Photos

When i was at home many of you asked me to post more photos. the first one here is in front of my house looking at the mtns i climbed yesterday.



This pic is looking down at Zaqatala from the top of the mtns.



This is a sheppard and his hut that i met and had tea with up on top.



This is a graveyard that was on top of the mtns. i don't know anything about it yet but there was a tombstone behind the gate that had dates from the 1600's



this is a look accross the ridge that i came across. if you look really hard you can see the sheppards hut next to the pond.

More Photos

The first pic is of my host mom and brother at their house.



This pic is of the football game in the street during the one year party.



This is a pic of one of my classes when we went on a field trip to a village called Ilisu. the bridge they are standing on was really old and made with eggs used as the hardening element for the cement.



This is a waterfall in Ilisu that we hiked to.



This was looking down from an old fortress we hiked up to.

Here we go again

13 Sept 2008

Well I stopped writing on this because I thought what I was writing was boring and didn’t think anyone was actually reading anymore, but after going home for a wedding and to see family many of you told me you wanted me to continue? It’s sometimes difficult to write over here because the things that you may find interesting have become normalized in my life over here. I will try to write more and if it does start to get boring I guess you can just stop reading right?

The only major things that have happened since writing last are getting kicked out of my house, and going to America for a wedding.

Before I tell you the story about getting kicked out of my house I want to say that I believe in Karma and sometimes when you’re not a nice person Karma can be pretty shitty literally. I got kicked out of my house after having a number of PC friends over to celebrate our one-year anniversary. I had a large awesome house with a ton of beds and the lady that lives downstairs was in Baku for the weekend so I gave in and agreed to host the party. The party was great we had a great time hanging out with people we hadn’t seen in awhile, we had good cultural exchange in having a street football game that all the neighbors came out to watch and cheer for, and we had some good laughs. Then Sunday morning came around.

That morning I was sleeping really peacefully when one of my buddies came into my room and said “hey Donny there’s a Hanam (old lady) at your door.” I asked what she wanted thinking maybe we had left the gate unlocked and it was a beggar. He said, “I have no idea but she’s yelling your name”. Knowing the beggars don’t know my name and the condition we left the yard in the night before I popped out of bed to go find out who this could be. When I got out of my room I could see the lady from downstairs, who told me she wasn’t coming home till that night, looking through my window at all the bodies sleeping on the floor. I ran to the door and started to apologize profusely for all the beer bottles, garbage, and the guy sleeping in the hammock in the yard. I told her I hadn’t expected her till that night and we would all come down and clean everything right away. She didn’t seem to hear me and just told me to come downstairs. Thinking my Azeri was a little off I tried telling her again that yes I understand that the place was a mess and we’ll come down and clean it. She just motioned for me to follow and I did. When I got down she motioned for me to follow her into her house which I thought was weird because I’d never been in there before and she led me to her shower room where even before I got into the house I could tell where the sewage smell we had been smelling for the last few days was coming from. When I got to the doorway of the shower room I saw what was three days worth of PC Volunteers sewage, which had been coming up the drain in her floor! At this point as could be expected she was talking so fast I had no idea what she was saying and had a volunteer with better language skill come down to understand what was going on. She told us that she was a lady and can’t deal with things like this and I needed to get it fixed right away. Not knowing the number for the local roto rooter I called my host brother and explained the situation to him. He told me not to worry he knew a guy that could fix it but not till Monday because he didn’t work on Sundays. I explained this to the lady gave my brother the money to give to the guy and in less than 30min everyone was out of the house and at the vagzal (bus station) ready to go somewhere else. And then to make the rest of the long story short after I called my landlord to tell him what had happened they decided to raise the rent so high so I could no longer afford to live there. This is the nonconfrontational way they say they don’t want you living here anymore.

So now before any of you start to feel sorry for this poor hanam that had a shower room full of sewage I need to explain that this is the same lady that had been sneaking into my house while I was at lessons and had stolen food my mom had sent from America and $250 worth of my clothes, some of which I saw her son wearing around town. So the way I see it, and you can call me heartless if you want, but I think this is just a great example of how karma can be pretty shitty sometimes.

Since then I have moved into a new place that is nice but more of a shared living situation. I have two rooms a living room and a bedroom. I have a stove I cook on in my living room and I share the toilet, shower room, and a fridge with a family. I’ll send some pictures soon.

The other big thing that has happened, as most of you know is that I went back to America! One of my great friends from high school got married and I was lucky enough to be able to come back to celebrate it with him and his beautiful new wife. The wedding was one of the best weddings I’ve been to and it was great to see so many of my old friends.

I was also able to see all my brothers and sisters, their kids, both moms and dads, and my grandpa! When I got off the plane 31 family members were there to greet me. As I walked down the hall I saw them all with their huge signs they had painted and they all started singing happy birthday to me then all at once all my nieces and nephews threw the signs down and came running and gave me a huge group hug. I couldn’t have asked for a better reception. It took me a few days to recover from the jetlag but after I did I had a great time eating, spending time with friends and family, and experiencing everything that makes America so great.

