February 10, 2008
Hello everyone sorry it’s been awhile since writing last it’s become more difficult to blog as my life has settled into more of a routine. I struggle to find new and interesting things to write about. It’s interesting how the things, which would have stopped me in my tracks with amazement 8 months ago, now seem completely normal. I noticed that the other day when I was walking down the street on the shoulder of the road passing a butcher with a head of a cow hanging on a hook and a car driving the wrong way on the same shoulder I was walking on came up behind me honking for me to get out of his way and instead of thinking wow there is a dead cows head and here is a guy driving where the pedestrians are forced to walk moving in the wrong direction and he’s honking at me! Instead I just casually moved to the side with all the other people walking so he could speed past us just inches away at 3 times the posted speed limit splashing slush all over us and didn’t really think much about it other than how it was funny that I now think of that as normal.
Other than the normal near brushes with death from the crazy drivers (Don’t worry I’m slightly exaggerating this mom) things have been going really well. It has been cold and water has been causing problems with most volunteers but I’ve been really lucky with my family and my host brother in particular who has been able to maguyver a way to have water almost constantly. I could complain about the week we went without water and thus a shower but the other volunteers would be really angry since many of them haven’t had water since the 1st of the year. So, understanding it’s cold but could be so much worse keeps my outlook positive.
My language is coming along slowly but surely. There are many volunteers who are learning it much faster than I am but I did realize that on Super Tuesday I was able to sufficiently explain to my host mom what Super Tuesday was and how the primary elections work in the US. I’m sure it still sounded like a 3 year old explaining it but the concepts were transferred?
I was able to go into Baku and see the Superbowl! A big group of us went in and one of my friends was able to talk a bar owner into keeping the bar open from 3 to 7:30am for us to watch. Up until it was over and I realized it was 7:30am and the sun was up it was good fun.
Everything else aside my work is going really well. Last week I met with the head of The Azerbaijan Scouts and learned that there really is no program so he and I are going to work together to create the advancement curriculum for Scouts!
I’m in the process of trying to find a new home! Here in PC Azerbaijan we stay with a host family for the first 2 ½ months during our training. Then we move to our sites and stay with a family for an additional 6 months. At the end of this 6 months (March 13th) we have the option to move out on our own. The theory of us living with a family for this long is to help us integrate into the community and culture better. There is an on going debate between volunteers and our Country Director about the significance or lack there of for this, but for now it just is, and it will be ending in one short month. I will keep you posted to how this process of finding a house or apartment in a country where it is almost certain to be an entertaining process that makes no sense at all, but will find some way to work itself out.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Happy New Year
January 3, 2008
Well Happy New Year and Merry Christmas! This last month has been really busy with all the things I’ve been doing and seems to have slipped right by. I hope you all were able to enjoy everything the holiday season has become in America. Being this far away has really made me miss all the little things.
They teach us many things in training here and one of the most important is about ourselves. They taught us that our service would be full of emotional peaks and valleys. This last month has been one of those valleys for me. I don’t know if it’s because of the holidays or just the fact that up to this point I really haven’t had a valley yet but I really missed home friends and family this past month. Now that the month has passed and it’s the start of a new year I can feel myself climbing the hill again and hope to be at that peak again soon.
The biggest event of this last month was our IST (In Service Training). For this all the volunteers in my class, the AZ5’s, went into Baku and spent three nights in a hotel and had trainings during the days. It was really pretty nice how they scheduled it. They had us all come in on Christmas day so that night we were all able to be together. We had an entire floor to ourselves so in the large common area we moved all the sofas and couches and almost all 50 of us ordered pizzas and sat around catching up with each other. Things like this are always kind of bitter sweet. It is all sorts of fun to be back around all the friends I grew so close to during our training, but then it’s always much more expensive than the money PC gives us for our Per diem. Then to be back around all those Americans again it can remind you of home that much more.
