Since December 28 I have been in Spain. I started in southern Spain, Seville, then Cordoba, then Granada. These are very old cities with old churches, mosques (the Moors lived here for 700 years), small, lovely plazas where even in January people are outside drinking the excellent coffee and exquisite chocolate they are famous for.

I spent my days walking around these cities and seeing buildings such as the Mezquita in Cordoba, a mosque that could hold 20,000 worshippers and the most beautiful building I have ever seen. I also saw the Alhambra in Granada, a lovely 500 year old palace with gardens. After about 10 days in these 3 cities, I came to Barcelona.

This is my new favorite city. It has the 13th century neighborhoods of small winding streets and city walls, (where I am now staying), but also a great modern architectural scene, beautiful plazas everywhere to hang out in, interesting shops and better food that southern Spain. Barcelona hosted the Olympics n 1992 and has fabulous infrastructure, buildings and neighborhoods like I have not see anywhere and is very progressive, still adding subway lines, new parks and maintaining the old things in a lovely condition.

With all the talk of the financial problems in Spain, I thought I would see some evidence of stress. So far nothing. People seem very prosperous, there are 800 Euro baby strollers everywhere, people seem to have lots of time and money to hang around cafes and lots of things to buy. Of course, there is no need for cars in many parts of Spain and people often say they inherited their home, so there is not a lot of basic expenses built in.

I had never heard of Antoni Gaudi, who is an architect who died in 1926. But I love his work and have visited some of his buildings here. There is a cathedral that he designed that has been under construction for over 100 years. It is a people´s cathedral and is being built with contributions. It had a couple of recesses when Fascists destroyed the plans and for other reasons, but it is plugging along.

Tomorrow evening I will take the bus to Madrid. There is a bullet train that takes two hours and a half, but it is expensive. I am taking the 9 hour bus. This will I will not only save the bullet train fare, but I will sleep on the bus and not have to pay for a place to stay!

I flew from Sweden to Malta, which is a tiny country of about 400,000 people south of Sicily. It consists of 3 islands, two of which are inhabited. It was a British colony until 1964, when it became independent and is now part of the European Union.

I flew on Ryanair, which is how I got from Berlin to Stockholm )for only $15!!) Malta is interesting, but not exotic, people speak Maltese, but many know English. Not surprisingly, fish is a big part of the diet. Much of the main island is taken up by villages and farms. The capital is Valletta. I stayed in a small fishing village for four days and near Valletta for two days.

The new thing that I did was to Couchsurf for the last two days that I was there. This is a concept I learned about in Peace Corps. There is a website, couchsufing.com, where you sign up. You list a lot of information about your interests and travel and indicate whether you are willing to host people at your home or if you are traveling and want to find a place to stay. When you stay with someone, it is free. Of course, you don´t choose to host or stay if you are not comfortable. There are reviews and comments for each time you stay with someone. In Azerbaijan, some of the volunteers hosted Couchsurfers and so I met a lot of interesting people who were traveling around the world, I learned a lot from these people.

Before you go somewhere, you look at profiles for the locations you want to stay, contact someone and ask if you can stay with them. I stayed with a young Hungarian couple with a baby. They make a living in Malta by lifecoaching, teaching yoga and dance. They are Bahai and have made friends there with other Bahais. They are a talented couple who have lived in different countries over the past few years. Ireland was nice, but too cold. They wanted to live in an English speaking country that was warm, so they just pulled up stakes and moved to Malta.

But back to Sweden for a minute. While I was there, I took a tour of the Reichstag. This is theSwedish Parliament. Ordinarily, I wouldn´t have been interested, but I was struck by how pleased Swedes seem to be with their government. They commented that they don´t really understand why people in other countries seem to be so angry with each other and their government. Also, I know the Swedes are firm Socialists. I wanted to learn more about their system.

A lot of Swedes commented on how they are firmly in control of what goes in in their government. Of course, there are only 9 million people, but Illinois has about 10 million and there is a lot of unhappiness over the way things are going.

Swedes have one house in their Parliament, having voted in the ´70´s to reduce from two houses. They just eliminated half of their representatives overnight. They said it saved money and they didn´t feel they needed two houses. They also don´t elect their Prime Minister--the speaker suggests someone and the nominee is voted on by the Parliament. About half of the Parliamentarians are women (they shook their heads about how few women are in our Congress) and people become eligible to run at age 18. They have one 18-year-old in their current Parliament.

The Prime Minister can be removed at any time by a vote of no confidence by Parliamentarians. Since there are currently 8 political parties represented, compromise is essential to do anything. Many times instead of voting yes or no, representatives abstain, which is considered fine. An average of 82 percent of the citizens vote. When asked at the tour what are the controversial subjects, the guides initially didn´t come up with anything, but citizens in the audience, after thinking, said that there is some controversy about changing the medical insurance program to include full dental and to have assisted suicide become an option for the terminally ill.

They are very proud of what they call the welfare state. That is a good word in Sweden. Health care is adminsitered locally by private doctors. Normally, there is a nominal copay for going to the doctor, but for the hospital, there is no bill. They are proud of the fact that a medical appointment must be provided for non-emergencies within three days and surgery must be performed within 2 weeks. Sweden spends half of what America spends on health care and cover all their citizens. Swedes are healthier and live longer than Americans.

New parents can stay home and be paid for about 6 months. Employees cannot work more than 40 hours, except for those in Parliament. If a business needs someone for more than 40 hours, they need to hire someone else. I saw this as a problem in Azerbaijan. There was a huge unemployment problem, but it was common for someone to be hired to work 11 hours a day 7 days a week. I don´t know why this was allowed when so many people were out of work. Besides, the person was burned out quickly and usually had to quit. Many Swedes seem to agree that new parents must be supported to have healthy citizens and that people need time off to have a good life. So it is institutionalized.

They were also proud of the fact that they have over 100,000 Iraqi refugees living in Sweden as well as refugees from Somalia. One of them was a barista at my hostel. He hadn´t learned English yet, but appeared to be fluent in Swedish. Swedes told me that they don´t understand why the US doesn´t allow Iraqis who have served as interpreters for our troops and have put their lives at risk to emigrate to our country, the way we helped Vietnamese who helped us in that war.

Many Swedes seem to be happy about being in the EU, although they have kept their currency, the krona. They say being in the EU helps their businesses expand to new markets and they can move to other countries to work and live with no paperwork. It also helps their businesses to hire the best people. They have also seen an increase in tourism and like the fact that they can have more of an impact on international matters.

Now it is New Year´s Eve and I am in Seville, Spain. The flight from Malta was $54 on Ryanair.

I don't like winter and am not a big fan of Christmas. Probably because I spent most of my life in Chicago and it is very cold and unpleasant there in the winter. The wind is like a knife and subzero temperatures can last for a couple of weeks or more. Christmastime is stressful for many, with too much to do and involves buying a lot of stuff.

But I am enjoying this winter time in Stockholm. There are a couple of inches of snow blanketing everything and a very light snow has been falling most of the time for three days. It is very pretty, but not very cold and not windy at all. Very few people are driving anywhere--most are walking or taking public transportation.

Stockholm occupies 14 islands-- a few tiny-- and most are a few square miles. There are attractive bridges connecting them--no interstate highway type bridges--with sidewalks on each side. They have an old city section, with buildings from around the 1600s and a huge park that was the royal hunting grounds. The rest of the city has very tasteful low-rise buildings, no real eyesores except a Ramada and Sheraton Hotel.

I have been walking around the city for six days now. I have looked in the shops because I am enchanted with what I am seeing although I am not a person who ordinarily enjoys shopping. While Swedes are out in the shops, they are carrying very little. Most of the outings seem to be about looking at decorations, meeting in cafes with friends and buying some food or decorations. Kids are being pulled through the center of the city on sleds and dogs are everywhere, mostly wearing little coats. Today I saw a couple with a medium-sized dog approaching an escalator in a department store. At the bottom, the dog paused, the woman scooped him up and dropped him off at the top. They did this two more times before they arrived at the shoe department, where the dog napped under a chair.

Most of the goods in the stores look beautiful and interesting and very artistic. For example, children's toy stores are popular and they are filled with lots of books, puzzles (especially world map puzzles), wooden toys, such as railroads, blocks, dolls, (but no Barbies--these are little girl and boy dolls like Pippi Longstocking), quality action figures of zoo animals, warriors, and doll houses and furniture. Young girls do not dress in sexy clothes and most women wear sport clothes and are slender and athletic-looking.

There are computer and phone stores, of course, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in all the electronic equipment that Americans have. People seem to do a lot of reading--book stores are everywhere-- and almost everyone speaks English, but with a Minnesota accent!

Swedes are known, of course, for their beautiful modern furniture and home designs. Turns out there is a lot more than IkEA, which is a Swedish company. For a country that is smaller in population than Illinois, they have a lot of companies doing business in the international market--a few that most consumers know about are IKEA, Ericsson (cell phones), Brio, H&M, Electrolux and Astra Zeneca (drugs).

Walking around different neighborhoods (the city is only a little over 1 million people), I am really impressed. The quality of life seems good, people look healthy and fit, I don't see any rundown neighborhoods or even cars in bad conditon, most people take public transportation, the buses are new and gleaming and run on natural gas, escalators stop running when no one is on them and start again (slowly) when one steps on them.

I don't see much of what we refer to as "stuff from China". Swedes seem to buy less and of higher quality. I am sure some of the IKEA stuff must be made there, but many of the goods here are made in Scandinavia and Germany.

Tomorrow I leave this beautiful, snowy place and fly to Malta, if the Stockholm airport weather cooperates.

Just like someone serving in the armed forces, when I was in Azerbaijan in the Peace Corps, I lost some of my free speech rights. This is because we are not supposed to get involved in political issues in our country and we are not there to criticize or even praise the government.

So when I spoke about Azerbaijan, I didn't say that a huge and frequently discussed problem for Azerbaijanis is the corruption in the government, the lack of a free press and freedom of assembly. The problem takes a few forms--many students in primary and secondary school as well as in universities are expected to pay or can pay teachers bribes. Some are for nothing in particular, others are for better grades or for not attending school (to work) and be counted anyway.

Others are to get jobs (a teacher is commonly expected to pay up to 5 years salary to get a teaching job), keep jobs, get a drivers license, stop police harassment, get a break from the armed forces, a better assignment or to get out early. Some doctors pay enough bribes that they don't need to really study.

Some people appreciate the convenience that the bribes afford them--are you a university psychology major and not good at statistics? Pay and get a passing grade. Need an A instead of a B? Pay and get it. But others hate it. When I held English conversation groups, the participants chose bribes as their most popular topic of conversation. This situation is a major reason that many Azerbaijanis are highly skeptical of democracy--bribes were reportedly minimal in the days of the Soviet Union.

I never realized how important freedom of the press is in America. Government and business try to get away with a lot of stuff, but in the end they can't, because someone will squeal. In Azerbaijan, the press is tightly controlled. The newspapers and TV report on nothing controversial. Americans and those who can read English or Russian on the internet know that the 12 year old son of the president of Azerbaijan owns over $40 million of real estate in Dubai, but regular Azerbaijanis have no idea. Conservative Muslims find their mosques shut down and themselves in jail. Those who try to have community meetings without the approval of the local government find their meetings broken up.

Azerbaijanis are not upset enough about these problems to do much about them. They even approved a constitutional amendment to let their president stay in office indefinitely. Part of it, I am convinced, is that even a bad situation like this could be a lot worse. When the Soviet Union fell, the country completely fell apart. No electricity, gas, everyone out of a job, no currency, no government. The first two presidents couldn't provide much of anything and when a former Soviet official who was the former head of the KGB appeared on the scene, they threw over their president and accepted him.

After his death, his son became president. Azerbaijanis have most of the basics and don't want to go backward. We volunteers felt smug about this difference between Azerbaijan and America at first, but then we realized that we have corruption too, some in the same form and some different. People in Chicago know that both Mayor Daleys had corrupt administrations, but they keep electing them. New York had a law that the mayor could only have 2 terms, but Michael Bloomberg ran again and won.

We gain advantage for our own children in schools, not by bribes, but by excluding the poor from our neighborhoods through zoning and economic segregation so we don't have to compete with them. We don't want to watch news or read articles that conflict with our opinions. We say we don't like the moral values of different groups of people, but we don't really know any of them.

So while I was bursting with the news early on, now it seems like a weak postscript to my Azerbaijan experience.

I am in Sweden now and am staying in a hostel, like I did in Berlin. I had never stayed in a hostel before and didn't know what to expect. But since I will be traveling for almost 6 weeks, I didn't want to spend money on hotels.

Actually, it's fine. I researched a hostel for Berlin before I left Azerbaijan. The one I chose had a location better than most hotels, I could walk most places, it offered free walking tours, a wealth of resources, like computers with internet, a library of travel books, knowledgeable employees and guests with advice about what to see and do, and an opportunity to meet other people. They pointed me to a laundromat a couple of doors down and gave me advice on how to get back and forth to the airport and to navigate the transportation system, all advice having a basis in cheapness.

With that experience under my belt, I researched another hostel for Stockholm. This one is different because Stockholm is different. Because it is a smaller city with a more conservative outlook and in a colder and much more expensive place, the common areas of the hostel are different--and much bigger. People don't eat out as much, so they have a big industrial kitchen and communal eating area. There a living rooms on each floor with books and wifi and movies every night. In Berlin I was out getting half-price California rolls or pho; here I had a sandwich.

I flew from Berlin to Stockholm for $15 on Ryanair. They have a lot of add ons, like preferred seating, checking a bag, buying a soda or sandwich, but I didn't pay for any of that. I even had to stuff my purse in my bag, since the rule says only one piece of carryon is allowed; otherwise the charge is 35 Euro.

