Happy Rooster Day!

Yesterday I celebrated my third and final Thanksgiving here in Azerbaijan.  My host mom slaughtered my rooster (for those of you who didn't know, in the spring I got a gift of two roosters - the other one we ate a month or so ago for my sister's birthday) to serve as our turkey, so we had Snow White (when I named him I thought he was a hen) for dinner.  I also made garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, garlic bread, apple crisp, and opened cans of cranberry sauce (I can't really take credit for "making" that).  Plus my host mom made cutlets (ground meat patties - my mom makes them better than anyone else) and gave us kompot (really sweet, AWESOME juice that she made) and turşu (pickled cabbage) and she cracked a bunch of nuts.  One of my counterparts and two of my best students came over to join my family and another volunteer, Connie (you've heard about her before, she is the one with the bike club in Qazax where I took my sisters to learn to ride) came down to my house too.  Connie helped me with some of my cooking and helped to keep me from stressing out cooking for so many people.  And my students and sisters helped to decorate our table with the various decorations and crafts sent by my mom and the ever wonderful Mrs. Collins.  It was a really nice, delicious night!

Cold FREEZING Cold

I am currently wearing boots, 2 pairs of socks, a pair of leggings, a pair of sweatpants, a sweater, a fleece jacket, a wool jacket, a thin scarf, a knit hat, and finger-less gloves.  I am also shivering cold.  Why, you might ask?  Because we have a policy here of not putting the heaters into the schools until November 15th and, unfortunately, this November is ridiculously cold (we've even had snow!).  I've only been at school for 2 hours because we have a random school break this week (we've never had it off before so I don't know why) but I had to come in and open the resource room this afternoon.  I'm trying to think warm thoughts.  Wish me luck!

Coming Full Circle

This week I began the final stage of my Peace Corps service, observations of my counterparts.  When I first arrived at my school I spent a few weeks observing classes to get a feel for how my soon-to-be counterparts taught.  Now, here I am, almost 2 years later, repeating the process to see how far they've come.  I'm pleased to say that after only a few days, I can definitely say improvements have been made.  I unfortunately also must say that this process is going to be the death of me.  Why?  Because this is really the beginning of the end.  I've given up my classes!  I'm a teacher with no classes to teach :(  And I have to sit and watch all the classes that only last week I was teaching be taught by my counterparts.  Not that we haven't been sharing the classes all along because we have, as "team teachers," but now I just sit there, unable to help with anything or jump in with a random comment (although I still do...and I need to stop!).  I think this is going to be Azerbaijan's ultimate test of my patience!  Good thing I've had 2 years of training in building up my patience to prepare me!

And FYI I wrote a draft of this post while observing a lesson.  I can't just sit there!

Happy Halloween - Azerbaijan Style

I'm happy to report that even though I'm overseas where we technically don't celebrate Halloween, I was able to have a pretty awesome Halloween celebration anyway!

First was my friend Eric's birthday party (if you don't remember, he is my friend who works at the US Embassy in Baku).  The party was a costume party where we were all encouraged to wear 70's outfits because Eric was born in the 70's.  Realizing that we couldn't find 70's outfits very easily in Azerbaijan, Beth and I decided to get creative.  We made a little harmless joke at Eric's expense by dressing as cave women and saying that, as neither of us were alive in the 70's and it was just SO long ago, we could only imagine that this was how people dressed!  He loved it.  And we were the hit of the party, winning "spicy-est" costume (our prize was a thing of spices from America!).

Beth and I with our spicy prizes!

Then I came home just in time to celebrate the real holiday with my host family.  It was a nice change from the crazy Halloween party that Beth and I had last year at my school.  This time I stayed home and my host sisters and I carved three pumpkins, with the help of my counterpart Tamilə müəllim.  And thanks to my mom sending an awesome pumpkin carving kit, we had all these sweet little carving knives that worked wayyy better than our big kitchen knives did last year.  Our jack-o-lanterns were pretty sweet, if I do say so myself!

A Day in Baku

I'm currently in Xirdalan, a suburb of Baku, because I have come in to conduct sessions for our new trainee group this week.  I was supposed to have to work all day yesterday to prepare for my sessions, but getting locked out of the training office gave me the great opportunity to go into the city and meet up with four of my students who are now in university.  We had a great day eating at McDonald's, walking around the seaside, and taking a boat out on the Caspian Sea.  I was so happy to have time to see them because I was worried that my schedule would be too full this week to give me the chance.

