Quick One (With Paragraphs!!!)

Bear Down, Chicago Bears! If you can’t tell, I’m very excited about the Bears game this week. In case you were wondering, I will either be huddled in my bed on Sunday evening checking the scores every two seconds on my phone or online trying to get play by play updates. Either way, I’m expecting big things. That being said, it has been pretty slow around here lately. Last week I didn’t do too much since I had the entire week off, which was nice. I spent a lot of time with my family playing Mortal Kombat (and losing quite often) and just chillin’ watching music videos (of course).

I am back at work this week, which is nice. I missed the people I work with and it’s good to get back into my normal rhythm. I am focusing on putting more of a concentrated effort on getting better at the language and looking for project ideas to do with my organization.

On Saturday, a group of about 10 Volunteers are going to a nearby village, Imishli, for a Play Day organized by Right to Play in Azerbaijan. Community members and teachers get together with volunteers to play games with disabled children between the ages of 7-13. We have training on Saturday, then Sunday morning we all head out and play games for an hour or so. We are all very excited and looking forward to this weekend. I have heard from other volunteers who have done this before that it is a fun weekend with the kids and of course, other volunteers. Now if only we can figure out how to get to Imishli, we’d be set. There are no direct bus routes from Lankaran, so we are trying to find the best, easiest way out there. I’m fairly confident that we’ll figure it out one of these days.

Also, thanks to some newly arrived Christmas presents for both me and Ashley, we are fully stocked on games. Between Chicago Monopoly, Regular Monopoly, Sorry!, Risk, Connect Four, Scrabble, Rummikub, ESPN Sports Trivia: The Game, Yahtzee, Clue, a deck of regular playing cards, Sega Genesis (that we are still trying to get to work) and my brothers’ Playstation One Ashley and I plan on having a tournament royale to determine the Gaming Czar of the Universe. Or we’ll just come up with a goofy bet that will cover the two years we are here.

As for other projects, there are a few things in the works. Ashley and I are working with a local teacher on a project she wants to submit and my organization is always looking for things to do. We are still waiting to hear back on the proposal we submitted right before the New Year so hopefully that’ll pan out. The pictures are of everyone in my office (left to right, they are: Ziya, Aygun, Me, Rufat and Arzu) and the office Christmas/New Years tree. Hope everyone is doing well. You stay classy, U.S. of A.