We arrived in Stockholm at an airport that is far from the city. On the bus ride in to the city, the countryside was flat and snowy--it reminded me of the opening scenes of the movie Fargo. The sun set about 3:30 p.m., but the city is lit up and looks pretty and Christmassy. Stockholm is made up of 14 islands, the oldest of which I will look at tomorrow. There is an old city, a palace and the park is made up of the former royal hunting grounds.

The first time I saw women in Berlin wearing knitted wool helmets with earflap and braids hanging down, I thought it looked pretty crazy, but now I am used to it and may look for one for myself tomorrow. The navy watch cap is getting some strange looks. The Swedes like the knitted helmets too.

I didn't know what to expect from Berlin. I really like it. Because it is the capital of Berlin with over 4 million people, I expected highrises and a corporate look. That's not it at all. It is a low rise city due to a spongy soil, so 4 or 5 stories is tops. This makes the city quite pedestrian friendly.

Everything looks very clean and well maintained, but the best thing is the public transportation. There is little auto traffic here because of the excellent tram, huge and extensive metro system and buses, some double decker. Most of the time, however, I walk.

Berliners call themselves 'poor, but sexy'. Because most corporate work is in other German cities and expats apparently keep a low profile, Berlin is cheap, cheap, cheap to travel and live in. Music, art and tourism keep people busy. There are over 175 museums. It is full of young people who are artists, musicians, free spirits or just people who like a balanced life.

Consumerism is at a minimum, with luxury brands looked down on by many as mindless and conformist. One of the first things I noticed is that I have truly not seen an obese person in Berlin. I was surprised, because drinking is popular and on the 'obese country list', Germany is near the top. Maybe because of all the walking, but even middle aged and older Berlin women look like they can crack walnuts with their thighs.

Berliners seem proud of the fact that anything seems to go here, such as nude or alcohol free nights at clubs, dogs in shops and restaurants, and apparently universal acceptance of gays. People appear to be friendly. In Azerbaijan, every day I met people who thought I was Russian and spoke Russian to me. Here everyone thinks I am German and tries to start up conversations.

I started my trip with a walking tour of about 7 hours, which was free, tips accepted. It gave me a lot of ideas for what to do on subsequent days. The tour was totally in English and I was with a few Americans, but mostly Brits and Australians. We came across an anti American protest about the death penalty and in particular one American citizen on death row. The international community apparently thinks this guy's trial was unfair and biased. They also point out that countries that still have the death penalty have major human rights issues. Besides America, countries executing the most people are China, Saudia Arabia, Iran and Pakistan.

Since the walking tour, I have visited the German Democratic Republic (Communist) Museum, which was really interesting and hands on. It showed homes, cars, consumer goods, clothing and other everyday objects from East Berlin. I also visited the Sunday flea markets, the Christmas markets (basically a big carnival with food, hand made goods, alcohol, ice skating and rides), Hitler's former bunker (a paved over apartment parking lot) and a fabulous bookstore full of English books (haven't seen such a place in 28 months).

Before I go I want to see the Brandenburg Gate again, some of the art museums and the Reichstag, the Parliament building.

I'm leaving my town in a few days. This week I have been visiting a lot of people to say goodbye. It is difficult. I know a few of my friendships can continue and a few people will even come to America. But for most people I know, I probably won't see them again.

Recently, visas to Azerbaijan for most foreign travelers are limited to 7 days instead of the former 30 days. This has really taken away the incentive for family and friends of volunteers to come to Azerbaijan.

I have published 77 posts to this blog and plan to continue for a little while so that I can cover my readjustment to America. But before I go back, I will visit Berlin, Stockholm and Malta for 6 days each, then go to southern Spain and maybe Morocco for 16 days.

My daughter, Kelly, came to Azerbaijan for three weeks in September 2009. While we were traveling in Georgia, she wrote this in her Facebook blog:

I met a Hungarian traveler today who's taking 6 years of vacation (wish I could do that...) and travelling the world through Couchsurfing. He's been on every continent except Antarctica (which he is planning to get to) and has only about 60 more countries to visit until he has been to every country in the world. We met again later in the day while I was eating dinner outside so I invited him to sit down with me. He had so many stories about the different places he had been.

He told me a story someone had told him:

"A young man cared very much about the world, so he decided one day that he was going to change it. The young man worked very hard for 10 years, and eventually he realized that he could not change the entire world. So then he decided that if he could not change the world, he could change his country. For the next 10 years, he worked for his country before realizing that he could never fully change his country.

So he decided to work for his city, and worked for 10 years for his city, but it did not change much. Then, the man decided to change his family. By this time he was 70 years old and did not have the means or the energy to change anything else. In his old age the man realized that when he was young, he should have started by changing himself. By changing himself into what he wanted to be, he could change his family, and his family could change the community, and then the city, and then the country, and then the world."

This story encouraged me to keep being who I am. As Ghandi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." I may not be able to change the world in my lifetime, and I'm not out to. Not everyone understands words and listens to speeches. But they can feel your actions.

I wrote two posts—the first about two years ago and last year about my experiences in trying to learn the Azerbaijani language. Since I have been at this for 27 months now, I am confident in saying that learning this language is the hardest thing I have ever done. I believe it was harder for me than it was to raise my children.

When new volunteers come to Azerbaijan, we spend about 4 hours a day for 3 months in language lessons. We live with a host family who usually knows no English and when we are done with our training, we continue our language studies while living with a new host family in our assigned region and working with people who may have little or no English. We are surrounded by Azerbaijani language all day.

This language is not quite as easy for Americans to learn as a language like Spanish or French. One reason is because sentences in those languages are said and translated in a similar order as English. For example, “She wants to buy a red shirt” in Spanish would be constructed “She wants to buy a shirt red”. In Azerbaijani it is constructed “Red shirt to buy wants she.” Making sense of a longer written sentence is difficult, because it is as if all the words for a sentence are put in a box and juggled. When you hear several sentences in a row, it is very difficult to put the words in the proper order to tranlate them in your head to English. It is also difficult to put the words in the right order when you speak.

The other difference is that words often have endings on them, for conjugation or adjectives. For example “it” is dog, “itlər” is dogs, “itlərimiz” is our dogs. But if “our dogs” is a direct object in the sentence, an extra “i” is added at the end, making it itlərimizi”.

There are some things that are easier in Azerbaijani than in Spanish. Nouns do not have a gender. Actually, even pronouns like “he”, “she” and “it” have no gender—they are the same word, “o”. So “O gedir” means “He/she/it is going.”

Anyway, at the end of my 3 months of training, I scored “intermediate low” and was supposed to be at “intermediate mid”. Most of what any Azerbaijani said to me was unintelligible, as was the TV and most signs.

In addition to doing my regular Peace Corps work, I spent the next 6 months in intensive study with a teacher and homework. I lived with a host family and my co-workers spoke little or no English. I met a lot of Azerbaijanis and spoke with them in my limited Azerbaijani. I passed the test and continued to study, last February reaching “advanced low”, where I remain.

I have felt quite confident for over a year going anywhere in Azerbaijan and feeling like I can get what I need. I can have a polite conversation using bad grammar with anyone about limited topics. A more in-depth conversation involves more effort and some misunderstandings, since my vocabulary is not large and I mangle sentences. But TV is still unintelligible as is much of conversation between Azerbaijanis. People tend to speak with me slowly using easy words like they are talking to a toddler.

A highlight, though, is that Azerbaijani is similar to Turkish and when I was in Turkey this summer, I was able to communicate with Turks. I plan to study Turkish language when I return to America.

One of the frustrating things is that in Spanish, for example, if you translate unknown words in a sentence, you can get the meaning of the sentence. When I see a sentence I don’t understand in Azerbaijani, many times I will look up each word, but I still don’t get the meaning of a sentence, since the words are “out of order” in English and the endings all have to be translated too.

Meanwhile, my fellow volunteers were going in several different directions in their language learning. A few were language stars, picking the language up easily and not needing to study—just being exposed to Azerbaijanis was enough for them to progress quickly. These few still say that they are not able to read a newspaper, for example, and TV is not easy for them to understand, but Azerbaijanis recognize their skill are quick to compliment them on their achievement.

Most volunteers did okay and progressed after training, learning new words connected to their work and lives in their new town. They studied off and on, but plateaued early and do what they can with the fairly limited language they have.

And another group, mostly composed of the older volunteers, didn’t learn much in training and gave up soon after they got to their worksites. Some are only able to say greetings, a few nouns for things they need to buy, and a few commands. This limits what they can do and experience in the country, but while they won’t continue to try to learn the language, they try hard to find meaningful work with the limited language skills they have. If they are English teachers, it is okay on the job, but no so good after school in interacting with Azerbaijanis. It also limits where they can go in the country and most of us like to travel. It is common for these volunteers to need another volunteer or Azerbaijani English speaker as a “handler” for certain tasks, such as paying a bill or solving a problem, since they can’t manage a conversation themselves.

Azerbaijanis usually know at least one other language and understand Turkish from watching Turkish TV. They are usually reluctant to speak a language unless their grammar is good and much emphasis is placed on being able to speak a second or third language well. I have found that many Azerbaijanis are puzzled about why most native-born Americans don’t have a second language that we speak fluently.

I explain how large our country is and how I could drive from my home for many hours in every direction and not encounter anyone unable to speak English. Also that if we are studying something, we want to use it; another language is something we may never use. I tell them that I spent about 5,000 hours in high school and college studying Spanish, but was not motivated because I felt I would never use it. If I had spent that time learning something else, it may have enriched my life.

Because of this emphasis on language competence, when volunteers speak limited and grammatically incorrect Azerbaijani, it can affect the way we are perceived here. I sense that some Azerbaijanis think I am not intelligent. And I have seen that for those volunteers who can’t say much at all, Azerbaijanis are mystified and sometimes insulted that the volunteers came here and choose not to study and learn the language.

Unexpectedly, though, a insight came to me from this language learning experience that has nothing to do with Azerbaijan or Azerbaijani language.

We all know Americans who are angry because immigrants, especially Mexican immigrants, usually don’t learn English. Of course, this phenomenon is nothing new--my relatives who immigrated to America as adults many years ago, reportedly never learned English. Typical of most immigrants, they settled in a community made up of people from their country, where the children learned English and the parents mostly didn’t.

For those who want the first generation to learn, I have to say this:

When already well-educated Peace Corps volunteers come to Azerbaijan, they are provided with native-speaking teachers, good materials, plenty of time to study and are surrounded by the language wherever they look. Yet after two years, some can’t say much of anything and most are not fluent.

Mexican immigrants come to America because some Americans are very anxious to hire them—otherwise they would not come. They usually work long hours for little pay. They tend to live in places that English speakers don’t and most have family responsibilities.

If most Peace Corps Volunteers under very supportive circumstances aren’t able to become fluent and many aren’t able to say much at all, why do we expect that Mexican immigrants should become bilingual?

The surprise for me in this case is that Mexican immigrants have nothing to do with my work here. But I am changing my thinking about them because of what I am experiencing in Azerbaijan.

I didn’t expect that my opinions about countries and cultures other than Azerbaijan’s would change. The only way I can figure out how much I have changed is to go back to America, to my friends and family, watch their faces and listen to what they say as we interact.

I was going to write something about the topic of “was the Peace Corps what you expected and do you think you have had an impact?” Then “Seva” called me today and we met. The experience of spending time with her today wrote this post for me:

Seva is 18 and attends her second year at a prestigious public university in the capital city of Baku. She grew up in my town and I lived with her family for about 6 months. Her mother wanted me to live there while Seva was in the second half of her last year in school so that her English would improve and she would do well on the entrance exam. As in many countries, university tuition is free for those scoring well on the exam. Those who score very high qualify for more prestigious universities—those who don’t do well normally don’t attend university.

We spoke English for about 30 minutes each day, and usually spent the time talking about her future, her interests and current events. The family was nice and I spent a lot of time talking with her mother about family, traditions and her daily life in Azerbaijani. Seva rarely left the house other than to go to lessons and had no friends. She studied many hours each day for the entrance exam. Her mother wanted her to be engaged soon and married while she was still in university.

Seva wanted to go to Baku to study if she qualified and eventually spend a year studying abroad, but her family is conservative and she was not able to express her desires confidently. We worked on that and talked about what some of her options would be if she were able to go to Baku to study. Meanwhile, I could see that her English was progressing rapidly.

She did well on the English portion of her exam and on the overall exam and decided to major in English. When she was accepted into the university, her parents were very proud and supportive, even allowing her to live with roommates in Baku. When I have gone to Baku, we have gone to a restaurant where a lot of English speakers go and we had American food. She loved the place and was amazed to see it.

Now she is a very confident girl, who is active in various English-related organizations in Baku, excited about life, reads books for fun, has made new friends and has told her mother that none of the girls in the second course (our sophomore year) in Baku are engaged or married and she wants to wait too. She feels that she is getting a good education and that she has a bright future. She is now looking into study abroad programs.

We met today in my town and we promised to see each other in Baku before I leave. She told me that I was her first American friend and once she knew me, the doors opened for her to a new world.

This post is sort of like a dinner made of leftovers. As I get ready to leave Azerbaijan next month, my mind is filled with a jumble of things I want to do or complete here. I dropped a few of my thoughts in the blog.

When I came here, I wondered if 27 months would seem too long or not long enough. Some of the volunteeers I started with left early for different reasons—mostly medical. A few are staying a few months to a year longer.

For me, 27 months seems perfect--three months of training and two years doing my work. I feel so much more competent than I did when I started and feel compassion for the volunteers who will be starting their new lives as I leave. We try to share our knowledge as much as we can, but there are rough spots and adjustments for everyone that can’t be smoothed over, they just have to be experienced.

