Photos of Summer

As I settle into my normal school-year life, I was taking a few minutes to look back over pictures from the summer and thought I would put up some of my favourite summer moments for your viewing pleasure.

June: Kim came to visit and found out just how much she loves outhouses.

June: Another delicious cherry season in Azerbaijan.  Don't let that inviting dish fool you, they are chock full of worms.  And as I was discussing the other day with some other volunteers, I can measure my growth here in Azerbaijan by how little that grosses me out anymore haha.

June: Welcome to Turkey and my first real vacation since coming to Azerbaijan.

June: I fell in love with all the beautiful tiles in Turkey.

July: Noticing the "Stalker Internet Club" in Tovuz for the first time made my day.

July: At summer camp we learned about countries and holidays from around the world one week.  The kids were all talking about it when they came back to school last week.

July: Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) summer camp, a collaborative project for volunteers all across the country and our awesome counterparts.  This year my host sister went and had a great time.  We are actually getting together with some of her GLOW friends this weekend!

August: I loved seeing all these little guys guarding the construction areas in Fountain Square.

August: One of my favourite places in Baku is the front of this museum.

August: My last trip to Qobustan? (our outdoor museum with petroglyphs)  I only went four times...for Naima and Jessica's visit the guy working there was trying to have me give the tour!

August: Matching pj's for girlie sleepover nights with Naima and Jessica.

August: So many beautiful tomatoes!  My mom was preserving them for winter for days.

August: Proud volunteers as our Close of Service Conference in their sweet shirts! (Thanks to Alex and Beth!)

August: Getting ready for a hot air balloon ride over Göreme in Cappadocia on my 2nd trip to Turkey this summer.

August: Some of the cool (and less phallic) rock formations in Cappadocia.  Do a google image search and you'll see what I mean about the phallic ones, it was pretty ridiculous!

August: Sunrise from a hot air balloon.  Does it get much better than that?

I got a bit carried away so there were a lot of pictures!  Hope you liked them!

Another School Year Begins

School has officially begun!  Today I taught my first real classes of the year because last week was mostly going over classroom rules and getting the kids to talk about summer.  I was very proud to see how many kids talked about coming to my summer camp and how they were still excited about it 2 months later.  And then I didn't have to teach on Friday (I was supposed to have Fridays off but today I just added another class so now I have one lesson...of course).  Today Tamilə müəllim (my counterpart) and I also opened the resource room for the first time this year and we already had 4 kids come to borrow books!  At least now they'll have something to read because my school seems to be having an extreme shortage of textbooks (which doesn't seem to be worrying anyone but my counterparts and I) so the vast majority of my kids aren't getting books so far!  As you may suspect, yes, this makes it very difficult to teach!  But my counterparts and I are powering through.  Tamilə müəllim and I have an adorable 5th form class (this is the youngest that Azerbaijani kids start seriously learning English, before that it is only once a week and they start fresh in 5th anyway) that I'm really excited about.  We started the alphabet today!  For some reason the Azerbaijani textbook doesn't teach the letters in order, so today was E, B, D, N, P, and T.  I also found it very interesting that my kids couldn't say the Azerbaijani alphabet.  When we were planning for the lesson I saw that Tamilə müəllim didn't know it because every time she tried to say it she said the Russian alphabet not Azerbaijani (which makes sense as she grew up in Soviet times).  I guess that's what happens when you change your lettering system like a million times, but I hadn't really thought about it.  I knew that my kids were really bad at using dictionaries, but I just thought it was lack of knowledge of the English alphabet.  I guess not!

This weekend I went to two weddings and I believe that I have now officially attended 20 weddings in Azerbaijan (which really just means I remember going to 20 weddings but there could be some less memorable ones in there somewhere haha, by the time you get to 20 that is highly possible).  My host mom is already stressing out about having to go to weddings alone after I go home (I finish here December 14th!) so now I really have to go to all the weddings with her (although it may not seem like it seeing as I have gone to 20, I have managed to get out of several more).

The First Day of School is Quickly Approaching!

School starts here every year on September 15th which means this Thursday I will be starting my last school year in Azerbaijan!  (For those of you who don't know yet, my close of service date is December 14, 2011!).  I'm excited for school to begin because it will put me back on a normal schedule, but not looking forward to losing the freedom of being able to stay up until 2AM watching Mad Men or whatever TV show I'm addicted to (and I take way too much advantage of that freedom haha).  I'm busily working to try to get all the lesson plans my counterparts and I have developed over the past year and a half compiled into big, complete sets.  It is quite a monumental task! To give you an idea of how big these sets of plans will be, I'm closest to finishing the 7th form book where I am on Unit 6 of 8 and the plans are already 51 pages long.  Yikes.  And I'm doing this for 5 textbooks, with hopes to do 2 more this fall.  I have no hope of getting it finished by the start of school (which had been the plan, unfortunately I like to procrastinate and do other things with my summer time!) but I will have at least the first lesson for each book done, inşallah! 