During IST I had my LPI (Language Proficiency Interview) During my training some of us didn’t score high enough so a few others and me had to retake the test during our IST and this time I passed. It was a great relief since before the test sometimes I was scared that I was going backward in my language skills but as it turned out I was able to go in there and relax and just have a normal conversation in Azeri. I still sound like a what talking to a three year old sounds like not getting all of my tenses correct in each sentence but I am able to understand and communicate.
The other exciting event of this past month was going to one of my student’s homes for dinner. I have this amazing student who is also my Azeri tutor and she just really has things figured out. So a few weeks ago I learned about this opportunity for youth to be involved in something called the youth fund where they are given the responsibility of distributing grants to different projects youth apply for. To be on this committee would really increase someone’s opportunity to be selected for other programs here to study in other countries. She wasn’t able to attend so I got the video and some applications and told her roommate to let her know I wanted to come over after dinner that sometime that week to tell her about these things. Well, her roommates English isn’t as good as I had thought and she didn’t understand so she told her that I was coming over but didn’t know why but thought I wanted her to cook me dinner. So when I got over there she had this huge meal prepared that she and all her roommates had worked on all day long. When I got there I was able to explain it all and we had a good laugh. After getting the through the language barrier we all had a great time and it was the most fun I’ve had with host country nationals since I’ve been here.
Just in case some of you have forgotten my address, here it is again : -)
Donald Stevens
Məzkəzi Poçt
Tələb Edilənədək
Zaqatala, Azərbaycan
Az 6200 Azerbaijan
note: i just looked at the address and the upsidedown e"s did not appear. anywhere there is a square put an upsidedown e.
Well Happy New Year and Merry Christmas! This last month has been really busy with all the things I’ve been doing and seems to have slipped right by. I hope you all were able to enjoy everything the holiday season has become in America. Being this far away has really made me miss all the little things.
They teach us many things in training here and one of the most important is about ourselves. They taught us that our service would be full of emotional peaks and valleys. This last month has been one of those valleys for me. I don’t know if it’s because of the holidays or just the fact that up to this point I really haven’t had a valley yet but I really missed home friends and family this past month. Now that the month has passed and it’s the start of a new year I can feel myself climbing the hill again and hope to be at that peak again soon.
The biggest event of this last month was our IST (In Service Training). For this all the volunteers in my class, the AZ5’s, went into Baku and spent three nights in a hotel and had trainings during the days. It was really pretty nice how they scheduled it. They had us all come in on Christmas day so that night we were all able to be together. We had an entire floor to ourselves so in the large common area we moved all the sofas and couches and almost all 50 of us ordered pizzas and sat around catching up with each other. Things like this are always kind of bitter sweet. It is all sorts of fun to be back around all the friends I grew so close to during our training, but then it’s always much more expensive than the money PC gives us for our Per diem. Then to be back around all those Americans again it can remind you of home that much more.
During IST I had my LPI (Language Proficiency Interview) During my training some of us didn’t score high enough so a few others and me had to retake the test during our IST and this time I passed. It was a great relief since before the test sometimes I was scared that I was going backward in my language skills but as it turned out I was able to go in there and relax and just have a normal conversation in Azeri. I still sound like a what talking to a three year old sounds like not getting all of my tenses correct in each sentence but I am able to understand and communicate.
The other exciting event of this past month was going to one of my student’s homes for dinner. I have this amazing student who is also my Azeri tutor and she just really has things figured out. So a few weeks ago I learned about this opportunity for youth to be involved in something called the youth fund where they are given the responsibility of distributing grants to different projects youth apply for. To be on this committee would really increase someone’s opportunity to be selected for other programs here to study in other countries. She wasn’t able to attend so I got the video and some applications and told her roommate to let her know I wanted to come over after dinner that sometime that week to tell her about these things. Well, her roommates English isn’t as good as I had thought and she didn’t understand so she told her that I was coming over but didn’t know why but thought I wanted her to cook me dinner. So when I got over there she had this huge meal prepared that she and all her roommates had worked on all day long. When I got there I was able to explain it all and we had a good laugh. After getting the through the language barrier we all had a great time and it was the most fun I’ve had with host country nationals since I’ve been here.
