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.

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.

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.

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!!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!!

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!!

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.

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.

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.

October 31, 2007

This past weekend I went down to the southern region of the country to the city Lankaran for a Halloween party. The country is only the size of Maine but because of the roads it takes 12 hours to get from where I am in the north to the cities in the south. The morning I arrived a group of us went hiking in a village to the east called Lerik.

The drive to Lerik was really beautiful and reminded me of driving in the Oregon coastal range in the fall. When we got to the village we walked around looking for some socks that they make there that are supposed to be really neat and unique to the area, but they said they wont start selling them until it snows. Then we saw some hills above the town we wanted to walk to, to get a great view of the area.

It was pretty comical walking through the town some of the looks we got you would think that we had just stepped off of a UFO. When we got to the top of the hills the clouds had rolled in and we were in an eerie fog that was really neat. The land up there was a rolling pasture land that was all green. We’d wished we’d brought a Frisbee. We wanted to have a competition to roll down the hills but because of all the cow pies we decided just running down yelling would suffice for the childlike urges we were having. We also saw fresh wild saffron growing on the hillsides. I tried to get some close-ups of the flowers with my camera but my photography skills were lacking. The saffron flower is really pretty. It is a purple flower, which has a bright yellowish orange center, which my friends said was what they use as the spice. After playing around up in the hills like kids we decided to head back to get ready for the Halloween party.

The party was pretty surreal. There was probably about 40-50 of the volunteers in country that came. And it ended up being just like any other college party in the states. The next morning when I woke I decided I’d experienced enough and didn’t think my body could handle another night of it so a few friends and I decided we’d head back a day early. When we got into Baku we found that there weren’t any more seats on the night train (and we can’t travel the roads at night for good reason) so we talked to Peace Corps and they allowed us to stay the night in the capital. Lucky for us there was a volunteer who was in town for a dentist appointment so we were able to crash in her room and didn’t have to spend the big bucks for a room.

The greatest thing about being in Baku is the food! Out in the regions there are very few restaurants and when there are they are usually all the same Turkish food, which is good but lacks variety. So that night we first headed to the Thai restaurant where I had one of the best curries I’ve ever eaten. For dessert we went to McDonalds where I had a happy meal with a chocolate milkshake! Oh, was that heaven.

While we were in McDonalds we all got a text telling us they uncovered a terrorist plot to attack on the US Embassy and other western buildings in Baku so as a precaution the office would be closed the next day. It turns out that they got everyone before anything happened which makes me feel safe that the authorities have a pretty good handle on what’s happening but it was a little unsettling realizing those feelings are here. Which when really thinking about it there are those feelings and threats anywhere in the world you travel. But now that I’m back in my city 8 hours from Baku I feel just as safe if not safer than walking down the street in any city in the US. The news covered it pretty well over here and the next day as I was talking to people in town everyone’s reaction was the same telling me how bad those people were and how happy they are that I’m here. So thank you to everyone who saw it on the news and sent me an email. There is no need to worry however as living in this small town way up north is probably much safer than being in most cities in the US.

Here are some pics in Lerik. The first is while driving there. The second is of main street. The Third is of us having fun in the fog. The last is a house that reminded us of Borat.

October 24, 2007

Many of you have asked me in emails to try and describe my normal day. It seems like that would be a pretty easy task but everyday here seems to be a little different from the last. Then, when I try to put it into words it doesn’t really seem like I do that much, yet the simplest things in life take so much more effort and time here. So here it goes this is what my life looks like on this side of the world.

I wake up every morning around 5am to the lovely sounds of the prayer call. My neighbors in the apartment above my room get out of their beds and I listen to them pray. Then I sit there and think about how I should get up and run but so far it’s only been a thought. I usually end up talking myself out of it with the excuse that if I do run I’ll get so skinny that I’ll end up disappearing. Then I roll over and fall back asleep till about 8:30. I get up go into the bathroom to light the water heater. Mine is actually much nicer than others, some people have to build an actual fire ours is gas so the only bad thing is when the gas is off or the fear of the thing blowing up. After the fire is lit I need to wait an hour so I usually eat breakfast while I wait.

