Busy, Busy, Busy

I'm back in Baku about to go out and "mentor" this week as the trainees begin their practicum teaching.  It will be interesting because just watching a lesson is always tough now.  I just want to jump in and teach it myself, especially when I get bored.  But it will be nice to get to know some more of the trainees!

Last week one of the trainees, Julie, came out to my site and watched my classes, came to lesson planning and clubs, etc.  We had a fun and very busy time, constantly going from one thing to the next.  She took a whole bunch of pictures, so the one to the right is of me teaching my 10th form (grade) class in my new classroom!  It's way better than my classroom from last year because it's like 2.5x the size and I've made some much better posters for it (you can see a few of them) and everything.  I'm still working on it, but it's coming together!

Now I'm off to Ceyranbatan so that I can visit my homestay family from last year before going to find my host family for this week of training.  I wish I could be staying with my family, but there are no trainees in Ceyranbatan this year, so I'll have to settle with just visiting for a few hours.  I would go stay a night at the end of my week here, but I have to rush back to site because Beth and I are having a Halloween party at my school!

What a Lovely Time for a Power Outage

This Friday (as in 2 days from now) is the deadline for me to submit my SPA grant which will hopefully be getting money for my school's new resource room.  Unfortunately, a large wind storm 2 nights ago left my village without power.  Some sort of procrastination god hates me.  My computer battery died yesterday morning and I have now been in the internet cafe for like 2 1/2 hours researching for the grant but also waiting for my battery to charge because who knows if we'll have power when I get back to the village!  As I'm only at 83% full, I figured, what a great time to stop staring at book and computer prices and write to my family and friends :) Can you tell from reading this how exhausted but like giddy I am from sitting in this internet cafe surrounded by little boys playing computer games and blasting Azeri music?

When I got back Saturday morning from being in Baku/Sumqayıt for training, I saw my host mom as she was running out the door to go to a wedding in Baku Sunday night.  She still isn't back.  She's going to be arriving tonight though, so maybe she'll be there when I get home from the internet cafe.  In the meantime, it was only me with my youngest host sister for 2 nights and then my middle host sister came home before my mom from the wedding so she has been with us for 2 nights as well.  But basically this means that I get to play fake-mom and make sure the kids get up for school and that they close the chicken coop and walk them to the tualet (that's toilet for those of you who didn't get it) in the yard at night when they are too scared.  And since my youngest sister wasn't in the best of spirits the first night, we got into a pattern of watching a Disney movie a night on my computer...well until I didn't have a computer thanks to the power outage.  I really don't mind watching my sisters (or Disney movies), but I'm just too stressed right now with all this grant stuff to put more on top of it!

In happier news, on Saturday when I got back in addition to starting my babysitting duties, I started filming on a televised English course with 2 of my sitemates.  The head of our local TV station (although I think it broadcasts to about half of Azerbaijan...) approached my Azerbaijani language teacher and me over the summer about starting "English for All" and we agreed to do it.  We've been planning ever since and getting more volunteers involved, and it all really started this weekend!  Our first show was only us introducing ourselves, although I think the episode will really be quite the comedy because they decided that we, the American volunteers, should introduce ourselves in Azerbaijani.  Let me tell you, it is stressful enough to be on television, and then to add to that speaking in a foreign language!  Now we are going to film every weekend (the volunteers will switch off weeks, thank goodness).  This weekend I'm really begin the course by teaching the alphabet!

Welcome to the AZ8s!

I'm about to get on the night train to go back to Tovuz after spending a few days in Baku/Sumqayit for training.  I don't really have much to say except that I'm really excited to see that we have a good group of new volunteers and I want to wish any of them who are reading this luck in the weeks ahead!  Coming back and teaching 4 sessions a day was absolutely exhausting and reminds me of how tough and just draining PST was, but hang in there because it's worth it when you are finished!  I hope I didn't scare you guys too much with all the talk of lesson planning and textbooks and "school reality" and if I did, email me and I'll reassure you that it's going to work out!

One Year (?!?)

Happy one year in country to me! (and to all the other AZ7's too...).  I'm in a state of complete disbelief that I've been living here for a whole year.  That just seems absurd.  But to prove the point, a whole new group of trainees arrived in country about a week ago.  Next week I'm going to head back to the beautiful Sumqayıt to help the newbies learn fun things like how to write a lesson plan and work with the English textbooks.  I know you are jealous you can't sit in on these sessions, try to hold it in.