Just in case some of you have forgotten my address, here it is again : -)
Donald Stevens
Məzkəzi Poçt
Tələb Edilənədək
Zaqatala, Azərbaycan
Az 6200 Azerbaijan
note: i just looked at the address and the upsidedown e"s did not appear. anywhere there is a square put an upsidedown e.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
GO DUCKS
Here is a photo of me with the duck stuff my mom sent. She got me duck Crocks, a stuffed duck that quacks, and then a that shirt before i left. i'm wearing this around all day today in my show of support! Read the Civil War post below and then go get changed! GO DUCKS!!
CIVIL WAR
December 1, 2007
When you wake up today it will be the most important day of the year and many of you may not even realize it! Today is the 111th annual Civil War! GO DUCKS!! Even though I am on the other side of the world thanks to many of you and especially my mom I have been able to keep up on the football season this year. Some of you have emailed or called me with eyewitness accounts of the games thank you Sean, Monica, and Dave. Many of you have forwarded me articles, thank you all. And my loving mother has sent me play-by-play text messages in real time, Mom You’re the best! Yes Sunday mornings I wake up in the middle of the night and lay huddled under my sleeping bag anxiously awaiting the messages. Then I forward them to fellow duck fans here that are waiting patiently. I hope you all understand how incredibly awesome each of you are! GO DUCKS!!
As many of you know this season has been great but tragic! We started the season unranked but very quickly moved our way up in the polls and then slowly moved our way into the number two ranking which would have led us into the national championship game. But then, while we were on top of the world the season came to a crashing halt as our Heisman quarterback tore his ACL in the first quarter of our game with lowly Arizona. We went on to lose that game and then the next week our second string quarterback sprained both ankles and then our once mighty, best in the nation (yes I know we were like 4th or 5th but the teams in front of us don’t count because they don’t play the same caliber teams) offence was shut-out by a marginal UCLA. So that brings us to today where the Duck’s will face the beat up Beavers. GO DUCKS!
The Beavers GO DUCKS! are beat up a bit they are on their second string quarterback they are without their top receiver and may be without their starting running back. That sounds bad until you realize the Ducks are without their first and second string quarterbacks, one of the two great running backs the one playing has a serious turf toe problem, many of our defensive backs, and our two best receivers. This game is turning into a JV Football game but there is still state pride behind the game. The state of Oregon is a wonderful state in that a person may not watch football or even care that much about it, but when the Civil War comes around everyone has an allegiance to one team or the other. GO DUCKS!
This game means more than people from outside Oregon can understand. 3-4 hours each year decides who has bragging rights for the rest of the year. No matter the conversation, it could be about a any sport, who has a better academic program, or anything else comparing the two schools, but whoever won the previous years civil war can always come back with “Yeah but we kicked you butts is the civil war last year” and that, is the ultimate trump card. GO DUCKS!
So all you who are Duck Nation get into that closet and get your Lightning Yellow and Thunder Green out. Wear it with pride down to the store and get the something to BBQ get the chips, dip, beer or soda, and take in the pageantry that is… College Football! GO DUCKS!!
When you wake up today it will be the most important day of the year and many of you may not even realize it! Today is the 111th annual Civil War! GO DUCKS!! Even though I am on the other side of the world thanks to many of you and especially my mom I have been able to keep up on the football season this year. Some of you have emailed or called me with eyewitness accounts of the games thank you Sean, Monica, and Dave. Many of you have forwarded me articles, thank you all. And my loving mother has sent me play-by-play text messages in real time, Mom You’re the best! Yes Sunday mornings I wake up in the middle of the night and lay huddled under my sleeping bag anxiously awaiting the messages. Then I forward them to fellow duck fans here that are waiting patiently. I hope you all understand how incredibly awesome each of you are! GO DUCKS!!