One of the things I have tried to do in this blog is to help people to understand what it is like to live here. I am not the caliber of writer to convey what it is really like, especially what it is like to live in a Muslim country. However, I recently read a book that seemed really authentic to me in its description of the contrast between America and a totally different country. I felt like I was there. That book is Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.

Greg is the guy who has been building schools for young children in Pakistan and Afghanistan for over 20 years. Most schools built by well-meaning foreigners there have been burned down or otherwise destroyed, but most of Greg’s schools have not. He operates in a way that is similar to what the Peace Corps does.

He doesn’t do things for people—he helps them do things they want to do. The community must demonstrate their strong desire for a school, they have to have strongly committed village partners to keep the school running, and be able to supply all the labor and source materials to build and maintain it. Greg doesn’t do anything before he gets to know the people of the community and is trusted before he begins working with them.

In the book, he describes his relationship with warlords, Taliban and mullahs—and why all of these people are not automatically bad guys like we read about in the press. He could not have done his work without having productive relationships with these people. He conveys the frustration, the learning curve, the relationship building and the excitement of a finished product very effectively.

After finishing this book one morning before breakfast, I had a chance to have a lengthy chat with one of the women in my host family. She just turned 69 years old and has been a teacher all her life. I respect her intelligence and insights. I was curious about something and know her well enough to ask a lot of questions that might be annoying.

I have written before about how volunteers constantly hear from 40-plus year old Azerbaijanis how much they miss the Soviet Union. They miss full employment, being part of an important world power, producing food and other goods for the other 14 countries and financial security.

When I lived in America, I had never heard any of this. It is an article of faith in America that Mikhail Gorbachev is a respected figure and Ronald Reagan is often credited with assisting with the fall of the Soviet Union. However, most Azerbaijanis despise Gorbachev for being an agent of the collapse. They are incredulous and angry when they hear that Ronald Reagan is given credit for assisting because they don’t feel the US had anything to do with it. They feel the collapse was due to oil prices and other mismanagement by Gorbachev. Also, they are incensed with the idea that Americans would think they had the right to try to change the government of another country.

The one thing that I never hear is anything bad about the former Soviet Union. So I asked my family member to tell me about some things that are better now or that she did not like about living in the USSR. She thought for awhile and said she couldn’t think of anything. I prompted her by saying that I had heard that people could not ordinarily leave the USSR, that they did not have quality consumer goods and had food shortages.

She said that it was great to be able to travel to the other 14 countries in the Soviet Union and that now most people are too poor to leave their city, let alone travel outside the country. She said they don’t have quality consumer goods now and that they never had food shortages.

After more prompting and more thought about any criticism of the Soviet Union, she said that in Soviet days some of the best fruit and vegetables from Azerbaijan were sent to Moscow. She also said that she thinks men are not as rude to women as they used to be. (The country has become more socially conservative since the Soviet days.) That is all she could say and that is typical. I don’t know what to make of this except that I have heard political observers in America say that Americans vote using their wallets and their sense of security as a guideline. They don’t mind giving up some of their rights or those of others if it will make them feel more secure or prosperous. So maybe this is all just human nature.

I have spent a lot of time in my blog talking about the things I like about this country. People have asked me what criticisms I have of Azerbaijan. After two years, I find I don’t really have any—and that is not because I couldn’t find any if I looked. It is because this is not my country. As a non-citizen, I am not invested in it and feel my opinion shouldn’t count. I am a guest here and am not here to change the country. Do Americans like it when Europeans tell us how we should be more like them? Remember Freedom Fries?

I am here to help Azerbaijanis make the changes they want in their personal or professional lives, to tell Americans about Azerbaijanis and to tell Azerbaijanis about Americans. That is it.

I am leaving Azerbaijan December 9 because my 27 months will be over. I will miss my new friends here very much, but am glad to be going home. I miss my friends and family. But Iwon’t exactly being going home, since I don’t have one in America. And never having been to Europe, I don’t want to fly over it on the way home without stopping, so I will visit Europe for 5 or 6 weeks first, then head to America.

When I get back to America, I plan to visit my family and friends first, then find a place to live, probably in Washington, D.C. I will have a guestroom and hope my Azerbaijani and American friends will visit me there.

In the meantime, I am wrapping up my work and visiting places I haven’t seen yet. Peace Corps had a wrap-up conference for us and one of the things they talked to us about is “reverse culture shock” and the issues of re-entry to America. I am glad they did, because I have felt for some time that my friends and family will notice that I have changed. Although they have always thought I was not exactly mainstream.

According to the material they gave me, some of the shock is related to the role we play here. We are treated as special people and we look different than others. We are viewed as experts and many people want to entertain us and get to know us. We have a support network of other volunteers who understand us and also a great administrative staff support network at the Peace Corps office in Baku.

A lot of volunteers go from this situation to unemployment and no home waiting for them in America. We cannot claim unemployment benefits, but are given about $7,000 as a readjustment allowance, plus a ticket home or the equivalent in cash.

Since we have not seen most of our family and friends in 27 months, they will, of course, have changed and moved on with their lives. Returned volunteers routinely say that their families and friends are not very interested to hear what they have been doing for 27 months. I don’t want to bore people and hope I won’t. But, the Peace Corps warns that it is our changes in values that are the biggest issue.

Our handbook says “Many return to the United States determined not to lose values learned and practiced during their Peace Corps service. For example, back home, returned volunteers often become more sensitive to the lack of respect some show toward the values of other nations and may strive for a simpler life-style.”

Some of the statements in the handbook are pretty serious. Like ”Do not judge your country and your compatriots too soon or too harshly in the beginning. You used to like this place and these people; you can probably (!) learn to do so again, if you are patient.”

And “Try to avoid the temptation to publicly compare the States unfavorably with the country you served in, for example. This practice may rub people the wrong way. They may ask you, ‘If it’s so bad here, why did you come back?’ Talking to other returned volunteers enables you to vent your frustrations and reassures you that you are not losing your mind.” As far as losing our mind goes, we are offered 3 free counseling sessions in the US as part of our close-of-service package.

Comparing the US unfavorably with Azerbaijan is not something volunteers here do all the time. In fact, much of the time, we wish things here were different and more like the US. But unfavorable comparisons do get woven into our conversations. And we don’t just compare the US with Azerbaijan, but with other countries too. This is because most of us travel to other countries while here, many have lived in other countries before and we meet other foreigners, diplomats and businesspeople here. They compare their countries and culture with ours, Azerbaijan’s and other countries they have visited.

I am confident, though, that some of the things volunteers talk about among ourselves would sound strange to a non-Peace Corps American. Such as how much we will miss eggs laid by chickens we know, how great it is to hang our laundry outside on a nice, sunny day without worrying about what neighbors will think, how we don’t miss driving and love all the public transportation available. Some topics that we discuss Americans would understand, like how much we love buying fresh, locally grown, organic food without packaging, how great it feels to be in a country with a low incidence of violent crime and how much more hospitable than most Americans Azerbaijanis are to guests.

One of the ways I am aware that I have changed is that I don’t drink or eat fish anymore. I was a fish-eating “vegetarian” when I left. I never enjoyed drinking and had a glass of wine or a beer now and then socially. But since I don’t enjoy it, I am not going to do it anymore just to fit in. Worldwide, the fishing industry is a mess, with overfishing a big problem. (Remember all the cheap orange roughy in the 80’s? They were pretty much fished to extinction.) I don’t like the idea of eating farmed fish. So I’m not eating fish anymore.

I never much cared about buying or owning expensive things and this feeling has intensified here. No one in America was impressed with the old Corolla I had before I came here. But now I am going to try to live in a place in which I won’t need a car at all. I realize now that I don’t need a lot of clothes in my closet. Five or six pairs of pants, a few sweaters and shirts, a dress and a couple of skirts and blouses sounds perfect. (KG in STL, are you freaking out yet?) Any more would be too confusing. However, hand-made carpets now interest me a lot and I have bought several. I never had the slightest interest in hand-made carpets before.

Another way I have changed is something that America and Americans can do nothing about. Most of the people we meet in this part of the world are from countries that are much smaller in area than ours and of course, much smaller in population. This type of country is attractive to me, since one can easily become familiar with each region of the country and cultures are more similar, which can lead to fewer divisions and other problems. Everything just seems more manageable in a smaller country. When friends and family are all within 200 or 300 miles, life is easier and families can remain closer. In America, family and friends can all be American, but be separated by thousands of miles. It’s difficult to stay close.

Being such a big country, too, America spends a lot of its money on wars and other defense issues. Many smaller countries have high-speed rail, better roads, great metros and public transportation, free wifi everywhere in cities and free university for smart kids. People live longer, healthier lives because the countries are able to spend tax money on things that improve the lives of their citizens rather than be locked into defense spending.

Another area that stands out is that most countries don’t have our Electoral College system—they have popular voting systems in which everyone’s vote is counted. Since 1948, Massachusetts Republicans have voted in vain in presidential elections. Every year since then, all electoral votes have gone to the Democratic candidate. If I were a Republican in Massachusetts, I would wonder why I should trudge over and vote if I knew in advance my vote would not count.

Most of us try to keep up on what is going on in the news in America. But we experience things without actually having been there—so we experience America like a foreigner. For example, I read about a Delaware Senate election debate in which the separation of church and state was mentioned. During the debate, Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell said “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?”

Her opponent replied that it was in the First Amendment. “Let me clarify,” O’Donnell continued. “You’re telling me that separation of church and state is in the 1st Amendment?” Her opponent replied “Government shall make no establishment of religion.” “That’s in the 1st Amendment?” she asked.

Almost 40 percent of voters know this, but support her anyway. This makes me feel shocked and confused.

And then there are movements like the Tea Party that we didn’t have in 2008 when we left. As a former banker, I am always interested in the money part. This is what I don’t understand about them:

When proponents say they want to cut government spending by billions of dollars but won’t identify the specific defense programs, Social Security, Medicare or other services they want to cut — or the amounts, how can Americans take them seriously? They also don’t explain how this will make us more competitive and grow the economy instead of leading to a death spiral like it did when Hoover tried to end the Great Depression by cutting spending.

Aren’t these Tea Party people the ones who sat silent or cheered when we launched two wars and a new entitlement, Medicare prescription drugs — while cutting taxes — but now, suddenly seem to be angry about the deficit?

And then I don’t understand those who blame unemployed people for needing unemployment payment extensions when statistics show that in St. Louis, for instance, there are 11 unemployed people for every job opening. How is laying off more people or cutting off any sort of payment to them going to help or save us money?

So for my friends and family—at least for a few months, expect me to try to locate live laying chickens, hang my laundry outside, spurn that tuna sandwich and have a mostly empty closet. But I will enthusiastically accept washing my clothes in a machine, buying peanut butter and having a great-tasting cup of coffee whenever I want.

This weekend I was lucky enough to go to the airport and meet the 8th group of future Peace Corps volunteers coming to Azerbaijan. All 63 of them arrived on a flight from New York. Last year I met 59 volunteers and the year before that, my group of 60 arrived.

This year’s group, like the ones before, was about 2/3 women, with about 8 older volunteers and about 35 who are between the ages of 22 and 24. Four or five are racial minorities and a few joined with their spouse.

The trainees got off the long flight after brief greetings, piled on three buses with their luggage and took off for three days of orientation before being delivered to their training site host families in local communities for their 11 weeks of training. Most will make it and become volunteers in December and disperse to new locations all over the country.

So who are these volunteers and why do they join?

Volunteers seem like a typical cross-section of well-educated Americans. They come from most areas of the country and different religious backgrounds. The great majority have college degrees, and most are white and come from middle-class backgrounds. The only other things I can think of that most have in common is that the great majority love to read, are very down-to-earth (no princesses) and are politically liberal.

Just like in any organization in the US, people join for different reasons. Many have traveled extensively and are adventure-seekers. They love having unique experiences.

Others have been teachers or worked in the helping professions. They join for altruistic reasons. A few people join to add experience to their resume and do something interesting and rewarding.

Some haven’t been able to find a professional job in America and are waiting out America’s economic problems. Some older volunteers are at the end of their careers and do it as an enhancement to their retirement, while others would like to retire, but can’t afford to. Peace Corps service means they don’t have to support themselves for two years and have an opportunity to buy health insurance when their service is over.

Some people aren’t ready to make the decision to either join the world of work or get their masters degrees. Peace Corps volunteers seem to be much more interested than typical college graduates in getting their masters degrees. Most volunteers either have a masters’ degrees or want to get them. Relatively few have work experience after their masters’ degree.

A few people in the group that left last year went back to their previous profession or re-retired. Some joined masters programs. Some found professional jobs and a few went on to different adventure opportunities. But many seem to be unemployed, working part-time or underemployed.

We are supposed to serve for two years after our training, but some people choose to leave or have to leave. Reasons for leaving are medical issues, family problems, violating rules or in some cases, volunteers just don’t like it here.

The job is a hard one. Problems that most volunteers notice in some other volunteers are depression, alcoholism, excessive partying, worrying about family members and situations back home, failure to integrate into the community, homesickness and negative attitudes toward Azerbaijan.

On the other hand, most volunteers don’t have significant problems; in fact some volunteers love it here so much that they apply to stay longer, up to a year longer.

One of the benefits of coming here that I didn’t realize beforehand, is that I learn a lot about other areas of America from talking to volunteers. Now I feel that I have friends all over America as well as all over Azerbaijan.

Although we come from different states, professions and fields, I am proud of most of the volunteers that I work with. They are hard workers, use their talents, develop new ones and grow in the process.

