Fact: My Students are the Best

Yesterday, my Program Manager Gülnara müəllim from Peace Corps came to my school to meet with my counterparts and me and to observe some of our classes.  One of the classes that she sat in for was the 11th grade class that Tamilə müəllim and I teach together.  Every week we have this class twice and all year we have had a system where one day we use the textbook and the other day we read a novel (I was lucky enough to be able to buy class sets of books from the US with a donation from our local shopkeeper).  In the fall we read Charlotte’s Web and now we are reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  While the students liked Charlotte’s Web, they LOVE Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and yesterday they were literally cracking up talking about it.  As we do every class, they gave summaries of the chapters they read at home, answered reading comprehension and analysis questions, and then read a new chapter of the book.  Throughout the whole lesson they were just generally having a great time, laughing and joking around IN ENGLISH!  It was funny to watch.  At the end of the lesson, my manager asked the students to stay after class for a minute.  She told them that she was so impressed with them and that in all of her travels around Azerbaijan (and she visits a lot of schools to decide where to place volunteers and again to visit volunteers), she has never seen an 11th grade class like them.  And then for the rest of the day she kept repeating how wonderful they were, asking me how we got them to such a high level, and was likening their work to college classes she took.  Tamilə müəllim and I were so proud.  And I couldn’t agree with Gülnara müəllim any more, my kids really do rock!  In a system where it is almost encouraged to not come to school when you are in 11th grade, my students come to every class and I am blown away by not only their level of English, but their insights into the books we read.  I really wish you could all meet them!

It's Writing Olympics Time!

Last week we did our annual Peace Corps English writing competition "Writing Olympics."  Basically we get kids grades 6-11 (and university students, but I don't teach university) and give them a few questions to choose from.  They write essays that are judged first nationally in Azerbaijan and then we send the winners to the international round (which includes Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova...and I think a few other countries).

The main criteria for the essays is creativity, which is very difficult for my students.  No matter how hard I tried to help them write more exciting essays during our practice writing activities, I got the same boring essays from all of my students.  Usually they write something about helping poor people because, as I found, they can make anything about how you should help poor people (I guess that's a message that is really drilled into them).  Finally, in one of our last practice sessions, I finally got an interesting essay from one of my kids.  I had given my 6th grade students the start of a story about a magic, blue cat named Joe and they had to finish the story.  While they were writing, one of my students randomly asked me to translate "bığ" which in English is "mustache."  Hearing this, another student decided to use the word mustache in his essay and wrote some strange story about how the cat magician stole a man's mustache and gave it to another guy.  The mustache then became gold and the man was never poor again.  While it was a totally bizarre story and still talked about helping poor people, I was really excited that it wasn't just the same old stuff as everyone else.  With this in mind, on the day of the competition, I gave my students a list of words from the 6th grade textbook that I thought were semi-interesting.  I figured that maybe if they had interesting words in their heads they would write an interesting essay (makes sense right?).  When I gave them the list I reminded them about the mustache story and how different it was…  Here is one of the results (a few spelling mistakes corrected), answering the question "Which would you rather be, a bird or a fish? Why?":

I want a bird.  I fly on the sky. I stole everything. I want a bird and I eat a reindeer.  Reindeer is very sweet.  I fry reindeer.  I want a bird and I eat people.  The people die me.  The people fry me.  The people eat me.  I carve to the people.  I go to my bird’s home.  The people call magician.  Magician made me carve my nose.  I gave to magician my nose.  Magician gave my nose to the people.  The people are very rich.

Can you guess which word was on my list?  And which other vocabulary words from this year the student remembered on his own that were entirely inapplicable?

My word: reindeer

Other vocabulary words: to fry, to carve, magician

So I didn't exactly get the winning story I was hoping for, but I at least got a kick out of the randomness of this essay!

My Dad Has Gone Home, Back to Work.

I'm pleased to report that my dad survived his time in Azerbaijan and has returned safely to the US!  He was in my village for 5 nights, even though upon arrival he said to me "Jessie, I give this 2 nights and I'm out."  See what he will put up with for me?  He slept on the floor (I offered my bed but it was too saggy for him, I really wish I had taken a video of him getting out of it when he would get up from reading in it, the effort that it took was hilarious) and used my squat toilet/hole in the ground and he kept a smile on his face the whole time!  I was very proud.  After the village we went to Şəki and Qax regions to see the mountains and my friend Lori, the self-proclaimed "Qax Star."  Unfortunately, as soon as we arrived in Şəki we got news that my dad's father died back in America.  He had been ill and we knew he wasn't doing very well, but the news was still really hard obviously.  I was again really proud of my dad for being strong enough to finish the trip.  He went home on Saturday and I came back up to site to start school again on Monday.  Only 2 more months until summer!  And summer means that Kimmy is going to come visit me!  And maybe Naima and Little Jimmy? Who else wants to come visit so I will have excuses to not work all summer??? haha (only kidding, I'm really looking forward to doing some awesome summer camps with my kids!)

