Moving on up... food style!

The Lankaran food situation just keeps getting better and better. As all of you probably know, I am a fan of the chicken Lavangi that is sold and unique to Lankaran. Over the past months, we have been discovering new foods and newer places to get said foods. One of our favorites is qutab, which is basically a tortilla filled with meat or potato and then deep fried. You can cover it with a yogurt sauce too, which is quite delicious. While this isn’t the best meal around, it is probably the most economical. Seventy cents will usually fill you up quite nicely. Also in town is the cocktail stand which I have mentioned before. For twenty cents you get yourself a tasty, milkshake type treat. It’s amazing every time. Our newest addition is a Turkish restaurant that opened recently and has some of the typical meals, like kabob and the like, but it also has pizza which is quite delicious. On top of that, we just found they will deliver, so we now have pizza delivery. Unfortunately for us though, the pizza is a bit more expensive than what we are usually spending on food, but it’s still a nice treat every now and then.

In other happenings, some friends came down to Lankaran this past weekend and a great time was had by all. We hung out at Ashley’s and mine houses and effectively made terrible messes that will take me a few more days to clean up, but I’ve taken care of the main stuff. On Sunday afternoon, Tim, Joyce and I went to one of the orphanages in town for a mini play-day. This was the idea and implementation of a youth group that Tim and I have been working with for a while now. They wanted to do this a long time ago and they finally got the ok and good weather to do it. The girls that organized the play-day were in charge and it was fun to watch them try and take control of a 25-35 kids and teach them how to play different games. It was a great couple of hours and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. We will be going back in a couple weeks to teach them kickball and play some games with them which should be fun. I remember teaching my sports club how to play wiffle ball and then kick ball so I know this day is going to be a little bit tougher, but I’m sure it will be ok.

This week I am mostly putting my house back together and tying up things at my office because I leave for Spain on Saturday morning. Joyce, Bonnie, Arzu and I will fly out Saturday morning to Moscow and then on to Madrid for what should be an awesome time. From Madrid, we’ll head off to Sevilla for a few days and then Valencia and Barcelona before we make it back to Madrid and then back to Lankaran. Work wise, things are moving along pretty well. I’m supposed to go visit the schools in town tomorrow and Thursday to take pictures of the sports facilities and see what repairs will need to be made to make them playable for the kids. The goal is to get this done before my vacation, so I’m really hoping we get it done. That way when I get back, we can jump into other things that need to be done, such as finding coaches and officials and getting them trained. So far, though, things have been going well.

The pictures this week are Aygun handing the office keys off to Farana on Aygun’s last day and other pictures from the same day and then some pictures from the play-day on Sunday. See you all when I’m back from Spain and Happy St. Patty’s Day!