I thought that since Azerbaijanis watch American movies on DVD (but they aren’t on TV much here), study about America in school and see news about America on TV, they would know more about America—we wouldn’t have to explain the basics to them.

Some things we expect to explain—like the fact that in America we usually don’t have individual water tanks in our home in which water is placed by the local utility several times a week. We don’t ever run out. It just comes. From where, many of us are not sure. And that we rarely have gas or electric power failures, schools have heat in the winter, that most stuff in America works most of the time and that many Americans like to buy Japanese and German cars because they are concerned with quality over patriotism.

Also, we expect to explain that our public transportation system is lousy and expensive, comedians make fun of our president and other national leaders every day and people love it (this is illegal in Azerbaijan), we eat a lot of processed food, we don’t have two kinds of cheese—we have hundreds of kinds, we have a lot of restaurants, many of which serve foreign food (restaurant food in Azerbaijan is monotonous) and that people often eat out, that women who drink and smoke are not necessarily slutty.

But I didn’t think I would have to explain that we are not all rich, many Americans don’t have homes, the government doesn’t give us homes, renting is not anything to be ashamed of, some people (including children) are homeless, the quality of the food here is much better than American food, why most Americans are overweight, poor people are usually forced by economics and zoning to live in neighborhoods by themselves with few resources, most of us don’t find spouses for our children and most of us don’t get nervous if our daughters are not married by age 22—in fact we are often nervous if they are.

The list goes on: Clothing is cheap in America and quality is good, as in most countries in this part of the world, men are not required to join the armed services, in America about 1% choose to join and get a good salary and training, 20 percent of children in America live in poverty, most poor children receive a poor education, most poor girls have unplanned pregnancies in their teens, most American baby boys are circumcised (Azerbaijanis think it is only a Muslim tradition), Americans are mostly too busy or are not qualified to take care of elderly, ill parents in their homes, and many Americans have lots of books in their homes and read for fun.

Also: Most wealthy Americans don’t feel a need to use their wealth to eradicate poverty, it is common for some upper and middle-income Americans to blame the poor for their poverty, high schools and universities in America offer elective courses, you don’t have to know your major before you start, majors can be changed, university is not free for most students, most people don’t mind if you walk in their home with your shoes on, many states are radically different from others culturally and topographically and America is 50 times larger than Azerbaijan.

Some things I don’t want to explain: why the American people wanted to start two wars back-to-back, even though no other country in the world thought this was a good idea (Azerbaijan was one of the Iraqi “coalition” for 5 years and did non-combat work. Many Azerbaijanis say they helped so that America would help them in any future war with Armenia, a naïve thought at best. Georgians were also in the coalition and some told me that when the war started with Russia, they were stunned and angry that we did not support them against the Russians the way they supported us), why American women appear to enjoy sex, why women who have sex before marriage are not slutty, and how Americans prevent pregnancies instead of ending them in abortion. I try to avoid political discussions, but with the news on every day, it is hard to escape politics, especially with my host family and their guests.

Of course each volunteer answers these questions differently. We usually say that many Americans think “A” because of “B” and others think “C” because of “D”. In conversation after conversation I have found that at the end of the discussion, they usually ask me what I think, don’t comment on the flattering things about America and then scold me on behalf of America and tell me to pass it along.

So here is two years worth of Azerbaijani indignation in a nutshell:

How can you have all that money and have no cheap way for poor people to get to a workplace? If Azerbaijanis can efficiently move the poor around rural regions, and have a beautiful, expanding subway system in Baku the equivalent of 18 cents a trip, why can’t America?

Why do the wealthy not make it a priority to help the poor and not isolate them?

Pregnant unmarried teens are a complete scandal and not taking care of your elderly parents at home is a shame.

Why do you tolerate guns? We have no guns and our murder rate is next to nothing.

What do Americans accept eating processed food and not know where their food is coming from?

We understand why you start wars now—because you don’t have to go. How do you feel about sending mostly poor boys off to their deaths when you don’t want to go yourselves?

Why don’t you listen to other countries before you start wars? We know the Soviet Union was a very powerful country and very unsuccessful in Afghanistan. You don’t have a different plan than the Russians, so why did you think you would succeed?

How can you do things like eat in restaurants when people, including children, are living on the street?

I try to avoid these discussions because I have found I don’t get anywhere. If I have to say something, I say that our culture is different and we value different things. We have more emphasis on self-reliance. We also tend to think of solving our problems with force since we have the largest military in the world. And when we want a war, we don’t think much about the cost at the time. We want the war and no new taxes and not to have to go ourselves. Later when we are not so angry, we change our minds.

I also tell them it does not seem practical to put restrictions on teens to keep them from getting pregnant and we are not as liberal as some other countries who distribute free contraceptives to those who want them. All of this sounds pretty lame to them. My last resort to get them off the topic is really pretty easy—I whip out a People Magazine or a Brides Magazine. The men huff and walk away and the women forget about nursing homes and start critiquing the dresses!

Like Turkey and Iran, Azerbaijan has a long history of carpet-making, both at home and in carpet workshops. When I arrived, I never thought I would be interested in hand-made carpets. First, I don't have a home to put them in. Second, I have seen oriental, Turkish and Persian carpets and thought they were attractive, but never thought of having any of my own. While I have been here, I have seen many carpets in homes and slowly learned about how carpets are made. I visited three carpet workshops and two carpet museums and have learned about different types and patterns of carpets from different regions of the country.

Pile carpets made at home are particularly interesting to me, although the ones made in workshops are made the same way on the same type of looms. Carpets have been made at home for hundreds, maybe even a thousand years and it takes a very long time to do the different tasks necessary to produce a carpet. The tasks haven’t changed much during this time.

I recently bought a carpet which was made at home sometime after 1950 and is from the Quba (Guba) region, which is in the northern part of the country, bordering Russia. This area is beautiful farmland and mountains; farming is done more with donkeys, horses and wagons than tractors and combines.

This carpet is typical of carpets made at home. The process is to first get wool from local sheep or even from the family’s own sheep. The wool is then washed several times in a local river or stream where the water is very clear.

The family chooses a design, usually a traditional design from their region of the country. Designs are handed down in regions similar to the way the designs of American quilts are handed down. The colors are dictated by the design and the dyes are made from plants that grow in that region. Before or after the wool is chosen, the family begins to gather the plants that will be used to make the dyes. Because most of these plants are available only seasonally, the process of gathering plants can take up to a year.

During the time this carpet was made and even today, many home carpet dyes were made from natural colors because plant dyes are free and chemical dyes cost money. Also, properly done, natural colors will not fade. Pomegranate skin is known for producing a good red color. Saffron, which is abundant in Azerbaijan, is used for yellow. Blue colors are usually chemical dyes because plants producing a good blue color are hard to find in Azerbaijan.

The wool is spun into yarn and when dyes are available, the yarn is dyed. Then the loom is set up in the house. Homemade carpets are not huge, because the loom must fit into the small main room of the house and still have room for the family to live. This carpet is about 5 x 8--as large as can be made in many homes. Carpets are mostly produced during the winter, when crops are not being raised and livestock does not require a lot of attention.

The carpet I purchased is wool on cotton; cotton is grown in Azerbaijan. You can tell it is wool on cotton from looking at the fringe. The cotton is stretched vertically on the loom, where the knots are made with wool. The cotton ensures a strong carpet. This type of carpet can be much more intricate than wool on wool carpets because cotton can be spun finely and the knot count is generally much higher.

Making a carpet involves sitting on the floor in front of the loom looking at a pattern while making rows of knots of the proper color. The work goes very slowly, especially for a wool on cotton carpet, because of the high knot count. A carpet this size could take 8 months to a year to make, longer if the carpet maker doesn’t work at all during the summer. Once several inches of yarn are knotted, the yarn is sheared to a uniform length with special large scissors. Once it is complete, the colors are locked into the carpet by soaking it with cow or horse urine or vinegar and salt solution. It is then rinsed repeatedly (luckily!).

Families usually made carpets for weddings and they are normally kept in the family. They can last 150 years or more of normal wear, so after several generations, sometimes a family owns too many carpets and sells a few. Most families do not make carpets at home anymore, but may buy them. Some rural families still make carpets at home for weddings. A few carpets are made in workshops. There is no way to speed up the work, as the carpets are still made the same way, except for the fact that chemical dyes are more popular. So new carpets are more expensive than older ones and few people in Azerbaijan can afford to buy them. Older carpets made at home are valuable also and will become more valuable because the supply is limited. A government certificate is necessary to be able to send carpets out of the country.

The traditional way of cleaning a carpet is to first beat it on a clothes line, then put it outside on the ground and run water from a hose on it (if running water exists—otherwise buckets are used). If still dirty, it is scrubbed with a brush and vegetable-based soap and rinsed again. The carpet is then put in the sun for several days. The sun does not fade the carpet if natural dyes are used. Carpet dealers do not recommend sending it to a carpet cleaning company where harsh chemicals may be used.

In October, I am visiting two regions of the country in which carpets are made. Maybe I will get a small, new carpet there for my future home.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a farm. Not a really big deal, since there are plenty of farms all over the world. But this one was interesting to me because it was so remote and because they farm in a very traditional way.

The farm is not reachable except with four-wheel drive vehicles in dry weather. I took a mini-bus to a small town and from there we found someone with a four-wheel-drive vehicle. We waited about an hour to get more passengers for a cheaper rate. I was surprised we made it in this vehicle or any vehicle because the terrain was so rough and rocky.

When we arrived, we found the farm to be 8 or 9 acres, but this is not a problem for livestock grazing, because the animals can graze on open land. The grasses grown for animal feed and to sell also appeared to be on open land. The home was old and made of fieldstone with a wooden roof, doors and windows, which were very dilapidated. There was no kitchen per se, but a place in one room for the electric oven and a propane gas tank. In another room the kitchen implements were kept.

The family was excited because they just got electricity, so they now have an electric oven for baking and don’t have to use the tandir wood-burning oven outside anymore. They can also turn the lights on and stay up late in the winter. They don’t have a refrigerator but they do have a satellite dish attached to the roof, although I didn’t see a TV. From May to September they could really use a refrigerator, but getting one there could be difficult. They also have no gas, but use the propane tank.

Water is outside--about 50 yards from the house. A small tap runs from a spring. There are these spring taps every ½ mile or so and people drink and use the ice-cold water without boiling it. Everyone says how healthy it is. At this tap, the family washes dishes, themselves and gets water to drink. The animals drink from it too.

There is a “barn”, which is a low building about the size of a garage. This is where the cows and sheep stay in the cold winter and eat the hay. The chickens must be kept warm to lay eggs, so they live in the tiny barn among the cows and sheep, which generate enough heat to keep them laying eggs.

The family was in the midst of harvesting long grass for the animals to eat. There are no machines to cut it and on the steep mountain slopes, machines may not be practical. So they use scythes and the farm is dotted with huge haystacks.

The animals are several cows, a few sheep, geese, chickens and turkeys. The geese were being plucked for down while I was there. It consists of chasing and grabbing a goose (done this time by a 6-year-old boy) and then handing it to a woman who yanked out the down for about 3-4 minutes for each goose. The geese screech the whole time. She collected enough for a couple of pillows

One of the sheep was slaughtered while I was there and it was quite an operation to get it cut up. They had to eat it in one day since there is no refrigerator.

One of the days, we took a walk and visited 5 different spring taps. It is traditional to drink out of each one and wash your face and put your feet in the water, which is considered good for sickness and to maintain good health. The sun was shining, the fields and mountains were lovely, sheep grazed, turkeys enjoyed the sunshine and small homes dotted the countryside.

One of the most interesting things we did was to find plants for making herbal tea. My family pointed out flowered bushes or smaller plants and we cut the flowers, leaves and branches from the plants. We laid them on a sheet on the ground back at the house and a couple of days later they were dry. I then cut them in one-inch lengths and put them in a box. We made the tea by filling about half a coffee press loosely with the cut up tea plant, added boiling water and waited for a few minutes. It was delicious.

Different varieties have different healing properties. The type we gathered and others are sold cheaply in our local bazaar by women who go to the country and gather the plants just as we did. But it was interesting to gather and process it ourselves. If you want me to mail some to you, email me.

The downside of this type of life is obviously the isolation, the huge amount of physical work involved, a lack of bathing facilities and no toilet--bucket baths are the norm and the outhouse is primitive even for an outhouse.

One of the huge advantages is the healthy environment. Even people in my city comment on how people who live in this area are rarely ill and about how many live to a long, productive old age. They drink mountain spring water, encounter no pesticides, don’t eat any processed food, eat freshly made yogurt, eggs and homegrown vegetables and fruits, work hard physically and have a low-stress life. They don’t multi-task, worry or even know about world events, get mail or worry about finding or losing a job.

Lately I have been thinking about how it is human nature to not notice something that people elsewhere think is a problem. For example, when I was in junior high, two-piece swimsuits were popular. I didn’t let the fact that my ribs stuck out like a skeleton stop me from wearing one.

When my children were tiny, I would proudly take pictures of them to work. I guess I wasn’t very discriminating, because the office grump once took a look at the latest picture of my baby daughter and asked “So what’s wrong with her?”

Sometimes we volunteers are lucky enough to get a ride in a car. In our first few months in Azerbaijan, we would scramble around the back seat looking for a seatbelt. Now we know that usually either there isn’t one, or it doesn’t work. Recently another volunteer and I rode in a car with a new volunteer. When she nervously looked around for her seatbelt, we rolled our eyes at each other.

