Wedding Season Is Upon Us

I thought I would take a moment to answer a reader’s question posted on the comments page of this very blog. This may have been a question troubling many of you, but most likely none of you. The question asked of me was, “Why do you stuff the double cheeseburger into the chicken sandwich?” There of course is an obvious answer to this, but I decided to draw it out into a much more complicated answer. And here it is: I'm sure you know the deliciousness of the double cheeseburger from McDonald's. Put simply, it's amazing. Now, if you were to order the chicken sandwich from this fast food Lebanese place, you would get about 10 inches of marinated chicken covered in melted cheese with green peppers and onions. This by itself is also, again putting it simply, amazing. When one sandwich simply won't do and you are forced to decide which restaurant you should dine at, my question is this. Why decide? Have the best both have to offer and combine them into a powerhouse (some may also call it a ‘tour de force’) meal that will give you all kinds of enjoyment and leave you satisfied for days. Again, I ask you, why would you not give yourself this supremely outstanding moment of happiness? That, my friends, is why you stuff the double cheeseburger into the chicken sandwich. Also, it's more of a placing of the double che inside the sandwich. We've found the best and easiest way is to tear the double che in half and then open the chicken sandwich and then place each half of the burger inside, completely filling all empty space, both in the sandwich and in your belly.

Now that I have that out of the way, there has been plenty happening in Lankaran lately. Last Wednesday, I was sitting quietly in my office, checking email, when all of a sudden there was a sound that came rumbling from all sides of the building. It sounded as though the entire building was collapsing around us and then all of a sudden everything was shaking, the lights, tables, chairs, walls. That’s right, everyone, we had an earthquake. Ashley did some research and found that it measured as a 5.1 and was the first earthquake I’ve felt since we’ve been here. We’ve been told of others, but never noticed anything. When it was over, my stomach felt like it does after coming out of a wave pool. All this did was make me miss wave pools, though. All in all, it was a fun morning. Everyone talked about it all day, which was fun.

On top of that, all the Volunteers in Lankaran (Ashley, Tim and me) were hosts to three of the new Peace Corps trainees. They just arrived in country at the end of June and came down on Saturday and stayed with us until Tuesday morning. We played games over the weekend and walked around town and gave them a quick tour. On Sunday we met with Tim and his youth group and they showed the trainees what they had been doing with their project (translating text for a local museum from Azeri into English). After this we wandered around town for a little bit then had everyone over to my house for chicken quesadillas (enhanced with the taco seasoning from Mom and Dad… THANK YOU!), which I’m sure you can imagine, was intensely delightful. We then played darts and some Chicago Bears Uno and just hung out. On Monday morning we brought them over to each of our offices and introduced them to our coworkers. They were able to ask any questions they wanted and get all the information they could handle on what it’s like to work with PCV’s. Tuesday morning, they were back on their way to Baku and it was back to the regular work schedule for us.

Tuesday night brought another wedding for us to go to. My coworker Aygun’s friend was getting married and invited us Volunteers to the ceremony. We aren’t about to decline a bunch of great food that is free and hours of dancing, so we dressed up and partied it up on a Tuesday night. It was a typically good time and the food was awesome. There was much more dancing at this wedding than the last one that Ashley and I went to and we were sure to take advantage. We did so well, that we even got invited to another wedding this Thursday. Depending on how quickly I recover from the trainees visit and the wedding last night, I hope to go to this wedding as well. It would be particularly fun since we wouldn’t really know anyone there. Wedding crashers anyone?

Other than that, everything else is going normally. Conversation club has been fun the last two weeks as we have played wiffle ball. I took some pics of the kids a couple weeks ago sitting patiently in the classroom and have those pictures posted above. Later this week I have my first athletic club meeting at the same school that we have conversation club, so I’m hoping that it will be fun for everyone.