My students with their bunny balloons that the boys bought for them.

Famous

I have had friends at Türkel TV (our semi-local TV station with its studio in Tovuz but which broadcasts to I would guess about 1/3 of Azerbaijan) for a while and last winter we filmed a show called "English for All" a few times.  It was my LCF Nuranə, me, and 2 of my sitemates (Josh and Beth).  We PCVs took turns going in to teach a lesson with Nuranə, but we only made 3 episodes.  The station has decided to start filming again, and this time in their newly built studio.  I went in yesterday and this time they even sent me to their stylist for hair and make-up (I'll tell you right now that Azeris like to wear a lot more make-up than I do, but I let the guy do his thing).  In addition to English for All though, the station has been eager to have me do a whole bunch of other things for them.  This week Beth and I went in on Wednesday and were guests on their live morning show.  They asked us our thoughts about Azeri culture and about our lives here in Azerbaijan.  We even had one person call in, although his question was only would we marry Azerbaijani guys (so typical...and funny because the host had actually already asked us that!).  And now the station also wants me for a new show they are making, Banu-çiçək, which from what I understand is going to be sort of an Azerbaijani version of The View.  We are going to have bunch of women sitting around talking about women and our "world."  We are going to film the first episode this week and the topic is going to be the treatment of children.  They also want to film some other clips of me, first showing me teaching my kids first aid (to show that there are important health lessons we should be teaching our kids) and second showing me at an Azerbaijani wedding.  So basically what I'm saying is soon I'm going to be an Azerbaijani celebrity and the Azeri paparazzi are going to be following me around the village, obviously!

But regardless of how often I am on our little regional station, my fame will never compare to my friends whose music video you have to see.  It has become a huge sensation in Azerbaijan and you should totally watch!

Baku State of Mind

A Weekend Getaway to the Village!

This weekend I was lucky enough to have 2 wonderful guests visiting from Baku, my good friends Evangeline and Eric who work at the US Embassy.  They are the very sweet and wonderful people who let Beth and I stay with them whenever we come into Baku and I was finally given the chance to return the favor.  We had a hectic weekend trying to squeeze seeing everything of importance in the village into a 2 1/2 day trip, but I think we did a pretty good job.  Evangeline got cooking lessons from my mom (3 sisters dolma, plov, and paxlava) and Eric got a saz lesson from Beth's friend Estella.  Plus we went to a wedding where Eric narrowly made it out without having his new best friend Vaqif drink him under the table and we went up for a drive/walk in the mountains where we freaked out some locals who don't get many foreign guests and they watched one of my classes where they learned about real conditional sentences (very thrilling stuff).  It was fun showing them the "real" Azerbaijan and I give them serious credit for wanting to come out and see it!  Not many ex-pats do!

A Sad Day for Peace Corps

Last night, our TEFL program manager, Gülnarə, passed away in her sleep.  I can't even believe it.  She was a really wonderful woman and I loved getting to know her.  I was lucky enough to get the chance to work very closely with her because I was the TEFL representative to the Programming and Training Committee etc.  And I'm just about to go in to work at Pre-Service Training for our new trainees and I was looking forward to seeing her!  It's really sad and my thoughts are with her family.  Allah rəhmət ələsin.

The List Begins

As I was walking through the village the other day, I began to think about some of the things that I will and won't miss when I've gone home.  Here is a the very incomplete list I came up with during this particular walk:

I'm going to miss:
- seeing random women walking around holding chickens upside down by their legs as if this is the most normal thing in the world.  And the chickens just hanging out as if to say "yep, this is life."
- going to people's houses and coming home with an entire tree's worth of fruit without having to even ask for a single piece.
- being able to see what seems like every one of my students by simply taking a 5 minute walk across the village.

I'm not going to miss:
- having to be constantly vigilant to protect myself from goose attacks.  I hate geese, I have never gotten used to them and I doubt I ever will.  They are spiteful creatures.
- needing to wash my feet constantly because the dirt roads kick up so much dust.
- procrastinating washing my underwear until every single pair is dirty and I have to hand-wash the whole load of it until my fingers are red and sore.

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!