Another example is in housing. The Soviets built many apartment buildings to try to provide decent housing for workers. People could move from really primitive conditions in very old, obsolete homes to high-rise buildings with indoor toilets, running water and elevator access to the higher floors. Some volunteers live in this type of building and we all visit people who live in them. Besides the amenities, though, they feature mazes of wiring coming out of holes in the walls, stairwells that are dark at night (and sometimes during the day), litter everywhere and broken steps.

Azerbaijanis don’t consider the state of the common areas to be a reflection on them or that it is really any of their business. (The interesting things is that when you actually walk in the apartment, taking shoes off and putting slippers on is mandatory and most apartments are much more neat and orderly than American homes.) The volunteers mostly have come to accept these bad outdoor and stairwell conditions. We carry flashlights, step around the trash and ignore the wires.

Quite a few of our volunteers work with English teachers in schools. We were shocked at the condition of schools on our first few visits. The buildings typically look poorly built with cracked walls and crumbling steps. Often there are broken windows and trash all over outside. Playgrounds and athletic equipment are rare. Many blackboards are in such bad condition that chalk doesn’t work on them anymore. The bathrooms are usually unspeakably filthy and most teachers plan their days so they don’t have to use them. For some reason there are usually women who work as cleaners in the schools mopping the floors constantly but not cleaning the bathrooms.

Recently I went into a classroom to meet some students for a summer project in which we had to move the desks and chairs around. The desktops, as in many schools, were pieces of warped plywood covered with graffiti and carvings. They were perched precariously on metal frames. Most of the desktops were no longer attached to the base. The chairs at one time had all featured plywood seats and backs, but most of them now lack backs and some lack seats. I realized that the state of the school didn’t bother me anymore and I just got on with the project.

What most of my fellow volunteers have to keep reminding ourselves is that in American schools attended by poor children, these same conditions can exist. In addition, poor children in America can face weapons, crime, drugs and hunger, and may be homeless or pregnant. Kjds in Azerbaijan usually have nutritious food to eat, weaponless communities, drug-free schools and almost no crime. I have never heard of a homeless or pregnant student.

Last month, the New York Times reported that over 250 schoolchildren were shot in Chicago during the past school year. A new teacher had been greeted by her new students by being asked how many times she had been shot. When she replied she hadn’t, her students showed off their bullet wounds and several had been shot on different occasions. This would be totally shocking to Azerbaijanis, but Americans are apparently used to hearing about it.

Azerbaijanis have strange ideas about Americans—that we are all wealthy, our lives are easy and that since women are “free”, that women have no problems in America. When we tell them what things are really like, from our own different perspectives, they see problems that we have accepted as a matter of course.

One stems from the fact that Azerbaijanis help poor family members. It is common for one family member to partially support a poorer family member, buy a relative furniture, pay their medical bills, repair their home. Last winter, the hot water heater went out in my home. My host mother took the train to Baku to get the money from her sister. She also got money regularly from different relatives to buy clothing, pay utility bills and buy food. This woman’s husband moved to Moscow to find work. One in eight Azerbaijani men is working in Russia. The husband makes enough to support himself, but not his family. We recently had repairmen at our home for 7 weeks, painting and repairing things. The bill was paid by a nephew who works in Moscow and knew the house was in poor shape.

Of course, America is not a monolithic place, and I have noticed that in America, people I know who are from Mexico or who are black are more likely to help support their relatives than Americans as a whole. One volunteer whose family comes from Mexico says she suffered little culture shock in Azerbaijan, since many parts of the culture are similar.

So when Azerbaijanis learn that Americans, including children, are homeless, they can hardly believe it. They are also shocked that some people go to a food bank or soup kitchen to get food instead of getting food from their relatives. And that people have their utilities cut off for non-payment, but their relatives may not feel the obligation to pay the bills for them.

I try to tell them about our culture of personal responsibility, how jobs used to be available to many people who needed them, that Americans need to save a lot of money to cover medical bills, their old age and university expenses. Many Americans feel that unless they have money saved for all of these things, it is premature to give to their relatives. And that they may feel that their relatives should work harder or smarter and make better choices, such as not drinking or taking drugs. I also tell them that many Americans feel that incentive is important and can be taken away when relatives give money. I also point out that we are very charitable to strangers or foreigners who have suffered in disasters.

Azerbaijanis I know aren’t buying it. They say that when a family member needs help, the family should give them the money they need, children shouldn’t suffer because their parents can’t provide for them and that the best security is in knowing that when you need help you will get it.

A lot of volunteers still shake their heads when they see fields full of trash, people throwing trash in beautiful natural areas and in the lack of environmental regulations in Azerbaijan. But we soon realize that most Azerbaijani families generate very little garbage, use their own containers at the bazaar, buy few packaged items and live in fairly small homes, which require little electricity.

We Americans in Azerbaijan prompt ourselves to remember that we pollute the earth and air in many countries with our consumer culture, have 5 percent of the world’s population but produce 25 percent of the greenhouse gases, we pollute our own waterways with the excrement from huge factory pig and chicken farms, we blow the tops off mountains in West Virginia for cheap coal and don’t clean up the mess and don’t heed the pleas of many other countries of the world who fear that our carelessness will affect the existence of their countries. Then we have to admit that even though we are looking at a field full of trash or a dirty apartment stairwell, this Third World country of Azerbaijan is doing a better job on the environment than we are.

Random things that happened to me and my son; he visited Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey with me for three weeks:

On our first day together, we were in Istanbul. Due to unfortunate circumstances we only had one card to use to get cash. Most of our transactions needed to be in cash. We went to an ATM and pulled out some money. We forgot to wait for the card to come out of the machine. As we walked down the street a Turkish man chased us down to return the card.

Weeks later, in Azerbaijan, we bought a small handmade carpet in Baku. We went into a restaurant and left without the carpet. The waiter chased us down the street to return the carpet.

To minimize the culture shock, I planned to start with him in Istanbul, work our way through Turkey, then less-prosperous Georgia, then to rural Azerbaijan. We later visited the sophisticated capital city of Baku, but at the border, the vibe was very rural. After we crossed the Azerbaijani border, Dave could tell he was not in America or in Turkey anymore. Our bus was actually a beat-up van with homemade seats. A chicken was sitting placidly in a bag next to us. As the driver shifted gears, the shifter broke off. He looked at it contemptuously and threw it aside. After that, when he needed to shift, he reached way down to the floor to a tiny nib that remained.

Shortly, the engine sputtered and died. The driver rummaged around the back of the van, emerged with a two liter soda bottle and dumped the contents in the gas tank. I had to inform Dave that this was normal—spare gasoline in two liter bottles is even sold by the side of the road.

Earlier on a van going from western Georgia by the Black Sea to the capital city of Tbilisi, I asked where we were. To my surprise the driver said “South Ossetia.” It looked pretty bucolic.

Neighbors can be strange in Azerbaijan as they are in America. But a different kind of strange. A week later as we prepared to take the midnight train from my home to Baku, my host family was entertaining guests and we walked in and out of the gathering. A man suddenly appeared with a bouquet of flowers. My family introduced me and my son to him—he was a neighbor that I hadn’t met. As he handed me the flowers, he spoke to me in halting English saying, “I have a Ph.D. in animal insemination and I would like to get to know you better.” Dave was amazed that he would say this to me and said he may try this as a pickup line at home in America.

This post is for the new crop of volunteers, who will arrive in late September to begin their training. They read the blogs of current volunteers for clues on what their lives will be like and how they should prepare.

Most volunteers spend a lot of time choosing the stuff they will bring with them. They figure that for 27 months they will not be able to buy much here and their favorite foods will not be available. I remember the time I spent trying to guess what I should do before I left. So here are my suggestions for AZ8 (the 8th group of volunteers coming to Azerbaijan).

1. Most things are available in Azerbaijan. If not, you will travel to Georgia or elsewhere and buy stuff or people will send you packages. So don’t panic.

2. Put aside some clothes in a separate box that you may need or want here and leave them at home. Make a list of what is in there and take it with you. When/if you want the stuff, your relative or friend can pull it out of the box and send it.

3. I have bought summer sandals, t-shirts and other things in the bazaar. I live in a larger town and there are awesome second-hand clothing stores here with gently worn things from Europe for men and women. There are at least 10 of these stores in my city and most volunteers can visit my town. I got a beautiful Italian wool coat for $10; also jeans, sweaters, etc.

4. If you are CED like me, you may be packing the wrong stuff. I packed like I was going to be hiking for 2 years, only to find out I needed business attire like I had worn in my bank job in America. I had the wrong clothes.

5. The PC suggestions on long skirts for women are okay, but Azerbaijani women have asked me why my skirts are so long and Azerbaijani women in my town don’t dress as conservatively as my first clothes. (Things are changing for women teachers. In my town, at some schools teachers wear jeans. Of course, PC volunteers don’t wear them.) I rarely wear skirts now.

6. Essential recommended clothes for women and men are a couple of pairs of black tailored pants and good walking shoes. Casual shoes for men and women are everywhere and are cheap. And if you are CED, I recommend a nice coat to put over your business clothes—a trench or wool coat. I walked around in business clothes under a ski parka until I found my second-hand wool coat. Not good.

7. People preparing for the Peace Corps spend a lot of time buying and choosing stuff. My recommendation is totally different. You won’t know what you need, so pack some of the things listed above, warm winter clothes, a few things for summer and don’t worry. You can buy it here or have it sent. Here is the top recommendation:

8. The Peace Corps has language training materials that are to be downloaded from the site for study before coming. Most people spend weeks choosing and packing their clothes, but come unfamiliar with the language materials. New volunteers come here not knowing how to say hello, goodbye, thank you or any of the basics. You will meet your host family soon after you get here. What will you say to them?

Your success depends in a large part on how well you know the language. This will affect your relationships, your experience, where you can travel and is very important.

You should know these 23 lessons by heart. Put them on your iPod and start studying them at least an hour a day. If you don’t have time, stop shopping and reading blogs.

Also, you won’t need a lot of reading material at first. This is because instead of reading English books and watching English movies, you should be studying Azerbaijani. Besides, the Peace Corps lounge has thousands of books that other volunteers have left behind. So if you don’t have a Kindle, don’t worry about bringing a lot of books. Some volunteers talk about all the movies they have watched and books they have read, but can’t speak Azerbaijani. Don’t be one of those people.

I wrote this article for the Peace Corps Volunteers' Azerbaijan newsletter.

I sent a dog from Azerbaijan to America. She has a good home with my sister in Wisconsin, everyone who has met her loves her, she is happy and healthy running around in the country and swimming in Lake Michigan with her new golden retriever sister.

But I don’t recommend that you do this. It was a crazy idea from the start and it is a miracle that it worked out.

To tell you why, I will go back to last summer, when I moved in with a new host family. Living outside the door of our house was a small brown dog of about 20 pounds. She lived there because my family fed her scraps once a day. She greeted me daily for months and if I paused from my walking, she tried to put her front paws on my legs. I never fed her, touched her and tried not to look at her.

I am a dog lover, but I felt that this dog needed to adapt to being a dog in Azerbaijan. She needed to go hang with other dogs, avoid humans, find her own food in the garbage, scrap it out. I thought to myself that making friends with a dog is not sustainable in Azerbaijan and that spaying and neutering are.

This dog was persistent. All through the fall and into December she greeted me whenever I came and went, walked me to the marshrutka (mini-bus) every day and waited with me. She would walk down the street right behind me and bump her nose against my legs. I still didn’t touch or feed her.

But I became increasingly concerned when I saw that she would not budge from our doorway to find shelter at night. Rain fell on her, snow fell on her and she would spend days wet. As I slept in my room at night, I knew she was right outside my window in the open on nothing but frozen ground. She was afraid of the feral dogs in our neighborhood and knew that men did not live in our house or come to our door. She could avoid kicks of men and boys by staying outside our door.

I also noticed that she was eating rice, bread and little else. She would dig up dirt with her nose and eat it. I could find no one who wanted a dog or could offer it shelter through winter.

Around January 1, she gave birth to 5 puppies and dug under a fence across the street to make a nest for her puppies. Some of the neighbors felt sorry for her and provided a cardboard box and some straw. But it was January, windy and at night, bitter cold. The water in the street was constantly either frozen or very cold.

At this point, I decided I had to start helping her. I bought some dog food and began feeding her. I started talking with her and touching her when she took breaks from the pups. I pulled her pups out of the gutter when they started walking and fell in. Her fur was thin and so was she. When I bent down to get them out of the gutter, she would slip herself between my body and my outreached arm and press herself against me. She was a good mother, with fat puppies. I wanted to send a couple of the pups to America, but could not get through the red tape and eventually they grew up and disappeared.

When they left, I could see that she would go right back to living outside our door and become pregnant again soon. She did not seem to be in good health and continued to eat dirt. But she continued to greet me happily. I really admired her spirit of continuing to be optimistic in spite of the fact that this life did not suit her. I decided I had to make a commitment to help her as much as I could. But how much I could help her would depend on what she would be willing to do.

I knew a vet already who could do most procedures, except a spaying operation, and took her there for an exam. Beforehand, we practiced walking on a leash and I eventually coaxed her into a taxi to get her there. The neighbors stared.

I had no luck finding a vet who could spay dogs until a fellow volunteer found someone at the Agriculture University, which is located in my town. He agreed to do it, but I knew I couldn’t pluck her off the street, have her spayed and dump her back on the street again. So I had to find her a place to stay. I left my perfectly good host family and moved to another family, people I knew, who agreed to give the dog a chance to live in the garden of their home.

After I moved in, it turned out that living in the garden meant tied up in the garden, that they were afraid of her and sometimes she got off the chain. Not a good solution, but she stayed while she recovered from the operation. (The post-op instructions I received were to feed her tea and soup for two days. She refused both because she is a dog and after awhile I gave her water and eggs, which she wolfed down.) I had to find her another place to stay while I figured out how to get her out the country.