School started a few weeks ago, as I wrote, and has been amazingly smooth sailing so far, which is unheard of in Azerbaijan.  My schedule has only had one change, which I requested because two of my classes were at the same time.  And my classroom is shaping up (I finally got a bookshelf yesterday!  Tamilə müəllim went and "quarreled" with our director haha).  Work has even been started on our future resource room, which is exciting!

I've been playing catch up all this week because last week my good friend and language teacher, Nuranə, got married.  All the other members of my cluster from training came out to Tovuz and we had matching dresses made like bridesmaids.  Nuranə wanted her wedding to have some American flair to it!  In Azerbaijan at the bride's wedding (there are two weddings remember, one for the bride and one for the groom), the bride doesn't always wear a white dress.  I can just say that makes it more difficult to choose a color for a bridesmaid dress!  In the end, we ended up in the same color as the bride, bright red!  Everyone loved it and it made us very easy to spot anytime we did anything!  Nuranə was told by the owner of the wedding palace that it was the best wedding they had ever had their because of us (and I'll have you know that this was at the most expensive wedding palace in Tovuz, I'd never been before).  I don't know if it was the best wedding ever, but it was certainly the most fun wedding I've been to in this country. I could sit with all my friends and dance and really be genuinely happy for the couple because I actually really knew them (at the other weddings I've been brought to, I haven't known the people getting married).  All in all, it was a huge success.

Stealing a Third Grader's Thunder

On Monday I got to go to my very first “kiçik toy.”  Those of you who have been trying to learn the few Azeri words that I sprinkle throughout my posts will recognize the word “toy” because it is the Azeri word for wedding.  But, although the literal translation of “kiçik toy” is “small wedding,” it is unfortunately not a wedding that happens to be small.  It is a ritual circumcision party!  In this case, the young boy going under the knife was about to start 3rd grade, which seems to be a fairly typical age for having this ceremony.  First there is a big party where, much like a wedding, everyone you know comes and has a big meal.  There is music and dancing, the whole nine yards.  The little boy has a sort of godfather who comes with his whole family and brings lots of presents for the little boy.  For this toy, my host cousin was this godfather figure, so I got to come into the party bearing a huge gift of candy for the poor child and dance around showing this pretty present.  Most of the time, the actual circumcision doesn’t happen until the next day, I guess so that the kid can enjoy his party (he kind of knows what is going to happen to him, but not really how much it is going to hurt…), but this time, because his godfather guy had to go back to Baku, they did the cutting day of and I, as the American guest who should learn everything about Azerbaijani culture, was brought into the room to watch the circumcision.  At first I was totally fine.  I watched them set the kid up on the table and hold him down and soothe him so he wouldn’t freak out as they gave him a big shot and then snipped him.  But then, as I was watching them kind of sew him up, I started getting all woozy.  My head was spinning and I knew I was on the verge of passing out.  Of course I thought “no way, I’m tough, I can handle this.  I’ll just go stand by the window.”  Unfortunately standing by the window wasn’t enough and before I knew it, as I was having my mother take me outside for more air (yes, amazingly enough, in my half unconscious state I was still able to articulate myself in Azeri enough to ask for help to go outside), I passed out.  I woke up on the floor, surrounded by large xanıms who were splashing water on my face.  They even took the doctor away from his penis operating procedure to come over and look at me.  How ridiculous is that?  This little 3rd grader was stronger than I was.  I sat in a chair, drinking tea to revive me, as they got him re-dressed post-cutting and brought him out to dance again in front of the party (see the photo).  Nice, Jess.  And in the process of falling, my mother scratched the heck out of my chin, so I have 2 nice gashes to show for my adventure.  I guess I just didn’t want the little kid to be the only one giving a little blood for the party.

On Wednesday school started again.  I am so blessed to have the school that I do.  While a lot of other volunteers had no idea what their schedule would be and are having fights with their directors about it, I sent a note to my assistant director over the summer explaining what classes I wanted to teach and when I wanted to teach them.  He arranged the schedule just to my liking and everything is perfect.  I'm sure there is still the typical Azeri practice of teachers duking it out over their class hours going on at my school, but I don't think anyone will let them touch my hours.  My classroom is not quite ready yet, but it should be for Monday and we can start real classes at that time!