As many of you know this season has been great but tragic! We started the season unranked but very quickly moved our way up in the polls and then slowly moved our way into the number two ranking which would have led us into the national championship game. But then, while we were on top of the world the season came to a crashing halt as our Heisman quarterback tore his ACL in the first quarter of our game with lowly Arizona. We went on to lose that game and then the next week our second string quarterback sprained both ankles and then our once mighty, best in the nation (yes I know we were like 4th or 5th but the teams in front of us don’t count because they don’t play the same caliber teams) offence was shut-out by a marginal UCLA. So that brings us to today where the Duck’s will face the beat up Beavers. GO DUCKS!
The Beavers GO DUCKS! are beat up a bit they are on their second string quarterback they are without their top receiver and may be without their starting running back. That sounds bad until you realize the Ducks are without their first and second string quarterbacks, one of the two great running backs the one playing has a serious turf toe problem, many of our defensive backs, and our two best receivers. This game is turning into a JV Football game but there is still state pride behind the game. The state of Oregon is a wonderful state in that a person may not watch football or even care that much about it, but when the Civil War comes around everyone has an allegiance to one team or the other. GO DUCKS!
This game means more than people from outside Oregon can understand. 3-4 hours each year decides who has bragging rights for the rest of the year. No matter the conversation, it could be about a any sport, who has a better academic program, or anything else comparing the two schools, but whoever won the previous years civil war can always come back with “Yeah but we kicked you butts is the civil war last year” and that, is the ultimate trump card. GO DUCKS!
So all you who are Duck Nation get into that closet and get your Lightning Yellow and Thunder Green out. Wear it with pride down to the store and get the something to BBQ get the chips, dip, beer or soda, and take in the pageantry that is… College Football! GO DUCKS!!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Photos
Here are some new pics. the first is of me holding a mirror pond that my wonderful sister sent me!! then the other three are of the pig roast.
Thanksgiving
November 26, 2007
Being away from home always seems to make you appreciate what you are thankful for more than when you’re around everything you’re thankful for. This year on thanksgiving I spent the entire day on a bus going back into Baku. I was asked along with a few other volunteers to go into the PC office for a meeting to help further develop our youth development program. The meeting was on Friday so I had to spend all day Thursday traveling into the capital. When we all did get there we all went out for a meal of nachos, which was amazing but still didn’t compare to a lazy day of watching football, napping, and eating my moms home cooking.
The day after the meeting I headed down to visit a few volunteers in a town called Ali Bayramli who were cooking a small thanksgiving feast complete with a couple of chickens, mashed potatoes, candied carrots, cranberry sauce, gravy, and pumpkin pie! It wasn’t moms and I didn’t get to see all the family but it was very nice to be around others who understood and were in the same situation.
As I was riding the bus into town on thanksgiving I was thinking about what it is that I’m thankful for and realized I’m most thankful for my family, and the things that have happened in my life to allow me to do the things I’ve done and am currently doing. It’s an amazingly humbling experience to live with people who have so much less than we have in the US but are just as happy. It really confirms what I learned on the trail which is all you really need in this life to be happy is one warm meal in your belly a day and a semi dry place to sleep. Everything else just gets in the way. We tend to get lost in the rat race thinking we need to have this and that to be happy but why? Will those things really bring you happiness? I think its just more stuff you’ll need to sell or ask to store in your moms basement to collect dust when you leave on your next life adventure?
I really hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving and that you had an opportunity to share with someone what you are thankful for.
Oh, I almost forgot I have to make a special note that I’m thankful for the best sister in the world. The day before I left to Baku I received a package from my sister with all sorts of goodies and as she knows me best she sent me three bottles of Mirror Pond Pale Ale and a note saying I was thinking you could use this about now! Thank you, thank you, thank you Becky! You so rock. I did the best thing I could and took them to the thanksgiving celebration and shared them with everyone there and they are all so appreciative of the kindness. There was even a fellow Oregonian who could appreciate it not just as great beer but as a little taste of home.
Being away from home always seems to make you appreciate what you are thankful for more than when you’re around everything you’re thankful for. This year on thanksgiving I spent the entire day on a bus going back into Baku. I was asked along with a few other volunteers to go into the PC office for a meeting to help further develop our youth development program. The meeting was on Friday so I had to spend all day Thursday traveling into the capital. When we all did get there we all went out for a meal of nachos, which was amazing but still didn’t compare to a lazy day of watching football, napping, and eating my moms home cooking.