In the meantime, The Dog and I (I didn’t name her, thinking it was bad luck) took walks all over town, causing a stir wherever we went. And my sister visited Azerbaijan, met her and decided to either keep her for me or her, or find a home for her (she has a husband who was skeptical) in Wisconsin. But our plans were to travel through Georgia and Turkey, so she couldn’t take the dog back with her. Besides, the airlines have a lot of rules and paperwork, which we were not prepared for. I had a lot of travel plans for the summer, so having a dog was not in my future.

Just when I thought I’d have to put her back on the street in her old neighborhood while I figured out what to do, my vet friend found a relative she could stay with for a couple of months, if necessary. He convinced the wife easily, but the husband required quite a bit of vodka in order to agree.

So she moved into their garden (also tied up) and I went to their home every day to walk her and check on her, except for when I was in Baku, the capital city, (twice) for The Dog’s flight-related paperwork and my sitemates picked up the slack. No one felt like flying to America with the dog, so we found that Lufthansa Cargo ships show dogs, racehorses, all kinds of other animals and has a good record and a special animal building for layovers in Frankfurt.

The details and paperwork overwhelmed me. I met everyone involved in Baku from the cargo people to the passport people/vet office to Customs, the city veterinary office and the document translator. Then on the other end, I had a friend arrange to pick her up in Chicago and hold her until my sister came from Wisconsin.

Frankly, this took away from my Peace Corps duties. While I think that walking around town with her every day and making friends with little boys, who ended up liking her and petting her was good, it took away from my other projects. I was distracted.

The tension was thick as the day of the flight approached. I had all the documents I thought I needed, but who knows what I didn’t understand that I needed?--I was speaking to everyone in Azerbaijani. Azerbaijanis helped me quite a bit, but once I got in the taxi for Baku (171 miles away) with The Dog, we were on our own. Well, almost. Our PC country director had given permission for her to relax at the PC office before the flight. We hung out in the yard, she had a bath with the car-washing hose and she searched for fallen berries to eat.

I was supposed to be at the airport at 10:00 p.m. About 6 p.m. is when they called to say I should come back in nine days because Customs is not open on Sunday. This was Sunday. I headed to the airport. At the cargo dock, I was quickly surrounded by huge, curious guys who looked like bouncers—they lug cargo around for a living. I told my Lufthansa contact that I had nowhere to go with her, they were the ones who scheduled the flight for Sunday knowing Customs was closed and she had to go or I would need to stay at the cargo building with her for nine days.

They figured it out. After awhile, they produced the crate, I said goodbye, kissed her while the giant loading dock guys watched us and left the rest to Fate.

My kind friends, the Harles, in Naperville, Illinois, picked her up at the airport and gave her excellent care for several days, including an oatmeal bath at a groomer. Afterward, my sister came to pick her up and they made the six-hour trip to her home in Wisconsin. My brother-in-law is no longer skeptical; he loves her and wants to keep her. She hustles around her rural neighborhood and goes to the state park on the weekends. She has gone to doggy class and even day-care for socialization with American dogs.

The real miracle of this story is not all of the people who helped me, although the support I received from everyone, including many Azerbaijanis, was tremendous. The real miracle is that this little dog is so unusual. She was not able to adapt to life in Azerbaijan, but was able to do everything I asked her to do to adapt to America—walk on a leash, ride in a taxi, accept physical exams and shots without objecting, walk confidently into an operating room when she had never been inside a building in her life, know not to urinate inside, not object to having me walk up to her on the street and shove worm medicine down her throat, and go from a crate in an airport to charming people in Naperville, Illinois within an hour. For awhile, her life changed radically and frequently and she kept accepting the changes.

So when I see a dog in my neighborhood scrounging his own food or lying in the sun enjoying the good weather, I toss him part of my candy bar and hope that he is finding some enjoyment in life. I don’t think I’ll ever meet another dog like The Dog.

I haven't seen my son in almost two years. He was in the Navy and couldn't just up and come over to Azerbaijan. Most volunteers have come home due to a family wedding; illness or just because they mıssed theır famıly.

So since he recently left the Navy, he decided to come and visit. We met in Istanbul last week and are traveling through the rest of the country. This blog post is really just an endorsement of Turkey as a vacation spot and an interestıng country. Neither of us had ever thought much about Turkey and only thought of coming here because I am in this part of the world and the other options are not so appealıng--Iran, Turkmenıstan, Armenia, Syria, and the part of Russia that is having a lot of civil unrest.

Of course, Istanbul is an interestıng city wıth a lot to do—historical sites, a beautiful city on two continents and in three parts, all separated by water. Lovely palaces, beautiful parks, interesting places, such as the Grand Bazar, with over 4000 merchants, the Spice Bazar and a wonderful public transportation system, although we walked most of the time.

Istanbul is extremely clean, the parks are outstanding, we felt very safe and there are interestıng things to do everywhere. The Turkısh people are very welcomıng and everything is well-organized.

We next went to Gallipoli, the site of the WWI battle, because my son is a history buff. We then saw Troy, the ancient cıty—I didn’t know that there are 9 cities here built on top of each other. It was interestıng to see the different excavations.

We then took an overnight bus to Cappadogia, an area wıth giant rock formations and soft rock cliffs into which are built whole cities. We are stayıng in a cave hotel carved out of the rock. What a lovely place. Tomorrow we will go to some cave citıes and explore a canyon.

We are so impressed wıth the bus transportation—clean, effıcient and they go almost everywhere. We had a butler on our Mercedes bus giving us drınks and snacks. It ıs inexpensive. The bathrooms in the bus statıons are immaculate.

As we traveled on the bus, we saw many cities along the way. They are immaculate wıth beautıful apartment buildıngs and wonderful infrastructure. The architecture is interesting and attractive wıth beautiful mosques everywhere.

Everyone has been very kind to us and some people on the bus have even invited us to their homes.

Diary of a Hot Day

I was working in a lovely mountain village last week at a camp for kids. Peace Corps volunteers there got the idea to create a camp for four weeks and organized it. We served 60 kids and it was a lot of fun. But despite the mountain setting, it was HOT.

Part of the week, there was no water in one of the volunteers' homes. It was difficult for them. We had water where I was staying, but it smelled really bad and came out of the tap sandy. Mountain or no mountain, the water there is bad.

I came home today on a 3 1/2 hour hot ride in a dilapidated van that serves as a bus between my community and the other one. I found that we had no water at our house either, but the rest of the neighborhood did. Despite this, yesterday my family had a circumcision ceremony at the house for a 14 year old relative and killed a lamb there too for good luck. I am glad I was not there.

The relatives are lovely (the boy is holed up in another room for 10 days), but I wish we had water. I have a lot of dirty clothes.

I left to go to the internet club and buy a watermelon (delicious and cheap, but hard to get home) and read these factoids from the Peace Corps monthly newsletter for Azerbaijan volunteers:

If you need to blow your nose, leave the room. It is acceptable to gently dab at your nose in front of others, but not to blow your nose. If you are in la ocation in which you cannot leave (say, for example, on a 6 hour bus ride), you may blow your nose but try to be as discreet as possible.

It is believed that for women and children, sitting on cement is bad for your health (bad for reproductive health).

Appearance is everything. Do not wear clothes with mud. Clean your shoes. Bring napkins/rag on a muddy day to clean your shoes before lessons. Iron your clothes. Men: Shave your face. Keep your hair cut clean.

Men in Azerbaijan commonly shave armpits.

I am going home to sit in front of the fan.

Azerbaijan is physically separated into two parts. To get to the other part from where I live, you must take a bus through Iran or through Georgia. It takes many hours and I obviously can't go through Iran. So when I went last week, I flew. It took 40 minutes.

I went with a Peace Corps friend and her Azerbaijani husband, Ferid. An interesting thing happened. Before we left, a young woman told Ferid that her brother was in the army in the part of the country we were going to. She asked if he would bring her brother some home-cooked food. Ferid barely knew this girl. But he told her he would, got information about his location and when we got to the other part of the country, he told his mother about the situation.

The next morning she got up early and cooked for several hours, making him a large packet of food. Ferid then went to the base, met with the young man and gave him the food. He was gone about 5 hours.

This is perfectly normal in Azerbaijan--spend hours making food for a stranger and delivering it.

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Some of the things that are part of everyday life in America didn’t exist when I left the country in 2008. So this time I will ask questions about these things.

For example, Twitter—I have heard of it, but we don’t have it here. It seems like if it did, I could get tweeted (I think that is the term) by Ashton Kutcher or Britney Spears about what they are doing or thinking. Why do people want that? It seems like a lot of people use it. What useful things can a person do with Twitter?

Lady Gaga—I haven’t heard her sing—it is not possible to download from Itunes here. Is she any good? Her outfits are interesting.

The Tea Party---I don’t get them. They seem like a contradiction. They don’t want much Federal government, but they are angry at Obama about not doing something about BP. But according to them, isn’t the government supposed to stay out of regulating stuff?

Most of the Tea Party people seem to be from conservative states like Mississippi, Alabama and Arizona. Maybe they don't know that when Mississippi sends $1.00 to the Federal government in taxes, they get $2.02 back. The balance comes from the liberal states they make fun of, like Massachusetts, which gets 82 cents back for every dollar it sends.

And on the personal responsibility part of the Tea Party—Arkansas, where the Tea Party is strong, has a divorce rate almost twice the rate of Massachusetts. The same for SAT scores, teen pregnancy, school drop-out rates and incarceration rates—the Tea Party states seem to have a problem with personal responsibility as well as for paying their own way. So why don’t they like the Federal government?

The Real Housewives—who are they? Are they really "real"? Are they actresses? Is this a reality show or a drama?

Apple Tablet—I want one, I think. How does the virtual keyboard work? Can I get away without a real computer if I have one of these? Will I miss the optical drive? Is it better to read books on it Kindle-like or is it better to tote the book around?

I have written about things that annoy or inconvenience me in Azerbaijan—lack of central heating, closets, competent repairpersons, intermittent lack of electricity and water. On the other hand, there are some things that to me are better.

Azerbaijanis don’t see the point of having a tree on their property unless it gives fruit or nuts. So throughout the summer and fall, fruit and nuts are everywhere. Now it is mulberries and apricots and cherries. Later it will be plums, other berries, peaches, figs, pears and apples. Best of all is pomegranate—they are everywhere. In the southern region of Azerbaijan, people have tangerine, orange, lemons and grapefruit.

Although we only have one tree of each, my yard has many more mulberries and cherries than we can eat, so we are canning, giving fruit away and feeding some to the chickens. Azerbaijanis don’t seem to fertilize, use insecticide or prune their fruit trees, but they do just fine. I like the idea of trees producing something instead of just being there.

Another things I admire about Azerbaijan is that there is reliable, frequent public transportation almost everywhere and towns and cities are compact and walkable. Good, cheap public transportation in Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia is seen as necessary for the country to be successful. The capital city of Baku has new, clean, frequent buses going everywhere for the equivalent of about 25 cents a ride. They also have a good subway, with new stations being built. Many of the foreigners in Baku and wealthy people don’t want to take public transportation, however, and there are many SUV’s there.

Smaller cities have older buses and vans that are sometimes pretty dilapidated, but they run. People who live in the country can travel on these older buses and vans for work or visits to relatives. Things are more pleasant because people walk and take public transportation instead of having to buy a car. And the poor are not at as much of a disadvantage transportation-wise.

As I meet Europeans and travel around this area, I hear comments and realize how much more violent America is than most other countries. I feel much safer from crime here and even in the capital city of Baku. When my daughter was in Berlin as a 13-year old, I wondered why the teacher allowed her and one other student to wander around by themselves for hours. She explained that Europe is overall much safer than America.

Many Americans feel safe in their own neighborhoods because most of the crime and violence happens in neighborhoods where the poor live. And that is one difference between America and some other countries in which crime is lower—the poor do not live in neighborhoods by themselves. They are able to be dispersed to live with everyone else. The opportunity for poor children to be surrounded by people with jobs, decent schools, a safe environment and city services helps them to become productive citizens and not repeat the cycle.

Which leads me to the final thing I like about Azerbaijan and living in this part of the world. Azerbaijanis don’t think they have all the answers. They think they can get some good ideas from people in other countries. Maybe I am cynical from reading all the bad news that has happened since I left the country in 2008. But I do know that no other country thought going to war in Iraq was a good idea.

We are the only developed country that still executes people and somehow we still have by far the highest murder rate of all—execution doesn’t seem like a deterrent. And our teen pregnancy rate and infant mortality rates are much higher than other developed countries, but we don’t seem very curious about how other countries do so much better than we do. Canada’s banking system is doing just fine—they have good regulation so did not have unsafe mortgage instruments and did not allow the type of financial products that led to our collapse. But we don’t seem to know how they did it or even that they are okay up there.

Now I will go back to eating mulberries.

These are some things that have happened to me lately:

Last week I had to go to the airport in Baku. It is about a $25 taxi ride, so I took the bus. That involves being dropped off a couple of miles from the airport and hiking along an expressway with no sidewalks.

Since I don’t have much call to go to the airport, I didn’t know how far it was and how difficult the walking would be. I saw no taxis coming or going.

But what did happen is that many, many drivers stopped to offer me a ride. Some backed up on the expressway, others pulled over abruptly. Ninety eight percent of drivers in Azerbaijan are men—so many men traveling alone offered me a ride.

Later, I found out that on this stretch of the road, it is normal to get a ride to and from the bus stop.

I think I have written before about another volunteer who was flying to Europe to meet her parents. Unbeknownst to her, her flight had been rescheduled for two days later. When she arrived and learned the news, she was unsure what to do, since she lives about 6 hours away from the airport. Several airport staff invited her to stay with them for two days.

