Aloink in Azerbaijan

Hello Again

2008-07-02T00:21:00.000-07:00

Hey all, sorry for the delay between posts. I've been busy traveling through Russia and Azerbaijan the past month or so. That and my computer doesn't work so well anymore (I got it to turn on for the first time in a month yesterday) and the phone line at my house doesn't work anymore at all so I'm on the computer at work. Which means this will be a quick post.

My trip to Russia was awesome. I'll work on getting some pictures up and writing some stories down and hopefully I can get those posted early next week. Highlights included me trying to order food in Russian, blasting off into space in a real space shuttle in Moscow's Gorky Park, napping in parks in Latvia, petting a real live bear, calling America from Estonia, playing guitar for a group of Russians at 7 in the morning after a night at the bars, and many other tales. It was awesome. I also gained about 10 pounds by consistently eating 2 or 3 times the amount of food as my travel companions Bethany and Rachel combined. It was amazing and kind of disgusting at the same time.

After Russia, I went to my COS (Celebration/Close of Service) Conference that PC throws for departing volunteers. It was a lot of fun and a good chance for all of us to get together in a big group. This weekend is obviously the Fourth of July and I'll be heading to a friends house tomorrow. Should be a good time. I hear they have a pool so it'll be just like home. Anyways, I should go for now. Have a good Fourth, everyone!

Talkin' Softball

2008-05-15T04:26:00.000-07:00

It’s finally time for the Azerbaijan Softball league to begin again. Two weekends ago we had the first softball tournament up in Barda. Some of the volunteers (John, Jason and Sarah) came down to Lankaran and stayed at my house for a couple days leading up to the weekend and we all traveled up there together on Friday the 2nd. While they were here, we showed them all the sights that Lankaran has to offer, including the Caspian Sea, the football stadium and the prison where Stalin was held. At the stadium, we talked to the same security guard that was there when I showed my parents the field. We also got a walking tour of the prison which is currently being renovated. It was nice to take a look inside and see what they had done. On one of the days, we ate at our favorite restaurant in town and had a couple drinks. John tried the fish due to Ashley’s high recommendation and after constantly complaining that it cost 6 manat, he ended up getting sick. Now he’s blaming the chicken Lavangi, but I won’t stand for that. He ended up making a full recovery.

As I said, we left for Lankaran on that Friday and got to Barda by early evening. Our first games were scheduled for the next morning, so everyone decided to take it easy and get to bed by 9:30 at the latest. By that I mean we partied until the early hours. Around 8, Ryan came to wake us up. I went with him to the field to get everything set up and play catch and basically just give myself time to wake up. I was recruited to play left field for the Barda team and I’m more relieved than anything that I didn’t screw anything up. I got a couple big hits and made a few good plays in the field, including throwing someone out at home plate. We still lost both our games, but the team put up a good fight. It felt good to get out and play again after a long winter. After each team played 2 games, we hung around and played another game just for fun. Afterwards, we kept up one of our favorite traditions and went to the nearby restaurant and got some beers. A good time was had by all.

The one bad part about this day was that my phone got stolen. I had placed it in Ryan’s bag with my wallet and a bunch of his stuff. It fell out at some point and someone had placed it on the bench where the people who weren’t playing were sitting and hanging out. There were probably about 20 people there, so I wasn’t too concerned. After the games when we discovered it was stolen, some of the kids said they saw who took it but that they didn’t know him. They assured me that they would get it back for me within a day or two and not to worry. I believed them and went about my normal business, hoping for the best. That following Monday, we received word that they had found my phone in a warehouse in town. I don’t know how it got there, or what the real story is, but they found it and for that I am grateful. It was actually kinda nice to not have to worry about charging it or anything like that. Luckily, the sim card was still in there and nothing else was taken.

On Sunday, we all got together again and played for a few more hours. This day was just volunteers, as usual. Afterwards, we all went back to Jason’s house again for another party. This time we were celebrating Cinco de Mayo eve. Yet again, a good time was had by all. As you can imagine, we all awoke Monday morning bright-eyed and ready to tackle the day. We bought some good meat, made margaritas and celebrated Cinco de Mayo, although it was a little tamer than last year’s celebration. Tuesday was more relaxed as most of the people had left by then, and it was nice to have a simple, quiet day. On Wednesday, Ashley and I left around 7:15 to get to Baku. He had some stuff to take care of and we were meeting Bethany and Rachel so we could get our visas from the Russian Embassy on Thursday afternoon. By the time we got into town we were both ready to crash. On Thursday, we all got our visas without any problems. So now I am officially excited for my trip to Russia, Estonia and Latvia. We’ll be leaving on June 1st and returning from Riga on June 11th. It should be an awesome time. We still have a little planning to do, but most of the details are taken care of.

When I returned from Baku last Friday, I arrived home to discover that I had no electricity. Because one of my pipes still leaks a little bit, I also had no water. And since I couldn’t plug in the pump for the well because of the electricity, there was little I could do. Fortunately, I had water saved up in a huge bucket so I was able to cook and clean and things like that. I also discovered that no matter the electric situation of the rest of my house, one outlet still works so I was able to use my computer at least. On Saturday, thinking that I had forgotten to pay my electricity bill, I went to the post office and paid up hoping that everything would be turned back on by the end of the day. It wasn’t and I also realized that I most likely paid the same bill twice and that something was actually wrong with my house. After a brief look at the wiring, I decided to call the landlord and have them take a look. A half hour later, everything was mostly back to normal except for the wiring. For now, everything works ok (except the actual well pump and my phone line), so hopefully the tape holding everything together lasts for at least four more months. What can you do though, right?

That’s about all I got. I put up some softball pictures from Barda. Our friend from the Peace Corps, Shams, was in town this weekend so we gave her the tour of Lankaran and ate Lavangi. It was her first visit to Lankaran and she seemed to enjoy herself. We also went to the stadium and saw the same security guard. He laughed at me. It was nice to see Shams at least once more, since we don’t get to very often because she’s so busy with organizing all the trainings that PC holds. I hope everyone had a great Mother’s Day!

Back to America...

2008-04-28T09:56:00.001-07:00

…For my parents at least. I’m still in Azerbaijan for the next 5 months or so, not that anyone is counting. So I think it is safe to say that my parents’ and aunt’s trip to Azerbaijan was a success. I got to Baku last Thursday with Ashley and we hung out in the hotel until it was time to pick up my mom and dad at the airport. They didn’t have any problems with their visas or their luggage and we were back at the hotel in no time. My dad asked if I wanted to see all the goodies they brought with them then or wait a day until we got to Lankaran. I thought about this for about 1/8 of a second and a few minutes later we were all enjoying a glass of some fine tequila. It was delicious. The perfect appetizer for this deliciousness though, was one of the finest sandwiches I’ve ever enjoyed. That sandwich is known as the Spicy Baconator from Wendy’s. If you haven’t had one, go get one immediately. You won’t be disappointed. It didn’t bother me that the burger was around 24 hours old. It was so good. It also started a week full of much eating. I’m still kinda full.

We decided around 3 a.m. that we should at least lay down and try to sleep for an hour or so before we had to leave to the airport again to pick up Aunt Jean. Her flight was due to get in at 5 but didn’t get in until 6. Due to the long visa line and the fact that her luggage did not arrive with her, we didn’t see her for quite some time and were beginning to worry that she may have missed her flight. She eventually came out and we were on our way back to the airport and back to tequila. We all got some sleep and later went to the Peace Corps office to get phone numbers for the airport and find out when the luggage might make it. They told us to call back the next morning and they would be able to tell us if her luggage was there. The next morning when we called, no one answered. We decided to head over to the airport thinking that was the only option available at the time. We got there and found two very helpful people who took us right to her luggage and thankfully, everything was taken care of. Later that day, Saturday, we headed down to Lankaran.

Friday though, was for cleaning up from all the traveling and doing some touring of Baku. We took a taxi from the hotel to the center of town and walked to the Maiden’s Tower which is in Old City Baku. My parents were there last year as well on their trip here, so they were experts at leading us around. Not really, though. We walked to the top of the tower which has tiny stairwells and doorways and I think Dad and I managed to not hit our heads at all this time. After wandering around Old City for a while, we walked down to the Caspian and along the walkway there for a bit. By this time, it was getting kind of late in the afternoon and everyone was fading fast. We decided to head back to the hotel for a couple hours of rest and some showers before we headed out to one of our favorite gathering places, Tequila Junction. On the walk there, we were able to point out where Ben broke my nose, which I’m sure she enjoyed. A bunch of other volunteers met us there and we ate a ton of nachos, drank a lot of beer and had what can generally be described as a good time. Katie challenged Dad to a chugging contest, so while he sipped his Guinness, she chugged a full beer. It was that kinda night.

We got to Lankaran Saturday afternoon and get everyone settled into their hotel rooms. After wandering over to my house and giving them the big tour, I took my dad and Joyce to get some chickens and bread from one of the nearby tandir places. We devoured three chickens and bread and sat around and talked for a while. Again, everyone seemed pretty tired and by now it was around 9 or a little later. I walked them back to the hotel and made it back to my house without leading anyone into any of the roadside gutters/ditches and went to bed. On Sunday we walked around town a little bit to kill time before we then took a bus up to Isti Su (translates to hot water). We had lunch at our favorite Gutab place and had a couple cocktails. Basically, we showed my parents and aunt what we typically have for lunch during the week. Anyways, Isti Su is a small village about 20-30 minutes away by bus and they have natural hot springs, hence the name. They created small rooms where groups can go in for 10 minutes at a time and soak and as we say, replenish, refresh and revive your soul. It feels pretty good. Afterwards we walked back up and waited a while for the bus to come to take us back into the city. By then it was dinner time, so we all headed to the new Turkish restaurant in town. This took a lot of time but the food was pretty good. They forgot to make one of our pizzas so we had to wait much longer than we usually do, but everything worked out. We even got to play with one of their pet rabbits they keep in the restaurant. Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel where we played a couple games of Yahtzee in the hotel restaurant. It was a good end to a good day.

On Monday I introduced everyone to my office and gave the grand tour of the city of Lankaran. At night, my office took us out to dinner where we ate and drank a bunch. The night ended kind of early since we needed to get my aunt back to the airport by 11 the next morning. We left Lankaran around 5:30 and were there in plenty of time. After saying goodbye, we picked up Ashley and were on our way to Sheki to see Magda and Charlie and show my parents more of Azerbaijan. We even helped move Magda into her new apartment. After checking out the sites of Sheki (climbing a mountain, old buildings, etc.) we packed up and were on the move again. Our next destination was Gence, where Ben was our gracious host. There was only enough time to spend one day there, but we saw most of the city and had a couple great meals. This ended the traveling portion of the trip and before we knew it, it was time to head back to Baku to send mom and dad off back to America. It was a great week though, for sure.

I finally made it back to Lankaran and was able to rest up a little bit and catch up on happenings at the office. I couldn’t rest long though, because I had to prepare myself for two weddings that week. On the 16th, my friend Ziya took me to a village wedding. We took a bus about 20 minutes out of town and went to his friend’s house. The groom was there, Ziya’s neighbor, and about 25 other men. We sat around eating, and giving toasts to the camera, me included, and at the end of all that, we went to a little wedding place where all the women and music were. We danced a bit and after a couple hours of that, we were off. I got home around 1 or so, but had a great time. Before we went to the wedding part, Ziya took me to his house where I met his father, wife and baby boy, Ujal. I put a picture or two of him up here. And yes, he’s a White Sox fan as you can tell by the apparel. Two nights later, Friday night, I went to another wedding. When we first moved to Lankaran, the AZ2 volunteers introduced us to Fuad, a friend of theirs who also speaks really good English. He helped us out with a lot of stuff as we got acclimated to our new surroundings and has been a great friend. So Fuad’s wedding was Friday and that was also a great time. Lots of food, as usual, lots of drinking, pretty common and definitely lots of dancing. Tim, Ashley and I had a lot of fun and we definitely showed off our dance moves as much as possible. The next morning, though, I was back on my way to Gence to celebrate Ben’s birthday, go to Qazakh to play soccer with Katie and a bunch of kids there, then back to Gence, then back to Lankaran again. Then, after just another couple of days of rest, I had to go back to Baku. I needed to go to the Russian embassy to fill out paperwork and start processing my visa for my trip to Russia in a month or so. Everything worked out great, and so now I’m starting to get really excited for the trip.

I’m back in Lankaran now, and things are finally settling down, but only a little bit. This month is sure to be busy again and it all starts tomorrow when a few friends come down to spend the week in Lankaran. On Friday, we will all head up to Barda to begin the softball season which is always a lot of fun. This Wednesday, we are going to play kickball at the orphanage that we had the play day at a month or so ago. Hopefully the weather will be nice. The past couple days have been gorgeous, but it started raining a little bit tonight. Tomorrow, I’m supposed to have a meeting with the ExCom to discuss plans for the sports league. We just found out last week that we officially received permission from the city to move ahead with the project and work directly with the schools, so now the real work begins. Should be interesting. Sorry for the lateness of this post, but hopefully it is full of plenty of information and joy to keep you busy and content until my next post. Pictures are: Ashley and I enjoying our amazingly delicious Spicy Baconators, Ziya and son, Ujal and me, Fuad and his wife Nigar, me dancing at the first wedding and then our friend Mobil, Ashley and me with Fuad and Nigar.

Back in the land of AZ

2008-04-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

And back to reality. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Spain and will get into a little more detail soon, but I thought you all might be interested to hear my latest housing issues. Take a guess, water, gas or electricity. Well, this time it’s water. Again. I returned home from all my travels (when I got back from Spain, I quickly turned around and went to Baku for a couple nights to watch some March Madness on Saturday night) to find that I had no water left in my big water tank. No problem, I’ll just turn on the well pump, I thought to myself. So I plugged in the pump only to find that it is no longer functioning. So once again, I am out of water. I would like to say I will have it fixed this week, but I am leaving again on Thursday to meet up with my parents and aunt who will be here for a while to visit. Needless to say, I’m quite excited to see them again. Plus it should be a good time showing them around the country. Now on to Spain.

We left Baku around 6 in the morning and flew on to Moscow. We had to land for a couple hours in a town about an hour away from Moscow because of bad weather. It didn’t really matter though since we had a 7 hour layover so we weren’t in danger of missing our flight to Madrid. When we finally did get to Madrid, we met up with Joyce’s friend Nicole and her friend Sarah. Our original plan called for us to then catch a bus immediately to Sevilla, but we had a small problem finding the bus station and figuring out the Metro. We finally did, but it was too late. Little did we know, it would end up being a trend for the vacation… the whole getting lost and sleeping in bus station thing. We decided to wait it out in the bus station for 6 hours or so and we had some Doritos and tequila thanks to Nicole to keep us warm and busy. We had to sit outside which got a little cold, but what can you do. We finally got on the bus and made it to Sevilla where we had a hotel waiting for us. Unfortunately, we had no idea where the hotel was and after waiting for a taxi for an hour or so, decided to hoof it in the semi-correct direction, then completely wrong direction. What didn’t help was the parades going on in town that crowded the streets and all of us being tired from travel. We finally made it though, and checked in without any problems.

Joyce’s friend Caroline was going to meet up with us in Sevilla and gave us some directions, which of course, we could not follow. So Joyce and I wandered around for a couple hours, ate some food (tapas are freaking awesome, by the way) and went back to the hotel where Caroline happened to be waiting for us. Good times. Funny story, while we were eating it was after midnight which meant it was St. Patrick’s Day. I tried to order an Irish car bomb, in Spanish, and got laughed at. The bartender’s eyes popped out of his head when I said car bomb in Spanish, and I tried to explain how to make one. They finally got someone that spoke a little English to help me out and I tried to get behind the bar to make one, but eventually gave up. The next morning, Caroline took us around a little bit and showed us how to get around town a little bit. We ate some breakfast then wandered for a bit. Turns out, when Joyce and I got lost, we were about 5 minutes away from the hotel. Go figure. The rest of the day we walked ALL over the place and saw pretty much all of Sevilla. We took a lot of pictures of old buildings, parks and churches and at night we watched the parades celebrating Holy Week. There are a few pictures of the guys in robes and the floats they carried around with candles. It was all pretty impressive. After that, it was time to say goodbye to our nice hotel room and leave for Valencia.

Every year in Valencia, they have a festival called Las Fallas. I was very excited when I learned that our trip would be corresponding exactly with this festival. We were able to plan our trip so that we would be in Valencia on the 19th, which is the last and biggest night for the festival. All over the town, they build these giant paper machet floats. They are all judged and a winner is selected, although I have no idea what basis they use or which float one, or if I even saw the winner. Either way, at night time, they light them all on fire. All of them, except the winner of course. So all day long there are people everywhere, checking out the floats, drinking beer and throwing off firecrackers. They were the kind that are somewhere in between black cats and small sticks of dynamite. It was awesome. Whenever it was time to light one of the floats, they would set off fireworks from that site so at night you can hear and see fireworks all over the place. We staked ourselves a nice spot right in front of one of the bigger floats and were able to see them set up the explosives and watch from the front row as they blew it up. They had fire hoses on either side and were constantly spraying the buildings, the float and everywhere around it. Keep in mind these things are built in the middle of these old European streets, so the buildings are practically right on top of the fire. I can’t imagine something like this going on back at home. Crazy fun. After the fireworks, we were all pretty exhausted. I was starving so Bonnie, Arzu and I stopped off at a Burger King (I know, I know, sometimes you gotta give in, you know?). Everyone went back to the bus station where we had a few hours to kill before our bus left for Valencia. The one guard at the bus station was quite vigilant though and made sure that no one got to rest their head or lay down in any form at all. If you slept for one second, this guy was all over you yelling something in Spanish until you sat up right. There were tons of people at the station though, so he couldn’t really keep up and we all got to rest our eyes for at least a little bit.
We finally made it to Barcelona and met up with Dave (my cousin) without any problems. We gathered our stuff and went to his house where we were immediately greeted with showers and beer. Not a bad combo. We went out a little bit that night to some of the bars, but we got a late start so we didn’t get to see the usual places Dave heads to. Friday night though, we got the full tour. It was a great time and I can see that Barcelona would be a fun place to live. That Saturday, we all kind of hit a wall. It didn’t help that most of us slept until around 4 or so in the afternoon (we got in pretty late that night). We decided that a relaxing day wouldn’t be all that bad, so we made dinner in the apartment and hung out all night. It was still a lot of fun and re-energizing. Nicole and Sarah had to leave early the next morning anyways, so they weren’t really interested in going out all night again. On Sunday we got a pretty good tour of Barcelona. Dave took us to Park Guell and a couple of the other major landmarks. It would have been nice to have another day to walk around, but we saw pretty much everything we wanted to. Barcelona, I think, was still my favorite city to visit though.

Monday morning brought with it another early bus ride back to Madrid. We got there early enough in the afternoon that we could wander and check out some of the major sites before we had to be at the airport, so that’s exactly what we did. Arzu went shopping, since she had already been to Madrid, but Joyce and I did a fair amount of wandering. I don’t think we even got lost. Well, maybe just a little bit. We got to see the big palace, cathedral, parks and watched some old guys play bocce ball. You can tell they go out there all day, every day. It was pretty amusing. We got to the airport in plenty of time to catch our flight and made it back to Azerbaijan. It felt good to finally get home and sleep in my bed, but it also would have been nice to spend more time in Spain. I would have liked to see a bull fight, but that will have to wait till next time. I’ve attached a bunch of pictures and have a ton more on my computer. The pictures are: a bridge in Sevilla, a parade with the guys in their robes, a float with candles and the Virgin Mary, the bull ring in Sevilla, a palace, the view from the top of the towers in Valencia, two of the floats that they set on fire, one of the streets in Valencia with tiny booths for shopping on the sides, the float we saw get lit up, Joyce, Sarah, Dave and Arzu out in Barcelona, pictures from the park designed by Gaudi and a statue in Madrid that is the city symbol.

The excitement doesn’t stop there though. Tomorrow morning, I am heading to Baku so I can meet my Mom and Dad at the airport. A few hours after them, Aunt Jeanie arrives as well. I’m excited to see them all again and can’t wait till they get here. We’ll spend Friday in Baku, then on Saturday we will head to Lankaran for a few days. Aunt Jeanie will fly out on Tuesday, and then my parents and I will be moving on to Sheki and Ganja. I figured since they have been to Lankaran before and have seen pretty much all it has to offer, I would show them other parts of the country this time. It should be a lot of fun, as always. Be assured that I’ll let you all know in a little over a week. Till then, go White Sox!

Moving on up... food style!

2008-03-14T03:28:00.000-07:00

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!

Running Water... wow.

2008-02-26T00:13:00.000-08:00

A quick apology to all you loyal readers and avid Aloink fans out there, in particular, Mrs. Flegal. I know this post is long overdue, but I have been trapped inside my sleeping bag for the last month.

Well, after two months, the wait for water is over. Last Thursday, I sat around my house while my landlord, two of her grandkids and a repair man were over fixing up my pipes. The first repair man they brought over told them it would take him a week or so before he would have the time and equipment to fix the water pipes at my house. This would not do, so we went to a different neighbor, I mean repair man, who made a shopping list of things to buy at the bazaar and went to work that afternoon. By mid-day Friday, I had running water from the cold water pipes again. Needless to say I was very excited because as you all know, running water is freaking awesome.

Also, and I don’t want to jinx it, but the weather has been fantastic the last few days. Temperatures in the 50’s and low 60’s with a slight breeze and cloudless skies are a great thing. So is running water. Did I mention that already? There is still a little work to do, as I had to leave Friday afternoon for a meeting at my office, but I think I can handle the rest. After carefully observing the repair man once all the new faucets and joints were in place, all I have to do is turn stuff on and bang on the pipes with a piece of metal. So that was my evening after work yesterday. All went well and I was able to shower this morning which was a wonderful thing, seeing as how I haven’t taken a shower at my house in over two months, or this year. I’ve used other showers, but it’s just so much easier using your own, you know? Enough of that, let’s move on to work related happenings.

As most of you probably know, I am on my second counterpart with my organization, since my first one moved on to bigger and better things with a job in Baku. While I was in Baku two weekends ago for Volunteer Prom (the 14th through the 16th), my new counterpart and Russian tutor, Aygun found a new job in Baku as well. So this is her last week working for CLEE in Lankaran and will be moving to Baku to work as a lawyer in a big firm. While I am once again a little disappointed because we have become good friends and she helps me out with everything I need, I am more than happy for her and glad that she has a new opportunity. Plus she’ll be working right across the street from our favorite restaurant in Baku, so I should get to see her whenever I’m there.