A shout out to Little Jimmy!  Happy birthday!! I’m so sorry I can’t be there to see you turn 18!!!  It seems like only yesterday I was coming to hold you at the hospital (who are we kidding, you were too tall for me to hold you even then and Dad would barely let me because he thought I’d drop you!).

Small American Treasures Can Brighten Your Day

I slept over my sitemate Beth’s house this week and we made Kraft macaroni and cheese (Toy Story shapes – I think the shapes really makes quite a sizeable improvement over the normal Kraft macaroni and cheese noodles, don’t you?) and Duncan Hines cupcakes (yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting).  It was a culinary delight of an evening.  And then I followed that up the next day by opening a jar of peanut butter Beth had bought in Baku for me.  I had been waiting to get apples (I know they are in season and at people’s houses, but they aren’t at the stupid village shop yet) so I could put peanut butter on my apple slices (I feel like some of you are going to judge my peanut butter eating habits, but I say don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, it’s fantastic), but then I realized that my mom had bought the nice soft bread from the store (she usually buys the lame hard bread) and we had plum jam that my co-teacher Tamilə müəllim had given me.  It was potentially the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich I have ever had.  And then I had like 3 more.  And then I have been having them for breakfast ever since.  But I have been sharing my peanut butter with my host sisters and teaching them how to make a peanut butter and jelly (they also think it is heaven…or at least I’m sure that is what they would say if they knew how to express that level of love in English or I knew it in Azeri).  It is a big step for me to share something as holy to me as peanut butter.  I think I can now graduate from kindergarten.

School starts on Wednesday the 15^th, which is super soon!  They are painting and fixing up my classroom (inşallah) so that I can go on Tuesday and hang up all the cool new posters I have been making.  And I found out my director really is going to give me a whole wing of the school as he said at the beginning of summer but I didn’t really think was happening (I was just hoping for one room and the big open foyer area).  I get a classroom, the foyer, and another classroom to make into a resource room for teachers and students!  And the director says he will put a sign outside the hallway to the wing naming it the English Wing.  Not really necessary, but pretty sweet!

A Little Trip to Qax

I finally got the pleasure this week of going up to Qax, a region in what we call the "middle finger" of the country because if you look at the top of Azerbaijan it has 3 "fingers" going up and this is the middle one (duh)...plus it just sounds funny.  My friend Lori lives there and I had yet to go visit, but she was having a summer camp and I thought that would be a great excuse to get out there and see 1) her and 2) what is supposed to be one of the most beautiful regions of Azerbaijan (truth, it is gorgeous).

Being in Qax was great because I got to go hiking around, something I haven't done in a while given the summer heat!  We went out to a gigantic waterfall, a "river" (more like a dried up riverbed with a trickle, but still pretty), and some church ruins.  Qax is right in amongst the Caucasus Mountains, so you're constantly surrounded by these great, green mountainsides.  Very picturesque.

Ceyranbatan 1 cluster love by the waterfall

Helping at this camp was really interesting because Qax has a large population of Georgians.  Even though my home region of Tovuz is also close to Georgia, we don't have a large Georgian population like this and so I had no idea about the racism that goes on between the Azerbaijanis and the Georgians in the regions of the middle finger that have Georgians.  We were even dealing with the kids fighting about it at camp!  I won't get into it more here, but if you're interested send me an email.

And of course being in Qax was great because I got to hang out with other volunteers, watching way more Glee and friends than I would like to admit, eating way more ice cream than I would like to admit, and loving it.

Volunteers at the church ruins

Finally, a little funny story before I go.  I was walking to catch my marşrutka to Qax (well, my marşrutka from my village to Tovuz, where I caught another marşrutka to Gəncə, and then a final marşrutka to Qax) and my post-man drove up and handed me 4 pieces of mail.  One of them was a postcard my mom sent me in February, you know, only 6 months late, no biggie.  Moral of the story: if you send me mail and then never here from me about it, it probably got lost...or just really, really delayed!

Daily Life

So I wrote this with the intention of posting it a week ago, but through a series of internet mishaps and such, it hasn't made it up till now...which means some of the information has changed but whatever, just pretend I posted it last Wednesday, ok?