Other than the textbooks, I spent most of my day yesterday helping Tamilə müəllim, my counterpart, prepare jars of food for winter.  I cut about a million peppers, tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes and in the process made a lot of little cuts on my thumbs!  Here the knives are super dull so we just cut things into our hands instead of using a cutting board, which is fine when you are only cutting for one meal but mass production takes its toll!

Belated Post: Naima and Jessica Came to Peace Corps It Up, Azeri Style!

I should have posted about this a while ago, but I think we can all see that my posting record isn't the most consistent!  My older sister Naima and Jessica Bruce, her best friend from Peace Corps, came to visit me from July 31 st to August 11th.  We got off to a bit of a rocky start when Naima's plane from America was delayed so she didn't meet up with Jessica in London to fly to Baku (Jessica was sitting at Heathrow longing looking about the terminal for Naima, she even bought Naima lunch...and then had to take one for the team and eat it herself haha).  Instead of arriving with Jessica at 9:30PM, Naima arrived at 4:30AM but then didn't make it out to us until about 5:30...without any bags.  The next few days turned into us making several trips to the Turkish Airlines office where I horrified the staff by listing off all the items of my clothing Naima was wearing because she had none of her own.  By the end of the few days every member of the staff seemed to know who were, would come in to check on the progress of our case, and would tell me how great it was that I could speak Azerbaijani...so that I could yell at them.  We did eventually get both bags back.  After Baku we went down to Lerik (which is a mountainous region down south) and to Lenkeran (which is down south on the Caspian).  In Lerik we did a homestay through Community-Based Tourism Azerbaijan (http://www.cbtazerbaijan.com/) which is a project PCVs started.  And then in Lenkeran we stayed with some volunteers.  Naima and Jessica were really struck by how similar the housing could feel to the volunteer houses they stayed at in Benin.  After that we went up to my site for a few days to meet my students, neighbors, family, friends, etc.  We went to the mountains, my school, my counterpart's house, the bazaar, etc.  It was a really nice few days that passed all too quickly!  It was really nice to have the two of them visit because their perspectives as returned Peace Corps volunteers were really refreshing to have and I appreciated being able to show them all my work and get their feedback.  I'm at our Close of Service Conference now and we have been talking a lot about how once we return home some of our best support systems will be other RPCVs (from all countries, not just Azerbaijan) and having them here could really make me see how that would be helpful!  Makes me feel really lucky to have an RPCV sister!

The Saga of the Dead Dog in a Sack

So I definitely owe you all a post about my sister Naima and our friend Jessica's trip to Azerbaijan, but first I have a more current story to share, the story of the dead dog.

A few days ago as I went to school, cutting through the bushes behind my house, I noticed a big grain sack in the little canal.  These canals are part of the irrigation system we have so sometimes water flows in them but generally they are just stagnate water or mud or dried up.  As you can imagine with the stagnate water and goose poop and trash, these canals aren't always the most pleasant places, but this day it reached a new low.  I could see that something was in the sack and at first I thought it was a sheep skin because often times the nearby butcher throws a gross skin from an animal he butchered (or random stomachs, etc) in the bushes.  Then I realized the fur didn't look sheep-like.  No, it was a dog, a dog dead folded up in a sack.  Both gross and really sad.  I immediately told my host mom when I got home and we both started ranting about all the disgusting things that people throw in the bushes by our house.  Apparently just a week before my mom had to go throw some dirt on a dead cat that she could smell in our backyard when she went to the latrine (I missed that loveliness, but I did see the dead goose in the canal a few weeks before that, although that dead animal ended up thrown into the basement of the school to rot...but that's another story).  As the days passed, the stink from the dog got worse (really? a dead dog in stagnate water/mud smelling bad? never!) and the breeze so nicely wafted his odor into our backyard.  By yesterday morning it was getting really strong.  I was trying to sit outside and work on my computer where it was a bit cooler than my room, but the smell was just rank.  Finally I gave my mom a manat to go pay some kids to bury the thing.  My mom and I vowed that we would go over to the mayor's office today or tomorrow to complain about the government's neglect (this is public land on the edge of a soccer field and connecting to the school property).  But before we got a chance to go today, my wonderful and highly respected neighbor Hüsəyn müəllim called the mayor himself.  My mother reported back the conversation to me and I found it quite funny.  Here's my cliff notes version "People keep putting bad trash there behind their house.  It is smelling so much that Jess müəllim can no longer do her work outside!"  That's right, it's not important that putting dead animals in the water is just asking us all to get diseases, no problem that kids play on the soccer field next door every day, no problem that there are another 4 people living in my house with the smell, what's important is that I cannot sit outside and comfortably work on my computer!  It leaves me with the following thoughts: 1) I'm glad that they respect me so much that they wouldn't want anything to be offending me, 2) I'm happy with anything that will stop the litany of dead animals that have been showing up near my house!