*Quick notes* Prom was awesome. I’m not sure exactly why it’s called Prom, because it’s just an excuse for all the volunteers to get together in Baku and party, but I guess it gives us a reason to dress up. Whatever. It was a blast this year. We didn’t go anywhere special, just the usual place, but everyone dressed up in some way or another and the bar let us play our own music so there was something for everyone. We went out for dinner in groups on Thursday and Friday night and Saturday, a small group of us hung out in a friends apartment and played video games and made lasagna for Magda’s birthday. The food was great and it set us up to have a great night. I’m getting pictures soon, so I’ll put those up next time, which will be sooner rather than later. Ok, back to the other stuff.

So Aygun is gone. Fortunately, we’ve already hired a replacement who I already know because she was Ashley’s Azerbaijani tutor when we first arrived in Lankaran so we are already friends. That should make the adjustment a lot easier. She’s being trained this week and I’m sure she’ll catch on real quickly. She speaks English too so that will make it easier dealing with my new project that is finally starting to get some legs. On Friday, Aygun and I met with representatives of the city from the Ministry of Youth and Sports about creating the sports league that I’ve wanted to start. It was important for us to get the city to support us and they agreed so this week we are sending letters to the Education department and will begin getting the schools and teachers directly involved (I hope). So it should be interesting to see how this project develops, but I’m real hopeful we might be able to have it put together by the end of spring so I can see the formation of the league before I leave. I’m cautiously excited at this point and hopefully this will keep me busy in the upcoming months. I realized last week that I haven’t really put up any pictures of the area where I live so I went out the other night and tried to get some good pictures while the weather was clear. These aren’t the best but they are what I have right now and I hope to get better ones in the upcoming weeks. The first picture is Ashley, Carlo and me at Prom. The next one is the street my house is on and then the other two are from the surrounding area around my house.

2008-01-30T23:51:00.000-08:00

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.

BRRRR!!!

2008-01-13T09:17:00.001-08:00

I wrote everything but this paragraph a week or so ago, but have been either too lazy to post it or to cold to get up and get the phone line and connect it to my computer so I can go online to post it. Nothing much happened this past week though. In addition to the one broken pipe mentioned later, I also have two busted faucets as well. One of em flew about 2-3 feet from the wall!! Just waiting for that thaw. Anyways, like I said, nothing much new besides what’s written below. I had a new first for me today though, which is pretty exciting. It had been quite some time since I’ve been able to shower and was sitting in my room the other day watching a movie and finally got disgusted by my own smell (it really wasn't that bad, but I figured a cleaning couldn't hurt, you know). It was time to clean. I didn’t want to use any of the water that I had managed to save from the faucet though, so I gathered a bunch of snow by filling a bucket and a pan from my kitchen and then melted it on the gas heater in my main room. I let it get warm for about 5 hours or so then I walked outside to the shower room and cleansed. The cleaning part felt real nice. The miserable part was the fact that the room I was in was around 30 degrees. Needless to say, I moved quickly. And that was my first (I hope last) snow water bucket bath. I’m just grateful I live in the South of Azerbaijan. The pictures this time are of the winter wonderland of my yard and over my fence and then fireworks from New Years in the big park and the Lankaran volunteers (minus Tim who is on vacation) with the Azerbaijani Santa Clause and Ice Princess.

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a fun and safe New Year extravaganza. The Lankaran group sure did. Ashley, Jane and Joyce came over to my house for a nice evening of chicken Lavangi dinner, games and drinks. Ashley and I have taught Jane and Joyce how to play Euchre, which is one of my favorite games, so we’ve been playing a lot of that lately. It’s a good four person game and it kills the time pretty well. The day before, Ashley and I went to the bazaar and bought a bunch of firecrackers (like black cats) and roman candles and some other small things. At night we walked around town adding to the general mayhem of everyone throwing off firecrackers and celebrating the New Year. We got to the big park in the middle of town just in time to see the big firework display that they had put together. It was pretty good, so I added a few pictures. Afterwards, we walked around a little more and went to go say hi and happy new year to my host family. We had some tea and cakes, of course. From there we headed over to Ashley’s house for more cards and to sleep. It was a good night, and a fun way to bring in the New Year.

This past week has been quiet since there wasn’t any work. All the offices and organizations close for a week for the holiday. It’s nice to have some time to get the house in order, start studying Russian again and things like that. I also watched a lot of movies. Yesterday, though, it was time to get back to work. It has also been getting pretty cold here. On Saturday I woke up to find a couple inches of snow on the ground. I was going to make a snow man in my yard, but figured the snow wouldn’t last long, like last year. So far, I have been very wrong. It has only gotten colder. The pipes in my house have been frozen the last several days, but luckily it’s been sunny and a little warmer in the day so they thaw a little bit. The first night I was caught off guard, but since then I have filled all the pots in my house with water and I even have an 18 liter bottle filled so I should be good for a little bit. If nothing else, I can always melt the snow down and use that for cooking, cleaning and what not.

Yesterday before work, I was hoping to take a shower. Nothing beats a hot shower in the morning on a cold day. To my disappointment, though, after checking all the faucets outside, everything was still frozen. Not that big a deal, I thought, so I went to work. On my way home, I was walking down the street by my house and heard a lot of running water. My first thought was, which faucet did I leave turned on?? When I walked into my yard I realized that it wasn’t a faucet that was running water, it was a broken pipe coming out of my shower room. Water was spraying everywhere and flooding the pathway to the toilet. So I went back outside and ran to my landlord’s house but no one was home, so I went to my neighbor across the street that always helps me whenever I have a problem. She said she’d call a repair man and the landlord and let them know what had happened. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out which valve to turn to make the water stop. I finally found it and lucky for me, the puddle that was gathering ran off so I don't have to skate my way to the bathroom.

I also made what appears to be turning out to be a wise purchase. Since it has been getting colder outside, the inside of my house has also been getting colder. If it is 30 outside, there’s a good chance the warmest part of my house is around 38-40 degrees. I decided to buy some plastic sheeting for my house since one side is pretty much all windows and they aren’t the tightest fit. After wrestling with the plastic for a couple hours, I got all my windows covered in the main room and in the kitchen. I only have a little bit left too, so I guessed how much I needed accurately, which I’m pretty happy about since I didn’t want to spend more than I would have to. After a couple hours last night, the temperature was around 50 while it was 28 outside, so I’d say its money well spent. And that’s pretty much what I’ve been up to this week. I’m picking my Russian lessons up again which keeps me busy and working on a few things with my office. Every day either on my way to or from work I get in a small snowball fight with some of the kids that live down my street. It’s fun. I usually win and every now and then they throw ice balls so I just whitewash them on the side of the road. Just kidding. I actually just say see ya later and walk away. All in all, it’s been a good month so far.

And I'm Back

2007-12-29T07:06:00.000-08:00

Well it’s been a while, but it’s good to be back. Mainly that means that I’m back to Lankaran and things have finally calmed down a little bit. It also means that I have electricity in my house which is an improvement. About two weeks ago, the power went out in my house. This isn’t that odd or even that bad a thing, as you grow accustomed to this sort of thing. The problem was, all my neighbors had electricity and mine was the only house that didn’t. That was annoying. So I burned through a bunch of candles and took to reading by the lights at the end of the lighters. I called my landlord and they came over with a neighbor but couldn’t figure anything out. It wasn’t that big a concern since I was heading to Barda and Sheki and I figured I could deal with it when I got back. So I got back and was hoping that the problem would have just fixed itself, but no luck. Later that night, the landlord came over with an electrician and after poking around a bit, the power came back on. We celebrated with high fives. They left and about an hour later, my power was out again. It came back a couple hours later, and has been better since. It’s not that bad a thing, but my computer only lasts 7 minutes on a full battery and you can only read so much. Oh well. Last weekend there was a Christmas party at my friend Jason’s in Barda and a good number of volunteers went to celebrate the holidays. It was a good get together with a lot of good food and friends. We didn’t do anything spectacular for the party, but it was definitely a good time.

On Sunday, Rikki George, Ashley and I went to Sheki to spend Christmas with Magda at her apartment. Basically this meant spending a great deal of time watching Christmas movies, like Elf, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and many others. First, though, we went to the fancy pants hotel in Sheki and got ourselves some great food. We got cheeseburgers, club sandwiches, fries, and stuffed chicken. The food there is really good, but a bit pricey for us. It was still worth it though. The highlight, for sure though, was Polar Express. Sheki has a small movie theater and we managed to find a time when they wouldn’t be having any customers and rented out the theater. They played Polar Express for us and we had Coke and popcorn. It wasn’t the same as the theaters in America, but it was really awesome. It was definitely better watching that movie on a big screen rather than a small laptop. Other than movie watching, we hung out, laughed a ton, walked around town for a little bit and played a lot of Life. That game is crazy. On Christmas night, we cooked ourselves a chicken, some pre-packaged stuffing, rice, instant mashed potatoes and some whiskey. It was really, really good. Everything tasted so great. Afterwards we made sock puppets from the kit that Ashley’s sister sent to him a while back. This was also a lot of fun although I was disappointed that we didn’t get to put on a theater show with the puppets because a lot of the glue hadn’t dried yet. So that’ll have to wait, but it just gives us more time to think of some good skits.

On Thursday, I was back at the office. Aygun had organized an office party to celebrate the new year and invited a few people to celebrate with us. She also planned a small game with small gifts. Each person had to grab a sheet of paper and complete the task that was on it in order to earn their prize. Mine was to say the Peter Pecker tongue twister, but it was Parrot Peter instead. Weird, eh? I succeeded though and got my prize which was a little mouse on wheels. When you pull it backwards on the ground a few times, it can roll away on it’s own. It’s perfect for my house and everyone got some sort of mouse gift because next year is apparently the year of the mouse. Who knew? We also had a bunch of snacks and fruits and balloons which led to a great balloon fight. Afterwards, Rufat took one of our new lawyers, Rahim, me, one of our old lawyers, Ziya, and Arzu (she was in town as well) out to dinner. He had brought some boar meat to the restaurant that they cooked up for us and we also had turkey and the usual assortment of bread, veggies and stuff to eat. The boar was so good, I could have finished it all on my own. After some drinks and some singing (they made me bring my guitar, and Rufat, Rahim and Ziya started singing some classic Azeri songs), it was time to retire for the evening. On Friday, I met Arzu for lunch and hung out at the office. We don’t have work all next week so now I have plenty of down time to catch up on some stuff around my house. One exciting development from this week is I found Mountain Dew bottles in a tiny shop right by my house, so they can be sure to get more of my business now. So far, we don’t really have any big plans for the New Year, but I think we’ll buy some fireworks and wander about town and see what trouble we can stir up. Should be a great time. I plan on going to the host family tomorrow and seeing what they are up to. That’s about it for now I think. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and enjoy your New Year’s celebrations. It’s hard to believe that it’s almost 2008 already, right?

The pictures are of my plate of food from Christmas night (to make you all jealous), the sock puppets that we made in Sheki, Aygun playing my guitar and “singing” a song, the New Years tree in my office, all the snacks and what not from the party and everyone from my office except Aygun (she’s taking the picture). From left to right, there is Arzu (doesn’t work with us anymore), Rahim (new lawyer), Shabnam (another new lawyer), Rufat (director) and me.

Results!!!

2007-12-15T02:53:00.000-08:00

Before I get to the results, I thought I’d give a little extra update on my week. Nothing too exciting happened, really. I got my hair cut, more like trimmed, by my new stylist, Joyce. She came over after work on Thursday to trim up the sides and back because my hair is getting pretty long since I haven’t had it cut short since I was home in June. Having her cut my hair is definitely an experience. She’s only cut guys’ hair once and that was me a couple months ago. So whenever she goes to cut something, she either flinches, or says “oh crap” or something else to make you think that your head is going to totally look messed up when she’s done with it. It’s pretty entertaining. I can’t complain either; it’s a free hair cut. It turned out pretty good, so I’m happy with the 2 Manat that I saved.

Tonight I’m going to a play at the Drama Theatre in town. I’ve been to parts of a play twice, and each time I saw the same scenes from the same play. This time, I’m hoping it’s a different play for one, and two, I’m going to try and stay for the whole thing. My friend Aygun is going and the rest of my office was supposed to go as well, but they bailed. So now I think it will be Aygun, her dad, her little sister and me. It’ll be nice to get out of the house a little bit and do something different. I’m even thinking about doing some laundry today, but it’s kind of crummy out so I’ll probably read and watch a movie instead.

Now on to the much anticipated (mostly by Mom, I think) results of my latest Reader Challenge. I appreciate everyone that sent in their guesses. I really liked the ones where the logic behind the guess was explained. And John, great job on getting the ball rolling. Dad, I was also impressed with your guess. That was some good sleuthing, but you forgot one fact. Only some people came Friday night, most Saturday night. Also, a good number of people left Sunday morning and only a handful stayed till Monday morning. So some people got 2 days, others 1. After collecting all the bottles and placing them in the garage and doing some calculating, the “exact” number I came up with for this challenge is 494. So congratulations Dad, with your guess of 521, you win this Challenge’s prize. It’s not a phone call; I’ll give that to the second place winner, which is Mom with her guess of 457. The pictures you see here are of both sides of the prize for this challenge. It’s a handy-dandy 2008 calendar!!! The months are written in Azeri but in the Cyrillic alphabet. I won it at the English Exhibition and will mail it with a short congratulatory letter. Proudly display it on your desk. That should about do it. Thanks again to everyone who participated, and I’ll think of a new challenge for you all.

Mmmm. Mutton!!

2007-12-12T04:45:00.000-08:00

I apologize for not posting an update last week. I meant to do it before I was leaving for the weekend but my plans got changed and bunched around a little bit and I ran out of time. I will try to catch you up to the best of my abilities.

The Saturday before last, I along with the other PCVs in Lankaran were invited to an English Exhibition at one of the schools in town by my friend Lala. She is an English teacher there and comes by my office every now and then to say hi and talk for a little bit. She organized a play last year where the students sang songs in English and acted out scenes from Azerbaijani plays in English. I watched a DVD of it and it was pretty entertaining. This year was a little bit different. We didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into. We showed up at the school and she showed us to the room where the exhibition was. In the cafeteria of the school, there were little tables set up like booths at a science fair. Each booth had a different theme with different facts about American or British history and some differences between American and British English. There were also games at each booth. Some were about grammar while others were about sports or food or anything else you can think of. Some games involved a saying written out in Azeri and if you translated it into English correctly you would win a prize. I started collecting quite a few prizes because all the kids wanted me to come to their booth. When I answered correctly, they wouldn’t let me not accept the prize, so I got all sorts of stickers and pens and pencils and things like that. I started giving these away and going around helping other kids as they dragged me around from booth to booth.

As the event was wrapping up, all the kids hounded us all and asked for pictures and autographs. Everywhere I turned there were kids posing and shoving paper under my face for me to sign it. One kid even asked me to sign her arm. Eventually, the teachers got everyone to calm down and they sat us down for tea and cake. The students and other teachers presented Lala with flowers and a gift and there were some speeches. Each of the kids from that school was presented with certificates and this is where Lala really put us to work. Azeri handwriting can be pretty difficult tot read and Lala asked us to stand up in front of everyone and read off the names and present the certificates to the students. So Joyce, Jane, Ashley and I each got about 4-8 certificates to hand out. I must say, I did pretty well. I impressed Ashley at least, although honestly, that isn’t too difficult. The picture over on the right is Ashley and me by a couple of roosters saying “Nush Olsun.” It’s by far my favorite saying here and means “bon appetite.”

Last week, my program manager Elmir from Peace Corps was in town to visit with Tim, Ashley and me and talk about our first year of PC service and our plans for the upcoming months and to check to see if there was anything they could help us out with in regards to our work. I had a really good talk with him and enjoyed the visit a lot. Fortunately, I have a very good working and personal relationship with the people in my office, so I didn’t need any help from him about that. I also got to bounce some of my ideas off of him and get some feedback. All in all, it was very good and I came out of it feeling a lot better about stuff. Plus, Elmir’s a great guy and always good to talk to. On Thursday, he took Ashley and me up to Beylagan where our friend Carlo lives. Carlo was having a small birthday party at his apartment so we stayed there until Sunday. Others joined us on Friday and Saturday and it was a good, small get together.

That (last) Saturday, Carlo took us around Beylagan to an old cemetery where there is a mosque and shrine dedicated to a prophet. The prophet is buried inside and visitors take off their shoes and walk around the grave and pay their respects. Hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room is a long chain with a hook on the end. There is a man there to assist you, or you can do this yourself. With a scarf wrapped up as if you were going to put it on like a neckerchief, you swing it over your head and hit it onto the hook at the end of the chain while you make a request to God. After a second or two, the hook jerks around suddenly and if the scarf stays on, it means that God has accepted your request. It was really interesting to try it and to see the Azeris try it as well. Afterwards, we went outside where they have small cabin type rooms. They served us tea, candy and mutton kabobs. It was all we could do to keep ourselves from constantly saying, “Mmmmm. Mutton!!” Once we were done eating, Carlo’s friends there drove us back into town since it was already dark and it was about a 45 minute to one hour walk back. On Sunday morning, Ashley and I had to catch a bus back to Lankaran. This was no small task as the bus we were to catch was leaving a small town at 8:00. We were told to take a taxi to a spot on the side of the road and wait around 10:00. We got out of the taxi, walked to the side of the road and five minutes later, our bus came flying by. It’s amazing how this stuff works out sometimes.

As for things at home here in Lankaran, they are going well. My landlady got the gas fixed at my house so I now have a heating source for the main room of my house and the water for showering. The night it finally got fixed a couple weeks ago, I just laid on the floor looking at the flame coming out of the pipe in wonderment and glee. Finally, I could sit somewhere without freezing. Unfortunately, my bedroom is still a little cold, but it does get a few degrees warmer than the outside temperature so it’s definitely an improvement. Plus, I have a few sweatshirts and the Peace Corps sleeping bags are wonderful. I typically sit next to the gas heater at night and read for a while. It is nice to be able to sit at the table and work instead of lying in bed all the time.

I realized after reading the guesses for the Great AzerAloink Reader Challenge #3 that I never placed a deadline for guesses. I apologize if some of you hurried your guesses and appreciate those that are playing. Dad, I must say, you definitely are talking some math. With all that being said, I will allow guesses for anyone else who wants to play until this Saturday morning, my time. You have until midnight Chicago time Friday night to get in there.

Getting a lil Cold

2007-11-27T23:22:00.000-08:00

So it seems the winter chill has arrived. This past week or so, the temperatures have gotten much cooler, especially at night. Some of the regions up north even got snow. We’ve been getting rained on most every day recently, which just makes everything seem that much colder. What doesn’t help is I still have no heat in my house. This means that I can see my breath while I eat dinner (right now it’s around 45-50 degrees inside my house). It really isn’t that cold but there’s no escaping it since the inside of my house is about the same as outside, just less windy. My landlord called last Wednesday to tell me that they have gas in their house and wanted to know if mine had turned on yet. I think they were just bragging because I still don’t have any. They said they would call a repair man to come check it out but as of today I still haven’t heard anything from them. I’m planning on stopping by after work to see if they have any news for me.

I have also been very busy at home trying to catch some mice. A month or so ago they weren’t really causing any problems and you could hardly notice them, but recently they’ve gotten much bolder and are starting to create some issues. So I went out and bought some sticky glue type stuff that you spread on cardboard and drop bread crumbs on to lure the mice on to the cardboard. Once they are on it, they are stuck for good. So far I’ve caught two mice this way, one small and one that was a decent size. Overall, I’ve caught three mice and the first one was all me. I was getting ready for work one day and walked from my kitchen to my bedroom to grab my computer. At the doorway of my bedroom I noticed a mouse making his way across the floor as well. I grabbed a broom that was nearby (luckily I had just swept out my house the day before and left the broom inside) and was able to hit the mouse once like a golf ball. After that it kind of laid there wheezing. It was a little weird. I proceeded to sweep him out of my house and down the stairs and left it at the mercy of the dinosaur mural. I think a cat came and scooped him up. The other mice, the ones that get stuck to the cardboard, are placed into a plastic bag and then into my dumpster. Amazingly enough, my dumpster has not been emptied in the 7 months or so that I have been living in this house. It’s getting a little full and my landlord has told me they will tell the garbage truck to come clear it out when it comes by but this has not happened yet. I think they think I leave my house every weekend, so they are waiting for me to be there. Just another thing I need to talk to them about, I guess.

We had a nice Thanksgiving last week, and thank you to everyone that sent me an email or message. It’s always weird not being home for the holidays but it’s always good to know people are thinking of you and it will be great to be home next year to celebrate with everyone. I don’t want to say I’m used to not being at home but it definitely helps to have great friends, Azeri and PC, to spend time with. It helps makes home feel a little bit closer.

At work, I have been meeting with some of the kids that participated in ABLE camp back in September on a small project that they want to begin. They want to do something with a website, but I’m having difficulty finding out exactly what their goal is. It seems to change day to day and week to week so it’s definitely interesting. If nothing else, I will be able to help them with basic computer skills and maybe some organizational stuff (yes, I can be organized when I choose to be). In the next couple of weeks we will be having trainings at my office so we have been preparing for those as well. Other than that it has been kind of laid back lately, which is nice. People are starting to get Christmas and New Year’s plans in place, so I am thinking about what I want to do. There is a group of people heading out to Turkey for a week so I am thinking about ways I can make that happen. That about does it for this week. There’s not a whole lot to talk about now that things are settling down. My Russian lessons are progressing nicely. A little slow right now, but Aygun and I try to have a lesson whenever she has time.

I decided to share some pictures of the aftermath from Halloween weekend (The other picture is a random one I found of the view off my porch. Breathtaking, isn’t it?). With a little bit of help, I was able to collect all the bottles from the party and put them into boxes and garbage bags. I put them all in the garage so they are out of the way and don’t get all cruddy by sitting out in the rain. The goal is to get the garbage truck to back right into my lawn and just take everything from the garage and get rid of it all in one fell swoop. Should make for an exciting Saturday. In fact, I think this might make for a good challenge for all my readers out there.

So here it is, the Great AzerAloink Reader Challenge #3. As usual, each contestant receives one guess which is to be posted on the comment board of this blog. This week, your job is to guess how many bottles are in my garage. I’m looking for a total of all the bottles. This includes beer, champagne, tequila, vodka, wine, Fanta, Sprite and anything else that might be in there. While I don’t know the exact number, I have a pretty good idea (I have determined a number that will be considered “exact” for this challenge). Things to consider before making your guess:

Not all the bags shown contain bottles; some contain regular garbage items, such as chicken bones or Slim Jim wrappers.
The piles in the pictures are the result of people staying at my house for three nights.
We have added to the pile since Halloween, so not all the bottles are pictured.
Ashley and I used some of our Fantasy Baseball winnings to provide “party favors” for everyone.
The bottles come in many different sizes. For example, a bottle of MGD is small compared to a bottle of Xirdalan and tiny compared to a bottle of wine.