My breakfast is usually bread with salty cheese, butter, honey, and sour cream with a cup or two of sweet tea. Sometimes my brother will try to cook me some eggs but he hates them and the way he cooks them I’m not surprised. They have this stuff here called super sun that they call butter (but they also called the grease I spooned out of the beef for tacos butter) and my brother puts about a ¼ cup of the stuff in a pan and then beats two eggs just enough to break the yokes and pours them in. The eggs are so greasy even with hot sauce they are almost inedible and I think I can eat anything with hot sauce.

After breakfast I boil water and wash the dishes. Then go and take a shower under the trickle of water. I have absolutely nothing to complain about because some people only get showers once a week if that in some cases and then sometimes they aren’t showers but bucket bathes. I only want to let you understand the time it takes to wash lathered soap off your body with such a small trickle of water it takes five minutes just to get wet enough for the soap to lather.

After the shower I usually try to study my language for about an hour, but often times get side tracked in some conversation with my brother. Then it changes depending on the day. On Mondays and Wednesdays I go to my tutor for an hour and a half. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I go to my conversation club with my first Teachers University club for an hour and a half. Then I get home at 12:30 and start to make lunch. Lunch is normally bread, grease soup from the night before, fresh chopped tomatoes and cucumber from the garden, and then sometimes fried potatoes. Grease soup is a staple here it is a soup base with varying spices, potatoes, sometimes meat, and enough grease to allow you to hold it over your head upside and shake vigorously when you get it out of the fridge. (This is not an exaggeration we did this one-day and we shook really hard.) After lunch depending on the day I plan my lessons for an hour on Mondays and Wednesdays then go to my conversation club with kids from the college followed by my awesome girls club. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I plan my lessons for a half hour after lunch and then have my second club from the Teachers University followed by a club made up of middle aged teachers which is actually really enjoyable I always try to help them see the crazy things their daughters are wanting to do are just the same as the crazy things they wanted to do that there parents wouldn’t let them do. After this club I hang out for an hour and then I have a club with educated but unemployed guys that are all economic majors. These lessons seem to be lessons of me trying to remember what I learned in micro and macro Economics nine years ago.

So on Mondays and Wednesdays I finish at 6 and usually read or take a nap until dinner. Tuesdays and Thursdays I finish at eight and without fail my Ana is putting dinner on the table as I walk in the door. After dinner is over I usually hang out with the family watching Azeri TV or just drinking tea. Sometimes (and I want to get in the habit of doing this more) I go guesting. Guesting is really just going over to someone’s house to drink their tea, but it is really neat and everyone loves it when I come to their house. I get tons of invites everyday just walking down the street. Then when I get home or get tired of the TV and retire to my room next to the TV room put my headphones on and try to read. My family is usually watching TV till about 12:30 – 1:00 so I’m up until then and as soon as it’s off I go to bed.

Then I have my Fridays where I head to work for about an hour and if anyone shows up I sit and talk to them about anything but work for an hour if not I sit there and wait and then leave after that hour. I’ve left my Fridays open from conversation clubs so that I can actually try to use that time to plan some youth activities. Right now I’m trying to put something together where I will help the youth in my conversation clubs plan and run a weekly Saturday activity where we lead a round robin of games with purpose with an attempt at trying to teach life skills through play.

My Saturdays and Sundays if I’m not traveling for work or play right now I try to get caught up on all the things that get put aside during the week like laundry and cleaning. And I usually use a bit of time to read a bit more. I’m reading more now than I ever have before and I’m really enjoying it. If any of you come across any good books throw them in the next package I can always use something to read, and they say it only get worse as the winter and darkness set in.

I hope this gives you a little bit of an idea what things are like over here. Kristin if you’re still reading or any others that may be coming next year please feel free to email me or anyone else over here directly and we can give you even more details and answer any questions you may have. If your anything like I was you’ll be full of them.