 

Dad and Me in Qax

Jim Farrell Has Arrived in Azerbaijan!

Some (me) thought it wasn't going to be possible, but amazingly enough, I am pleased to report my dad's safe arrival in Azerbaijan!  After his visa failed to come in time for his initial flight, and then again failed to come on Monday, I have to admit that I lost all hope of it arriving in time for his Tuesday flight.  I knew that we had given the embassy like 6 weeks to get the visa, which should have been more than enough, but it just didn't seem possible.  But lo and behold, it made it Tuesday afternoon!

His plane got in a little ahead of schedule last night and I braved the all-male airport (as in there were only males there and everyone was staring at me and it was really uncomfortable, not as in I was not allowed there as a female) to get him.  Then today I took him to see the rock carvings at Qobustan and the mud volcanoes outside of Baku before we went to visit with my host family from training.  And now we are back at the hotel resting up (and by that I mean he is resting up, snoring away while I write this) before our long ride up to Tovuz in the morning!! Get ready Qədirli, here he comes!!

At the mud volcanoes

Village Tragedy

 This week, for the second time since I came here, someone that I know has died.  If you remember, the first time it was the mother of our local shopkeeper.  While her death was of course very sad, she was quite old and ill with diabetes, etc.  This death is much more of a surprise and much harder to bear.  It was one of my seventh form (grade) students.  But she was not only one of my students, she was in the same class as my youngest sister and they were close friends.  She is also the younger sister of one of my very best students/close friends.  She was a really shy girl so I won’t write all the details of her death here, even though it all seems to be very openly discussed in the village, but from what I have gathered she basically bled out after a cyst ruptured in her uterus and then no blood went to her brain.  Even though she was apparently suffering for about a month, she didn’t tell anyone (friends, family, etc) and looked perfectly normal and healthy.  On Thursday night (2/10) just before I went to Baku, I heard she was ill but no details.  By the time I returned Tuesday (2/15) she had had an operation and was very ill in the hospital.  By Tuesday night she had died.  I didn’t know until Wednesday morning when students from my other 7th form class told me.  At first I really thought it must be gossip, that the students had it wrong, but within a few minutes my counterpart confirmed the news.  I went with all the teachers and students to her house after school and watched them carry her body away to the cemetery.  It was so surreal and I still can’t quite believe it has happened.  I think I’m going to use it as motivation to do some lessons about women’s health for this girls’ group (basically a Girl Scout troop) that I just started.

While she is the only person I know personally who died, unfortunately my village has seen a lot of death this month.  In addition to Aytac, one of my fellow teacher’s father died, one of my fellow teacher’s husband died, and a small boy (age 3 or 4) also died.  And probably more that I haven’t heard about.  I guess February is just not our month.  I hope we’ve had all the bad news we’re going to get.

Allah rəhmət eləsin.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Even though I knew I wouldn't be at site for Valentine's Day (I have a meeting in Baku), I used my English after school activity time this week to do Valentine's Day stuff with the kids.  First we learned some new words that related to Valentine's Day (things like greeting card, to hug, etc).  Then we had a guessing jar with conversation hearts inside (one of my students guessed dead on, 193 hearts!).  And we finished it all off by making valentines with all the supplies my mom sent from America.  I'm telling you , these kids had more stickers/doilies, etc at their disposal than I think I ever did when I was a little kid making valentines....not that I was jealous or anything....haha.

A Couple Success Stories

At our conference this week, I've had more internet access and while I've been talking to people from home, I've felt so boring saying that nothing is new or noteworthy in my life.  So, I've been trying to think what are some of the more exciting stories from my life and here is what I have come up with.

I have a lot of new kids books that were donated by the Darien Book Aid.  I put them in my classroom this month and we started a sort of library program in my classroom where the kids can borrow the books for a week.  My kids are going crazy over it!  They flock to my classroom every chance they can to turn in their book and get a new one.  They keep track of which books their friends have read and enjoyed so that they can borrow them too.  And I'm so proud of my host sister because she took out a short chapter book (one of the Magic Tree House books) and read the whole thing!  And one of my students borrowed a history book that my mom (my real mom) gave me and it has created quite the stir in the region as one of our best history teachers (who works at my sitemate Beth's school) really wants it and is sending Beth's host sister and our other sitemate Josh's host brother to harass me about getting the book for him.