So there you go. Think carefully and talk some math. The prize this time will be really neat. I promise.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

2007-11-20T03:44:00.000-08:00

So, on my walk to work one morning something funny happened. At least I was amused, which admittedly doesn’t take much, so hopefully you all will be too. My office is about a 25 minute walk from my house and is basically a straight shot down one main road. I was walking down the road, just minding my own business when, from way behind me (like a couple blocks), I hear the unmistakable sound of a bell being rung from a bicycle. Lots of kids in my neighborhood ride backs and like to ride circles around me as I walk home and ask me random questions, so I figured one of the kids saw me and was cruising down the street to say, “Hello, what is your name?” So I keep walking and I keep hearing the RING RING getting closer and closer. Now, the RING RING is just about next to me and all of a sudden there is a flurry of RING RINGs as the bike rider slows down and pulls up next to me and rides at my walking pace. I look over to see an old man, probably around 50 or so, staring right at me. RING RING, he says. He followed that up with a quizzical stare that I returned to him. After saying hello and then asking him what he wanted with a simple wave of my hand (you know what I’m talking about), I looked away. He stared at me for a few more seconds and said … (wait for it) … RING RING RING RING RING RING and rode away. I couldn’t help but laugh and wonder what the hell had just happened. And now on to this week’s update.

Last weekend ROCKED!!! Team Lankaran decided to take the night train into Baku, so we left around 9:00 Friday night and arrived around 6:30 Saturday morning. A long train ride to be sure, but with music, beverages and snacks (FUNYONS RULE!!!) it can be a fun ride. Once we arrived in Baku we went right to the Peace Corps lounge where there was already a good number of our friends trying to catch up on some sleep and hang out until they could go to the houses they were staying at for the weekend. The Peace Corps calls other Americans that live in the area and arrange for us to stay at their houses for a night or two. Ashley and I stayed with the same couple we stayed with last year. They’re really nice and have an amazing house. We got there around 11 and they were just getting up and making breakfast so we were treated to eggs, pancakes, sausage and bacon. Needless to say, it was awesome. Ben, Carlo and Jason also stayed with us. During the day, we decided to relax at the house and have some beers while we swam in the pool and sat in the sauna. Great Peace Corps experience, right? Around 3:30 or so it was time to start preparing our dish to bring to the party. This year was a potluck party with volunteers bringing pies and mashed potatoes and things like that while the embassy provided the turkeys and stuffing and the house and main items. We made mashed potatoes. They were delicious. A little after 5, we headed out to the party only getting a little lost along the way. We made it there in time, though, and got some appetizers and chatted up our friends and Peace Corps staff. It was funny watching people react to the appetizers. One server would walk in with a tray full of chicken nuggets and volunteers would be running from different rooms to grab one or two. You would think we’d never eaten before. Then came the real meal. You know you have served yourself well when you walk by other people and they stare at your plate and say, “Oh wow.” I done well. Twenty minutes later, I couldn’t move. The food was incredibly good. I covered everything in tons of gravy. For the first 5 minutes, I stared at my plate, just soaking in all the Thanksgiving wonderfulness. Dinner was amazing and so was dessert. Shortly afterwards, it was time for the talent show.

Many of you have probably already heard, but Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne made an appearance at the party. Ashley and I have been trying to figure out a way to outdo last year’s performance so several months ago we decided it would be funny to dress up as Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne, since they are both really awesome performers. A few days before the party, we were practicing at my house and trying to decide how we could have some chatter in between the songs we played and came up with the idea to do a “VH1 Storytellers” skit. After I got up on stage and played Dave Matthews Band’s Warehouse solo, I headed to the basement to get beautified as Kelly Clarkson. Ashely was already dressed as Avril when I got down there and our beautician, our PCV friend Karen, was putting on his makeup. It was my turn next and then we patiently awaited our turn at the end of the show. Some of the staff was cleaning up dishes and taking down the tables and saw Ashley and I sitting in the room preparing and just laughed at us. One lady freaked out and started yelling something in Russian then petted the tuft of hair on my chest. She then walked away laughing hysterically. Ashley and I just about lost it there. Finally we got called up on stage and performed quite possibly the most ridiculous performance ever. It took us a while to prepare for this too, because Ashley can’t play guitar so I had to learn all of his songs as well as mine so I could teach him how to play at least a little. We played a duet together as the last song, and I’ve been told that we melted at least one face (Joyce’s). If you ask me how Ashley and I look dressed in drag, I’ll tell you its incredibly hideous and more than a little frightening. Everyone else at the party seemed to think that I was quite attractive. Not sure what I think of that, but compliments are compliments. I’ll take what I can get.

And so now the last month’s whirlwind tour of Azerbaijan is complete. I look forward to resting and getting back into a normal routine again. I’m having some troubles with my house that I need to get fixed. The gas line that heats my house is very weak and doesn’t light. The landlord has come over to look at it but I need to follow up with them and find out what the deal is before winter really starts. I’m concentrating a little more on my Russian lessons as well and hope to get into more of a routine for that as well. For real Thanksgiving, Team Lankaran will be sitting around someone’s house, eating some good food, some pumpkin pie (thanks to Becky, I believe) and watching movies. In other words, we’ll be doing nothing. I’ve posted some pictures of people getting food last Saturday, people sitting in the room of the talent show and Kelly and Avril. I’m still collecting more and hope to get those up next week. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!!

Pig is Delicious

2007-11-13T23:51:00.000-08:00

Nothing quite like a pig roast, no matter where you are. Last weekend in Gence, a bunch of us got together for softball during the day and pig at night. I could go on and on and on about how awesome it was, but I don’t need to make any of you jealous. I have put up a couple pictures. One is of the pig being cooked and the other is of me enjoying a piece of bread scraped on the pig and a bottle of Mountain Dew after a day of softball.

This weekend pretty much concludes a very busy and eventful month. All the volunteers (or at least most) will be heading to Baku on Saturday for a Thanksgiving celebration with folks from the Embassy. We did this last year and gorged ourselves on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and pie. This year shouldn’t be much different. After dinner, the volunteers organize a talent show for our hosts and it has become very popular. This year I’ll be performing a song solo and then teaming up with Ashley to melt faces and rock everyone’s worlds all over again. There is quite a buzz over what we are going to do this year to top last year’s performance, mainly stemming from the fact that we have been spreading the word that we are going to blow last year out of the water for the last 4 months. We’re very excited and have been practicing for the last couple weeks now. We only have a couple days to get ready and put on the final touches, so it’s been a busy week.

Next week things should get back to normal. Or at least normalish. We are planning a nice Lankaran Thanksgiving celebration for the weekend. Basically, we’ll just make some good food like mac and cheese and sit around and watch movies. It’ll be nice to just relax instead of going all over the place. As for work, I applied for the grant and will be waiting until the end of December before we hear if we get it or not. In the meantime we will start meeting with our conversation club again in a week or so and I have met with the kids that went to ABLE camp in September and the plans for a small project are in place with them. My office is also organizing several trainings for different groups in the community that we hope to begin in December. They will be focused on human rights (one of the main focuses of CLEE) and on general business skill development (where I come in).

I went to my host family last week with a large duffle bag full of laundry because I have gotten very lazy and hand washing that many clothes would have taken me months. They were kind enough to let me use their machine and hang my clothes all over the place to dry. Plus it was a good opportunity to hang out with them which I haven’t done in a while. Ulvi and I renewed our Yahtzee rivalry and played 6 games with each of us winning three. My Russian language lessons have started as well. I haven’t been able to find enough time to study, but I’ve pretty much got the alphabet down and have started learning grammar rules (so much fun). It’s going ok, I think. Other than that, I’ve been waiting for letters from Jackie’s students and a video from Zach’s office. Also, thank you to Jane’s mom for the “Darn Good” Chili pack you sent. No joke, it was better than “Darn Good.” Anyways, I found a picture of all of AZ4 together a from month or so ago when we were at our Mid-Service Conference in Baku. It’s a good picture of all of us together. I’m still trying to think of a new challenge that will really make you think so stay tuned.

November... WOW!!!

2007-11-05T03:45:00.000-08:00

Sounds as if there are some sore losers out there. Don’t worry, I’m thinking up a new challenge for all of you and an even better prize. Maybe I’ll send some chicken Lavangi to you, but odds are I’d eat it first so all you’d get is a pile of bones. They’d still be delicious, though, you can bet on that.

As you all know, the last two weeks were incredibly busy. I had Ben and Magda stay at my house the week before the party, and then the party was general insanity. We made costumes mandatory or else you weren’t going to be granted entrance into my compound. People started to arrive Friday night, and we bought 10 chickens stuffed with Lavangi and 10 pieces of bread to feed everyone. It lasted about 8 minutes. Later that night, I was talking with some friends when someone came up to tell me that my neighbors were at my gate and wanted to talk to me. Thinking they thought we were too loud, I asked everyone to quiet down and to turn the music off. I got outside and two of my neighbors drag me over to one of their houses where one of their sons is waiting inside. They bring me in and tell me that he plays keyboard and that they want him to come to my house now and the next day to provide music for us. I thought it was very nice and told them so, but that it was unnecessary. Instead, they gave me a cd of music for us to play and told me again and again that they are my sisters. So, now I have two older sisters to look out for me in my neighborhood. Good stuff.

Saturday afternoon brought more people and lots of awesome costumes. One guy, Nate, dressed up as Gwen Stefani, but his costume wasn’t all that great and he just looked like a creepy dude. I called him Glen Stefani the rest of the night. Ashley and I dressed up as Ron Burgundy and Brian Fantana from the movie Anchorman, and as always, we were a huge success. Jane and Joyce went the commercial route and dressed as the Chiquita Banana girl and Land o’ Lakes Girl. I am still collecting pictures from everyone that was there and hope to be able to post more next week. I have put up a few to tide you over though. All in all, the party was a great success. There was a little bit of trouble though, as Joyce playfully slapped (shoved)me, causing me to lose my balance. I hit my head against one of the windows in my living room/hallway and got a cut above my eye. I had a pretty nasty bump too and got quite the shiner, but it’s almost all faded away back to normal now. My house is also just about back to normal thanks in large part to Jane, Joyce and Tor, an AZ5 Volunteer. Others chipped in before they had to leave, but these three stuck around for the bulk of it. I decided to stack all the garbage in my garage until I could figure out how to get rid of it all. It’s a little ridiculous, but I guess three days of Halloween festivities is bound to make some trash. I also want to thank all of the parents that sent decorations and anything else Halloween related. My garage was decked out and I had decorations all over the house as well. It was awesome.

This upcoming weekend a bunch of us are headed up to Ganja for a Luau/Pig Roast. I’m not sure the pig roast part is realistic or will ever actually happen, but it has been discussed and I am certainly holding out hope. Either way, there should be a lot of volunteers getting together to celebrate November, or something like that. Man, I hope we get a pig.

Besides cleaning and recovering last week, I was very busy writing a grant proposal for my host organization. A lot of the work had already been done, but I needed to fit everything into the grant applications specific guidelines. This is still for the Lankaran tourism booklets that we have been trying to produce. It came down to the wire, but I got the application in Friday evening and so now we are playing the waiting game. This week at the office we are welcoming two new lawyers into the office that will be here mostly part time. One of them is friends with the lawyer that used to work here so I know him pretty well. The other one recently graduated from University in Baku so I will be getting to know her. Aygun will fill in as a lawyer when the others are gone but will mostly be working as the office administrator. She’s very excited to finally be back to one job as she has been the only lawyer and office administrator the last couple months. So my office is finally getting back to normal and things should calm down a little bit, just in time for winter. Aside from all that, I’m also busy preparing for the Thanksgiving Day PCV Talent Show. I’m sure most of you remember Ashley and I performing a Bon Jovi classic last year (remember the youtube.com video?). Well, this year should blow that completely out of the water. As usual there is a great air of secrecy to our plans and so no one else knows what we have planned until we walk out on stage. It makes it more fun that way.

So everything is going well over here and getting back to normal. November has been very busy so far and will continue to be with Ganja this weekend and then Baku the weekend after that. It’s nice though, because as it starts to get cold and dark by 5, things tend to slow down to a crawl. With the office getting back to normal and with Aygun having some more free time, I will be starting Russian lessons this week or next. I figure it will be a good challenge and it couldn’t hurt to know a little bit if I want to go visit Russia next year. We’ll see how it goes. I’m thinking of a new challenge, like I said and will get that up soon. Other pictures posted besides the obvious are Rikki the Mexican eating Ina the Bulgarian Flavored Taco, Ben as the Jolly Green Giant and Ram as a transformer. It only worked from the side though, he looked absolutely ridiculous from the front.

And the Winner Is:

2007-10-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

Last week in Baku was a great time. I ate all the food that I wanted to, several times for some of them and got to see all of my friends in one place again which is always great. We went out dancing a few nights and on Saturday afternoon we played some people from the US Embassy in softball. The field was really nice, much better than what we have gotten used to. The game was a lot of fun as well. I only got a couple of hits (everyone struggled at the plate but we got the big hits) and scored a run. I threw out a runner at home from left field as well in the first inning which proved to be a big play later in the game. We got down a few runs early but got back in the game thanks to Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" blasting out of someone's iPod stereo. Going into the top of the ninth, we were down 9-8. Once again, we decided to play some Journey to get us the lead. An AZ5 got a couple of big RBI's to put us ahead 11-9. The Embassy team scored one run in the bottom of the ninth but that was it as our defense shut them down. Afterwards we all went out to lunch for nachos and chicken nuggets. Then it was time for all of us to head back to our sites. Ben and Magda came to Lankaran with Ashley and I and we've made awesome meals all week and just been having a great time.

Also during the week, we had our medical and dental check-ups and everything turned out great. I'm healthy and within the normal weight range for my height, so don't worry Bonnie's mom. It's all good. You'll all also be pleased to know that I have no cavities. I'm relieved because now I don't have to worry about it or go back to Baku for fillings. Good stuff. I also took my language test on Tuesday and scored an Intermediate High which means I improved a little bit and I can get a tutor to start learning Russian. I think it'll be challenging but I want to give it a shot.

Now the moment you've all been weighting for (GET IT???). I got a decent amount of guesses and they vary quite a bit. My personal guess would have been 134, but I figured it wouldn't be fair of me to make a guess. Some guesses were intriguing, such as Joel and his ELMO!! guess. I think he's just a little bit off though. My official weight at the time of my weigh-in was.......... 139 pounds. So John, with your guess of 138.8, you are the winner. Sorry Zach, I wanted to go in dripping wet, but the Peace Corps is very strict about walking around dripping wet. Oh well. Congratulations and thanks for your guesses. Now I must prepare for the Halloween party.

You Ready For This?

2007-10-11T00:08:00.001-07:00

This past week hasn’t brought much excitement to the great city of Lankaran, but it hasn’t been completely boring either. I have had some company at the office which has been nice. The cleaning lady comes by once or twice a week, and another volunteer (Azerbaijani) at one of the other NGOs in town comes by to answer the phones for me and help out with clients that come in. Turns out it’s much easier for her to talk to them than me. Plus she doesn’t speak English, so it’s a good chance for me to practice. Which is important because next week, I have a test.

During our service, Peace Corps organizes several trainings for all the volunteers in Baku. We had one last year, and next week is our Mid-Service Conference. I’ll leave Lankaran on Tuesday morning and arrive at the Peace Corps office a few hours before my Language Proficiency Interview. We had to take these during training as well. Basically, you sit down with the Peace Corps language coordinator and talk in Azeri for 20 minutes or so. She’ll ask questions or just let us talk and she judges how well we can speak and understand. This wouldn’t be so bad, but the part that freaks me out every time is when she turns on the tape recorder. I don’t know why, but it always unsettles me for the first minute or so. I’m hoping to get a higher score than I did in training, obviously, or at least maintain (insert awesome “thumbs up” picture here). I really hope I haven’t gotten worse, but I’m fairly confident that I haven’t. Time will tell though. On Wednesday and Thursday the Peace Corps staff will have sessions planned out for us to refresh us on things we have learned in the past and also to motivate us to get back out there and break the monotony of being at site. On Friday we have our medical and dental check-ups. Can’t wait for these! And this brings me to the Great AzerAloink Reader Challenge #2.

As most of you know, or have at least noticed if you have seen any pictures of me recently, I have lost some weight during my time here in Azerbaijan. I thought that this week, I will post another challenge for everyone (update on Challenge #1 coming later). I will even through in a prize. The winner will receive a phone call/voice mail from me at some point in October. I know, I know, it’s very exciting. I will be weighed on Friday morning, and will post the results in two weeks. Everyone has until my next post two weeks from today (October 11) to make their guesses on my comments page. The winner will be whoever guesses closest to my weight on next Friday.

Some helpful hints:

When I left America in June of 2006, I weighed around 160 lbs.
Between then and now, I may have misplaced somewhere between 20 and 25 lbs.
While in America this last June, I gained roughly 10 lbs.
I’ll be in Baku next week. That means McDonald’s, nachos, beer and pizza.
I walk to and from work every day… about a 25 minute trek, one way.
I try to work out, but have no set routine.
My good friend Carlo got so worried in Barda that he made a diet plan for me, which I have yet to follow.

Ponder all this and get your guesses in!

As for Challenge 1, two people entered, and that was Dad with a guess of 24 days of rain in October and Katie with a guess of 17. We are still at just one night, so it looks like Katie will win.
I'm surprised we're still only at 1 day, but I'm more than happy for it. I'll think of a prize, Katie.

Barda was a great time last weekend. Each softball weekend involves one day of just the American volunteers playing a game or two, and one day of the Azerbaijani/American teams playing against each other. This weekend, the American games were on Saturday. And John, yes, I did hit a home run. Aside from stellar play in left field and that home run, I really didn’t do much else. It was a rough go around, but still a great time and a good tune up for next week. A group of us will be playing some of the Marines from the Embassy in Baku on Saturday. The volunteers won the basketball game last year, and we hope to keep it up in softball.

Aygun is returning from Australia this week (today she should be in Turkey), so it will be good to hear her stories, see her pictures and see if she brought back some Vegemite, which we all know is an acquired taste. Granted, it is a taste that I have not yet acquired. Lyka is staying at my house since Ashley has gone to America, and has become a little bit more well behaved. She still barks at night, but not nearly as often, which is nice. I have gotten her to stop digging at the concrete in front of my gate, but now she digs under the house. My yard has a nice collection of bones and other random objects that she has pulled out from under there. I just found out yesterday that the tourism booklet my office had been working on with another NGO will not be getting made like we had thought. The other NGO is experiencing some budget cuts and decided to cut our project. I’m disappointed and frustrated but have a few other ideas on how we can get this completed so we will see what happens. Other than that, everything is pretty normal in Lankaran. And Zach, I’m waiting for that video hello and letters from your co-workers. Let’s see if they can entertain as well as a group of 5th graders.

Steak Sauce

2007-10-04T08:11:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I’ve been weak sauce the last couple updates (according to Mom) so I hope to remedy that this week. I don’t think I can, but I’ll do my best, and isn’t that what really counts? Well, that, and making sure we all have fun. Here we go!

As you can probably guess, the last week or two has been kind of slow. Tim, Ashley and I organized a training for college kids that was supposed to be on Monday at 2:00. We were going to have 10-15 students meet us at the library and we were going to give a seminar on resumes, cover letters and interviews. Ashley contacted his tutor who knows students and one of our other friends from the youth group that he is involved with to invite other kids. So at 2:00 on Monday, Tim, Ashley, Jane, Joyce and I all headed over to the library to meet with everyone and do the first of what should be many trainings. Turns out, Ashley’s friend in the youth group was on a bus coming from Baku and wasn’t able to make it that day, which means that all the people he invited weren’t going to show up. So, there you go. Just goes to show that you can schedule and prepare all you want, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out. So I think we are going to try again next week.

In office news, I have been holding down the fort over at CLEE this past week and a half. My coordinator, Rufat, was on a month long vacation to Russia. He just returned this week and stopped in to see how I was doing and make sure everything is ok. He had a great trip, from what I could tell by his stories and pictures and brought back some pretty tasty chocolate. Arzu, who is working in Baku, has spent the last month in San Diego for a program designed to train it’s participants on youth organizations. Last I heard from her, America rocks. Ziya, one of our lawyers, recently got a new job as an ombudsman in another city, about an hour from Lankaran. That means that Aygun has been the only lawyer in our office for a while, but we are searching for another one as a replacement. Speaking of Aygun, she is currently in Australia. She also has my camera, which is why I won’t be putting up any pictures for a couple weeks. I get an email every other day or so, and so far she is having a great time. She is staying in Sydney and says she is constantly getting lost, but that everyone is really nice and helpful and more than willing to point her back in the right direction. I hope she brings me back a wombat and some vegemite. Well, maybe just the wombat, vegemite is nasty. So that leaves me alone in the office to answer questions and give out lawyerly advice. I don’t do much of that, I usually just ask the clients to write down what they need and when Aygun gets back, she will help them out. And as for Ashley, who doesn’t work at my office but is there quite often, he is on his way to America for a friend’s wedding. He has promised to do all he can to eat a baconator in O’hare Airport and let me know how it goes. If nothing else, I’m sure he’ll eat plenty of other stuff.

Ashley and I received a treat in the mail a couple weeks ago. My friend Jackie is a teacher in Chicago and had her 5th grade students write us letters. While the letters weren’t as crazy as the ones we got last year, they were just as amusing. She even sent a cd with a video of all of them saying hello to us. So now we have something else to keep us entertained and hopefully the kids will learn a little about Peace Corps and Azerbaijan.

This weekend promises to be very exciting. Maybe not exciting but at least mildly entertaining. I am going to Barda to meet up with a bunch of other volunteers and play softball. We did this over the summer and it was a blast. The same four cities (Mingechavir, Barda, Sheki and Ganja) all have teams again (Americans and Azeris) and this is the first meeting since the summer time. I’ll get to see and hang out with my friends and meet some more of the new group of volunteers who I didn’t get to hang out with much in Baku last time. Should be awesome, except for the bus rides. Those are never fun.

Later this month, we are having a Halloween party in Lankaran for all of the volunteers. So far we have heard from a lot of people that they are coming so it should be a good time. In the next week or so I’m going to go around the neighborhood and tell everyone that a bunch of American’s are coming for a holiday party and that they will only be here for one night and to apologize ahead of time for the noise. On that Sunday, there is a soccer game at the local stadium so we are going to get a big group of kids together with some of the volunteers and watch a game. It’ll be great to get the girls involved because they always tell us that they want to go see a game, but feel uncomfortable. Our hope is that with a large group and American girls, they will feel better about it. Hopefully the weather will be nice. So far it has only rained one night in October. I kind of hope it keeps it up because the days have been quite lovely. I have attached one picture, from a while ago. It's me enjoying the Krusty-O's you sent me Mom. Thanks! They were delicious.