Super Volunteer

This post is a testimonial to how awesome one of my fellow volunteers is.  For a long time I have been promising my host sisters that I would take them up to Qazax (a region about 40 minutes away) to visit one of my friends, Connie.  My sisters love her, but even more importantly, Connie has been doing an awesome job developing a killer bike program to teach the kids of Qazax how to ride and how to do it safely and my sisters really wanted to learn how to ride.  Wanting to be true to my word, I arranged for us to go up to see Connie the day after camp ended, knowing that I wouldn't really have that much free time at site for awhile after.  Connie said that day was fine and I told my sisters and they got all excited.  Unfortunately, I woke up the morning of with a bad stomach virus.  Gross.  Being the dumb idiot that I can be, I thought that I would be fine and had gotten everything out of my system (along with my breakfast) and decided to go to Qazax anyway.  Boy was I wrong.  I showed up in Qazax in pretty rough shape, but Connie didn't hesitate one second in helping get me settled and then teaching my two sisters how to ride bikes all by herself.  I lay in the shade of her school's courtyard while she ran around with them for about 2 1/2 hours in the hot Qazax sun of late July.  I was so impressed by her dedication (and the fact that she never said to me "you're an idiot, you are ill and still came up here, loser" or something to that effect).  And this was the first time that I was able to see the bike club I have been hearing so much about and let me tell you, it was fantastic.  So basically what I wanted to say in this post is that Connie is a super awesome volunteer and my hat's off to her.

Connie helping my sister Gülnar learn to ride.

Turkey, Bulgaria, and Camp!

Alright, I promised a post about my travels in Turkey and Bulgaria with Kimmy, so here goes, but I’m going to keep it short and sweet.

Turkey

• Our trip was 4 nights in Istanbul, 2 nights by Ephesus (staying in Selchuk), 2 nights in Fethiye, and 1 night in Antalya.
• Ephesus was cool but had way too many tourists.  And I must say, the picnic that Kim and I put together to have at the end of our walk through the ruins was phenomenal.
• Fethiye was gorgeous, just beautiful.  And our day long boat cruise around the Mediterranean was awesome: stunningly clear blue water to swim in, distant mountains on the coastline, hilarious British tourists sitting by us who smoked like chimneys, super interesting father son pair from America who had been travelling for 5 months, etc.  Only downside: I got ridiculously sunburned.  Like ridiculously.  Big time ouch.
• In Antalya I accidentally made Kimmy walk way too far to go to a museum.  There was a very convenient tram that could have taken us.  My bad.  My continued apologies Kim L  But the museum was pretty awesome right??  And the tram back was like a nice treat! Haha
• Between Turkey and Azerbaijan, I have never had so many people fight with me over the fact that Kim and I are sisters!  I get it that we don’t look much alike (except we both have blue eyes) but I guess I never realized we were so shockingly different.  Didn’t help that as the trip progressed my hair was starting to bleach to be lighter brown and she was getting more freckles on her face…just soooo different!

Bulgaria

• Our trip was 6 nights in Varna at Kim’s friend Vesko’s house and 2 nights in Sofia at Vesko’s friend’s apartment.
• Varna was really pretty on the Black Sea coast and we drove north to see more of the coast, which was great.  It was way colder than I expected and since I idiotically lost one of only two cardigan sweaters that I brought on the trip during a night out in Istanbul, I was constantly relying on Vesko and his friends to lend me various clothing.  And we all know that I’m constantly cold regardless of if it is actually cold, so this was just a bad situation haha.
• We went on a walking tour of Sofia with one of Vesko’s friends and saw the really pretty downtown.  Then we went to a really cool lookout over the city at sunset.  Again, I froze.
• Vesko’s friends were all really great to us and we loved meeting them.  They were so welcoming!