October 17, 2007

For this post I must first profusely thank my Mom, Dad, and sister Becky for being so absolutely gracious for sending me supplies to make these tacos!!

Today I had the best meal of my life! Since I’ve been here I’ve craved nothing more than a taco the way my mom used to make, and today that craving was finally satisfied. (For the next few hours at least.) This conquest began two days ago when I made salsa from the great fresh produce we have here in our bazaar. I let the salsa sit in the fridge for two days to allow the flavors to completely merge. Then last night my brother and I pulled a Kilo of beef out of the freezer, took it outside, and ran it through the hand grinder. This morning I woke up like an excited little boy on Christmas morning. Luckily I had a few errands to run this morning otherwise I would have eaten them for breakfast. When I got back I started the beans and paced the house. When it was finally lunch time I browned the beef, grated the cheese, sliced the lemons and tomatoes, and started to heat the oil for the real CORN TORTILLAS my sister sent from home.

We have something here called lavash that is kind of like a flour tortilla but… different so it was absolutely amazing to finally have the real thing. Ever since I can remember my mom made us tacos this way where she takes a corn tortilla and fries it in corn oil just enough to cook it but keeping it flexible.

Like a symphony all the parts came together perfectly the tortillas were ready just as the meat finished cooking the veggies and cheese were prepared as the meat was started and my brother and I sat down and enjoyed complete ecstasy.

Here are some pictures to show how great tacos in the AZ look!

The first is cooking the tacos on the stove. The second is the spread. The third is of one great taco. Ane the last is some corn chips i made!!

October 15, 2007

This last weekend was great. I got to meet many new people, practice my language a bunch, and eat tons of food. I went down to one of my friend’s villages, which is about 20 min south of my town because they are a bit more religious and his family was having a huge celebration for the end of Ramadan.

Ramadan is the Muslim holy month when they do not eat during daylight hours. As with every aspect of life here I wanted to learn and understand more about the people I’m serving so I asked anyone I could what the significance of Ramadan is and why they fast during this month. What I learned however was not why they fast but just another example of the leftover Soviet mentality. There are many things people do here not because they make sense but because they’ve been told to or learned it that way. Many people here are much different than most people in the US in the sense that they don’t question authority. They just do what they are told and go on about life, and Ramadan seems to be an example of that. Each person I asked why they fast had a different answer and all of them revolved around because it is our custom, or because this is what Muslim people do, nothing about the significance of why the fast happens, when it happens, or for how long. I don’t write this in an attempt disrespect the people here only as an observation of things I’ve seen and experienced.

With the lack of understanding of why the holiday happens aside, we had a wonderful time and got a four-day weekend out of it. I got to my friends house around 12:30 and he had already had lunch 3 times at 3 different houses. My arrival created a reason to have another lunch and that theme carried on for the rest of the day. Throughout the day we went to six different houses and had six meals that were all the same in both content and size. It didn’t matter how many times you said, “no, no I just ate and I cant eat anymore” you were still served massive amounts of food. What else we learned was that if you didn’t serve yourself or you didn’t serve yourself the “proper amount” whoever was sitting next to you would take your plate and fill it with twice as much as anyone else was eating.

All of the meals were the same. We would get to the house go in sit down and have tea with really great sweet cakes, sweet biscuits, or any other type of sweet pastry. Then the meal would follow. This consisted of Plov, which is rice baked with massive amounts of butter then nuts, dried fruit and more butter are poured over it. This is also the national meal of Azerbaijan. Then we had either cabbage or grape leaf dolma. This is one of my favorites. It is a rice and meat mixture that is wrapped and cooked in either grape leaves or cabbage. Then a sour yogurt is poured over the top of it. Then there were the whole chickens or a once whole chickens depending on where in the line of guests you fell. Then there was the lamb stew stuff that was lamb cooked with potatoes and some sauce that I poured over the plov in an attempt to counter the massive amounts of butter. And finally there was the staple Azeri salad of cucumber and tomatoes. That’s literally all the salad is, cut cucumbers and cut tomatoes and it’s at every lunch and dinner here, but they are the best tomatoes I’ve ever eaten since everyone has a kitchen garden here and these are picked ripe off the vine right as the meal begins. After the main meal is over we would sit and eat either bad watermelon, which is now out of season or great pomegranate, which has just come into season. Then the table would be cleared and more tea and sweets would be brought out. After the tea was done we would say our goodbyes, wash, receive our eggs and move to the next house on the list and start the entire thing over again.