In my 11th form class recently we were learning about Shakespeare and I wrote a short version of Romeo and Juliet for them to perform.  Totally independently, one of our casts made themselves little props for the apothecary character and they put pillows on the ground so that they could die comfortably and everything.  They did an awesome job!

I started some new activities in January and one of the new things I'm doing is an Extra Help activity.  Last year when I tried to do something similar, I just ended up with a bunch of kids coming to play games and I was disappointed.  But this time, at least the one week that I have run it so far, was really successful!  I had 2 girls come in to do their homework and have me around to answer questions and I had another girl come in with specific grammar issues to prepare for her test the next day and my host sister came to look up new words from her library book in the dictionary!

Mid-Service Conference Time!

It's time for MSC (Mid-Service Conference)!  That means that tonight I came back to the Neapol Hotel for the first time since our Welcome Week, which was really trippy... We have sessions for the next 2 days to learn how to make the most of our 2nd year, so things like how to be better at what we are already doing, new projects to start, and how to make everything sustainable for after we leave.  I've been asked to present 2 sessions while we are here so I'll be teaching a session on English conversation clubs and how to build a resource room. It may be a little interesting because although my grant for a resource room has been approved, I haven't received the money yet!  Hopefully I still have enough insight to lead the session...and one of our awesome Program Managers has agreed to come help me.  Wish me luck!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Təbrik edirəm! Bayramınız mübarək!

Sorry I've been lame about posting lately, I've been generally lame about all things internet related because I've been too lazy to go online.  Now that I have dial-up at my house I don't want to waste time going into Tovuz...but the dial-up is in my FREEZING cold kitchen and I only use it after 11PM when I figure now one is calling my house...which means I just don't go use it at all!  But now I'll do my best to catch you up on what's been going down in my world:

For Christmas I stayed at site with my host family.  We did stockings and presents for each other in the morning.  In the afternoon my sitemate Beth came over and we made "brunch" (but it wasn't ready until like 3 o'clock, so can we really still call it brunch at that point?) which was a fantastic breakfast casserole thing.  And then for dinner the shopkeeper bought a turkey for us and my mom killed and cleaned it for us so we had a big holiday dinner.  Tamilə müəllim, one of my English teacher counterparts, came over to celebrate, which was really nice.

Next was my birthday, which I also stayed at site for.  It was the first time I've ever had to work on my birthday!  I taught 2 classes and then my 11th form students had a tea party for me down in our school canteen.  They waited until after they knew I was finished teaching because they knew that I wouldn't give up my class time, even for my own birthday party haha.  After school my old LCF Nuranə and her husband and mom came over to wish me a happy birthday.  And then my mom cooked up another holiday dinner, this time with 2 chickens.  One we made into levangi (which means stuffing it with walnuts, etc) and the other I made stuffing for.  Two of my English teachers came over to celebrate with us and other neighbors and friends from the village.  It was really sweet how many people came to wish me a happy birthday and give me presents.  Almost made me forget that I'm 24 and thus super old.

Then came the last week of classes before school let out for New Year.  I gave all my classes final exams that covered everything we had learned since September during that week.  I had a marathon of grading them all so that my teachers and I could look at them when we wrote the students' semester grades.  I have mostly blocked the grading experience from my mind, but I think I remember my students doing pretty well.  I'm going to look at the breakdown of how many kids actually failed/passed etc...and decide how successful I am as a teacher.  Maybe I don't want to look...

And finally, I finished off the holiday season with New Year's Eve in Baku.  It was really nice to see a whole bunch of other volunteers, especially because I was at site for Christmas, and get to hang out with our new AZ8's, we had a nice big group.  And on New Year's Day I went out and stayed in Ceyranbatan with my host family from training for a night.

Swearing In Means One Year as A VOLUNTEER

Thursday was the Swear-emony for the AZ8's, which means that we have been actual real volunteers for a whole year!! How crazy?  A whole bunch of AZ7's came in for the ceremony which was really nice, not only because we were there to support the AZ8's but because we got to see each other and hang out.  And spend some time in Baku, which is always wonderful.  It was cool to see the ceremony from the other side of things and just appreciate it.  And my friend Carrie sang the national anthems (of Azerbaijan and the US) instead of having these heinous recorded versions that we had last year, and she sings so beautifully, it was wonderful.  All in all, a pretty great time!