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, AGAIN!!!

2007-09-30T23:37:00.000-07:00

Once again, Ashley and I have defied the odds and won another fantasy league against my friends in America. This time, we dominated in baseball. I came back from behind several weeks ago to finish in first place, and Ashley took second. So now we hold both titles in football and baseball. Taunt my friends at will, because I surely will.

Hello

2007-09-29T03:09:00.000-07:00

I didn't know what to write... so. Hi Jane's mom and Jane's friend Shannon. Hope you are well. Love, Tom

I got nothing!

2007-09-19T02:49:00.000-07:00

Well, this should be a really quick update this week. We officially have welcomed two more volunteers to Lankaran which is very exciting. Everyone came over to my house last Saturday and we made sloppy joe’s. This was great because we got to eat an awesome meal AND got to sing the sloppy joe song. Always a fun time. So Jane and Joyce definitely got a warm welcome and they have insisted that we cook one American meal every week, which Ashley and I were quick to agree to. Other than that, not too much has happened since last week. School started on Saturday as well, so it’s been fun to watch all the kids walking to school in their new outfits. On Monday, Ashley and I saw 3 kids, pretty young by the looks of ‘em, walking down the streets. They were wearing matching shiny suits with matching briefcase style bookbags. It was awesome. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera, but you can bet they broke some hearts in the schoolyard that day.

A funny thing happened on Sunday night as well. I was lying in bed watching a Bears game from last year when I received a text message from Aygun. Here is how it read. “Hey tom! Will u come after lunch plz? Tomorrow I’ll have surgery in my throat. Bone got stuck there. While eating. Very dunzo. Don’t cry for me. I’ll be ok. Have a good night.” Needless to say, this caught me by surprise. I was also a little confused and worried that Aygun might not be ok, so I texted her back to make sure she was alright and to see if there was anything I can do. Her response was that she is ok and not to worry, she was just so hungry she thought she was Lyka (Ashley’s dog) and “here you go – bone inside.” Not to worry though, the next morning she was ok and back to her usual self as the bone somehow worked itself out of her throat and she didn’t miss any work. Hearing her tell the story is hilarious though and we all had a good laugh. That was the excitement of the week for me.

Since school has started, we have to find a new time and day to have our conversation club. I also need to schedule a new time for the athletic club. We’ll see how this goes, as scheduling has never been an easy thing for us and the students. I hope that I can continue both though, as they have been a lot of fun. I would like to see the athletic club grow to involve other schools as well. This weekend promises to be a good one as well. All my friends and I are heading off to Baku to hang out with a ton of the new AZ5 volunteers. This will be our first chance to meet a large number of them and them us, so it should be a fun time. Also, on Saturday I am planning on going to visit my first host family from training. I haven’t seen them since I left last September, so I’m excited to see how everyone is doing. I just heard that an AZ5 stayed there for a week or two during their training and they constantly told her about how much I ate. I found this funny because they always told me how little I ate. I’m sure they’ll be surprised to see how much weight I’ve lost.

The pictures I have posted are random and don’t relate to anything in particular, but I find them to be amusing. The first is from the Project Design and Management workshop conducted by the Peace Corps that I attended in August. That’s Ashley on the left and Maria on the right. Next is my friend Chris Boswell and cardboard cut-out Tom at Zach and Julie’s wedding a couple weeks ago. Finally, there is the groom himself having a drink with party cardboard cut-out Tom at the reception. Fun times were had by all. (Next time I'll try to put up more pictures from this side of the world.)

One year?!?

2007-09-12T07:47:00.000-07:00

September started off a couple of big weeks for us here in Lankaran. On the third, Ashley and I traveled with 8 other kids (ages 14-17) up north to Gabala. You may have heard of Gabala and the listening station that is posted there. Anyways, we went up north to attend ABLE (Azerbaijani Boys Leadership Experience) Camp 2007. Of the 8 kids, 5 were going to attend the camp and three others attended last year and went going as Junior Counselors to help out the volunteers. We met up with five other volunteers who also brought kids from their regions. Before I get into camp and how much fun it was, I want to thank everyone that contributed to this project or wanted to, but didn’t get a chance. All the kids really enjoyed themselves and took a lot out of camp and it could not have happened without all your help.

Being in Lankaran, we always have long days of traveling ahead of us if we want to go anywhere. Gabala, being in the northern part of the country was no different. We met on Monday morning to catch the 7:30 bus to Baku where we would transfer to a bus that would take us to Gabala. Ashley decided to bring Lyka with us rather than leaving her at home by herself for a week, so we had to take a big, slower bus, but it was a little more comfortable. We all crammed into a littler bus in Baku and arrived around 6:00 that night. We made introductions, ate dinner, and that pretty much wrapped up the first day of camp. Tuesday morning, Ashley and I were in charge of leading the day. I gave a presentation on Leadership and Ashley presented on community. The kids then got into their groups and talked about what community groups there are in their towns and how they can work with them. That afternoon we had a guest speaker from the Embassy come. He spoke about leadership as well and told stories of his experience working with the Embassy and as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Each day was structured the same way. The mornings were made up of technical sessions that encouraged the campers to think of ways that they can work together to help their community and in the afternoon we did different activities. On Wednesday and Thursday, we had counselor to camper skill transfer where the kids got to choose where they go. Ashley and Charlie taught them how to make hemp necklaces, Mike taught them about photography, Carlo talked about astronomy and I was in charge of music. I brought my guitar and everyone was excited that they were going to learn how to play guitar. Once I explained that I couldn’t possibly teach them how to play guitar in two hours over two days, some were disappointed. Then I explained I would play a song and they would sing and we’d play a mini concert for the camp, they got more excited. While I had many requests to play Sweet Caroline (mainly from one kid), I did not oblige. Instead I taught them how to rock to, what else, Bon Jovi’s Dead or Alive. The kids got really into it and it was a blast to practice with them. We put on a show and everyone loved it. For me, it was a highlight for sure. The kids are wearing gloves in the picture because they were going to tie dye their shirts afterwards.

During one of the afternoons, we taught the campers how to play football. That is, American Football (really... what other kind is there?). There was one American to each team, and the kids counted off by 4’s to make the teams. We then rotated who each team would play. I had a rough day of it, losing 7-0, 14-7, and 21-14. At least my team got better with each game. I’m convinced if we had played two more times, we would have tied and then won. Oh well… it was still a lot of fun. The highlight of the week for me came afterwards, when the bus was waiting by the field for all of us to load up and take us back to camp. One of the kids, from Lankaran no less (which was easily the rowdiest and goofiest group of the week… go figure), was bouncing around the group screaming, “We are the champions!” over and over again. I’m guessing his team won more than mine did. Anyways, he was real pumped up and just bouncing around all over the place with a huge, goofy grin on his face. Finally, he sits down on the curb and is just laughing and joking. Carlo and I are standing by him, just watching, and you can tell he was building up to something. Finally, he raises his arms triumphantly and screams, “THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!” It was incredibly hilarious and cool that he was that pumped up. That's him, on the right, re-creating the moment on the last night of camp. For the rest of the week you could randomly hear someone shout that across camp. It was great. There’s even a picture of him shouting, “This is the greatest week of my life!!” I believe it will be the poster for future ABLE camps.

On top of that, we did a lot of the regular camp stuff. One night, we built a bonfire and made smores. Always delicious. On the last afternoon, we played wiffle ball and went on a hike. There was also a lot of Frisbee and football throwing during downtime. One afternoon was dedicated to teambuilding activities, like the trust fall and egg drop competition. There were three other stations that challenged the kids to work together and reach a solution faster than the other teams. We even had a dance party one night, which was actually a lot of fun. It’s amazing to watch them combine the traditional wedding style dancing to rap and rock music. It’s quite entertaining. The picture though, does not indicate this. I went with the classic dance, just for you, Zach. All in all, it was a great week.

This week is exciting as well. Two more volunteers will be moving to Lankaran in the forms of Jane and Joyce. It’ll be nice to have fresh faces around and someone else to hang out and joke around with. Plus, I think we are already planning on having an American meal at least once per week, which means I should start packing on those pounds pretty soon. Another event this week is Tim’s birthday. I’m not sure what the plan is, but I’m sure there will be some sort of celebration. Finally, this week also marks the one year anniversary of my move to Lankaran. The other side of that, of course, is that I have just one year left until my service is done. It feels pretty weird to think about at this point, but hopefully I can make the most of the next year since I am sure it will fly by just like this past one has. I decided to add a poll to this week’s blog update as well. You can answer on the comments page, if you feel so inclined. October is coming (it’s next month, you know) and last year we were blessed with good weather. From what I’ve heard, it usually rains every day here in Lankaran, or just about. Last year, I think it rained about 1/3 of the time, which seemed nice. My question to you is: how many days will it rain in Lankaran during October this year? The answer may shock you, but you’ll have to wait till November.

The pictures should be pretty self explanatory. Except for the one with me and the bear. Whenever you travel across Azerbaijan by bus, there is always a 30 minute break at the halfway point. At the particular café we stopped at they had a bear in a cage. Just sitting there, hanging out. I had always heard about it but had never seen it. So I guess that’s one thing I can cross off my list. I tried to use different pictures than the ones Ashley put in his blog. I’m sure there are a few repeats though. Oh well.

The Best Phone... EVER!

2007-08-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

Quick note… Yes, I read all your comments. Sometimes twice, even. But never thrice. Oftentimes I try to incorporate the comments into my post, to give a little shoutout to commentators. So, John, I do read, and as for you Mr. Zachariah Bo Summers (that’s his real name), there will be no need for a beatdown. BLOG ON!!!

So, I’ve had this one phone that I’ve been using at my house since I moved in. It’s nothing special, and even a little broken. It’s a normal phone and the chord always falls out of it, so it was kind of a pain to continuously be replacing the phone line. In my bedroom I had another phone, but no phone line. I don’t know what took me so long to make the switch, but I finally did it and my life has greatly improved since then.

This isn’t any ordinary phone, mind you. Sure, it’s gold, with a cool, old-time kind of handset. But that’s not all. It’s also a lamp. And a clock. And a pen holder. And a celebration of 2001. There’s nothing this phone can’t do. Well… it can’t make bacon, but besides that, it’s a pretty efficient phone. So that’s been my last week. I plugged the clock/pen holder/2001 celebration phone in. Life is good.

Besides that, we had the new volunteers come visit us last week. They had a lot of stuff to do and people to meet at their host organizations and with their host families, but we got to spend a little bit of time hanging out and getting to know each other. We had them over to Ashley’s house on Thursday and made a quesadilla feast complete with a giant bowl of queso and freshly made chips. Needless to say, I had to take a taxi home because I could not walk. That’s about it for now. It truly is the dog days of summer.

Next week, Ashley and I are heading to Gabala with 8 kids from Lankaran for the boys leadership camp run by volunteers. It’ll be a week long event and should be a lot of fun. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures so next time you have something to look at, although I’m not sure anything will really compare to the clock/pen holder/2001 celebration phone.

Slackin'

2007-08-21T12:29:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know, I’m a slacker. I’m trying to be better, and we’ll all have to settle with that for now. You have to cut me some slack because I’ve been busy these past two weeks, aaaand it was recently my birthday, so there ya go. Anyways, last week I headed to Baku for a training workshop the Peace Corps put together for volunteers and Azerbaijani counterparts from our communities. The workshop was called the Project Design and Management workshop, and I found it to be everything a good workshop should be. Fun and informative. Other volunteer friends were there as well, and of course, so was McDonald’s. Good times. Also, I got reunited with my site mate, Ashley. He was in Budapest for a music festival, which by all accounts, simply rocked. But now that he’s back, Lyka is no longer staying at my house which means that I am now able to sleep from 2-4 a.m. unless I choose otherwise. Sometimes I think about going out on my porch and barking at the neighbors for old times’ sake, but then I think of better of it. Also this week, I have been working with fellow volunteer and Lankaran resident, Tim Ong and a youth group on another project that they want to do with one of the local orphanages. We just completed planning and now are working on getting all the permission we need from the city and everything else lined up. More on that later. As always, I am still working on the tourism booklet and we should be submitting a rough draft very shortly, knock on wood. This Friday, Ashley, Tim and I will be presenting on different topics for a Freedom of Expression workshop that one of our friends from Lankaran has organized. On top of that, Ashley and I are wrapping up plans for the boys’ summer camp that will be in September (ABLE Camp). We’re all really excited about this and it should be a lot of fun. See, I'm busy, right?

As for my birthday, I had a pretty laid back celebration. Aside from when my friends and I were all in Baku before AZ3 and the Budapest music festival goers left at least. The day before I went to my host family’s house because it was my host mother’s birthday so we had a small meal and talked and that was nice. They invited me over for lunch the next day for my birthday, and when I got there, there was way too much food, and my host brother Ulvi got me a gift, which is pictured. That night before I was leaving work, my director cornered me and they all came forward presenting their gifts for me. From the office all together was a dog piggy bank. Also pictured. It’s pretty awesome. Aygun wrote a message for me on the bottom of it which reads, “Wish you such a life you never have to bark about! With love, CLEE Band, Lankaran.” As if I could ever forget where it came from. Also from the office was a bottle of whiskey equipped with a glass to drink it from. What more could I ask for, really?

That night I went home and decided to have a very special dinner for myself. I carefully selected a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese and prepared it with care and skill. I made it old school, too. Instead of just regular hot sauce, I added taco bell fire sauce packets AND bacon bits. Let me tell you, it was quite amazing. I wrote several texts to fellow volunteers sharing my joy and all responses carried a tone of jealousy with them. I followed this up with several hours of playing baseball, basketball and skitchin’ on my Sega Genesis. I’m not gonna lie, turning 25 felt oddly like being 7. I’m not complaining though.

On Saturday (that’s the 11th for those of you keeping track) Arzu came from Baku to celebrate with me and my office friends. They showed up at my door around 5 with three chickens stuffed full of lavangi, 5 fresh loads of bread and a good amount of beer. So, we ate, drank and danced. Arzu also gave me a little bear she had made and on the bottom is painted in Azeri “Ireli, Chicago Ayilari,” which basically translates to Bear Down, Chicago Bears. The bear is holding a glove and baseball, but that’s a minor detail. Everyone had a great time. Tim was over for most of the day as well. We also played games on the Sega which was a blast, especially when arguments broke out over who the computer was favoring. The Bear Down bear is pictured and one or two dancing pictures, as well. Those are for you Zach, I know how you love them so.

That should catch you up on everything. This week is exciting because the two volunteers that will be moving here in September are visiting for a couple days. They will get to meet their host organizations’ and families’ and us, so I’m sure they are excited as well. It’ll be nice to have a few fresh faces around here, that’s for sure.

Dogs Bark a LOT

2007-08-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

The rock video is on youtube.com for absolute certain this time. Just go to youtube and search amongst the videos for “Azerbaijan Bon Jovi.” It’s awesome. At least in my experience.

So this week should be a short update. I had a nice trip to Baku and we sent the AZ3 volunteers home in style. Plus I got to eat nachos, McDonald’s (stuffed into the chicken sandwich of course), and see everyone who I haven’t seen in a long time. We even got to meet some of the AZ5 volunteers and show them around Baku. Then it was back to Lankaran and the real world. Which, of course, means spaghetti and ketchup. Yum…

Since Ashley is gone to Budapest, I am in charge of watching the dog, and so far the first two nights have been interesting. The first night, Sunday, I was exhausted from the weekend in Baku and the hot journey on the bus back to Lankaran. First thing when I got back was picking up Lyka from Ashley’s house and collecting all the food and toys that I needed to bring over to my house. Second on the agenda was finding a taxi to save myself the 40 minute walk to my house. This proved to be more interesting than I had originally planned.

While waiting on the side of the road, the sight of an American with a dog on a leash attracted some attention. One kid in particular was completely fascinated with the dog and me. The highlight of this exchange, though, wasn’t the 79 questions he asked in a four minute period, but maybe the last question he asked. At the end of our conversation, he tells me to wait there for a second. I do, since I really don’t want to walk home and up to this point I couldn’t find a taxi driver that would let Lyka sit in the back seat with me, but rather wanted to put her in the trunk. This seemed like it would be uncomfortable for her, so I decided to wait it out. I mean, I’ve seen goats back there and they always look miserable. Anyways, the kid returns with a cat in his hands. I immediately start telling him no, this isn’t the way to behave and is inappropriate. Even after saying this, he asks me if he can throw the cat at the dog and see what happens. I couldn’t help but laugh, and despite my dislike for cats, could not allow this to happen. Hence, I decided it would be best to start walking. Finally I find a taxi in front of a tea house with, of course, more spectators. This time, they were able to laugh at the taxi driver enough to get him to take me. It was amusing when, as I was telling him that the dog was nice and there’s no reason to be afraid, Lyka jumped halfway through the passenger side window. He couldn’t stop laughing the entire ride, as Lyka would not sit still, and kept licking the seat. Finally, we made it to my house where Lyka could finally spend her days and nights barking at my neighbors on their porch. If only they would stop staring at her, I think she would shut up, but who knows. She spent the first night in my house and that is the last time that will be happening, for now at least. I do believe my yard is Lyka proof, as much as I could make it anyways. I had to find some wooden boards to cover the bottom of my gate because last time she was there she managed to sneak her way under it and I think you all know how little I want to chase her around the neighborhood. She has been getting better with each day that she’s been here and I’m hoping that trend continues. Enough about her.

On Monday, I had my first Athletic Club meeting and had 12 kids show up. We played volleyball, which you would think would be very difficult with no real volleyball net. Turns out, you can play many games like volleyball, but not quite volleyball. We even played an Azeri version of dodgeball which gave me an idea. We could play real dodgeball!! This should be fun, but I think we will wait until we can use the gymnasium at the school. Next week we will play wiffle ball. A lot of the kids want to play American football as well, which I’m really looking forward to teaching. On Wednesday, I will have conversation club again, which is getting more and more difficult since it’s hard to keep coming up with games to play that will keep the kids interested. I am planning on bringing my guitar and hoping that we can write a song, so we will see how that goes. There are a few pics of Lyka and one of the barricade, and if I catch her doing anything stupid, I’ll put that up as well.

THEY GONE!!!

2007-08-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, so they aren’t gone yet, but AZ3 will be leaving Azerbaijan this weekend. This past weekend some of them had a party in Mingechavir and some members of AZ4 went to hang out with them. We got to swim in the ice-cold river which felt amazing, and eat pork, and all sorts of other great food. We played music and danced all night, so unfortunately, my legs have been killing me all week. That’s just the price you pay though.

Work has been busy the last few weeks. Conversation club still meets every week and next week I am meeting with a bunch of kids to play volleyball. We tried to meet last week to play kickball or wiffle-ball, but only two kids showed up so I’m hoping for a better turnout next week. I’m feeling pretty confident that more will be there. We are also wrapping up our tourism booklet project, finally, and I plan on filling out a few grant proposals in the next couple weeks. We are also getting ready for ABLE camp in September. We are in the process of finding Junior Counselors from Lankaran that participated in the camp last year and can help us out this year. We will be taking four kids to participate in the camp and three Junior Counselors. We are all very excited.

This week, since there are no weddings to speak of, or at least none that I was invited to, I thought I would take some pictures of my cooking equipment that I use daily to prepare my delicious meals. I made an exciting discovery last week, too! As you all know, a staple meal of mine is the spaghetti noodles with butter and ketchup. Well last week I got ambitious and made some sauce that was actually pretty good. Not as good as mom’s but still not bad. It also didn’t have any meat, but still tasty nonetheless. Anyways, my discovery. I was thinking of ways to mix up the meal a little bit and searching the scant selection in my fridge, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted some leftover sour cream from when we made quesadillas with the AZ5 trainees. I had no idea that putting sour cream into my pasta (with ketchup or the sauce) would be as good as it was. So that was my interesting discovery of the last week or so. Next week I’m going to try to make a kind of alfredo sauce, so we will see how that goes.

The pictures are pretty self explanatory, I believe. The green metal thing is my gas balloon that I fire up every night and boil my water on. I got it filled a couple weeks ago and hope that it lasts me about two months. We’ll see. Now that it is full, I consistently burn the hair off my knuckles when I light it up. Gets me every time. The big yellow container is a big tub of butter/cow lard type stuff. It’s great and delicious. Some of my friends here are disgusted that I use as much of this stuff as I do, but it’s perfect. A solid spoonful is great with the noodles, or you can use it to butter the pan when necessary. It lasts a while, and is really cheap. Both families that I have lived with use this liberally. Plus it’s called “Super Sun.” How can you go wrong? Finally, I believe there is a picture of the ketchup. They sell spicy ketchup here that is delicious. The noodles are normal so they are not pictured. And that is typically what I use to feed myself. A lot of times I’ll buy bread or some fruit to supplement the noodles and ketchup, and I have been eating breakfast more often as well. I also buy potatoes a lot to make French fries which is fun.

That’s pretty much all I got for this week. This weekend we are going to Baku to formally say goodbye to AZ3 and send them back to America in style. I’ll be back on Sunday and before I can get back to my house, I have to swing by Ashley’s and pick up Lankaran’s newest resident. Lyka the dog came back to Lankaran with us from Mingechavir. Our friend Terah from AZ3 bought her and since she will be moving back to America she handed the dog over to us. We are excited to have her here and it made the 9 hour bus ride from Ming a lot more interesting to have a dog with us.

Toy Pictures

2007-07-23T01:46:00.000-07:00

There was a request, or demand, for more wedding dancing photos, and I am more than happy to oblige. Unfortunately, I was dancing most of the time and was also the only one with a camera, so you won’t get to see my killer dance moves. However, there are some other good ones.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, a wedding here is called a “toy.” Which in my mind, makes them that much greater. Who doesn’t like toys? I like toys. With that out of the way, I’ll give a short explanation of the pictures and then just let you enjoy the pictures. At this particular wedding, like most, we were invited by one person that we know. In this case, my friend and Azeri tutor Aygun invited us. We knew some other people there, but for the most part, we were on our own. After enjoying the fine food that was there we were invited to dance, and there’s no way we could say no. The first picture is Ashley, me and Tim taking a short breather.

At this particular wedding, it was mostly women dancing the entire time. Men would occasionally gather to dance, especially after giving a toast, but at this particular wedding it was mostly women and children. The next picture is a grandmother who really wanted to dance with the Americans. She got up and danced like hell, which led to us taking a breather. She was good.

Next is Tim in a sort of dance-off. This woman was all over the place throughout the entire wedding and was non-stop dancing. Tim, getting into the groove and shoved into the center of the circle that had formed, had no choice but to engage in a dance that increasingly picked up pace. You can see Ashley laughing in the background. I would have gotten into the center of the circle and danced, but who would have taken the pictures?