After I left the airport, I was in the subway. I asked a woman sitting in an information booth which train to take. She was so thrilled that I spoke Azerbaijani (most foreigners working in Baku don’t speak Azerbaijani) that she invited me to her home for tea. She was ready to pack up and leave. I had to tell her that I was in a hurry to get back to my town.

Yesterday I needed to go to a notary. Someone told me where the office was located, but when I got there, I didn’t see the office, so went into a travel agency in the same building and asked. They said the office had moved. The owner of the business told me where they had moved, but insisted on driving me there.

When I got to the office, they did my transaction and when I asked how much it would cost, they told me that since I am a guest in the city, it would be free.

The Peace Corps tells us that most volunteers experience reverse culture shock when they get back to America. I remember that in America I was not a celebrity, but I am not sure I will like this fact!

Most volunteers travel out of the country while they are here. We get 22 days travel time each year, and the Peace Corps hopes we will spend most of the travel in the country. This is because when we go back to America, we are supposed to share our experience here with others and speak knowledgeably about Azerbaijan. We are given the equivalent of about $25 per month for travel in the country. Since buses are cheap and many times we can stay with another volunteer, the money is adequate.

Of course, since the country is small--about the size of Maine—we are able to do significant in-country travel over a few days, including weekends. There are numerous holidays throughout the year, so some volunteers travel in Azerbaijan without using vacation time and spend most of their 44 days of travel during their two years of service outside the country.

Most volunteers use some of their vacation time to return to America once for family events such as weddings, funerals or for Christmas. Nearby travel alternatives are somewhat limited—to the south is Iran; to the east, the Caspian Sea; to the north, a part of Russia that is experiencing a lot of civil unrest; and also Georgia, which is interesting and where many volunteers go.

To the west is Armenia, where we can’t go. Azerbaijan is locked in conflict with Armenia, which is occupying part of Azerbaijan. Further to the west is a separate part of Azerbaijan which we can fly to; and west of that is Turkey.

So when my sister recently came to visit, we visited several cities in Azerbaijan; the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi; and Istanbul in Turkey.

One of the things I like about traveling in Azerbaijan is that outside of Baku, the capital, there are few tourists or foreigners. Azerbaijanis welcome tourists and sometimes I even feel like a celebrity traveling around Azerbaijan because tourists are spoiled. It is easy to engage with locals and learn from them. Interesting sites are never crowded and it is possible to see much more than in a roped-off guarded tourist-popular museum in another country. Museums in the regions of Azerbaijan mostly display things outside of glass cases and touching is often allowed. The curation is somewhat haphazard and the information about each piece is often scant or missing, but the overall experience is interesting and charming.

Tourist sites are also different that in more often-visited countries. For example, Azerbaijan is one of the few places in the world with mud volcanoes. They are vast flat plains of dirt with occasional small and large pools of mud in which gases regularly pop to the surface, creating bubbling pools which sometimes throw up a geyser of mud. The mud is cold. Most of the locals don’t realize they are there—they just go about their business in their villages. One you find the volcanoes—nothing is marked on the road--you can walk right up to the edge of an individual volcano, stick your hand in the volcanoes and maybe get hit by a geyser. Nearby are 20,000 year-old cave paintings. There are guided tours in the cave section if you want, but the whole scene is relaxed and there are no barriers.

In the few artisan workshops in Azerbaijan, such as a rug weaving workshop, workers will stop and talk about their work or allow us to sit and watch them work. They will explain the different types of designs, how wool is spun from local sheep, is dyed with vegetables, fruits and herbs, how designs are chosen and how rugs are made.

So when my sister came, I knew we wanted to visit certain sites in Azerbaijan. I also took her to Tbilisi, Georgia, where I had been twice before. But this time, I thought I was ready to go to Istanbul with her.

I had a party Sunday. There were 12 guests at a sit-down meal. The party was in honor of the Azerbaijani husband of a Peace Corps Volunteer. The young man just got his visa to go to America with his wife. Guests were split between American volunteers and Azerbaijanis.

The couple met when she arrived as a volunteer, survived his being gone for a year for compulsory military service, and a few months after his return they were married officially in Baku and then had a traditional Azerbaijani wedding in his hometown.

The bride extended her service a year to accommodate all of this and they will go to America in October. The groom is 24 and his wife is 27. He spent one year of high school on an exchange program, living in Florida. His English is excellent, he is a very intelligent, kind and interesting person.

My host family set the table like a wedding, with beautiful china and table decorations. Even poor Azerbaijanis have nice china. In Soviet times, china was priced so that an average family could buy it and apparently, most did. As in America, it is handed down.

I made different salads and side dishes while my family fussed about the lack of Azerbaijani food. They wanted to spend the day cooking but I told them they were guests. Why no Azerbaijani food? Well, when you invite Italians over to dinner, do you cook Italian food? Of course not, because it will not be authentic. Afterward, just when my family was ready to attack the dishes, some of the American guests began washing them. I had warned the family that this was an American tradition for some families, but they were still dismayed to see guests rolling up their sleeves and washing dishes. Our kitchen is outside and the day was unseasonably cold, which made it more interesting.

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The primary way that Azerbaijanis receive their news is through the television. Apparently, some American soldiers shot a group of Iraqi civilians, the incident was recorded on tape, including narration by the shooters as they shot, and is on YouTube. The tape is also being played here on the news with questions from my family and a general level of disgust from those who have seen it.

My family keeps asking me if Obama said he would stop the wars, why hasn’t he stopped them? Why is he allowing the murder of innocent children by American troops? Why do people still support him if he is not stopping these things? I always try to stay away from political talk with Azerbaijanis, both about American politics and about Azerbaijani politics. On the Azerbaijani side, obviously Azerbaijan is not my country and it is really none of my business. On the American side, I am not here to discuss American politics. But I don't feel I can ignore persistent and pointed questions.

If Azerbaijanis know several Americans, I usually tell them to ask all Americans they know because they will get different answers. My opinion, I tell is them that presidential power is different in America than it is in Azerbaijan and that Obama can’t do a lot of things by himself without the support of other branches. And also that we are supposed to be mostly out of Iraq later this year. They reply that Bush did what he wanted, why can’t Obama? My next answer is that when Americans are angry, some tend to think of using force for three reasons:

One is that Americans don’t understand what it is like to have a war on their own soil.

Another is that Americans don’t have to fight the wars. Our military is all-volunteer. In Azerbaijan, all males must serve 1-1 1/2 years.

The third is that Americans feel they don’t have to pay for wars. Taxes are not raised when wars are started. In fact, with these two wars, taxes were lowered.

This is one I didn’t say, but thought about: Americans feel they can prevail against terrorists by using force. I was reading something awhile back that said that there was not an instance of a powerful country defeating terrorists in the past 100 years or so. I am not sure if this is true or not, but I can’t think of an instance in which America prevailed over terrorists, probably because they are so much more committed than we are. And of course, in our own version of terrorists, we didn't win against the criminals in the Prohibition area and are not wining the war on drugs.

In Revolutionary War times, if the Brits had beaten us, I doubt we would have given up and happily accepted being part of Britain. I think we would still be fighting them.

So I explain that in my opinion, if Americans are angry, they can invade another country for free and send people they don’t know to fight it. Then they can change their minds about being there when it goes badly and leave without having anything bad happen in their American lives.

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I don’t miss a lot of American material things—a few that I do miss are central heating, having inside bathrooms in houses and nice showers with instant hot water and a good spray . Another amenity I miss is having closets. I thought most people had closets. I have have yet to see a closet in Azerbaijan.

Clothes are kept in chests of drawers, or wardrobes, some with a small closet area. I fold my clothes or hang them on a coat tree. So that they don’t get wrinkeled, I have hangers on the coat tree, which leads to crossed-up hangers and not much room for coats.

Most Azerbaijanis have few clothes, since they are expensive. Wearing the same blouse or shirt for a few days is not unusual. One of the women who lives in my home has one sweater. For the first 15 days I lived here, she wore it every day. That was excessive, in my opinion. Then she washed it and wore a robe for two days while it dried.

A post in December called Starfish (http://lindazb.blogspot.com/search?q=starfish&updated-max=2009-12-03T01%3A24%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=20) was about a dog who lived outside my house. She was not a typical street dog, feral and street-smart. Because of the way she acted, people think she has lived with a family sometime in her life. But when I met her last September, she lived outside my home because my host mother fed her every day. When I say “outside our home” I mean on the street. Most Azerbaijani homes are accessed through a gate door. When you enter, there is the yard and the house. So the home and yard are enclosed behind walls. Outside on the street, when it rained, she got wet, and she slept in the mud. She did not hide or go off to remote areas with the other dogs. We think this is because she did not know how to live on her own with other feral dogs. As winter advanced, she slept on the cold and frozen ground outside our door.

In January, she gave birth to 5 puppies and it was difficult for her to sustain them in the cold weather. But the neighbors helped by making a shelter for her in the street and giving her extra food. Of course, the food consisted of whatever food they had that was too old or spoiled to eat, such as old bread, rice and potatoes.

The pups left for who-knows-where, but she remained. Every day for 7 months she came up to me, her tail wagging. I didn’t feed her, as I hoped she would learn how to find her own food like other dogs. They root through garbage bins. But she still greeted me with excitement and a wag every day. She is only about 20 pounds and skinny.

We couldn’t take her in because the family already had a dog and the grandma had moved in and didn’t like the existing dog much. Dogs in the home (even though they live in the yard) are rare in Azerbaijan.

I grew increasingly concerned about this dog and was worried about her getting pregnant again. I saw her eating dirt several times. I decided to take her to the vet in our town. It was difficut because I didn’t know how to get her there. I got a leash and practiced with her for several days, giving her food as a reward. My neighbors stared. No one walks dogs on leashes here, plus I was squatting on the ground talking to a street dog.. I told a neighborhood taxi driver what I was trying to do. He agreed to transport us to the vet. I ended up lifting her into the taxi. She was frightened at first, but got used to the ride. At the vet, she got an immunization. He said she was basically healthy, but was eating dirt because the food she was getting did not have enough nutrition.

At this point, one of our volunteers had to leave because of health issues. Her host family was open to considering having a dog live in their yard. This and the lack of food for me at my home induced me to move there.

One of my fellow volunteers works at the national agriculture university, which is located in my city. She inquired there to see if anyone could spay dogs (the veterinarian I had taken her to for the vaccination doesn’t do this operation). She found that the head of the veterinary department is able to spay dogs. I had the dog come to the new house (using the same taxi routine, scooping her off the street) as a guest and she met my new family. They looked at her dubiously from afar and I soon returned her to the street. Nothing was said until a few days later when it was raining and I remarked that I was thinking about how wet the dog was on the street. They said we could try having her at home.

I didn’t want her kicked out before she was spayed, so the day before the operation, I scooped her off the street for the third time and brought her here. She had the operation over the weekend, and seems to be recovering okay. She lives in a sturdy dog house made out of some junk in the yard. She has eaten some peanut butter, hard boiled eggs and a little dog food. The vet said to give her soup and sweet tea after the operation, but she didn’t want it.

The reaction to the spaying by Azerbaijanis has been interesting. They are pretty horrified by the operation. When I bring up the standard argument that we use in America about limiting the number of homeless dogs and unwanted puppies, people just say that dogs deserve the chance to live. They say that many can find food, that nature wants dogs to be parents and that we should not interefere with that. The owner-pet bond that we value so much in the United States is not well-known here, and Azerbaijanis feel that dogs living on the street are not necessarily unhappy and may in fact, be happy.

While I understand this opinion and have come to accept it, I still think there should be some help for street dogs and cats who are ill and some form of population control other than starvation or sickness. I also think that while the suffering of homeless dogs and cats here there for all to see, we tend to hide our poor treatment of animals.. Chickens who never leave cages, pigs and calves raised in factories in which they can’t even turn around, universities with painful and often unnecessary experimentation on dogs and in my state of Missouri, horrible conditions in puppy mills and a law that does not even allow photos to be taken to document the bad conditions.

In Azerbaijan, many farm animals lead idyllic lives, with large pastures and chickens live outside and can wander about. Azerbaijani farmers feel no need to give the antibiotics and other medications to animals because they normally don’t live in close quarters on factory farms. Azerbaijanis probably eat more mutton and lamb than other meats. Many sheep spend their lives moving from meadow to meadow, going up mountains in the summer to stay cool.

The other thing that interested me about the reaction to spaying is that abortion is the primary method of contraception in Azerbaijan. When I asked why abortion is considered fine and accepted for humans, but spaying and neutering is not acceptable for animals, I got the answer that there is not enough money for large families since the fall of the Soviet Union and there is no choice. Dogs on the street don’t cost anything to raise, but children do. When I asked why humans can’t have operations to prevent pregnancy instead of abortions, the people I asked said that operations were considered dangerous and upsetting, but that abortions are considered safe and common.

Anyway, when I brought the dog home after the operation, my family was upset that I had gone through with it. While I checked on her in her new doghouse, my family, who had wrinkled their noses when I brought her home, tiptoed around to see how she was doing and asked me if she had accepted any food or drink. When she hadn’t after several hours, they began giving me suggestions of what might tempt her and began loudly praying to Allah for her speedy recovery. They were overjoyed when she began eating and drinking.

Now that I have the dog with me, I hope that she doesn’t get kicked out of this house and can spend the summer enjoying not being homeless anymore. But in the fall, I will need to find a home in America for her.

When I came to Azerbaijan, I had no experience or understanding of grants. Most volunteers write at least one grant while they are here. Grants are offered by charitable organizations or governments. They outline what they will pay for and ask for applications. Those who submit the winning applications get the money.