Because I am constantly (alright, constantly is certainly a bit of an overstatement, but often enough) getting questions about my daily life here, I wrote up this little snapshots of some facts about my life right now. Enjoy!

Tea today so far: 1

Tea yesterday: at least 5

Most recent junk food purchased: M&M peanuts, Fanta, Dannon yogurt bar that can only be counted as junk food because I only eat it due to the fact that it tastes like cheesecake

Current books: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows; Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship by Jon Meacham (I didn’t even mean to do it, but I wanted to read a novel on the side while I read this book about FDR and Churchill during WWII and I picked a book my mom brought for me which is all about the aftermath of WWII…good coincidence!)

Recently finished books: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (never finished it in Mr.C’s AP English class because I took the test and said “screw that” to more work before graduation, it took me months this time, but I was determined not to give up again and have to restart a third time); The Innocent Man by John Grisham (I read it like crazy on my marşrutka ride home from Baku, only stopping when we hit the ridiculous road construction patches because I didn’t want to get sick)

Most recent movie watched: Braveheart (another volunteer hadn’t seen it – ? – so we had to watch it during Biləsuvar camp)

Most recent TV show watched: Glee (this show makes me so happy)

Most recent thing I cooked: Peach sorbet thanks to Mathias’s recipe and instruction

Activities I’m currently teaching: Conversation Club for University Boys with Tamilə müəllim, World History Discussion Group, English Writing, Mini Camp for Middle School Age Students (starts today!)

Last time I was in Baku: August 14 and ready to go back, if only for the Twix ice cream I found during this visit and should not be allowed to buy any more because I’ve already eaten too much of it

Last time I saw Beth, my sitemate: August 7 (and before that it was July 14^th…how am I surviving??)

Latest decorations added to my room: Maps of Azerbaijan and the US which like to fall back off my wall so I’ve had the pleasure of hanging them many times, more pictures from my mom for my picture wall

Last time I had an Azerbaijani language lesson: August 16

Last time I had a lesson before that: first week of June (oops)

Last time I talked to my family in the states: August 12 (only for like 5 minutes before it got cut off, I was super disappointed, it was the first call from Naima! And I hadn’t heard her voice literally since I came to Azerbaijan)

Most recent song obsession: Tik Tok by Ke$ha (a little bit embarrassed to admit that…)

Songs I reminisced listening to this week: Stumbling into The Barenaked Ladies on my ipod, I first listened to “One Week” which reminded me of Little Jimmy trying desperately to learn the words and say them fast enough and then to “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” which took me back to freshman year with Steph Miller in our sweet double blasting that as one of Steph’s song obsessions.  Then I also listened to “Walcott” by Vampire Weekend which has lyrics all about getting out of Cape Cod and all the bad things about it…but my response was more like “Oh my gosh no Cape Cod is wonderful and I want to be there right now more than anything!”

Biggest success of the week: Actually remembering to consistently take my vitamins every day, something I haven’t done in months and something which can be pretty important here where I feel my diet is generally lacking a few (many) things.

Biggest disappointment of the week: One of my fans seemed to stop working last week.  And yes I said “one of” even though I live in one room.  I had to buy a second one during the heat wave while my mom was visiting (she was about to get violent if I didn’t go make the purchase), but I have been leaving one in my family’s room for them to use…and so I was I jerk and went and took it when mine stopped.  I’m still hopeful mine will make a complete recovery and I can go back to sharing like a nice person.

Interesting little stories of late:

Sitting in a car on the way to town with my host mom and an acquaintance, I noticed that the woman was looking at me strangely and kind of cocking her head to one side.  I tried to ignore her, assuming she was just being curious and trying to look into my purse (and at this point of this sort of typical Azerbaijani behavior, I just sit still for it most of the time).  Suddenly she looked at me and told me she had been counting the freckles on my left arm.  In case you were wondering, there are 47.

In a sleepy daze one morning, I heard a strange scratching sound from outside my window.  Looking out I could see some sort of animal in a small tree just over the property line in our neighbors’ yard.  I was trying to make out what animal it was and at first wrote it off to my eyes not working properly because of sleep, but no.  It really was a rat.  A big rat eating what I now learned is a chestnut tree.  Probably 10 feet from my bedroom.  Not a big fan of rats.  And especially because I heard a story last week about another volunteer getting bit by one in her room while she slept! Ew!