The next picture doesn’t involve any dancing, unfortunately, but it does involve an entire lamb. At some point in the middle of the wedding, a group of waiters came out to and wheeled this giant cart to the head table. We couldn’t see from where we were what was on it, but when they put it on the head table, we could see it was a whole lamb. I was told later that this was very expensive.

Finally, we have Tim and Ashley dancing with a group. Everyone is feeling pretty good about themselves and their dance moves and are just enjoying the music at this point. Hopefully I will be going to many more weddings this summer and will be able to get a fine collection of photos for all of you back home. Typically, each wedding starts around 7, with a couple hours of eating, then dancing. The brides’ sister kept asking us what music we wanted (typically, we request our favorite Turkish pop star) and then insisting that we dance. We ate as much as we could and then danced. That’s usually how it goes. Till next time, you know what to do.

Wedding Season Is Upon Us

2007-07-18T23:58:00.000-07:00

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.

July is HOT

2007-07-08T01:07:00.000-07:00

Quick note: Some of you may remember me telling you all about Ashley and I performing at the talent show at the Thanksgiving Day party last year in Baku. Well, it’s finally done. The video has been posted thanks to Ashley's sister, Ali. Simply go to youtube.com and search for "Azerbaijan Bon Jovi sighting", and you should be able to rock out. Enjoy and you’re welcome.

NATIONAL CHAMPS!!!! Ok, so Lankaran doesn’t have a team but we were well represented in this past weekend’s softball tournament in Gence. Ashley and I were invited to participate with teams from Mingachevir and Barda, and needless to say, we dominated. Maybe not so much, but I was recruited to play center field for Mingachevir and made some spectacular plays as they clinched the championship. Each team got to play two games on Saturday, then on Sunday we had just Peace Corps Volunteers playing each other. All in all it was a great time. As you are perusing the pictures, notice the shorts being worn and the occasional shirtless player. That is because it was incredibly hot outside and shorts are allowed when playing sports. After the games we all had to change back into pants for the bus ride back into town. An excellent time was had by all and was made even better by post game burgers and beer at one of the volunteers’ houses in town.

On Tuesday, a group of us headed into Baku for the Fourth of July celebration at the Embassy. Not all of the volunteers were able to attend, but there was still a good group of us and a ton of other people from all over the place. I met up with Arzu and we walked to the Embassy to meet up with everyone else. The Ambassador was there waiting to greet everyone and shake their hands, and then there was the food. Hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, appetizers and MGD (insert Homer Simpson drooling noise). Needless to say, we felt free to help ourselves and walked away sufficiently fed. Afterward a group of us went to hang out at Tequila Junction and relax. It was a really pleasant way to spend the 3rd of July. Not quite the Taste of Chicago, but you make do with what you have. My Fourth of July was spent in a bus riding back to Lankaran after devouring a double cheeseburger from McDonalds stuffed inside of a chicken sandwich from the nearby Lebanese fast food place. Upon arrival in Lankaran, Ashley and I ate our double cheeseburgers that we bought before leaving McDonalds, watched a movie and immediately crashed for it was back to work the next day.

Last night Ashley and I were invited to a wedding or toy as they are called here. These are always a fun experience and we got to eat a ton of great food. Better than spaghetti and ketchup, for sure. As usual, there was lots of dancing. Ashley and I even got called upon to give a toast. This was my first toast at a wedding, and it went about as good as it could have I think. Once the toast was over we had to start the next dance, as per tradition. So that’s always fun, being forced to stand up and speak to a ton of people you don’t know and then trying to dance the way they do. I think everyone got a good laugh. I know we did.

Our conversation club is going well; we still have about 15 kids that we meet with every week even though school is over for the summer. The girls’ athletic club I was planning on creating should start meeting soon, so that should be a lot of fun as well as keep me busy. Oh, I also hope to be putting some netting around my porch to keep the mosquitoes away, so I will soon have a great sitting area/porch for the warm summer nights. Very exciting. That about catches us up for this week. Pictures included this week are of me driving a ball out to left field during softball, a team picture of team Mingechavir (the National Champions), some friends of mine and I at the Embassy, the wedding room from last night and a couple of us dancing. Stay tuned for more, and stay cool.

Back to Work

2007-06-25T03:30:00.000-07:00

Wow, so it’s been some time since I’ve done this. Let’s hope I remember how. A lot has happened since April, mainly I visited America and went to Egypt. So, I’ll just pick up from right before I left for home. This gets pretty long, so read at your own pace. Hopefully you’ll finish before my next update. The Tuesday before my vacation, I invited my whole office over and Ashley’s tutor for enchiladas and drinks. Ashley and I cooked for them, and again, pulled off an amazing meal. The picture of everyone in sombreros around the table is from that night, if you couldn’t guess. After dinner, we all played darts and just hung out all night. It was one of my most fun nights in Lankaran, I think. The next day was Ashley’s birthday and he said goodbye to his banging twenties. I mourned for him.

Next up was my trip to America which was an amazing time. I’ll try to touch on a little bit of everything that I did as quickly as possible. I got to see most everyone I wanted to see and do most everything that I wanted to do. Right when I got off the plane, my parents took me over to John and Kristi’s where they ordered some pizza from Lou Malnati’s and had some cold beers waiting. I couldn’t imagine a better way to arrive home. That Sunday, as most of you know, was a barbecue at mom and dad’s. It was awesome getting a chance to see everyone. Thank you to everybody who came that day to see me, or just enjoy the pool and food. It was a great day, and just a little exhausting. I am still proud to say that I got my brothers back for throwing me into the pool, although Steve required a little help from the crowd. He’s spry for an old man. The next day, Steve, John, my dad and I all went golfing. Since I hadn’t touched a club in a year, I was pretty confident that I would not be winning that day. The competition wilted, though, under my excellence and I was once again crowned champion. John had a good excuse though, as he was chased by a small bird on one hole that I think got into his head.

Later that week, I went to my friend Jackie’s apartment in Chicago. Ashley and I had been writing letters to her classroom and she had invited me to go meet the students and answer questions about Azerbaijan. I had a blast, and it was great to meet the kids that I had been writing to. They were funny and I think a bit shy when I first got there, but they definitely warmed up by the afternoon. During my stay at her place, I continued my goal of trying to eat everything in site. Although I couldn’t move very well afterwards, I highly recommend going to McDonald’s and ordering a Big Mac, two double cheeseburgers, a McChicken and a large fry. It is delicious.

That Friday I returned back north and began preparing for the Bianchi-Spencer wedding in Crystal Lake. Friday night was the rehearsal dinner, and while I wasn’t allowed to eat two meals, the steak that I had was delightful. Plus it was great to see everyone and hang out with some great friends. The wedding was outrageously fun, as expected. Again, I will thank Marissa and Drew for having me be a part of their wedding. It was an honor to be there. Congratulations, you two.

The next day it was back to Chicago for me. I met up with my friend Anne for some hot wings and a beer and then was off to Tyler’s apartment where Zach was waiting for me, on vacation from New Haven and studying for the bar exam. That night we all went out on the town and celebrated nothing in particular and just had a great time. The next night 8 of us went to the Sox game against the Yankees, and they actually won this game, much to our delight. It felt amazing to be back with all my friends at a baseball game, and even though it rained, all seemed right with the world. We even had all of us standing in the aisle and dancing “Azeri style.” I was hoping we’d be on SportsCenter, but I think they missed us. After the game, we had a limousine take us around town anywhere we wanted to go. What was funny about this was that we did this last year as well, before I left for Azerbaijan and this time we had the same driver. Go figure, he remembered us. The next day was spent hanging out on the North Side and a trip to Millennium Park for dinner and some shopping.

The next morning I headed back to Woodstock where Corrine had arranged a dinner party in my honor. Mark, Alex, Paul, Emily and Corrine all gathered to cook some burgers and hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, salad and chips for me. The food was great and the company greater. After stuffing ourselves with food, we all relaxed in the hot tub with some champagne. I’m not sure what the occasion was, but I think it was more because it was there and had to be drunk at some point. Once we were all relaxed, it was time to head home for some much needed rest.

The next morning I was up and at ‘em again, heading out to the golf course with Tony and Joe. It was just like old times, and although it was pretty hot and extremely windy, we all played fairly well. We could only fit in 9 holes though, as I had dinner plans again for the evening. This time though, Steve, Darcy, Madison, Jared, John, Kristi and Joel all came over to my parents’ house for a Mother’s/Father’s Day dinner. While we had planned on trying to cook Lankaran’s famous chicken lavangi, mom and I quickly abandoned this plan as we realized it would take all night. So instead we just threw the chickens into the oven and had chicken with fried potatoes instead, which I thoroughly enjoyed. After dinner, we had some drinks, sometimes out of a measuring cup (sorry Kristi), and hung out by the pool, which was really cold. Too soon, though, it was time to say goodbye and begin preparations for Egypt. I had two more stops to make, first, though.

That Friday morning, I drove down to Tinley Park to visit my Cousin Emily’s classroom who I had also been writing letters to. I visited with them for about an hour or so and answered a ton of questions. They were fun and I am looking forward to writing more letters with them again, next year. After this, I drove back north to have dinner with Grandma and Grandpa, and showed them pictures as well. We had a great lunch at Culver’s and a great visit as well. Then it was back home to mow the lawn and pack my things for the finale of my trip. Jackie arrived and shortly after 5, we were picking up my dad and off to Egypt.

That Sunday, the 10th, we arrived in Cairo around 3 a.m. or so and kindly woke up Ashley and Rachel from their oh so comfortable beds. Thankfully, I called the right room on the first try and didn’t have to wake up the rest of the Hunziker clan. Upon reaching the room, we offered the gifts that we had brought. Those being a small personal pan deep dish pizza for Rachel, smuggled from Chicago, and a bottle of Patron Tequila, bought by mom in the airport. After a couple of shots and some quick story telling, the kids headed down to explore the hotel and have some fun in the casino while the parents got some much needed rest. That morning we woke up bright and early to explore Cairo and take in the Egyptian Museum. This place was enormous and incredibly unorganized, kinda like my house, but the stuff was older than anything I own. There was so much stuff there, you could spend days getting lost in there. That night we saw a famous belly dancer. While the opening band was pretty terrible, the real show was pretty good. The best part, besides the belly dancer of course, was the drummer off to the side that would make intense faces and hoot and holler at the dancer as she moved across the stage. That guy was hilarious.

The next day we checked out the Giza pyramids, which was host to the greatest tour guide of all time. In all honesty, this guy really didn’t do a whole lot. He did, however, show us that it was much easier to enter the pyramid backwards instead of forward and give us catch phrases (are you happy, welcome back and watch your head) to be repeated throughout the trip, surely annoying anyone within earshot of us. We also went and checked out the Sphinx. It was amazing to stand next to and walk right up to these buildings that you have always seen pictures of. It’s impressive to see how huge they really are.

That night we took a bus out to Mt. Sinai and faced a tough decision. We were allowed to start our hike up the mountain around 2 a.m. and the decision was should we ride camels up the mountain, or take the Steps of Repentance that Moses took when he received the Ten Commandments. Curiosity and overzealousness won out, as we decided to climb ourselves up the rugged trail. It probably wouldn’t have been too bad if it wasn’t pitch black outside. In my mind though, it was well worth the effort. The view going up the mountain and at the top was spectacular and the sunrise was incredible to see from up there. We did, though, take the camel trail back down the mountain which was a much easier and smarter choice. This was followed by a short trip to St. Catherine’s Monastery and a visit to the Burning Bush. That day was spent in Sharm el Sheikh, where we waited for our ferry to take us down to Luxor. Unfortunately, the only ferry available to us was at 3 a.m. This did allow us to spend the day at a resort and swim in the Red Sea and pool. We even hit up a bar supposedly housing pirates, but alas, it was not meant to be. Instead we went to a dance club and made them play music we requested. It was a good time and set us up well for the 2 hour boat ride. What was supposed to turn out to be the “best boat ride ever” quickly turned into the opposite. For those of you who are curious and are considering renting Jackie Chan’s “First Strike,” take this piece of advice. Don’t. It’s awful.

Upon reaching Luxor, we set up our game plan to go visit the temples and museum in town. We visited Luxor Temple, which was really cool when lit up at night, rode some Sphinxes there, which was fun, went to the Luxor Museum which was very interesting and even had two mummies, which were creepy and fascinating, the Valley of the Kings where we walked into three tombs and saw a ton of carvings, the Valley of the Queens, saw two colossal statues, and rode some camels at sunset around the west bank of the Nile River. While we couldn’t quite figure out how to start our camel spit fight, Jackie did develop an amazing dance, and my camel did spray some slobber on Jackie and Rachel, so I think I won.

The next few days were spent exploring more temples in Karnak and Abydos. It got much hotter the last two days we were there, but still wasn’t that bad. While we probably didn’t give the temples we saw the attention they deserved, the sun takes a lot out of you and we pretty much templed ourselves out. Our last day there, Ron, Ashley and I celebrated Father’s Day by golfing next to the Giza pyramids back in Cairo. The course was real crummy, but it was still pretty cool to golf next to the pyramids.

That about wraps it up. Hope you enjoyed the update and pictures. Thank you to the Hunziker’s, my family and Jackie for making the Egypt trip as much fun as it was. All in all, I had a great 3-4 weeks and now it is back to the grind in Azerbaijan. For those keeping track at home, I gained about 10 pounds on my vacation, and only have 15 more to go before I’m back to pre-Peace Corps weight. My counterpart, Arzu, accepted a new job in Baku and has since left Lankaran. We wish her well and miss her here in Lankaran.

Learning

2007-04-23T06:38:00.000-07:00

Now that the weather is getting nicer, I moved in to my own house and the fact that I haven’t done laundry in over a month, it’s time I start learning some new skills. One of those being hand-washing my clothes and the other will be cooking. This week I’m really excited to get to the store and buy some Barf laundry detergent (it’s actually called Barf) and figure out how to get my hands to do the work of a machine. I’ve been putting this off for quite some time now and can procrastinate no more. It’s moments like these when I really wish my host mother or nene wouldn’t have yelled at me whenever I tried to help with the laundry. I’ve been told I’m a fairly intelligent person, though, so I’m sure I can figure it out. Plus it’ll give me a chance to spend some quality time looking at my dinosaur mural, which is always pleasing.

Second, I’m going to actually start cooking real food. I’ve told a few of you that I typically make something really easy, like macaroni noodles that I cover with ketchup. This sounds kind of gross at first, but it’s actually quite good once you try it. Of course I mix in a good amount of butter too, and there you go, a delicious meal that requires absolutely no skill or brainwork. Another staple of mine is fried potatoes. I’m still perfecting this meal and have gotten a little better, but still have room for improvement. Another great meal that is really easy to make is eggs mixed up with tomatoes and onions. Mix this in with some of the fried potatoes and some Tabasco sauce, and you’re good to go. Clean up the slop with a slice of bread and you’ll be one happy camper. The Peace Corps gave us a cookbook that was developed by past volunteers and has a lot of good recipes. Starting this week, I hope to pick out a few recipes and head over to the bazaar to buy some supplies and cook myself a real meal of food. We’ll see how that goes.

This past weekend I was in Barda and Genja. Friday night we stayed with some volunteers in Barda and helped her with a trash pickup that she organized with one of the schools. A handful of us teamed up with a bunch of students and cleaned a couple of streets near the school and bazaar. We ran out of garbage bags and gloves too early, but overall, it was a good day. Once that was finished, we took a nap and took a short ride to Genja where we celebrated two of our friends’ birthdays. There was a good group of volunteers there so we had a ton of fun. I even got to play euchre! It’s nice getting together with some people from the Midwest that know how to play. On Sunday I made the long trip back home to Lankaran.

Things are going good at work now, too. We have started up our conversation clubs and our tourism booklet project is starting to get some wheels. There’s a lot of work to do still, so it should keep me busy for a while. I have another project idea that I want to start working on this week to create an athletic club for girls with some of the schools to give them more opportunities to play sports. Hopefully I can get parents and teachers involved as well and eventually I want to create a league and have the project move to other villages and towns (if it’s successful). We’ll see though. In other news, I’m going to get my first electric bill from my house, so I’m hoping it’s not too expensive. Today I was interviewed by a reporter from Lankaran TV doing a report about NGO’s and the roles they play, so I’ll soon be a celebrity, I’m sure. I forgot to put pictures of my parents’ visit up here, so here is one of a group of friends and my mom and dad at a restaurant in Baku. I still don’t have all the pictures from different cameras from that weekend, but should get those soon. The other pictures are Ashley and me standing next to the statues in Lankaran that we have named after ourselves and the last picture is the old prison in town. There’s a story that Stalin was kept as a prisoner there and escaped through underground tunnels to the lighthouse across town and then out to the Caspian. Finally, we have a picture of a bunch of chickens being cooked in a tandir oven. This oven and way of cooking is specific to Lankaran and this region. It’s a clay oven with a hole in the top and on the bottom they have hot coals/fire to heat the oven. The women working there will either put the chickens in there (stuffed with lavangi, of course) on a grill that they put in the bottoms, or they will slap the dough for the bread to the side. The bread and or chicken straight out of the tandir is really good and one of my favorite meals here. It’s even better than noodles covered with butter and ketchup. The last picture is one of the women working there. There are a bunch of tandir shops all around Lankaran and a cooked chicken costs us four manat, which is a pretty good deal if you ask me.

I Have Gas!!!

2007-04-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it’s been a while and a lot has happened since the last time I updated this. Sorry for the delay, I’m sure all of you were waiting anxiously for a new update. My parents were here for a few days and my friends and I had a lot of fun with them. My mom ate goat meat, and I really wish I had a picture of her face once she was told that that’s what she was eating. It was priceless. Next time you see her be sure to ask for a look. They arrived on a Friday and my friends and I took them to one of our favorite hangouts, Tequila Junction, for nachos and beer. They even had a live band there that played Sweet Home Chicago which was a nice surprise. Everyone had a great time. The next day Ashley and I walked them around Baku showing them some of the more touristy stuff and then we went out for Georgian food that night. Sunday brought us to Lankaran, where I made them a glorious meal of Kraft Mac and Cheese. While Ashley and I loved it, I think they were less than impressed, but it was better than goat. Monday was a relaxed day of walking around the town which didn’t really take all that long and that evening we had dinner with my host family. They were very excited to meet my parents and we all had a good time. During the day, Ashley and I took my dad to a tea house so he could say he had been to one. On Tuesday, we took them to Nene’s birthday party, where my mom and dad were forced into giving toasts to Nene by the birthday girl herself (another awesome moment for my mom who I apparently “owe one” to because of it) and we danced. After that we went to meet my coordinator Rufat, one of our lawyers Ziya and Arzu for breakfast. We took them around parts of the town and showed them some cool stuff, then went out to eat. It was a nice night and everyone at work loved meeting my parents and vice versa.

Work has been busy lately, with our CHF project producing booklets to help with tourism development in the Lankaran region. Arzu and I have been working on getting everything coordinated and planned and put together. It’s been a lot of work, but I think we are finally getting there. Ashley also has a project that he is starting to get into place where he will be making a playground for the disabled kids at a local orphanage. We have also put together a proposal for an America Day in Lankaran. I submitted the proposal last week and this has been moving along quite well. We have been working with the students and youth groups that we know in town and plan on having 70-80 students participate. We will have two rooms at the local business center where we will split the kids up into two groups. One room will talk about Memorial Day and the Fourth of July and how American’s typically celebrate these days and the other room will talk about Summer Vacation. We hope to encourage the students to travel around their country more to see all that it has to offer. We will use a slideshow of American tourist spots then show them all the places that the volunteers have visited in our short time here. After all of that, we will go to a field and teach everyone how to play baseball. Two volunteers will be bringing a lot of equipment and so far all the kids and volunteers are very excited about this. This will all be taking place on May 5th, so it’s getting close.

In other big news, I finally found my own place to live. After several close calls and after several options have fallen through, I finally got lucky and found an awesome place in town. So I moved out of my host family’s house and have my own place to live, sleep and cook. I’m very excited to start shopping for my own food and seeing what I can cook. It should be interesting, to say the least. My house has a lot of great things, as you can see by the pictures. Just to name a few of my favorites: I have a huge garage for my car, or donkey, a nice shower heated by electricity or gas, a natural gas line into my house for heating (explains the title), a real queen size bed that is really comfortable, a sweet porch, a nice kitchen with refrigerator, a TV (still can’t get the Sega to work… no idea why), and the best part…… a dinosaur mural. I have attached a bunch of pictures so you can see my new digs. The bedroom with the queen sized bed and big dresser is mine. It goes out to a huge hallway/room that I can play catch with a baseball in. I probably won’t because of the very realistic possibility of breaking things, but it’s still cool to know that I could. At the other end is a guest bedroom. The kitchen is across the hall from my room. There are doors in the hallway that lead to the porch and you can also get there from the kitchen. Outside I have a pretty big yard that is more reasonable for playing catch. The garage is huge and empty so I have to find some fun, creative way to enjoy that space. Next to the dinosaur mural is my shower room and then past that is the toilet. All in all, I really like it there, even after a couple of days. The owners that I’m renting from are really nice and helpful. Hope you enjoy and I’ll make the next post less boring… perhaps a story of my cooking exploits or a Yahtzee update. Have a happy Friday the 13th!!!

Novruz, Baby!!!

2007-03-21T23:22:00.000-07:00

Happy Novruz, everybody! March 20th and 21st are the two days that Novruz is officially celebrated to bring in the new year. There are a lot of traditions that go along with this holiday, and lots of fun as well. A lot of families grow a kind of grass that kind of look like sprouts, each year and plant them in their yard for new beginnings. They also pluck the first flowers of the year and bring them into the house. My family took a picture with them after we ate. The grass is grown kind of in a similar way as a Chia Pet, with the seeds placed on some soil in a dish, covered with a thin piece of cloth, and watered until they have grown. The main difference, of course, is that this isn’t grown in the shape of an animal or anything like that. Just the shape of the dish, usually kind of roundish. They also spend a day or two before the holiday cleaning most every inch of their houses, kind of a spring cleaning sort of deal. Not that fun of a tradition, but I suppose it’s got to be done every now and then.

Another tradition that you can probably guess at is the food. As I may have mentioned, Lankaran has a famous dish called lavangi which is like stuffing for chicken or fish. It’s very delicious and one of my favorite meals, if not the favorite. So they cook a bunch of rice with sweet raisins on it and serve fish and chicken lavangi, and some other stuff that I’m not sure the name of. It’s all good, although I tend to stay away from the fish if given a choice. Just a personal preference. They also cook a bunch of sweets and cakes for dessert that are always good and I do believe I ate myself stupid with all the chicken, rice and desserts that I ate.

