While a whole lot hasn’t really happened since the last update I’ll try and make this as entertaining as possible. A couple of weeks ago, the circus came into town and generated a bunch of excitement. It wasn’t Ringling Bros. but it was pretty entertaining. There was a rumor that they had some animals but that it was too cold so after a day in Lankaran, they sent them back to Baku. So, the circus was more of an acrobatic display with music and all that stuff. Tickets were really cheap as well, so it was volunteer friendly. I was only able to take a few pictures before the circus staff came and told me to stop so I’ve posted the ones I do have here.

This past weekend, I went from Lankaran to a small village way up north and to the west called Qazax. It’s as far as I could travel from one volunteer site to another. I hadn’t been up in that region before, so for the first night I went the first 10 hours to my friend Ram’s house in Shamkir. He took me to a Georgian restaurant where we ate some amazing food then we just hung out at his place and played a lot of guitar. We wrote a song which I think sounds pretty good. The next day I went the last hour or so up to Qazax to meet up with two other volunteers where they had pizza waiting topped with none other than delicious bacon! The next day more people came over and the party was underway. I decided to pack up all my stuff that night since I knew that I would not want to pack at 6:30 in the morning when I would have to leave. It didn’t occur to me until I was in the taxi and on my way that I had left my camera and iPod at my friend’s apartment. Not that big a deal, but it makes a long bus ride feel that much longer.

I finally made it back to Lankaran and had a fairly interesting bus ride. It seemed to take forever, and everyone around me was very talkative so I didn’t get to sleep as much as I would have liked, but that’s ok. Arzu is in town doing some work until Thursday, so I’ve been able to hang out with her which is always fun. My director Rufat took us out to dinner Monday night. It was only us three but we had a great night, talking joking and eating. So after my weekend travels and then being up all night Monday, I’ve been exhausted all week. That about wraps it up. My pipes still aren’t fixed but hopefully I’ll be able to get someone over to take care of that sometime this week. Ashley has running water now so at least I can go over to his house and shower. It’ll still be nice to be able to get my house fixed though. Some people are heading up to Baku to watch the Super Bowl at one of the bars, but I won’t be making the trip, mainly to try and save some money. Other than that, I’m just waiting for winter to end.