Photos

Here are some photos. the first is my bedroom. the second is my cool western toliet that i can actually flush toliet paper down! (most toliets here you have to either use the red flower watering pot that's next to the toliet or have a bag for dirty paper which can be pretty smelly). the 3rd and 4th are of the best packages i've gotten! my mom managed to fit all this into the flat rate boxes that you can send for 37bucks. if any of you need any ideas look at these photos and see the randomness. i asked her to go to the super market and just look for fun small things you would never normally buy spices to make things with here are awesome!!

Photos

Here are some photos. the 1st is the dinner i made for my girls club, a few PCV'S, and my brother. the second is of my new house from the road. THe third is my house form the yard. the forth is my kitchen. The last is my living room.

Spring Is Here!!

April 13, 2008

Hello everyone. I can’t believe how much the weather can brighten a person’s attitude! This last month and a half has been pretty exciting. We had our annual Peace Corps prom in Baku, I moved out on my own, and spring arrived.

Over one weekend the weather went from winter to spring and now everyone is outside and happy. Today I went for one of the best runs in my life. We had a thunderstorm last night with tons of rain then when I woke up this morning there wasn’t a cloud in the sky but all the roads were still wet and clean. I ran down toward a great village called Danaçi which has all these little village country houses spread out along this long straight road that has tall cottonwoods on the sides spread out enough to still see the fresh snow on the mountains from last night. I had my ipod playing some great music and felt like I could have gone on for hours. (Then I turned around and realized that feeling of being able to go on forever was aided by the fact that I was running on a slight down slope that I had to run back up at a much slower pace.)

Our prom was all sorts of fun. Volunteers have been planning a prom in at the end of February for a few years to have something to look forward to during the hard winter. This year the theme was high society and everyone dressed up really nice I however decided to do it high society redneck style! I had been growing my hair out since our swearing in ceremony in September which was fun but time for a new look so I had one of my friends cut it into an awesome looking mullet complete with lines on one side and a lightning bolt on the other! Then I had my mom send a tuxedo t-shirt which unfortunately didn’t arrive in time (something about accidentally being sent to Thailand?) So I took a white t-shirt cut off the sleeves and made my own which turned out to be even better. Then I got a brown bag from our medical staff and bought some beer in pounder cans from the store next to the bar and drank cheap beer form a brown bag all night. My camera was acting up that night so you’ll have to wait a while longer before I can send you some pics of all my sexyness in a mullet!

A month ago today Peace Corps let us move out of our host families and into houses of our own! I thought the process would be really crazy and interesting after I asked my brother how I could find a place and he said we would just walk up and down the streets asking people if they knew of places for rent but it turned out to be easier than that by using my conversation clubs. I sent everyone home with the assignment to find me a home. They came back with all sorts of places but two actually were cheap enough to meet the PC requirements. One of them was nice and relatively new sharing a courtyard with a family but the family said the only way they would allow me to live there for that cheap was if I would teach their kids English. The other place which I took is really old but huge. I have three bedrooms a huge kitchen an indoor western toilet and an indoor shower. The first story has a divorced old lady that people say is a prostitute and who has a key to my house and has stolen food and clothes from me living in it but other than that and the fact that I have very sporadic water and wont have any in the summer and winter the place is great. I’ve realized being here how much Americans myself included really pride ourselves on our independence. Even with all the issues living in this house have and will produce it is still so nice to have a place of my own where I can cook my own food, wash my own dishes and laundry, wear socks only when I want to, and not have someone constantly hovering over me.

Moving out has also produced some great topics of discussion for my conversation clubs. It is unheard of here for people to move out of their family’s homes until they get married. I have some students who are in their late 20s to early 30s, who for some strange anomaly because people usually get married early here, are still living in their parent’s homes. Then there is the whole topic of how I eat and take care of myself without a mother, sister, or wife to take care of my eating, tea drinking, and cleaning needs. In the last two weeks I’ve had two of my clubs over and I cooked dinner for them. They were more than astonished and not only at the realization that Chinese food isn’t made entirely of weird looking bugs. When I met with my girls club the next time I realized how much they liked the experience when they (who are all between 16 and 22) all told me it had been the best day of their lives. Then this last Friday I cooked for my teachers club which is a bunch of middle aged women who are used to doing all the work over here and it was funny to watch how much nervous energy they had sitting there watching me do all this work for them. They kept getting up trying to jump in and help but I wouldn’t let them. It turned into a great cultural sharing experience as we sat over dinner and I explained to them how men and women share household responsibilities in most US families.

In all things have really been going really well and I’ve been having a great time. There are still the moments where I sit in my big empty house all by myself on a Friday of Saturday night and go to bed at nine o’clock because there’s nothing else to do and think about how long these 27 months are going to be, but the good times are still overwhelming making up for some of the long nights.

Photos

Here are some new pics. The first is of the front of my host families apt. in the snow. The second is loking up my street with the mtns above town. The third is of the street of the college where i hold all my clubs. Then the last is the sun rising over the caspian sea after the superbowl.