Two more things that most families do, at least from what I have heard here in Lankaran, is jump over a fire (called “tonqal”) and go to the river early on the 21st. The fire jumping is a bunch of fun. My family made 7 small fires in our little garage/yard and we all took turns jumping over them. My host dad kept yelling a prayer/chant that basically says, “May all the bad be left behind in last year.” If you haven’t guessed or read elsewhere, the fire jumping is supposed to leave all your bad things behind in the last year and start this year fresh and clean. I have a few pictures of this as well. On the morning of the 21st, a bunch of families go to the river to wash their hands and faces and bring some water back to spread around their yard, another cleansing ritual for the new year.

This is one of the biggest holidays and everyone gets all geared up for it, which makes it a lot of fun. Also, we don’t have work for four days, and who doesn’t enjoy that? My nene is home from Russia right now which is always nice because there’s always someone home to dote over me and she cooks awesome desserts. In other news, Ashley has moved into his own place and has been tasting the sweet taste of independence lately. I found a house that is about a 30 minute walk from my work, but the lady living there told me originally that she would be out of her house around the end of the month, after the holiday. Now she is saying that she isn’t sure when she may move out and that it could be May or June. So I told her to let me know and I am continuing my search for a house. Finally, my parents will be arriving in Baku on Friday to spend a little over a week with me here in Azerbaijan. Some friends and I will be going to Baku this weekend to hang out with them and then I will bring them to Lankaran and hopefully show them a good time. We are all excited. Ashley’s nene and my family keep asking when they are going to be here and if I will bring them over and all that, so it should be fun for them to meet everyone. That’s about it, look for more next week.

The pictures included are: My dad lighting the 7 tonqals, my nene jumping over the fires, Ulvi jumping over the fires, me and nene, the table of sweets and fruits that they have out each year and the host family.

Six Months Already???

2007-03-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

This will be a special edition of my blog this week. It will be a short update of what is going on around town and my office followed by a poll that I have put a lot of thought into and have debated furiously with Ashley and I need some help, although I have a suspicion of what the results will be. Ok, off to the updates.

Well, there really isn’t much to say this week. Ashley is moving into his new house right in the center of town. It’s pretty exciting. I’m looking for houses still and have a PC representative coming down on Wednesday to approve a house for me. The one I have my eye on is pretty nice except that it’s a 30 minute walk from work. This isn’t too bad and I could probably use the exercise, but for those of you who know me, you know I don’t like walking all that much. On the plus side, it’s mostly a down hill walk from the house to the office and for the uphill portion on my way home, I would be able to catch a bus heading out to the villages. This is all assuming, of course, that the house gets approved and I actually move in there. Other than that, there really isn’t too much going. Work is the same as last week with preparations and planning taking place for the next steps of our tourism booklet project as well as trainings/workshops that I am trying to put together. Now to the poll.

Ok, so most of you know how much I like bacon and how I truly believe there isn’t one thing you can’t add bacon to that would make it better. For example, mozzarella sticks wrapped in bacon. How can that not be good? Or onion rings wrapped in bacon. Same thing. I already know that Macaroni and Cheese is improved ten fold by adding bacon. With that being said, Ashley and I have had some lengthy discussions on the possibilities of adding bacon to… are you ready… ice cream. That’s right. I maintain that if you take some freshly cooked bacon, drain the grease, cut it into small bite size pieces, but not as small as bacon bits, and add it to a bowl of ice cream, it would be great. Ashley disagrees. That’s the first part. The second part of the poll is what flavor of ice cream would be best. I originally thought vanilla would be the clear choice, but the other day while I was thinking about this, Neopolitan ice cream (chocolate/vanilla/strawberry) might work too. I could be wrong though. After some more discussion, we felt that vanilla has potential because it would be like milk and bacon, two staples of a solid breakfast. This led to orange sherbet being thrown out there, since that would be like orange juice and bacon. You get the idea. So if anyone would like to share their thoughts on whether it would work, or what the best flavor would be, we’d appreciate it. Also, if anyone is daring enough to actually test this out that would really help solve this problem for us.

No pictures for right now. We are heading to Agjabedi this weekend for another America Day with a big group of volunteers. We are going to teach a large group of Azeri children about St. Patrick’s Day and Valentine’s Day. I think part of the plans even involves having two groups write a play and performing them for the group, so that should be a bunch of fun. Plus, I’ve never been to Agjabedi, so I get to see another part of Azerbaijan which is always interesting. Also, our conversation clubs will be starting soon, so we will be helping school children practice their English. My hope with these is that we can also get them to think about small-scale projects that they can do in the community on their own without funding and get them more involved. That should wrap it up. Hope everyone is good and Happy St. Patty’s Day!!

Happy International Women's Day

2007-03-07T23:21:00.000-08:00

Happy International Women’s Day to all the women out there! I hope you enjoy this day and that you get many great gifts. There is no work for me today, on account of it being Women’s Day, as I just mentioned. I thought I’d give another brief update on how work is going. First, we have begun our meetings with CHF and CDC to begin the next step of our tourism booklet project. Within the next month, we should have a good idea of what information the booklets will contain and who is responsible for what and all that fun stuff.

Second, and maybe more entertaining, is the construction site that has become my office. Last Friday, I was told that one of the walls in the back half of the office had been knocked down and that some things had been moved around. On Monday, I was nowhere near prepared for what I found. When I walked in, I was immediately stopped short by the door hitting a small chair that had been placed behind it. Right in front of me was a large desk that had been in the coordinator’s office in the back half. On top of that was a very large collection of files from the past two or three years. Next to that was a bookshelf and next to my desk was another desk completely covered with files and binders. A huge sofa sat in front of one of the lawyer’s desks and a door was propped up in front of another. As you have probably already guessed, every piece of furniture that was in the back half was now in the front half where almost all our business takes place. In the other half of the office, there were no walls and half the floors were missing. Apparently, while the workers were tearing down the rooms connected to our office, they cracked one of our walls and decided it needed to be taken down. As they took that wall down, it became obvious that the other walls also needed to be taken down. So, long story short, our office gets to be remodeled. I took some pictures of the construction and will take more as the construction progresses. Enjoy!

Helloooooo March

2007-03-04T11:22:00.000-08:00

Is the year going really fast for anyone else or is that just me? Last week, the Peace Corps had all the AZ4 Community Economic Development Volunteers in Baku for two days of training with all our counterparts. For the most part it was pretty good. It was good to hear what everyone’s counterparts expected of the volunteers and gave us a little more insight into their perspective of what kind of work they want us to do. Also, I think it will ultimately make it easier at work to have better communication with our counterparts on what we need and want and all that good stuff. Arzu (my counterpart) had lunch with my friends and me and everyone had a great time. Plus, we all got three nights in Baku with most of our friends which is always a good time. We ate chicken sandwiches with a double cheeseburger from McDonald’s jammed in the middle for lunch and had burgers Wednesday night, pizza Thursday night and nachos and beer Friday night. All of it was great. On Saturday it was time to go back to site, which for me of course, means Lankaran.

This last week brought a couple new experiences for me. Last Sunday, I woke up and there was several inches of snow cover on the ground. It has snowed in Lankaran before, but it only stuck around for maybe half a day. This snowfall actually looked like it would stay. Not only did it stay, it snowed MUCH more in the next two days. By Tuesday we had easily over a foot of snow on the ground. This of course, led to a lot of fun. On Monday at work we decided to take a break from our daily routine and Aygun, Arzu, Ziya and I all headed outside to build a snowman, which got kicked down immediately, and romp around in the snow. We went to a nearby park where we all had a small snowball fight, made some snow angels and just basically ran around like little kids home from school. For lunch, my office has a tradition of having lunch all together after the first big snowfall with our coordinator, Rufat, and they also invited Ashley to join us. They usually go out to eat at a restaurant, but decided to order in and have lunch in the office this time. Needless to say, I like this tradition.

The second new thing this last week was riding the train in Azerbaijan. Since the snow seemed like it was going to stick around for a while and Ashley and I wanted to get to Baku a little early to take care of some errands, we decided to take the night train from Lankaran which leaves around 9 and gets into Baku around 6 the next morning. Apparently, they have two person cabins and four person cabins. By the time we bought our tickets there were only four person cabins left and as it goes anywhere, you never know who will be in your cabin with you. The two people that were in our cabin with us seemed relatively quiet and generally uninterested in the goofy Americans sitting with them. A fifth person wandered in (I guess he knew one of the guys) and was very interested in us. So we had a good conversation with our new friends and they even offered us some tea. After having our tea and cake, we decided to kill some time by watching a movie on Ashley’s computer and then try and get some sleep. Other than that, we had an uneventful journey. After we got off the train we tried to catch a bus and waited for the right one to come along for about 45 minutes which was really fun at 6:15 in the morning.

Some big news for me came on Wednesday from the other volunteer in Lankaran, Tim. I’ve mentioned the project that Arzu and I have been writing with the Community Development Committee that we submitted to an organization called CHF where we hope to produce some tourism booklets and maps to help create more tourism in the Lankaran region. Well, on Wednesday, Tim informed me that CHF accepted our proposal and the project will be moving forward, so I got my first project proposal accepted as a volunteer here. I’m pretty excited about it and am looking forward to the next steps. I’m sure that will be an interesting and fun new challenge for me and I can’t wait to see what happens. Aside from that, I introduced my co-workers to the typing lessons I created for them and they seem to enjoy them so far. It’s hard to find time where they have the free time to practice the typing and where we have electricity to run the computers. Luckily, though, the electricity has been much more consistent lately (knock on wood) so hopefully that run continues. I’m still looking for my own place to live in and I hope to get that wrapped up this week, but if not, I’ll just keep looking. I’ve posted pictures of us playing in the snow. The group photo is Aygun, me, Arzu and Ziya. The two of the street are looking from the door of my office. The others are just random photos from playing in the snow, including Ziya and me on a seesaw.

We're Smart Over Here

2007-02-20T23:52:00.000-08:00

First I would like to apologize to all my faithful readers on the lack of an update last week. For those who read Ashley’s blog, you probably read the most important and funny thing that I could have thrown into my blog, which of course, is the story of him falling in the ditch. It was gross and completely hilarious. I haven’t laughed that hard at any one person in such a long time. In all fairness, I too, have fallen into one of those ditches, but luckily mine wasn’t filled with anything and I didn’t have to wash my clothes immediately after. It also happened in another town, where I was unfamiliar with the surroundings. Good excuses, I know. In case you were wondering about the other volunteer in Lankaran, Tim, he has also fallen into a ditch. I, for one, am glad that I fell into one so early and got it out of the way so I can enjoy the rest of my time here without that dark cloud hovering over me making me fear the day I fall into the gutter/ditch. Plus it’s funny. So, with that all out of the way, I’ll move on.

Last week was rather busy. My organization found a grant opportunity that they wanted to apply for so I was busy helping develop project ideas and writing the application. The program is based around HIV/AIDS education focusing on the youth. It had to be written in Azeri, so my main focus was helping with ideas and offering any advice that I could as well as preparing the budget. This was much easier than my first experience from a few months ago. On Sunday (last Sunday, the 11th) I helped two kids with a Youth Leadership project of theirs. They had traveled to America a month or so ago to learn about our constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, and part of their program involved talking to a group of kids their age about what they learned and the Azeri Constitution. They talked about their freedoms and how they can become active in their country’s politics. It was very interesting to hear what they had to say. They asked me to say a few things about the U.S. Constitution and that was about it. That basically sums up last week.

On Friday I headed to Baku to meet up with pretty much all of the other Volunteers. Every year they have Volunteer Prom, which is basically the entire group going out in Baku and having a good time with all their friends. We don’t get together in very large groups very often just because it is hard for everyone to be able to go to one place at the same time due to obligations at our sites, so it was great to see everyone. A good time was had by all.

This week, the housing search really heats up. Ashley and I informed our host families last week about our intentions of moving out next month and we both really thought the reactions would involve lots of questions and disappointment and just general awkwardness. Once I was able to convey what I meant, my host mom asked me three questions. The first was am I going to live alone, answered by me saying yes. The second was, “Why are you going to live alone?” with my answer being “Because that’s what I did in America, and I’m used to it.” And the third was, “Who will cook for you?” My reply was, and get ready to laugh now, “I can cook.” My host mom’s response was, “How wonderful.” And that was the end of that. It was quick, painless and surprising. I really expected more of a reaction from my host brother, but oh well. We hope to get our housing options approved relatively soon and then wait until moving day. The picture I have included is the group of kids that came to my office for the Youth Leadership day last Sunday. The park by my house that I keep talking about is really coming along and so I will take some pictures this week and maybe some more of the mountains. As my tutor, Aygun, says, “Keep it real, yo!”

Groundhog Day

2007-02-07T00:21:00.000-08:00

So I hear that the groundhog didn’t see his shadow… and if I remember correctly I believe that means winter is over soon, or now. It has been warming up a little bit here, but the wind keeps us cool. It’s somewhere in the 50’s most days, I believe. I hear Chicago is pretty brutal right now as far as the weather goes, so I’ll move on.

A real quick comment on the Super Bowl. I did get to see it live. Ashley and I went to Baku on Sunday because we had a meeting on Monday with Right 2 Play and some project ideas we have. We met a couple friends who were volunteers here before we got here and now they live and work in Baku. They were staying at a house that had the game and were kind enough to let us stay and watch. Our announcers were Mike Tirico and Sterling Sharpe. Sterling Sharpe would not stop talking about the Bears being on a cliff and “the game within the game” between Urlacher and Peyton Manning. It was a little ridiculous… every play was a game within the game and the Bears were on a cliff or close to a cliff. Once the game ended around 7 a.m. Monday morning, we went to the Peace Corps office and got some sleep before our meeting the we headed back to home. Twelve days until pitchers and catchers report!

This year marks the first year I actually celebrated Groundhog’s Day. I didn’t do anything to celebrate on Friday since I was at work, but on Saturday, Ashley and I had quite the celebration. However, Friday was a busy day at work. Besides brainstorming some project ideas and my regular tutoring sessions, I was teaching my office how to sing Bear Down, Chicago Bears. Earlier in the week, my tutor Aygun and I translated the song into Azeri and on Friday we were singing the English and Azeri versions. It was fun. Back to Saturday’s festivities. We had one of our friends buy us syrup in Baku and he brought it down last week. The syrup went perfectly with the pancakes and bacon we made on Saturday morning. We bought some orange juice which was good and the bacon was, of course, wonderful as were the pancakes and syrup. We finished pretty early, so to kill some time we played Rummikube which I dominated. Around 2, we went and got some food and went to my house. We sat around and watched Groundhog Day, the movie. At every point possible, I pointed out the places in Woodstock that I recognized, which Ashley appreciated. Once that was done, it was time to eat, so we headed downstairs to have dinner. Then Ashley, my little brother Ulvi and I played a few games of Sorry!. Ashley actually won a few games, which was amazing. That was our Groundhog Day.

We also started writing letters to my friend Jackie’s students. Here’s a picture of us with the pictures of the class that Jackie sent to us.
The letters they send us are amazingly hilarious. From the questions they ask, like, “If you were wanted by the air force for some crazy reason do you… A) run like a madman screaming Sponge-Bob? B) Grow a beard that touches the floor then hide in the wild? C) Build a time machine, go back to pre-historic times and get eaten by an extinct animal?” I have to provide an answer and those are my only options, so I guess I have some serious issues to ponder. Ashley also received some goofy questions, so we have a good time reading and writing back. They also ask some questions about what it is like to be in the Peace Corps and Azerbaijan.

That should do it for now. Everything is going well. Next month will be six months of being a Volunteer which is very exciting. Not only will 25% of my service time be complete, we are allowed to move out of our host family’s houses. So the search for other living arrangements has begun. Hopefully I will find something nice in town that won’t cost too much. I really enjoy living with my host family, but I miss having independence and being able to decide when I’m going to eat and what, and everything else. But, if I can’t find a place to stay that I like, I will just stay with my family. I have attached some pictures that may be repeats. I mentioned earlier that they are doing some construction to the park near my house. The pictures are of what the park used to look like.

What it looked like a couple weeks ago.

And what it looks like today.

There’s quite a difference, and I’m really curious as to how it will look in a month or so. The whole town has changed quite a bit since I moved here in September, so after two years I’m sure it will be very different. Until next time, be well.

Ahh, Home Sweet Home

2007-01-30T05:16:00.000-08:00

Another week has come and gone and I don’t think I have missed Chicago or home so much as I did in the last 36 hours. On Sunday night, around 8 or 9, the temperature skyrocketed to about 70 degrees. I went outside to get something from my room and noticed what had been a cool night turned into a balmy and windy evening. So I opened the window in my room and basked in the warmth, as my room has not been that warm since October, I think. I woke up for work Monday morning and while it was a bit cooler than the night before, it still seemed like decent enough a day. I enjoyed my walk to work and checked out the destruction/construction of the park near my house to see what progress they had made. I arrived at work to find the office was still locked and waited with Aygun and Ziya for Arzu to let us in and everyone was in good spirits. This continued throughout the day despite the change in weather or maybe in spite of it. By 11:00 it was cold, windy and rainy. Just plain nasty. By 3:00 it was snowing and the flakes were absolutely huge. At least golf ball size… but flat, mostly, because they’re snow flakes. But they were huge! You know? It was still windy and cold, but thanks to the snow, it didn’t seem so nasty. We all went outside for a few minutes to try and catch some of the snow and take a small break from work. By the time I was heading home at 6, it was raining again and the roads and sidewalks were a nice mixture of slush and ice. By 7:00 it was calm and cool again. Good stuff.

To give a bit of an idea on what my office life is like I thought I would share a story. Everyone in my office is roughly my age, maybe a little older except for Aygun, who is 23. That being said, we occasionally like to let loose and joke around the office. Everyone gets their work done on time, so don’t worry about that. Well, a while back I got a package from Mom and Dad that had a couple baseballs among other items in it. To make me feel like home, I kept a baseball at my desk and we occasionally lob it to each other or I’ll throw it to myself while studying. Ziya, probably the most random person I have ever met, really likes to play a game with the baseball that is a weird and sometimes violent hybrid of catch. Instead of gently tossing the ball to each other in the office, he insists we hit it to each other using the palms of our hands. The first one to let the ball hit the floor loses. Ideally, the ball is hit to you with a little bit of air under it so it’s not coming in a line drive right at your face or lower to a more dangerous and painful destination. Also, you want a chance to hit it back so you don’t lose. This sounds simple and risk free, but those who know me should know better. Thankfully and unbelievably, the near incident wasn’t of my doing.

Ashley walked into my office in the middle of one of our games and was coaxed into playing by Ziya. So there we were, all three of us (Arzu and Aygun sat off to the side in what is usually a smart decision) in my little office with two computers and four desks, hitting a baseball at each other with the palms of our hands. Ashley, being the newbie that he was, hit the ball back to Ziya a little lower than ideal and also to Ziya’s offhand. Instead of letting the ball drop to the floor and accept defeat, Ziya attempted to make a big play and took an awkward swing at the ball with his left. I was already laughing as he swung his body trying to get into position and almost fell over when he connected with the ball and sent it on a straight line drive across the room. All the air was sucked out of the room as everyone realized that the ball was heading straight towards one of the two computer monitors. I started laughing again as soon as the baseball passed cleanly over the monitor and picked off a little calendar that was sitting on top of it. Both items sailed about 5 feet to the wall where they both slammed to a rest. Ashley proclaimed Ziya the winner and he took his victory lap accordingly. Needless to say, some of the more fragile items from Arzu’s desk were removed that day and put safely in her home. Also needless to say, this game has not been played again. Now we just talk and joke around for fun, which I must admit, takes some of the excitement and anticipation out of the day, but I suppose it’s for the best.

For those of you who are wondering how the game tournament is going, here’s a brief update. Ashley has broken out to a commanding lead in Monopoly and we are almost dead even in Rummikub. I have a one point lead in that. Risk hasn’t been played in a while, but I’m pretty sure I have a couple games lead in that as well. As far as Yahtzee goes, I have a solid points and games lead. We have started playing Sorry! (The sweet game of revenge… or is it the game of sweet revenge… either works, I guess) and I have been purely dominating. Same with Connect 4. I think Ashley has actually given up in Connect 4 and may be reaching his breaking point in Sorry!. I do realize that by typing this I risk putting a huge jinx on myself, so we’ll have to see how that plays out. A funny tidbit about Connect 4 and Sorry!. While Ashley has yet to beat me in a limited number of games of Connect 4, my 13 year old host brother Ulvi has beaten me 3 times already. Granted, we’ve played many more games than Ashley and I have. As for Sorry!, Ulvi also has a better success rate so far.

As for work, things are picking up. I am developing some short training courses for the people in my office. I have completed one based on teaching typing skills instead of the tried and true hunt and peck method. I just finished this today and we will work on it as time allows. I am also working on Customer Service, Project Management and Internet Research training. I hope that some of these will be successful enough that we might be able to do them for larger audiences at the local business center. The conversation clubs are still taking shape and we expect to be starting those within the next few weeks. The other bigger project that I have been waiting to hear back on is getting some legs as well. Our initial proposal was not accepted in it’s original state, but we had a meeting yesterday to discuss revisions and adjustments and I re-submitted the proposal today. This is the same proposal for tourism brochures/booklets for the region. So now it is back to the waiting game to see what other feedback we get. I don’t have any pictures to share this week, unfortunately. If I take any or find any that I deem noteworthy I will put them up here. That should do it for now. Take care, stay classy and BEAR DOWN!

Just Shufflin' Through

2007-01-24T08:33:00.000-08:00

Who wants to go to Miami??? I do, I do! Or at least somewhere in Baku where I have been told I should be able to watch the Bears play in the Super Bowl. I may have to take a vacation day or two, but it’ll be totally worth it. Whew, ok that’s enough on the Bears for now. This past weekend Ashley and I had some volunteer guests stay at my house. They were supposed to arrive Friday but couldn’t make it until Saturday afternoon so we had one night of great fun. Basically, we just sat around and played games, but its always fun to party and hang out with other volunteers, if for no other reason than giving me and Ashley someone else to look at. I think one of the highlights was definitely our Sunday morning breakfast of a brick of Velveeta cheese with Rotell, tortilla shells (thanks Aunt Barb and Uncle George!!) and 15 slices of pre-cooked bacon (thanks Marissa and Sarah!!). It tasted amazing. Chase it with some Riptide Rush Gatorade and you have yourself some very happy volunteers. It’s amazing that after such a fun weekend, the melted cheese and bacon might be my favorite part. Then again… what’s not to like about melted cheese and bacon???