And now back to my real world where it is all about camp, camp, camp!  On Friday of this week we finished off our Healthy Bodies, Healthy World week by talking about the environment and trash.  Our activity for the day was to make creative things out of trash.  Luckily for my kids, I’m an incredible pack-rat and I have been saving “interesting trash” for them basically ever since I arrived in the village.  The result was 1) some pretty cool creations from the kids, 2) my room is cleaner because I finally got rid of all that stuff!  I’m going to put up some photos of their projects and your job is to deduce the contents of all the packages my mom sends me from America!  (I thank you for the real stuff Mom and my students thank you for their packaging! haha)

With all the trash explaining the activity

A lowly tube for glowsticks becomes glasses

The sign reads "Most Beautiful City" and another sign that you can't see from this angle explains that it is Harry Potter City (that's Harry Potter wrapping paper underneath it, very timely!).  My vitamin bottles and orbit boxes make the buildings, bottle caps are the people.

This kid jumped up first thing to grab this box and was like "I'm gonna make a car."  It ended up being a bus, and I really liked it.  I also really liked the Reeses eggs that originally came in that box haha.

Houses, cars, and boats.  Mostly out of Orbit boxes.  What is my favourite type of gum again?

At camp we have 3 teams (Awesome Team, FCB - Football Club Barcelona, and Bomba) so we were counting up their points for the week.  They get points for almost everything we do.  So far FCB is in the lead...but there's one week left!

All photos courtesy of my awesome week 2 photographer (and all around awesome person) Peggy!

Back in the Land of A

I realized just now as I'm online for my daily 20-ish minutes of internet that I never got back on to write another blog post about Turkey or on to write any blog post about Bulgaria!  And now that I've been back in Azerbaijan for 2 weeks, that all seems like a distant memory, especially since those 2 weeks have been spent doing summer camp here at site! Camp has been going really well and the kids have been really enthusiastic.  I've had some great other volunteers up to help (so far I've had Moses, Alec, Julie, Peggy, Mariel, and Lori!) and my kids have been so happy to meet some other volunteers.  Last week our theme was countries and their big holidays and then this week we have been doing stuff about health.  We're going to finish up next week with arts and crafts.  I'll try to remind myself to write a post about Turkey and Bulgaria at home to put up the next time I come online, but I can't make any promises as I've already been forgetting to do it for so long now!  Sorry for being such a lame blogger :(

Hi from Turkey!

I got a panicked email from my mother this morning because my sister Kim and I apparently haven't been checking in enough as we travel through Turkey (sorry Mom) so I thought maybe it was time to put up a little post to let the rest of you know where and how I am!

I'm currently in Fethiye, Turkey (on the Mediterranean) watching my sister sleep because even though for my entire life I've never been a morning person, on this trip I can barely sleep past 6AM (which is 8 on Azerbaijani time, so I guess it makes some sense).  Today we are going to go on a boat cruise to a whole bunch of little islands and swim and see ruins, etc.  Try not to be too jealous :) Before Fethiye we first traveled to Istanbul and then on to Ephesus, but I'll write more about everything later (remember, this post is just so you don't all start sending me panicky emails!).  And from here we are going to Antalya so we can fly to Bulgaria and meet up with Kimmy's friend from school!  So that is my itinerary, you can all feel properly informed now and I'll write more detailed accounts of our journeys later.  For now I'll just say that we are having a great time and everything here is just so beautiful!

The Son Zəng has been Zəng-ed!

Summer is here!  The school year is over!  On May 31st we had "Son Zəng" which literally means "Last Bell" but we would say graduation.  One of my best classes (I wrote about them a few posts ago) was graduating and they asked me to make a speech and sing so I got to be in the ceremony.  I spoke in Azeri (obviously) and I felt more comfortable doing it than last year, so I guess that shows improvement!  And then I sang "Time of Your Life" by Green Day with 3 of my students.  They were so funny about it!  They decided all on their own that we should make cardboard guitars and violins to play when we sang, which I thought took a lot of guts!  Everyone loved the song, even though they couldn't understand it.  They said it was "romantic."  :) Don't worry, I have a video of it and I just might put it on Facebook so you can go look for it!

Now that summer is here that means....more of the same thing!  I'm teaching a second round of computer courses quickly before my sister arrives on June 8th and this time my counterpart Tamilə müəllim is helping me teach which is really exciting.  Makes teaching 6 hours of computers a day (and by that I mean how to point and click a mouse) a bit more bearable!

Right now I'm in Baku (I had meetings all day) and we're about to go out to dinner so I need to stop writing this and get ready!  Delicious food here I come!