As we would walk we would see everyone else from town walking to their next meal and we would play the egg game. The eggs we were given as we left were hardboiled and dyed a tint of red by placing onionskins in the water as they were boiled. As you walked to the next house you would challenge other people for their eggs. One person would hold their egg in their closed hand with one tip facing up while the other person would hit their egg on top of it. The person’s egg that cracked lost and the other person would get their egg. The objective was to get as many eggs as you could. We on the other hand couldn’t understand the need for any more food and didn’t want to walk around with our hands and pockets full of eggs so for some mysterious reason we always hit the egg in a way to make ours break. I think the kids really thought we sucked and sometimes would try to have mercy on us and let us keep our broken egg, but we insisted that they won the egg fair and square and that they needed to take the egg.

I had the opportunity of watching the end Ramadan while I was in Egypt. Five years later I’m in another Muslim country but this time I had a much better experience as I felt that I was able to participate rather than just watch from the outside.

Yeah so i'm still trying to figure out this blog stuff and the pictures on the last post didn't really end up in the text like i wanted. The Pics are of my underware hanging infront of my apartment, a cow in the streets of Sheki, me and my cheese burger, and my buddy katie pitching in our softball game.

October 10, 2007

This week has been really great. On Friday I went down to Barda in the central part of the country for a softball tournament with the Sheki team. There are four regions that have softball teams with Americans and Azeri’s.

Friday night was great fun we went to one volunteer’s house and had a wonderful spaghetti casserole with garlic bread and got to meet up with a bunch of different volunteers. The next morning we woke up and went to a field, that actually had grass, and played a double header. My team lost the first in a total melt down in the 9th inning we were up I think 12 – 3 in the top of the ninth and ended up losing to something like 17 – 15. Then the second game I think we won by 22 – 2. It was so much fun to be out in the sun playing softball. Later that day we all gathered at a different volunteers house where we ate some great lentil stew, mashed potatoes and homemade biscuits!

The next morning we woke up and headed to the field again and played two more games with the Azeri’s. Unfortunately not all the Azeris showed up so we couldn’t do a real tournament. But we divided up who we had and they all had a really good time! There we a few that actually really good. After the game we had to leave right away to catch our marshrutka back to Sheki.

As we were pulling into the Sheki Autovagzal the last marshrutka to Zaqatala was pulling out. So we went up to the 5 star western hotel and ate a real cheeseburger! Then those of us from the north shared the cost of a cab back home. As we were in the cab satisfied from our cheeseburgers and completely exhausted from the weekend we realized how much each of us wanted to get back to our homes. It was nice to have that feeling of this being my home and the desire after being away to want to come back to what I’ve learned is familiar and comfortable.

This weekend I’m heading down to one of the villages to stay with another volunteer and his host family to experience the end of Ramadan. They are a very strict Muslim family and it should be a great cultural experience! Ramadan is the holy month from mid September to mid October where Muslim people fast during the daylight hours. Then at the end they throw a huge weekend long feast! It should be great fun and I look forward to sharing it with you.

October 3, 2007

Today was one of the best days I’ve had here! The last two weeks have been pretty difficult meeting all these new people and trying to explain to them what it is that I’m here to do. It’s actually kind of comical if I take a step back and look at it. I mean even Peace Corps doesn’t know what it is that we (Youth Development) are doing here. We are the first group of youth development (YD) volunteers so we are tasked with the job of figuring out what YD volunteers will do in Azerbaijan. In our training we studied different methods to assess the youth and our communities in an attempt to figure out what it is that the people and youth of Azerbaijan want and need us to do. However these assessments take time and require us to have a relationship with the youth so PC has us teaching English conversation clubs as a way to create these relationships and to give us something to do while we figure this out.