Hopefully I’ll be starting a conversation club with some kids in Lankaran which will allow them to be able to practice their English skills. It doesn‘t sound that hard to start, but you have to find a place to meet, a good time when all the kids can be there and make sure the school is ok with everything. You know how it goes. It should be fun to teach them games and introduce topics that they may have not addressed before and to get them to think differently about certain things. My hope is that through the conversation club, I can also get the kids to think about some small programs or projects they can do within the community with other classmates or friends to get them more involved in volunteering and the community.

I am also working on some training programs for my office that I might be able to do and think may be useful to them. My counterpart and I are going to sit down this week and discuss a couple ideas and with any luck I will have those moving along somewhere. Ideally, if they are successful with the people I work with, we may be able to offer them to other NGO’s in town as well as business owners and their staff. My hope is that these trainings will spawn more ideas and lead to other potential projects that we can do. Other than that, it should be a quiet week.

In other news, the entire city of Lankaran is under construction it seems and the weather has been amazing. There is a building around the corner from my house that has been destroyed, the big park with the Buckingham Fountains has been doubled in size and the small park that I walk through (pictures from 11-15-06 update can be seen below) has had almost all of the trees cleared out. There is also another part of town near my office that is being leveled and looks like they are going to make it similar to the big park, but mini-sized. It’ll be interesting to see what will come of the little park by my house. It was always very nice to walk through and looked gorgeous in the fall with the leaves changing colors. Tomorrow I will try to get pictures up of the addition to the big park and the tear down of the little park as well. There is also a picture of one of the World War II statues in the big park. I know it’s a short update, but no one wants to sit here reading this all day long, do you?

Play Day... GAME TIME, WHOOP!!!

2007-01-18T03:40:00.000-08:00

That’s right, Play Day. This past weekend 10 Volunteers, including me, got together in Imishli with an organization called Right to Play. We arrived Saturday morning for a brief training. Getting there should have been relatively simple, but it turned out to be a long and somewhat painful journey. On Tuesday or Wednesday we called to the bus station to see what our options were on getting there and found out there was a bus going to Ganja that went through Imishli and left on Saturday morning at 7 am. I wasn’t looking forward to getting up at 6 to get to the bus on time, but you do what you have to do. At least I wasn’t Ashley being woken up by Nana at 5:15 to eat some chicken. So we get on the bus a little after 6:30 and sit there. Then we sit a little longer. Some more people got on and they sat there while we sat there. We sat a little longer and then around 8:00 it seemed like we were finally leaving. The coolest part up to this point is that the guy across the aisle from me brought a duck on to the bus. A real live duck. It was in a plastic bag. The aisle was full of stuff, so the duck in the bag sat on the aisle right next to my feet. Some people had to climb to the seats in the back over all the stuff in the aisle and I think one of them kicked the duck in the head on accident. Once we started moving, the guy took his duck and moved farther back. After a little more sitting but finally moving, the guy who takes the money started yelling at two passengers and told the bus driver to pull over while he yelled at the passengers and threatened to kick them off. This went on for about ten minutes at which point we finally started moving again. Eventually we made it to Imishli but not after we got dropped off on the side of the road not knowing where we were and having to take a cab into the city who wanted to charge us way too much. While we thought we’d get there around 9:30 or 10 at the latest, we finally got there jut before noon. Luckily training didn’t start until 3.

Training wasn’t too bad or long and was mostly fun. Basically they told us about their organization and taught us some games, which was the fun part. Then we had an awesome dinner and all hung out and had a mini-party. On Sunday morning, we broke up into groups and headed out to the schools. Our school was set up for a refugee settlement. We received a very warm welcome by the school director and several students who came and gave brief speeches in English. You could tell they were nervous, but they did a good job. It was great to be welcomed so much and also tough to hear their story. But then came game time which was a blast.

Each volunteer had a group of about 15-20 kids and one of their teachers that we were assigned to. We weren’t really assigned, but more like walked up to a group and stood there waiting for further instructions. When we arrived, all the kids were lined up in a gymnasium in their groups just waiting for us. Since it was so nice outside, we all moved out there to have more space. I played Duck, Duck, Goose first. No one picked me to be the goose. I think they were all intimidated. Then we switched games and played a game called Snakes and Tails. The kids line up in two groups holding the person in front of them by the shoulders. They then chased each other around and try to catch the other “snake’s” tail and add to their own tale. This was fun and kind of mayhem. After that we played a game I think is called Mouse Trap. The teacher would pick five or so kids and the rest would form a circle and hold hands. She would say “Open” and we would raise our hands and the “mice” would run into the circle and try to get out before she would yell “Shut.” Any mouse caught in the circle had to join the circle. I think I caught two mice. The next game we played was similar to Duck, Duck, Goose, but instead the person would walk around the circle with a rag and drop it behind someone who would then have to try and tag the other person with the rag before they sat down in their spot. In this game, the kids kept picking me… and I dominated! I will admit though, I got a little winded. Man, I’m outa shape. We played this for a while and then I showed them the three-legged race which they really enjoyed, but we ran out of time. We only got to play for a little over an hour. Everyone had a great time.

Afterwards, we were invited inside for tea and sweets and we talked more with the director of the school. Once that was done, we all got back into the cars and got dropped off at a rest stop where we could catch a bus to Lankaran. All in all, it was a great weekend. I didn’t know many of the games we played or that other people played so I even got to learn, which we all know is neat. I’m not so sure what this weekend brings, but I’m sure it will be a good time. Ashley and I will either have a couple guests stay at my house where we will build forts and play games, or we will go to Baku, where we will probly build forts and play games. Either way, it’s guaranteed fun. One of the pictures is what I look like while screaming at one of the DVD’s of the Bears games that Steve has sent me so you all can imagine what I would look like if I were there to watch the game on Sunday and the other is me with my group of kids from Play Day. Enjoy!

Quick One (With Paragraphs!!!)

2007-01-10T00:03:00.000-08:00

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.

Welcome, 2007

2007-01-01T10:04:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! Ahh, you gotta love the holidays. It’s been a pretty low key week, and this week will be super low key as I have the entire week off of work. Plus, Ashley is in Georgia skiing, so I have no one to get in the way of my malaise. Before I talk about how I rang in 2007 with my family, I’d like to mention last week very briefly. On Monday I didn’t go to work seeing as how it was Christmas and all. My coordinator is really good about offering American Holidays off to me… he even offered for me to stay home on Columbus Day, to which I declined. Not to knock Columbus Day, but it didn’t seem necessary to stay home. Christmas, though, is entirely different. On Tuesday, it was back to work. During the day I finished off the Tourism Development proposal I had been working on with my counterpart and the Community Development Committee. We’ll see where this goes. Later on in the day, my office had organized a “roundtable” involving many of the local NGO’s and other community members, including the two other PCV’s in Lankaran, Tim and Ashley. After a brief introduction from my coordinator, my counterpart Arzu gave a background of the organization I work for (Center for Legal and Economic Education). For those of you who don’t know, CLEE was founded in Baku in 1997 and is supported by several international NGO’s. The Lankaran branch was opened in 2002 and it’s mission is to provide assistance by promoting human rights, rules of law and democratic institutions through legal and economic educational activities. Essentially, my office provides free legal advice and services to vulnerable groups of society who would otherwise be unable to find such help. Next, Ziya and Aygun spoke of several holidays including the three that we are currently celebrating, Gurban Bayram (Sacrifice Holiday), Azerbaijan Solidarity Day and, of course, New Years. Gurban Bayram, as I mentioned, is the Holiday of Sacrifices. The explanations are taken from handouts from the roundtable. It is celebrated 70 days after the end of Ramadan. This holiday is connected with the Biblical prediction about the prophet Abraham who wants to sacrifice his son Isaac to God. At the last moment God sends the archangel Gabriel with a lamb and saves Abraham’s son. To commemorate this day, each Muslim must sacrifice a sheep or some other animal while reading prayers and then distribute the meat among the poor. Azerbaijani Solidarity Day was established in 1992 to commemorate the 1st World Congress of the Azeri People that took place on December 31st in Istanbul. New Years, as in most places, is celebrating the new year. After Ziya and Aygun presented it was my turn to speak about Christmas. I spoke a few minutes about the background, how families typically celebrate in America now and a little bit about our Santa Clause. After that I played and sang the Christmas Song by Dave Matthews on my guitar. Not the most Christmasy song out there, but a good one, and everyone enjoyed it. Most of them didn’t understand the lyrics, as I sang in English, but they were given a brief overview of what the song is about. All in all, it was a nice get together and good to see some of the people in town that I don’t get to see very often. So that explains why I have no work this week. My family had a pretty low key celebration. All day Saturday was preparation of the food. When I woke up in the morning and headed down to the main house, there was a GIANT slab of meat sitting on the table and Nana (back from Moscow) was busy with the meat grinder. There was also a pretty big fish sitting in a bowl that I was less excited about and several birds and chickens waiting to be grilled. Sunday brought pretty much what I thought it would… lots of eating. I woke up and had some cake, then some beef kabob, then some cake, then some potato salad, tea, cake, tea, chicken, salad, chicken, cake, tea, salad, bread, bread and more bread. All day we were eating. I couldn’t tell, but it didn’t seem like we really sat down like we normally do and ate a meal… I think we just ate all day long. While we weren’t eating, we just chilled and watched TV almost all day. You could tell the anticipation for midnight was just eating at everyone. Or something. Eventually, midnight and 2007 did arrive. I knew my little brothers had bought some firecrackers that are very similar to our black cats and just make a big noise. We also had bought some roman candle type fireworks so I knew our celebration would be fairly small, but fun nonetheless… who doesn’t like making a ton of noise and shooting off roman candles. What was really amusing was that throughout the entire day you could hear random POPS and BANGS as people all over would toss a firecracker for no real reason. When we walked outside at midnight, it was ridiculous. I think every single person in Lankaran was lighting off firecrackers and roman candles and bottle rockets and who knows what. All you could hear and see were loud pops from every where that never ended and bright flashes of light over the houses and around the corners. It was pretty awesome. So we lit a bunch of our fireworks and watched some others. No one had any real big ones, just the loud little buggers. Hopefully everyone used all theirs up so I don’t have to jump on my way to work when one goes off two feet behind me. Some people around the corner had some pretty big ones, but I’m not sure they were used or worked right. I rounded the corner to see a HUGE red ball and people running all over the place and loud bang followed by uncontrollable laughter… a lot of it mine. No one was hurt, I made sure of that before I laughed. So that’s how I celebrated the new year. AND, I found one constant from celebrations involving lots of cooking. Way too much gets made and then you eat the same meal 4-7 times in a row, so there’s some more continuity in the world, if you’re looking for it. I’m not complaining though, kabob and chicken and cake is delicious. I pass on the fish, for those of you keeping score at home. Sorry I have no pictures as of now, maybe this week I’ll find a few or take some new ones to put on here. Hope everyone had a safe and fun New Year! Oh, and Ashley and I won our NFL Fantasy Pick ‘Em League against 11 of my friends. I still can’t believe it and I’m pretty sure they will never hear the end of it. Feel free to taunt them at will (namely Tyler and Zach).

Merry Christmas!!!

2006-12-25T10:57:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!!!!!! I hope everyone had a great Christmas and stayed safe and had great food and great times. I realize it’s been a while since I updated this and I know you are all sitting on the edge of your seats to see what exploits I have gotten myself into recently. Well I hate to disappoint and we’ll leave it at that (if you’re disappointed, lower your expectations). Anyways, plenty to talk about. Last time we left off I had a rooster named after me by Nana, which is awesome. In the following week after that, not much happened. Which brings us to last week. On Tuesday all the volunteers in my group (AZ4 if you recall) traveled to Baku for three days of training. Every few months or so the Peace Corps likes to hold training sessions that not only refresh us and give us a break from our sites for a while, but to also help us develop our project ideas and come up with more ideas. This training was no different. Everyone arrived on Tuesday afternoon and we naturally headed out for one of our favorite Baku treats, lots of nachos and a beer or two. Neither disappointed. It was all good. Wednesday began our training which started at 9 every morning and went till 6 at night with an hour and a half for lunch. The first day was centered on language training and gave us lots of new phrases and vocabulary for holidays and weddings and things like that as well as job specific vocab. This was enjoyable because they brought back some of our teachers from Pre-Service Training including mine so it was great to hang out with them again. Plus we got to learn, which is always neat. Thursday was centered on a lot of reflection and sharing of our first three months of service. Everyone had a chance to share with the group all their successes and failures and we discussed which methods worked and which didn’t and were given other ideas. There was also a safety and security session which is always wildly entertaining thanks to Security Officer Emil. Seriously. He’s awesome. At the end of the day there was a Resource Fair with NGO’s where we could talk about what they do and pick up any information we wanted. Friday brought with it the most nasty weather I’ve experienced since last winter in Chicago. The good thing was it made me feel like I was at home. It was snowing/raining, windy and cold. Beautiful. As far as training goes, this day was my favorite. We started the day off with monitoring and reporting, which if you are familiar with my process of applying to the Peace Corps, then you know there are plenty of forms to fill out to keep you content for days on end. It was a helpful session, though, I thought. The rest of the day was mainly different programs that are available for volunteers to use to get money for projects which was nice, as well as more specific sessions that we got to choose. I chose conversation clubs and environmental projects. Hopefully these will help me with conversation clubs and environmental projects. All in all, I thought it was a great week of training. We got to see some staff members we haven’t seen since PST which was great and we got lots of good information. Plus, each night we got to go out and eat great food and have fun with all the volunteers. My favorite food thing that I ate was a chicken sandwich/sub type thing (chunks of chicken meat with melted mozzarella cheese and green peppers and tomatos on toasted bread). What made this even better was when we went to McDonald’s and Ashley and I decided it would be a great idea to buy a double cheeseburger and jam it into the middle of our chicken sandwich. It was amazing. We have pictures and I think Ashley is posting one of them. I can’t wait to do that again. On Saturday it was time to head back to site. Since it was Christmas weekend, our friends Rachel, Rikki and Kasey decided to join us for Saturday night. We got back to site and went to Ashley’s and drank hot chocolate with Nana and played a few games of Yahtzee. Sunday morning brought with it travel days for the girls and cooking for Ashley and me. Luckily for us, the girls stayed a little in the morning and helped us begin our cooking. I’m not sure if I mentioned this earlier, but Ashley and I decided to cook lasagna for a total of 10 people (his office and mine and Nana). Neither of us cooked very much in America with anything other than a Foreman grill or macaroni and packaged powdered cheese so the fact that we had to make our own lasagna noodles and then figure out how to put it all together meant that we needed help and are very grateful to the girls for staying in the morning and helping us out. I know it probably isn’t all that difficult to actually do that stuff, but if you know us, then you know there are about 293,820,848 ways we could have screwed it up. In a strange twist, we actually pulled it off!! The lasagna was great and ready to serve for our guests earlier than we said it would be, and we even made garlic bread which just made it absolutely delicious. It seemed that everyone actually enjoyed it and had a great time, so Ashley and I were very proud of ourselves. Plus, we only ate one pan on Sunday which means that Ashley and I get to enjoy the other pan of lasagna for the next two days or so! Today, Ashley and I went to the post office to get some packages that were waiting for us. We were very excited to actually be getting Christmas packages on Christmas day. After opening what we got, we played some Yahtzee, ate some lasagna, played catch with a football and baseball, watched the movies that we bought for each other in Baku. We made a deal that we would each pick out one movie for each other on the condition that it had to be watched by both people, so we could buy whatever we wanted but had to keep in mind that you’d have to sit through it yourself so you must pick carefully… we did awesome. I got him a movie about a softball league starring Ralph Macchio. You may remember him from such films as The Karate Kid and My Cousin Vinny and The Karate Kid: Part Two. He got me a movie about a fighting league where the best fighters are brought to a secret island to battle for 10 million dollars. It was ridiculous and pretty awesome. After this we ate dinner with my family and tonight I am going to watch A Christmas Story as I fall asleep and that’s how you spend your first Christmas in Azerbaijan. It wasn’t like being home with friends and family, but we did our best here and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, so I would say it was wildly successful. Tomorrow it’s time to go back to work. I should be pretty busy this week with the tourism project we’ve been working on and a few other ideas we’ve been kicking around. Enjoy the pics, too. Some may be on Ashley’s blog too, but I tried to pick one’s I didn’t think he was using. There, should be one of Nana, Kasey and Rikki decorating the tree at Nana’s house; then me, Nana, Kasey and Rikki before they left on Sunday; the actual tree after decorating; the trays of cooked lasagna…. Mmmm, lasagna; all of us around the tables eating the lasagna; and finally Ziya wearing Ashley’s ski goggles. He got a kick out of those as you can see by the giant grin on his face. That should about do it. Hope you all had a great Christmas!

Good Stuff

2006-12-13T02:51:00.000-08:00

Only 13 days till Christmas!!! Y’all better be excited, because my Christmas celebration will blow you all away. Anyways, that’s a story for next week. This week I would like to tell you about my family life. Last week I told you about the whole Fam, Ulvi, Kanan, Mama and Papa, and occasionally our G-Ma. Today was a huge day in Azerbaijan as it was the Anniversary of Heydar Aliyev’s death (the First President of Azerbaijan). Azeri’s all over the country gathered to celebrate their leader and place flowers at his statue to commemorate his contribution to their freedom and independence. It really was quite interesting and amazing to wake up to quite beautiful music this morning dedicated to Heydar. I’m not sure how to describe it, and I will leave it at that for now. Anyways, as the family goes. My mom and dad here work a lot. Sometimes they wake me up about an hour or so before I plan on it, which as you all know is annoying, but I’ve figured it out and am ready for it. They only do it when I am the last person to leave in the morning, which is once or twice a week. So when they need me to lock the door I am prepared. Plus it means, sometimes, they trust me to make my own tea in the morning and get myself ready for work (I think). But anyways, both my parents are teachers, my dad is an Economics teacher for the local University and my mother is a History teacher for one of the local schools (I am constantly quizzed to see if I know who Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin are… So here is my formal apology to my 5th grade teacher when I wondered if “any of this will ever matter”… So far my answers have been qualified…. WHEW). Then there is Ulvi and Kanan, who are students. Ulvi wishes to be a lawyer or doctor and Kanan wants to work with photography. I believe they are both on their way. Anyways, I work from 10 am till 6 pm. The kids go to school through this time, roughly 8 till 1 or 2 and then they are done for the day. Lunch is at 1 for everyone (in the country, as far as my understanding goes). My dad works a ton, as does my mom… she tutors a lot of students when not working at the school. By the time I come home from work, Ulvi and Kanan have already worked on “bodybuilding,” which I need to start soon,… and are ready to arm-wrestle me. I am often challenged to arm wrestling (which I regularly win ;), and am also asked if I have ever seen Sylvester Stallone or Jean-Claude Van-Damm movies of any kind. I sometimes claim they are my relatives. I quickly explain that I am joking, as this may cause hysteria. Anyways, I get home from work, change into my Bears clothes and head down to the main part of the house where I hang out with the family. From 6 till 10 or so is family time. We watch music videos, talk and joke as much as I can manage. Now that I’m learning more Mom and I talk more often. Much like at work it’s hard to force the language cuz Ulvi can translate but I’m trying to make Mom talk to me instead of asking Ulvi to translate for me. Kanan pretty much decides what we watch on TV, unless Dad wants to watch something really interesting about Heydar or Azerbaijan, or anything that is funny. Otherwise we watch music videos. On regular nights, I get home about 6 or so and change into comfortable clothes (Bears pants and sweatshirt. Thanks Mom!) and chill out. I just found out that besides the Soccer game, that we play sometimes that I’m terrible at, they have a “Mario Cart” kinda game that I know and can be quite good at, and I think that we now just decided to play a ton. My mom just yelled at me to eat, which is normal, YE! is maybe the most common thing you will hear in this country. But anyways, from 6 till 10 or 11 or so I spend with the family either chatting or watching TV or just hanging out. So I hang out with my family a lot. My family and I have fun together (as much as I can tell… they seem to like me). As I’ve heard, it’s amazing where a smile can get ya. Anyways, work is going well, the project profile I was mentioning has hit a snag but I hope we get through it. Here come the problems we’ve always been told about. We have a plan and a budget is in the works, but the donor is asking for more than what is normally required. It makes for a real long story. I’ll let you all know how it works out because this is one I thought we had in the bag, but we will see. I hope this gives you a better idea of what I do during a regular day. Anyways, I hope you all are doing well, sorry I don’t have many pictures this time. The pictures posted are of Rooster Tom that Ashley’s Nana bought. Apparently, she’s really excited for me to get over there and meet my rooster self. I can’t wait. Tomorrow’s gonna rock! Thank You Nana, Thank you. The tall, skinny rooster dominating the photo is Rooster Tom. There is also a Rooster Ashley who should be in one of the photos as well. We haven‘t been formally introduced yet. I’ll confirm… if you see a picture of a different rooster later, then you know I was wrong this time. Also, I will have the video from Thanksgiving shortly, I just need to get it from Ashley’s computer. If I can’t post it, it will be in your emails… do not open at work, it’s horribly offensive singing. But radically awesome. Take care and have a wonderful Christmas if I don’t hear from you till after.

Only 21 Days Till Christmas!!!!