I watched a guy get arrested at a road tea house on my way back from Baku.  I have no idea what this guy did, but it was very interesting to watch the two cops try to get him into the backseat of their car.  He was literally doing splits against the door frame so they couldn’t get him in.  And he lost a shoe.  A third cop would kind of walk up occasionally and watch and not help, which was maybe the best part.  And the other cops were yelling “You’re a cop! Help!” but he just walked away.  This incident made me realize the value of having a partition for the back of your cop car because as I watched them drive away, I saw that one cop was having to sit with the guy and keep him in a headlock until they reached their destination.  I bet that got fun at some point.

Another Week, Another Camp

I feel like summer should be wrapping up, but I still have about a month left until we start school!  This is not complaining at all, I certainly have plenty of things I want to do with my teachers, students, classroom, etc before September 15th!

I just spent a week down in Bilәsuvar helping with a summer camp that my friends Jon and James were having.  It was a really great week.  Their kids were so sweet and excited and we got to do fun things like make picture frames, drop eggs from the second-floor of the school, and play the ninja game (if you haven't played the ninja game yet, try it, you won't regret it! This is a game that involves a bunch of kids standing in a circle taking turns doing ninja moves to try and hit another person's hand, no one gets hurt, every one gets to be a ninja...awesome).  And in addition to all this fun at camp, there were some great volunteers down there as staff and so we would go play softball (really "left-field ball"...the other volunteers can attest to how thrilled I was to be playing...which is not very much at all) and make amazing food (fruit sorbet, donuts, and general overall wonderfulness).  Only downside is that Bilәsuvar is not exactly close to Tovuz which meant I had to take a really long and ridiculously hot bus ride, the highlights of which include the little girl next to me vomiting (she stood up and did it on her father not on me, and I think she and I both are thankful for that because I was in no mood to be barfed on...not that you are ever really in the mood for that...) and the bus breaking down so I got to stand on the side of the road for like an hour and a half before giving up on the bus and getting a ride from a passing car.  Sounds like fun right? Wanna visit me now?

I'm in Baku about to head back to site.  I just went to the dentist yesterday and got my teeth cleaned.  I was talking to staff yesterday before going and one guy asked me if before Peace Corps I would have ever dreamed of being so excited to be getting my teeth cleaned? Especially because I was paying for it out of my own pocket (Peace Corps only pays for us to get our teeth cleaned once a year...and that's a year after actually swearing in, so it would have been a year and a half without seeing a dentist and given the amount of sweets we have here with our çay - tea, I didn't feel so great about that).  I thought he made a really good point because never before would going to the dentist be the highlight of my month, but I'm super happy with my clean teeth haha.

Apologies, I've been super lame about posting

So yeah, as the title says...sorry.  As I wrote in my last post, my mom came and that meant no time for posting for a while and then the task of explaining everything we did seemed too large, so I just didn't do it!  But now I'll just tell you that you can go to Facebook and find all the photo evidence of my mom's trip and maybe someday I'll write up some of the craziest moments!

You may be thinking, well Jess we all know your mom left like weeks ago, no excuse for not posting since then.  True story, however after she left I was busy for another week because within like 12 hours of getting home from Tbilisi, I left again to go to Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) the summer camp that volunteers and Azerbaijani counterparts put on for girls from all the regions of Azerbaijan.  It was fantastically fun.  It was so great to see these girls work so hard in sessions (I planned a day about leadership and courage that apparently went really well, but I wasn't there to see that one b/c I was a bit late due to getting back from my trip) and then let loose at our nightly dance parties/talent show/etc.  And I got to hang out with some of the most amazing other volunteers in country, which was so refreshing and fun.

I need to be running along (I know, I know, I only just got started) but I wanted to throw a big shout out to my sister Naima who returns today (!!!!) having just finished her Peace Corps service in Benin.  How ridiculous/unbelievable/crazy/exciting is that?  Call me Naima, now you have to b/c you're in the US where Mom will pay the bill and I just told you to in front of my entire blog audience (and you know that has to be huge right??? I mean, Mom prints it for Grandma and Aunt Lillian to read and everything so I'm even in print!!). Congratulations!