The day after the meeting I headed down to visit a few volunteers in a town called Ali Bayramli who were cooking a small thanksgiving feast complete with a couple of chickens, mashed potatoes, candied carrots, cranberry sauce, gravy, and pumpkin pie! It wasn’t moms and I didn’t get to see all the family but it was very nice to be around others who understood and were in the same situation.
As I was riding the bus into town on thanksgiving I was thinking about what it is that I’m thankful for and realized I’m most thankful for my family, and the things that have happened in my life to allow me to do the things I’ve done and am currently doing. It’s an amazingly humbling experience to live with people who have so much less than we have in the US but are just as happy. It really confirms what I learned on the trail which is all you really need in this life to be happy is one warm meal in your belly a day and a semi dry place to sleep. Everything else just gets in the way. We tend to get lost in the rat race thinking we need to have this and that to be happy but why? Will those things really bring you happiness? I think its just more stuff you’ll need to sell or ask to store in your moms basement to collect dust when you leave on your next life adventure?
I really hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving and that you had an opportunity to share with someone what you are thankful for.
Oh, I almost forgot I have to make a special note that I’m thankful for the best sister in the world. The day before I left to Baku I received a package from my sister with all sorts of goodies and as she knows me best she sent me three bottles of Mirror Pond Pale Ale and a note saying I was thinking you could use this about now! Thank you, thank you, thank you Becky! You so rock. I did the best thing I could and took them to the thanksgiving celebration and shared them with everyone there and they are all so appreciative of the kindness. There was even a fellow Oregonian who could appreciate it not just as great beer but as a little taste of home.
Luau and Thanksgiving
November 20, 2007
So I got an email from my sister with a guilt trip just as bad as the one I sent to all of you when I hadn’t gotten an email in over a week. It made me realize if I want to keep the support coming from your side I better keep up my end of the bargain and keep this thing posted more often! I couldn’t believe it when I looked at it and realized I hadn’t posted an update in 20 days!! I’m deeply sorry and I thank you Becky for keeping me honest!
Well let me try to recap what has been happening the last few weeks. After Halloween my host brother left to go to Baku for training for two months. He is going to be an air traffic controller at the new airport they are building in our town. The significance of this is that he is fluent in English so now a whole new host family dynamic has started. Before he left I’d get frustrated because my parents talked to me through him and when I tried to speak in Azeri they would look at him. I had asked him over and over to try to talk to me only in Azeri and he would, but really fast and if I asked him to slow down he would repeat it in English rather than slower. So now that he’s gone I miss him because he’s a really great guy and I’ve realized how much easier life was with an interpreter.
Now around the house there’s a lot more charades and laughing while shrugging the shoulders as my family and I try to communicate. I’ve learned that instead of getting frustrated when we can’t get a simple point across it’s much better to laugh and give my mom a big bear hug. I think she thinks I’m nuts and I haven’t yet figured out if when she’s laughing, she laughing with me or at me, but there’s rarely a dull moment when we talk.
The weather has gotten substantially colder the last few weeks. It’s not really that much colder than the weather in Oregon the difference is that there just isn’t any insulation. So it just feels much colder. We brought the heater in and set it up a few weeks ago and the room it’s in is really warm, when the gas is on, but when you head into any other room you either hurry to get back or start putting the layers on and jump under the sleeping bag. I’ve actually got two bags. I brought the one I hiked the PCT with and then Peace Corps gives us a massive subzero slumberjack bag that I mostly sleep on as a mattress but on the really cold nights I crawl into it as well.
The room I hold my conversation clubs in is really cold. It’s in a really old building and during the day it is actually colder in the room than it is outside. I’ve tried to talk my students into having class outside but when I mentioned it they looked at me like I just stepped out of a spaceship or something. The Room is actually just what I wanted though. I was talking to another Peace Corps Volunteer the other day and we were discussing how each of our conditions, yet different from each others, were just what we had imagined in our romantic vision of what PC was going to be like here. I have two oil lamps in my classroom that we use for light (we don’t have any electricity in the room) but also to stay warm. They smell really bad because they don’t have oil for the lamps so we use diesel. On the really cold days we all gather really close and act as if the lamps are a campfire.
