilers because you do everything before the main event...). We spent days cooking food and baking sweets like I said. Then we had our bonfire and my sisters and I did our jumping. We went inside for our big meal that we'd slaved over, except that my sisters were really excited to get to the party our street was throwing, so they wolfed down their food and scampered off. This left my mother and I sitting and eating alone, until our local shopkeeper came over and then my host grandmother stopped by. So I stayed with them and helped my mom serve food, pour çay, and slice fruit. I also got to give sweets to the little kids that came by for their hat throwing (although, these kids just held out bags for me to put stuff in, more like Halloween, so I don't know, maybe if you wait a week and don't do your trick-or-treating on the pre-holiday you don't have to let them put food in your hat? And can get it in a more "normal" way...like in a plastic bag?). I did eventually make it to the party in the street where I did a bit of dancing, but not much. The neighbors had hired someone to video tape the party (they do this for all Azeri weddings and big parties) so that they can have a keepsake. I'm really not a big fan of this because Americans are apparently really interesting for these cameramen and if I do anything remotely worth watching, they don't take the camera off me. Dancing is certainly considered something remotely worth watching. It makes dancing really awkward. (Heather - fyi it's really hard for me to even follow my own dancing advice in these situations haha)

Having a long vacation from school, I took one trip away from site and went to Ağdaş for my friend Beca's birthday. It was really nice to see everyone, especially because some of the people from my training language cluster I haven't really seen since December when we moved out of Ceyranbatan. And I think that a lot of the construction that has been happening on the one main road that I have to use to go anywhere is getting better, because the trip went surprisingly quickly. A good sign!

We are now back in school and I have started new conversation clubs. I decided that I would restructure my clubs after Novruz because before I just let any students come who wanted to and, as a result, I was teaching 10 clubs a week, which is way too much. I've downsized to 6, assigning students to groups based on their level and their willingness to try to speak English etc, so I'm hoping that will work well. I've also started having 2 basically office hours a week so that any student who wants to come and ask me questions, speak to me in English, use my Azeri-English dictionaries, etc can come. I think it is going to devolve into me just playing games with students though, and I'm pretty ok with that.

I've also been especially busy this week because tomorrow is an English writing competition put on by Peace Corps Volunteers in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova. There are prizes for the best compositions at the regional, national, and international level. I've been helping my students prepare for a few weeks now, but we've really kicked it up a notch this week and I've had extra activities every night! I won't lie, I'm pretty excited for it to be over tomorrow. Well, over until I go to Baku next weekend to help with the judging.