2006-12-04T11:18:00.000-08:00

Big news day!!! Only 5 more days until I will have a copy of our Bon Jovi performance at the Thanksgiving Talent Show so you all have that to look forward to as I hope to make that available as soon as possible. Secondly, Ashley and I won our second week in our NFL Pick ‘Em Fantasy League, which means that two guys in Azerbaijan have beaten 11 people in America twice at picking football games. Thirdly, Da Bears clinched the division yesterday, which is nice. Some may even say it’s pretty neat. I’ll go with both. Anyways, this past week was a busy one, as we had meetings galore with CHF, an international NGO, and CDC, the Community Development Committee in Lankaran. Ashley, Tim and I also met with two youth groups in a sort of conversation club where we talked about potential projects to do with them as well. Beware: a talent show was mentioned. The meetings seemed to go well and I wrote a couple of project profiles which we will discuss tomorrow as CDC and CHF will gather once again and hopefully decide on a project to move forward with. The ideas center around developing tourism in Lankaran. One is about developing brochures and travel maps that outline the main attractions of Lankaran and the southern Region, and the other is about running a Customer Service Training Seminar for local business managers and owners. Eventually we want to have a Lankaran Days Festival, which I am really excited about, but there is a lot of work to be done before we get to that point. This weekend brings more travels for Ashley and I as we plan on heading out to Volunteer Sara’s in Siyazan. As always, we are excited about meeting up with other volunteers and seeing more parts of the country. In other news, the weather has been quite nice for this time of year. I have a feeling it hasn’t rained nearly as often as normal. Yesterday was about 63 degrees at it’s warmest and was perfect for throwing a baseball around on one of the streets (thank you Mom and Dad!). We couldn’t use the fields because it had rained for most of last week, but the street worked just fine. Ashley only threw the ball into the gutters that line the streets twice, which is better than expected. There was a small gathering of kids that stood there and watched us for about 20 minutes. They were content just watching and didn’t want to try to throw or catch. It was kind of funny to watch them all flinch whenever the ball went within 30 feet of them. Not much else is new so I thought I‘d share a normal day. I wake up around 9 and get ready for work. Once there, I generally wait 10-15 minutes and chat with Aygun or Ziya until Arzu shows up to let us in. Then we chat for a little and I study my Azeri and have Aygun write sentences in English and I translate them. Lately I have been working on project write-ups or just help around the office where I can. Ashley does his daily check in call around 10:40-11 and we talk about anything that may have happened over night and what may be happening during the upcoming day, such as where we are eating lunch, his house or my house. At 1, Ashley comes to my office and we head to his house or mine for lunch. After that we go run some errands around town, or play a quick game of Yahtzee if my room isn’t too cold. Then it’s back to work. While not writing sentences or project profiles, my main duties around the office are carrying the generator outside and starting it when there is no electricity, and when there is electricity, I carry the generator inside. Sometimes I go with Ziya to get more gas for the generator. We’re working on getting me more to do. Seriously. At 6 I head home and change clothes and hang out with the Fam for a while. We watch a lot of Turkish music videos, and lately we’ve been sharing pictures of family and their trips they have taken. When I’m tired I head up to my room and either watch a movie or read for a while then go to sleep. That’s about it around here. OH! Ashely and I had Kraft Macaroni and Cheese last week. It was insanely delicious. We made it without milk, but we added bacon bits (all of this courtesy of Marissa and Sarah) and I added Tabasco sauce (I’ve been throwing a bunch on everything I eat since I’ve received two bottles). Ashley and I just sat there and enjoyed every bit and licked the bowls clean. We also watched the Bears beat the Giants this past weekend and couldn’t help but notice the Jalapeño Cheddar Double Melt from Wendy’s. We actually re-wound the commercial twice to re-watch it and drool on ourselves. Someone has to let me know how good that thing is and make sure Wendy‘s keeps serving it until I return. Also, this past weekend, while writing letters to my friend Jackie’s students, my host brother ran in the room and said there was an earthquake. He said the tv and tables shook, but Ashley and I did not notice anything at all… so the status on the earthquake is still pending. We are leaning towards no, though. People at work confirmed this. This evening while watching tv, I saw perhaps the most ridiculous and aggravating commercial ever. It was for diapers for little kids, and wouldn’t you know it, they played the Macarena in the background and the kids danced around in their diapers. I cannot escape that song… EVER. Anyways, besides that, things are awesome here. Hope you like the pictures, there’s a lot of them and probly took me forever to upload. Peace!

Pictures:
There is a picture of Ashley’s Nene when she had me over and we grilled Kibobs. She’s awesome. The next bunch of pictures are my house and family. There is a picture of the “back yard” with the chickens. Then there is the outside area where we hang out in the summer, with the spiral stairs to the new part of the house where I live as well as the purple Lada. I love that car. Next are outside pics of the house, starting with the old part then the new bigger part (my room is the window on the left). The picture of the street is my ‘hood. Notice the brand new pavement, it’s neat. Next is my room, notice the tiger print blanket on my bed. I also like to keep some clutter on my table to make me really feel at home. The next picture is the huge shelving unit filled with the fine china. Not one piece has been disturbed since my arrival, amazingly. Then there is the “hamam” with the shower and toilet. Next is the kitchen with the sink and stove on the right and a bed on the left. The next picture of the shelves with dishes is in the same room. Then there is the family room, with the tv and another bed, and the next pic is the same room with the kitchen table where Ulvi is doing some homework. Finally there is a picture of my Mom, brother Kanan (16), my Dad and Ulvi (13). Then there is a picture of Mom, Dad and me. They rock and that’s about it. Hope you like!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

2006-11-27T04:25:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! I know all of you are concerned so I’ll put your worries to rest… I am no longer cold and the frozen part has been lifted from my room’s name, “Tundra Comma Frozen.” It is now just “Tundra Comma.” That being said, a good week was had by all. We had a neat weekend in Baku. On Saturday afternoon a group of us went to Ashley’s host family from training and they treated us to a great lunch. Then we went to Baku and got ready for our Thanksgiving dinner at the Embassy. The food was great and I think I ate half my body weight (yeah I know, that’s about 4 pounds, but I still ate a lot). After a lot of visiting with friends and staff members, we went to the living room (party wasn’t actually at the Embassy but at one of the people’s houses) and had a Volunteer Talent Show. Most people played a song and sang on the guitar, and Ashley and I were no different, but we were the only people that actually had a costume change. Basically they were just jeans and t-shirts, but Ashley wore a wrap thing around his head (I have no idea what you call it) to look more like Jon Bon Jovi or Axel Rose. Ashley did a little intro on the guitar that he doesn’t know how to play then I took over and we played a classic tune, Wanted Dead or Alive. If you haven’t heard the song, you must, it is a can’t miss. Ashley sang the Bon Jovi parts and I sang the Richie Sambora parts and even had a waling guitar solo. We don’t have pictures yet but as soon as I get them they will be put on here. The song really lent itself to our skills, which is loving Bon Jovi and being able to be loud. To sum it all up, we rocked. After the party ended a bunch of us went out and then went to American families in Baku to stay for the night which was really nice. We got to meet some great people and the family we stayed with even treated us to a great breakfast of pancakes, coffee, bacon, eggs and milk and juice. It was delicious, especially the bacon. After breakfast we got to enjoy the sauna that is in the basement of the house. It was quite refreshing and got me all geared up to sit in a little bus and make the trip back. So there you have it, the big news in Tom Kniola’s world is he ate a lot of great food this weekend, including bacon. It was a busy week before that as well. As I mentioned, CDC had a meeting at my office and we discussed some ideas for projects that can encourage tourism in Lankaran and the southern region of Azerbaijan. Tim, Ashley and I also had a meeting with two youth groups in Lankaran to see if they wanted to work on projects together as a large group. It went pretty well and we are meeting again this week and will hopefully have some good ideas. Anyways, right now I only have one picture to post and will get more off my camera for next time I am online to put on here. For those who may be confused (Marissa) I have lived with a host family my entire time in country. I am with my second host family right now (since I lived in Saray for training and now live in Lankaran). My host father, Namiq, is an Economics teacher and my mother, Ulkar, is a History teacher. I have two little brothers, Ulvi who is 13 and Kanan who is 16. They are both students. Ulvi speaks English fairly well and helps me explain things to my family if I need help. We also have a Nana that stays with us from time to time, but she is in Moscow right now and will return near the new year. At home I have my own room (“Tundra Comma”) and right outside my room is a big room where my mom tutors students and attached to that is an extra bedroom. Under the large room is a big open space where the car is parked and in warm weather there is a table and tv out there where we eat and hang out. For now, though, everything is inside. There are two rooms, one functions as the kitchen and the other is where we eat and watch music videos. There are two beds (one in each room) and a big sofa in the tv room. That’s about it. Everything is well, Ashley and I rock, and things are all good here in lovely Lankaran. Until next time, you stay classy, America.

2006-11-19T06:11:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind while reading the following that I am in no way complaining, but simply stating some facts about the current situation in which I live. That being said, my room is really cold. It is now known in Lankaran as the “Tundra comma frozen.” (This bears no relation or similarity to the field on which the most despicable NFL team plays on). We have now tried two heaters in my room, one of which half works, the other works but is tough to start. You plug it into the wall and it has a bar that heats up and warms the area immediately surrounding it up to and including three inches away. This one is ok and is quite reliable. The other heater we have tried is powered by kerosene and is less reliable but much warmer and effective. I haven’t blown it up yet so there’s a positive. It is much harder to turn on however, and does not get used very often. The Peace Corps issue sleeping bag is wonderful and keeps me warm and toasty while I sleep. I knew it was cold in there the other day when my host brother, Ulvi, walked in and asked me incredulously, “How do you live in here???” The main sitting area in the other part of the house is quite warm though. My family has a little metal stove where we burn wood and it heats up real good. (pictures of host family and home coming soon) Recently I have become insanely jealous of Ashley because he has a fireplace in his room! His room used to be the kitchen of the house and so there’s a wood-burning stove that heats up his room. Like I said though, I’m not complaining. I only sleep in the room and with the sleeping bag, I am quite comfortable. In other news, Rikki George, another Peace Corps Volunteer, came to visit Ashley and me this weekend. She got in Friday afternoon and we showed her around town and headed to Ashley‘s for dinner and hung out and played some games and watched a movie where a fascinating event occurred. It‘s a well known amongst the other Volunteers that Ashley and I break out into laughing fits at random times for no reason and cannot stop laughing for around 10-20 minutes. Up to this point, amazingly enough, we haven‘t had a laughing fit with Ashley‘s Nana (grandmother). Not even when she comes into the room and dances to the music we have playing, or when she calls Ashley a baby when he can’t do something or even when she spills food on herself and calls herself a baby. It finally happened. We were all watching Batman Begins (in English so Nana couldn’t understand what was being said but the action scenes were good) when she said something and we all lost it. Ashley, Nana and I just sat there and laughed for about 15 minutes while Rikki sat there and laughed at the three of us. Good stuff. Anyways, back to Rikki’s visit. There are several places around Lankaran in other villages that have hot springs that people go to to refresh and replenish their souls and we had planned on visiting one on Saturday afternoon but the weather was less than favorable. In fact, it was quite cold and rainy. It was the perfect day though, to push a car up and down the street to try and get it to start. We were unsuccessful, but I reached my three month exercise quota so there’s another positive. That’s how my morning started, but then I met up with Rikki and Ashley and we hid from the inclement weather in Ashley’s house and played some Monopoly during the day. Afterwards we went to my house for dinner and played some Yahtzee (of course) with Ulvi and just passed the time with music and games. We all had a great time and sadly, Rikki went home today. This should be a busy week for us though. The big Volunteer Talent Show is on Saturday after thanksgiving dinner at the Embassy and Ashley and I have a ton of practice to do before we are ready. I also have some meetings coming up with a local committee called CDC (Community Development Committee) where we will make plans on developing tourism in Lankaran and the surrounding areas. That should about do it for now. I took some more pictures of the town Friday afternoon because it was so nice outside and have attached a few. They are from right next to the Futbol Stadium near the outer edge of town.

Playing Catch Up

2006-11-15T11:06:00.000-08:00

Bonus update since mine appears to be lacking in entertainment value. I thought I may update this more regularly (at least that’s what I say now until I forget again). Anyways, I found this little nugget of information amusing and helpful. For anyone wishing to send packages to me here in Azerbaijan, the following is a list of items that cannot be sent according to the regulations posted on the U.S.P.S. website (thanks to Marissa for sharing this):

-Articles for smoking opium and hashish.
-Explosives.
-Films containing technology on the manufacture of narcotics, psychotropic or toxic substances, explosives, or arms or ammunitions.
-Films promoting immorality, violence, or terror.
-Firearms, ammunition, cutting and stabbing arms, and other articles designed for attack or defense (knuckledusters, stiletto blades, balls of paralyzing fluid, etc.), explosives, war materiel.
-Narcotics and psychotropic substances; articles for their use.
-Printed matter (books, newspapers, pictures and other products of the printing industry; manuscripts, typescripts, and plans) promoting immorality, violence, or terror.
-Radioactive materials.

So please keep that in mind when putting a package together. It occurred to me today that I haven’t posted many pictures of the people I work with everyday so I decided to put a few on here with more to come, I am sure. The first two are part of my walk to work every morning. I go through a park and down a main section of the town. Then there is a picture of my office from outside (in spite of the bars and everything it is not a prison, but work can feel that way sometimes, am I right? HA!), my friend Ashley and Ziya who is a lawyer in my office, then there is a picture of Arzu (my counterpart and office manager… the blonde one) and Aygun who is also a lawyer in my office (she says hi to Marissa). Finally, there is a picture of my cactus and a fruit (that I’m not sure how to spell but I can pronounce it) that was carved by Ziya (he really enjoyed carving the pumpkins). Not pictured from my office is my director, Rufat. He also is the director at one of the local banks so he is very busy and is not around very often but I will get a picture of him soon. Also, Ashley does not work in my office, but right down the street and stops by often. That is it for now, more to come later.

America Day in Sheki

2006-11-13T23:39:00.000-08:00

It appears some of you are getting awfully impatient about these blog updates. I hope this one will ease your craving and meet your lofty standards, Marissa and Zach. Anyways, lots of stuff happening lately. This past Thursday, Ashley and I traveled from Lenkaran to Sheki, a beautiful little town in the mountains in the northern/central region of Azerbaijan. We got there Thursday and met up with everyone and went to our friend Charlie’s apartment/house. The bus ride was very long and it seemed like we would never get there. It was entertaining though. Right when we walked on, the first thing you saw was a bunch of huge wicker bags filled with various fruits placed all the way down the aisle way and covering the last four rows of seats. In order to get to our seats we had to climb around all these bags and maneuver your way into your chair. Good stuff. Then, about halfway through the trip, Ashley took out his computer and we watched some Simpsons episodes. This caused a huge commotion on the bus and created a lot of interest in us. A little kid really liked my Bears hat that I was wearing and I let a guy listen to my iPod for a little which he really enjoyed. He was dancing to 311 and a little Guns ’N Roses. The reason for this journey was because the volunteers in Sheki, Charlie, Magda and Josh, organized “America Day” and they needed help from other volunteers. Josh’s organization allowed us to use their office to have a bunch of Azeri kids from the area come over and learn about American holidays and traditions. We had one room where they learned about Thanksgiving and one room where they learned about Halloween. I was in the Thanksgiving room and we put on a great show. We did a small play about the first Thanksgiving. I was a Pilgrim. There is a picture posted of the play down below. After that, we had everyone make hand turkeys out of construction paper and we went around in a circle and everyone told what they were thankful for. We also had cookies and apple cider for the kids to eat and drink and everyone enjoyed themselves. In the Halloween room, they explained trick or treating and the carving of pumpkins and all the other fun stuff we do. Then they showed a Simpson’s Tree House of Horror episode which got a bunch of laughs. After this we went bobbing for apples. Some of the kids were reluctant at first, but after a few people went they all got really into it and volunteered to stick their head in a bucket and grab an apple. Finally, we explained the rules of football and headed over to the stadium and played flag football. Everyone seemed a little confused at the rules and there were a few mishaps, but once they played a little bit everyone got the concept and had a blast running around. Some of the kids were really into it, which was good to see. This all took place on Saturday. Friday we did some preparations and then Charlie took a few of us on a walk around the town. We went up one of the hills/mountains to a very old gravesite and watched the sunset. The pictures with the view is from this spot. It was gorgeous up there and the weather was nice for it too. It was a little chilly once the sun went down but it was well worth it. Charlie took us through the town on the way back and we saw two of the museums (didn’t go inside, but they were impressive from the outside). One of them had two absolutely enormous trees in front of it. They were huge and definitely worth writing home about. I couldn’t even come close to getting my arm around the trunk. After we went out to eat we headed back to Charlie’s to relax and hang out. We were sitting around, kind of bored, when Charlie noticed that the barrier between his living room and kitchen made an excellent viewing area for sock puppets. We then did sock puppet skits for a while which was hilarious. That tuckered us out so we all went to bed and got ready for the big day which was to be Saturday. After the football game was finished, we again headed back to Charlie’s where there was a big pot of chili waiting for us. It was delicious. We had sour cream, shredded cheese, and oh yeah… delicious chili. We ate a lot and hung out the rest of the night listening to music and relaxing. All in all it was a great time. The journey back was very long and tiresome, but that was expected so at least it didn’t sneak up on us. Plus today (Monday) was a holiday so we didn’t have to work, so an extra day of rest to recover was well spent playing Monopoly. Ashley and I also practiced for the talent show that will be after the thanksgiving dinner at the embassy. We’re real excited, but I can’t share what we are doing yet in case some other volunteers look at this, but I will let you all know how it goes. If you would like to hear more about my adventures in Lenkaran, please view my friend Ashley’s blog at http://ashsazeradventure.blogspot.com. Me and him usually hang out and do the same things together, but he might have some different pics and a different way of telling stories. That should about cover it. Enjoy the pictures!

Happy Halloween; Bring on November

2006-10-30T11:46:00.000-08:00

Back from Ganja and it is safe to say that the Halloween party was a success. There were a lot of friends and good times had by all. One person dressed as a pomegranate. There was also a pirate, a witch, a devil (me), an angel (Ashley), two people dressed as best friend babies, and a wide variety of randomly thrown together outfits. Sunday morning brought with it the joy of an 8 hour bus ride back home. It may have been the slowest bus ever, but it got us home and that’s all that matters. Monday brought with it a sweltering 88 degree day! I did not expect it to get this warm on October 30th, but I’m not complaining. It was gorgeous. We met the Ambassador for dinner tonight and it was good to share with her our experiences so far and our thoughts about a variety of topics. She offered a good perspective on a lot of things and shared some stories of her travel experiences which was real interesting. Other than that, there really isn’t any news for now. I seem to have lost some weight, so that’s a relief. I was really worried for a while that I was just getting out of control so next time you all see me I should look like a totally different person. The pictures I have included may have been sent with one of my earlier emails but I decided to post them here since not everyone was able to see them. They are of the field where we played Frisbee a while ago. The stadium is pretty new and we have yet to see a soccer game there, but are planning on going next chance we get. So we still have that to look forward to. I believe that is it for now. The other two pictures are from Baku. One is the Maiden Tower, one of the more popular tourist attractions and the other is just a picture of the city. You can’t see it in this picture, but the Caspian is just to the right. Enjoy!

I'm Bloggin' Baby

2006-10-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

First Blog update, woohoo! So to catch everyone up, I lived in Saray for a month with one host family and there is a picture posted of me, my host brother Qudrat and sister, Fatima. Then I moved to Lankaran. That‘s about it. I work in town and will post some pics from there (work and town) shortly. Now to recent news. Lately, things have been pretty bland, Yahtzee here, Monopoly there, not much going on. The next few weeks, however, are action packed throughout. This last weekend, for instance, I, as well as many other Volunteers, went to Baku for my flu shot. Normally this would be more of a hassle what with the 4 hour uncomfortable ride in the marshrutka just to get stuck in the arm with a needle and what not, but since the Peace Corps gets me a hotel room and pays for the trip, it’s totally worth it to get nachos and McDonald’s (scheduling conflicts did not allow this to happen) and, of course, my standard 2 bags of Doritos (still love ‘em, but unfortunately, this also did not happen… scheduling). Plus, since all us volunteers rarely get to see each other, we store up all our energy for weeks at a time and let it all out at once. It’s been likened, pretty accurately no less, to when we were 5 and all of our friends piled into a van to go to an amusement park and all the kids are bouncing off the walls with excitement. Then, on Monday, my friend Ashley and I invited our offices over to his house to do some pumpkin carving. They had never really seen anything like it and we all had a great time. The picture of all of us on the steps are my host brother Ulvi and I at the top, then Ziya (a lawyer from my office), then Ayzel and Farina (from Ashley’s office), then my counterpart Arzu and Ashley. This weekend is the big Halloween party at one of the volunteer’s houses in Ganja. Costumes are mandatory, so this should be fun. I’ll let you all know how that goes. Next Monday, the Ambassador is in town as well as a Texas swing band so we will not only be treated to a wonderful dinner, but will also be rockin’. Should be fun. That’s what’s going to be happening, now for what happens normally. As I have mentioned several times before, the rainy season is upon us. This means that we are pretty much confined indoors which means the great Yahtzee and Monopoly Challenges have begun. Ashley and I are in the early stages and will have a year long bet on each game… the terms have yet to be determined, but so far I am in the lead in Yahtzee (points and games), but recently got passed in Monopoly (games only). To give you an idea of how much of this is being played, keep this in mind. Ashley and I average about 3 games of Monopoly per weekend day, and maybe 3-6 games of Yahtzee per weekend day. I expect these to increase as weather conditions worsen. My littlest host brother and I, however, play much more often, seeing as how we live together and all and how he has taken such a strong liking to the game. The rest of the family can take or leave it, it seems. Here are some numbers for you to think about:

30,886 - Total number of points scored by me
29,263 - Total number of points scored by Ulvi
1,623 - My point lead
496 - Most points scored in a single game (Ulvi)
245 - My average points per game
232 - Average points per game for Ulvi
128 - Fewest points scored in a single game (also Ulvi)
126 - Total number of games played by Ulvi and me
68 - Number of games I have won
58- Number of games Ulvi has won
1 - Spreadsheets created by me to keep Yahtzee stats
½ - Number of bottles of dandruff shampoo my friend’s host father drank because he couldn’t read the label that was in English and didn’t realize it went on your head (unrelated, but amusing… he’s ok)
0 - Number of people I expect to be impressed by any of this
Countless - Hours wasted playing Yahtzee and maintaining stat spreadsheets

Yes, I am aware of how ridiculous this all is, and yes, I am aware that there are plenty other things to be doing with my time, but when it is cold and rainy, there really are few options. We’ll watch a movie every so often and watch Azeri TV (mostly Azeri and Turkish music videos… my brothers cannot get enough of the same 7-9 videos) but nothing passes the hours like rounds upon rounds of Yahtzee. Also, this gives me a good opportunity to practice my Azeri since Ulvi speaks English decently enough to help me out and answer questions. That’s about all that has been happening lately, work is still going well. I have found out that a letter takes about 2 weeks to get to Lankaran from DeKalb, Illinois, so apply that knowledge accordingly. Work is still going well, hard to believe I’ve been there over a month already, but that’s the way it goes. The other pictures are of the main park in town that I live about a two minute walk from. The big statue is Heydar Aliyev, the former President, and current President’s father. The other picture is one of the fountains in the park that we have named Buckingham South (There are 3 fountains, Buckingham North, Buckingham South and Buckingham East… we have yet to locate Buckingham West).="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4450/3277/1600/Buckingham%20South.jpg"> Also included are the bacon chips we found in Baku. Don’t they just look delicious??? So that’s the first of many blog entries. Keep coming back as more pictures will be loaded and more stories and updates. One more thing. Ashley and I are quite proud that we won one week of the NFL Pick ‘Em League that we have joined consisting of friends of mine from Chicago. Not bad with very limited internet access and electricity. Just had to take a moment to publicly revel in my glory… we hope to win more and will let you all know as soon as that happens. And one last thing - thank you to Tyler. Got the first of da Bears Game DVD’s (week three against Minnesota) in the mail… glorious sums it up. Even the commercials were entertaining. But mainly da Bears rocked.