My weekends have been pretty busy lately. I went to a city called Ganja two weekends ago for another softball tournament and the PCV’s who hosted it put on a pretty good show. After the games we went back to one of the guys houses where they had a luau themed party. The day before they went out and bought a pig then all day while we were playing ball they were roasting it! This was good in so many ways. First anytime you eat an animal you can still see what it is while eating you have that cave man like feel of manliness. Then the fact that this country is Muslim and they don’t eat pork made it to where I really craved some and it was one of the best meals I’ve had! After the meal when the food comma wore off we decided to have a dance party that lasted until the early hours of the morning when it was just a few of us rocking out in the kitchen in nothing but our underwear? Not sure how that happened but it was good fun!
This last weekend we had a thanksgiving party in Baku at the house of the DCM of the Embassy (he’s the guy that is second in command to the ambassador). It was a really nice event, which everyone looks forward to and gets all dressed up for. PC works with the embassy to find us Americans who work at the embassy to host us in there completely western houses. Our host was completely amazing. She gave us the key to her place with a fridge full of beer and let us have it for the weekend. She came in Saturday afternoon to check up on us to see if we needed anything and then left us to just completely relax in a real western home! We even had a few English news channels!
Well this year because of budget issues the dinner was not catered as it had been in the past. Our country director threw in for a few turkeys and everyone signed up to bring something. My site mate and I, probably because we were relaxing so much, waited until the last possible second to get ready and prepare our meal. Well as it turned out we didn’t have the pots we needed to cook the things we had planned so we hit the market to see if there was anything we could substitute. Unfortunately we didn’t find anything and this put us way behind schedule. We decided to go without and be a little late rather than really late.
We got out of the cab and followed where the directions told us to go. As we turned down a shady unlit alleyway we thought we must have turned the wrong way so we asked someone if there was a barber down the street (which the directions said as across the street from the house) and the person said no the barber was out on the main road. (It should be noted that Azeri people are so nice they will still give you directions rather than tell you they don’t know). Well, we were not smart enough to investigate for ourselves and went back out to the main road and walked down every other alleyway. We decided we must be lost and thought we should call someone to find the way because now we were about 40 minutes late. None of the three people we called answered their phones so we thought it must be so formal that everyone has turned their phones off. So we decided rather than show up to a formal party late with no food it would be better to skip the party. As it turns out we just called the wrong three people. The party was tons of fun and it wouldn’t have been a problem if we had shown up. We ended up walking all the way back to where we were staying, which was about a two hour walk and completely missed our thanksgiving feast. We did end up meeting up with everyone after it was over and had a good time but really wished we would have just walked another 100 meters down that alleyway.
So I got an email from my sister with a guilt trip just as bad as the one I sent to all of you when I hadn’t gotten an email in over a week. It made me realize if I want to keep the support coming from your side I better keep up my end of the bargain and keep this thing posted more often! I couldn’t believe it when I looked at it and realized I hadn’t posted an update in 20 days!! I’m deeply sorry and I thank you Becky for keeping me honest!
Well let me try to recap what has been happening the last few weeks. After Halloween my host brother left to go to Baku for training for two months. He is going to be an air traffic controller at the new airport they are building in our town. The significance of this is that he is fluent in English so now a whole new host family dynamic has started. Before he left I’d get frustrated because my parents talked to me through him and when I tried to speak in Azeri they would look at him. I had asked him over and over to try to talk to me only in Azeri and he would, but really fast and if I asked him to slow down he would repeat it in English rather than slower. So now that he’s gone I miss him because he’s a really great guy and I’ve realized how much easier life was with an interpreter.