There are a few problems to this. First, it’s never been defined what an English conversation club actually is. Second, every person in Azerbaijan wants to learn English. Where this has created problems for me is that my counterparts at the organization I work didn’t really know what a club was so they promised everyone that I (their American) would teach them English. Well a club isn’t a place to teach people who don’t have a base it’s a place to practice the skills you already have so you can apply the language practically and it works best in a group of about 8 – 10. So long story short my counterparts promised me to all sorts of people and then when I explained what it was that I was doing all sorts of people got mad.

Then the last problem with this is that because PC didn’t know what it was that we will be doing all they told (or all the counterparts had heard) was the we would be doing these clubs so they want to help us fill all our time with these, which will take all our time so that it will be more difficult to create real sustainable youth programs.

Well, so that was why my last two weeks have been difficult. The reason today was so great was that it seems like things are finally starting to iron themselves out and I had two really great club meetings today. One was with a very beginner club that was just down right fun. We played a few games that everyone enjoyed and I just felt good to finally be connecting in some way to the youth here. The second was a club that I will look forward to going to each time. It is what a club is really supposed to be with 9 girls that speak really well but are losing it when they don’t have an opportunity to speak. The reason I’m so excited is that while I’m here I want to focus my work on creating more opportunities for girls and these girls will be perfect to get into their minds to figure out what it is that Azerbaijan girls want.

Then to cap the day off I got a package from my mom with all sorts of fun stuff that just made my day, including a new battery for my computer which makes writing blog entries much easier as the power goes on and off.

If any of you have questions about life over here or ideas of blog entries you would like me to write about please email them to me.

September 11, 2007

Two years from today I will have completed my service here! We had our last training meeting today and we will swear in tomorrow. Right before lunch staff had all of us gather around in a circle to remember what happened on September 11th. We had all of us trainees and many of the staff both Azeri and American. There were about 65 to 70 of us and we were given a chance to talk about what September 11th means to us.

I talked about how those events helped me make the decision to join Peace Corps. After the terrorist attacks most Americans reaction was to fight back harder and stronger to teach “them” (whoever “they” are) a lesson. I had a different reaction. I thought what would make someone hate Americans so much that they would kill that many innocent people. I thought if they only knew me, or all the people in those buildings, there is no way they would hate me that much, and instead of going out and killing more people and making whoever we were killing (and their families and children) innocent or guilty hate us that much more. But instead why don’t we go out into the world and let people get to know what real Americans are like and dispel any thoughts they may have about us from watching TV and reading newspapers. Then, learn from them what things America does either directly or indirectly which makes people hate us and come home and try to change those things.

As I said in my first post Peace Corps has 3 goals and two of them are completely related to this.

The 2nd goal is: To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.

The 3rd goal is: To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans.

I really feel much more patriotic serving here in the Peace Corps than I ever have before. I am proud of my country and appreciate the things we take for granted every day, such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or a free election. Even countries that claim they are free people don’t always have these rights.

These are just a few rambling thoughts I had today on the anniversary of September 11th. You may or may not agree with these thoughts but that’s what I love more than anything the fact that I have the right to express my thoughts. And if you do agree do something about it because you CAN! Go out and protest if you think something is wrong or vote or write a letter to your congressman or senator (tell them you support Peace Corps and what we are trying to do) or join Peace Corps. Whatever you do just don’t sit around and let things happen act like a real American and stand up for what you believe in.

I had a post from sept 11th that didn't load right i will post it next time in. Here are some recent pics.

The first is of my good friend Whitney in front of the Caspian Sea.

The next is of me and my good oregon buddies.

This is me and my cluster mate Jenni

This is me and the coolest Azeri i've met she is my language teacher vafa

The last is of my new room