Now around the house there’s a lot more charades and laughing while shrugging the shoulders as my family and I try to communicate. I’ve learned that instead of getting frustrated when we can’t get a simple point across it’s much better to laugh and give my mom a big bear hug. I think she thinks I’m nuts and I haven’t yet figured out if when she’s laughing, she laughing with me or at me, but there’s rarely a dull moment when we talk.
The weather has gotten substantially colder the last few weeks. It’s not really that much colder than the weather in Oregon the difference is that there just isn’t any insulation. So it just feels much colder. We brought the heater in and set it up a few weeks ago and the room it’s in is really warm, when the gas is on, but when you head into any other room you either hurry to get back or start putting the layers on and jump under the sleeping bag. I’ve actually got two bags. I brought the one I hiked the PCT with and then Peace Corps gives us a massive subzero slumberjack bag that I mostly sleep on as a mattress but on the really cold nights I crawl into it as well.
The room I hold my conversation clubs in is really cold. It’s in a really old building and during the day it is actually colder in the room than it is outside. I’ve tried to talk my students into having class outside but when I mentioned it they looked at me like I just stepped out of a spaceship or something. The Room is actually just what I wanted though. I was talking to another Peace Corps Volunteer the other day and we were discussing how each of our conditions, yet different from each others, were just what we had imagined in our romantic vision of what PC was going to be like here. I have two oil lamps in my classroom that we use for light (we don’t have any electricity in the room) but also to stay warm. They smell really bad because they don’t have oil for the lamps so we use diesel. On the really cold days we all gather really close and act as if the lamps are a campfire.
My weekends have been pretty busy lately. I went to a city called Ganja two weekends ago for another softball tournament and the PCV’s who hosted it put on a pretty good show. After the games we went back to one of the guys houses where they had a luau themed party. The day before they went out and bought a pig then all day while we were playing ball they were roasting it! This was good in so many ways. First anytime you eat an animal you can still see what it is while eating you have that cave man like feel of manliness. Then the fact that this country is Muslim and they don’t eat pork made it to where I really craved some and it was one of the best meals I’ve had! After the meal when the food comma wore off we decided to have a dance party that lasted until the early hours of the morning when it was just a few of us rocking out in the kitchen in nothing but our underwear? Not sure how that happened but it was good fun!
This last weekend we had a thanksgiving party in Baku at the house of the DCM of the Embassy (he’s the guy that is second in command to the ambassador). It was a really nice event, which everyone looks forward to and gets all dressed up for. PC works with the embassy to find us Americans who work at the embassy to host us in there completely western houses. Our host was completely amazing. She gave us the key to her place with a fridge full of beer and let us have it for the weekend. She came in Saturday afternoon to check up on us to see if we needed anything and then left us to just completely relax in a real western home! We even had a few English news channels!
Well this year because of budget issues the dinner was not catered as it had been in the past. Our country director threw in for a few turkeys and everyone signed up to bring something. My site mate and I, probably because we were relaxing so much, waited until the last possible second to get ready and prepare our meal. Well as it turned out we didn’t have the pots we needed to cook the things we had planned so we hit the market to see if there was anything we could substitute. Unfortunately we didn’t find anything and this put us way behind schedule. We decided to go without and be a little late rather than really late.
We got out of the cab and followed where the directions told us to go. As we turned down a shady unlit alleyway we thought we must have turned the wrong way so we asked someone if there was a barber down the street (which the directions said as across the street from the house) and the person said no the barber was out on the main road. (It should be noted that Azeri people are so nice they will still give you directions rather than tell you they don’t know). Well, we were not smart enough to investigate for ourselves and went back out to the main road and walked down every other alleyway. We decided we must be lost and thought we should call someone to find the way because now we were about 40 minutes late. None of the three people we called answered their phones so we thought it must be so formal that everyone has turned their phones off. So we decided rather than show up to a formal party late with no food it would be better to skip the party. As it turns out we just called the wrong three people. The party was tons of fun and it wouldn’t have been a problem if we had shown up. We ended up walking all the way back to where we were staying, which was about a two hour walk and completely missed our thanksgiving feast. We did end up meeting up with everyone after it was over and had a good time but really wished we would have just walked another 100 meters down that alleyway.
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