In my town, for example, the Japanese government gave $100,000 to a local organization that trains adults in topics such as English, welding, knitting and computer skills. They used much of the money to install air conditioning and central heating so that it is comfortable for the trainees. They also bought a few new computers.

Many grants are smaller. I worked on a grant in which we asked for travel money for young people to visit other cities in the country. This idea would have sounded strange to me before I came here, but now it sounds perfectly logical. I got the idea because as I travel around this small country (the size of Maine) I am surprised at the young people who are proud of their country, but have never been anywhere. It is cheap to travel here and if they planned, most families could take a day trip to a local city to have fun and see some of these sites. But they rarely do.

What makes it stranger is that if you ask the people over 40, most have extensive travel experience, but it all happened before the fall of the Soviet Union. They can talk about travel to Russia and the other 13 former Soviet countries, as well as travel around Azerbaijan.

Part of the ability to travel in those days is that people had more money then. Everyone had a job (it was required), while now I think unemployment is more normal than having a job. The other reason is that the Young Pioneer Camps offered opportunities for youth to travel in their own countries and attend cultural events and summer camps.

I remember my mother talking about these camps when I was a child. She told me they were Communist propaganda camps that Soviet children were required to attend and they were filling the heads of the youth with lies about the West. I am not sure about that, but when I got here, I started hearing nostalgic stories about these camps from the over-40 folks. They talk about being taken to see the ballet, opera, classical music concerts, and to other cities to attend museums, go hiking and attend athletic events. There were community centers with gymnasiums and rooms set aside for music and crafts.

As I traveled in a lovely mountain area last year I saw very large, very badly deteriorated buildings on a beautiful hillside. The windows were broken and the roofs were falling in. I asked and found that these were former summer camp buildings for Soviet children. They played sports, hiked and had a great time being in the fresh air with other kids outside of their cities.

Kids today rarely have the opportunity to play any sports, travel or have cultural experiences. Our idea is that since families are out of the habit of traveling and most feel they can’t afford to even spend one day in another nearby city or in the country, we would apply for a grant, take the kids on a guided tour of another city, with some free time. They would be able to see some of their cultural heritage and history, some beautiful natural areas and may be inspired to travel again on their own.

The young man who did most of the writing of the grant studied in America for one year during high school. This is in a program that is funded by the US Government. Young people who speak excellent English can go through an application process and live with host families in America for a year and attend high school There is a similar program for college students. When he went to America and was asked to talk about his country from his own experience, he had to say that he had never seen much outside of his town. He wants better for other kids who have the opportunity to study in America and also for kids who will spend their whole lives here.

It seems that an important issued for Americans is to communicate America’s positive values to foreigners. I think a very good and cheap way to do this is through education programs. I have met dozens of kids who have been through these programs and all feel friendly toward Americans and excited about their experiences. After their eductation in the US, many become leaders in their countries. Of course, this works even better for prominent families of foreign countries. Jordan is one of our few friends in the Middle East. A big factor could be that the father of the king of Jordan married an American woman and the king has spent time in America.

Since I have been here, I realize how much other countries do for foreign aid worldwide. My perception was that the US was the world leader, but I am finding out that is not so. On a per capita basis, Norway gives 6 times more than the US for both government and private contributions. It seems to me that in Azerbaijan, Norway may be the best-known country for charitable organizations. Norwegians seem to be everywhere, from running micro-credit organizations to cultural and humanitarian organizations and hiring a lot of Azerbaijanis to work with them. Other countries that give many times more aid worldwide than the US are Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. The UK gives about 1 ½ times what we do worldwide. Of course, this is good news for many Americans and I don't have a position the issue, but I was surprised at the statistics.

We will hear in May if we have the grant money. If so, we will start traveling in June.

This post is not about something new, strange or unusual happening to me in Azerbaijan. It is an article I wrote for our Azerbaijan Peace Corps newspaper, which we use to help each other out with different ideas and suggestions or just to make each other laugh. We are scattered all over the country and never get together as a full group, so the articles allow one person to communicate with everyone.

I wrote it to address the fact that some of us come here thinking we will make a drastic change while we are here. The Peace Corps training helps us understand that this is not usual or even desired. When we are sent to our assignments, we usually think that the biggest projects we will work on will be with our assigned organizations. Many times we find out that the things we are most interested in and proud of are activities that we do outside of our organizations.

But still, the slow pace of change weighs more heavily on the younger people. It is easier for the older volunteers to look back at history during their lifetimes and find that things do change drastically, but usually not over two years, the time that we are in our assignments. So this is what I wrote:

In the TV series “Mad Men”, a drama about a 1960’s-era advertising agency, a picnic scene stands out. The upscale family, a mom, dad and two children are beautifully dressed and having a meal in a lovely park, sitting on the ground. A fabric tablecloth is covered with tempting dishes, colorful paper plates, napkins and plastic flatware.

At the end of the picnic, the husband hurls his beer can into a grove of trees and the mom picks up two ends of the tablecloth, shakes off the remaining food and all the trash onto the ground, folds up the cloth and they drive off.

As Peace Corps volunteers, we are here to help Azerbaijanis make the changes they want to see in their country. Sometimes it can be discouraging when we and the Azerbaijanis we work with constantly run up against roadblocks to change. People say that the way things are now is just fine or that the idea is untried and probably won’t work. The family on Mad Men had no understanding of why their trashing the park was a bad idea, but a decade later, their behavior would have been unacceptable.

As an older volunteer, I think it may be easier for me to have faith that things will change. I was a teenager in the 1960’s and still remember the vociferous opposition to safety equipment such as seatbelts (“who does the government think they are telling me I have to have expensive, useless equipment in my car?”), medians and guard rails on highly-traveled roads (“they are running up my tax bill to protect idiots who don’t know how to drive!”), child safety seats (“why does the government think they know better than me how to raise my child?”) and even the law that childrens’ pajamas must not easily combust when near a flame.

As the ‘70’s arrived, a minority of women began marching for the Equal Rights Amendment. They wanted equal pay for equal work, the ability to get credit in their own names and without their husbands co-signature and protection from discrimination at work guaranteed by the Constitution instead of being in statutes, which can be arbitrary, incomplete and subject to change. Most people did not agree with these new ideas. It was common for women to say “We are proud to be women, we don’t hate men”, “Those women make me uncomfortable”, “Why do you want to try to get a professional job in the business world when you know you’re not wanted there?” Many women who did see problems for women were afraid of angering their husbands or boyfriends if they stood up for themselves or other women.

In 1976 a bill was introduced at the behest of a feminist group that would outlaw marital rape. Most people were aghast that such a thing could be considered rape and the bill was widely ridiculed in editorials, late-night talk shows, and at workplaces and parties. It took until 1993 before marital rape was illegal in all states.

Until the mid-70’s children with special needs were frequently not allowed to enroll in public schools. Passage of the Federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 spawned the delivery of services to millions of students previously denied access to an appropriate education. There was a public outcry (“Why should I pay taxes for a kid who will never be productive and can’t learn?” “What will we do when these kids get out of school and expect to hold a job? The whole thing will fall apart then.” “I don’t want my kids in class with kids who can’t learn.”)

In the 1980’s indoor smoking bans in workplaces started to take effect, to the dismay of much of the public (“Big Brother shouldn’t try to tell me what to do in my own office” “I own the business—I should make the rules, not the bozos in Washington”). Leaf burning was outlawed in most communities, which was portrayed as an assault akin to banning apple pie (“what will they say next—carving pumpkins is too dangerous?”).

And in the 1990’s The Family Leave Act, which allowed unpaid time off for family medical emergencies (up until then, parents with terminally ill children could be fired if they took time off to take care of their child) made millions angry (“it will weaken American business” “people will be taking months off any time they can manufacture an emergency.”)

Over the years I have seen that progressive initiatives are rarely supported by the general public, but are supported by those individuals who are talented, educated and informed. When the tipping point eventually occurs and the change is made, there is a backlash that can take years or even decades to subside. My grandmother in the 1960’s still complained about the existence of Social Security (which she received and spent, but didn’t pay into) and the interstate highway system (“an expensive boondoggle—we never use those roads.” “Why build a road in the middle of nowhere?”).

Today, most of the American public supports trash pickup, safety equipment in cars, marital rape laws, special education, smoking bans and the Family Leave Act—everything except the Equal Rights Amendment, which has never passed. Some new hot-button issues are rights for gays, abolition of the death penalty and the right to health insurance—issues which have been supported in more progressive countries for years.

As we try to help Azerbaijanis make the changes they want to see in their lives, we can remember that in the past 40 years we have come a long way in America. Forty years from now, I hope that both Americans and Azerbaijanis will look back and be grateful for the changes we have seen in our countries.

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Which reminds me of a question that I have that you may be able to answer. All my life I have been surrounded by Republicans and so when I want to know what the Republican position is on an issue I ask or already know. But few Republicans seem to join the Peace Corps or else they keep quiet here, so I don’t have anyone to ask.

My question is about the new health bill. It seems to me that it is all about the Republican value of personal responsibility. For example, now if people don’t have health insurance and have a medical emergency, they are treated and then the hospital most likely doesn’t get paid. This can drive a hospital out of business and raises prices for everyone else. Forcing people to be responsible for their bills by buying private insurance doesn’t seem like socialism to me.

Republicans are fine with parents being forced to pay support for their children and to buy auto insurance so others don’t have to pay their bills. What is different about health insurance?

Republicans like to have an even playing field for American businesses with foreign businesses. So why should GM and Ford have to pay for insurance for their employees when Honda and Toyota don’t?

I would like to buy private insurance when I get out of the Peace Corps, but because of my health history, no company will sell to me. So if I have an emergency, I can either not pay or empty my IRA and have no savings when I am older. With the new health bill, I can buy insurance. I am not sure why Republicans would think my paying for my own medical care is a bad idea. So email me or leave a comment on my blog to explain. Thanks.

Things are beginning to be fun again in Azerbaijan. For me, nothing is fun in the winter because I don’t like cold weather. You can’t be inside and pretend it isn’t cold, like you can in America. There is one heater in most homes and when you are not near, it is cold. Stores are mostly unheated, although my workplace has central heating, which is rare.

For a week, my office is closed for Novruz. This is the spring holiday and it is great. Compared to this, the one-day holidays in America just don’t make it. For almost two weeks, families get together, massive amounts of tasty food and cooked and eaten, people dance, party, and build bonfires. It is all about spring coming, new beginnings, forgiving people who have wronged you, and welcoming everyone.

I have spent the first three days visiting my first family in my training village. Azerbaijani hospitality being what it is, I was welcome everywhere, ate a meal at every home, got caught up on everyone’s lives, and enjoyed being with everyone. I didn’t speak English for all three days. My family accepts my broken Azerbaijani for what it is, just grateful that I can speak at all. When I arrived to their home in September 2008, I could say hello, goodbye and thank you.

Now I am at the Peace Corps office in the capital city of Baku waiting for my night train, which leaves at 11:05 p.m. It will get me home by 7:30 a.m. tomorrow. The compartment sleeps four and the other three will be strangers, as they were when I boarded the train to come here.

The trip usually goes like this: I get on and find three people, usually a family group, putting away their bags. They realize I am not Azerbaijani, look very surprised, say hello in Russian. I tell them in Azerbaijani that I don’t speak Russian and we have a conversation. It is usually about me first—they want to know what I am doing here, how old I am, why I came, how much money I have, why I abandoned my children before I married them off, how much my pension will be. Once I answer enough questions and parry off some others, I find out about them—they are usually traveling together to a family event and want to talk about that. Then the porter brings our fresh bedding in bags and we make our beds. Some of us change into jammies (not me) and everyone goes to sleep.

In the morning, we are awakened by a porter banging on the door for us to get up and in the next half hour we get our things together and talk again. They invariably invite me to their homes for tea, a meal or to stay as long as I want at any future date. They give me their phone number and we hug and say goodbye.

This week, without a job or regular activities to go to, I will visit people I already know in my town to celebrate the holiday, visit other volunteers, catch up on some work for when I get back, wash clothes and clean. And I will think about next month, when I can wash clothes without ending up with frozen fingers, be inside without a heavy sweater and not hunker down next to the furnace all the time.

One of the strange feelings about living in another culture is that I get to experience American news and culture from afar just like everyone else in the world. And now I understand how strange ideas and negative feelings about Americans can develop.

A couple of weeks ago when I went into my regular fruit store, the owner began yelling about airplanes and America and pointing at the TV. He was trying to find out if I knew about the guy who flew the plane into the IRS office. The store was full of people. I said I had heard (everyone at work told me) and he wanted to know why an American would do something like this. I said that I didn’t know and that there are many crazy people in the world. The customers’ opinions were that no one in their country would ever do something like this.

They may have a point. There is very little crime or violence here. I am sure crime happens in my town of about 350,000—I just don’t know anyone who has been a victim. (Someone at work asked me, if this man had lived, would he have been sent to Guantanamo to be with the other people who wanted to destroy the American government!)

When I read about the financial crisis that happened shortly after I left for Azerbaijan and then read a month later people were stampeding each other to death at Wal-mart on Black Friday, I first wondered what is wrong with people. Then I realized that in America, there are crazy people, but my friends and family are mostly normal and so is most of America. Naturally, though, people who don’t know Americans can think this behavior is normal in America. For those who remember the Bobbitt story, just image what foreigners thought of American women when they heard about Lorena Bobbitt!

Of course, it’s not just Americans who can be thought of poorly. The same week, I was walking home down a muddy, potholed street and it was getting dark. I slipped and fell. Two women behind me saw me fall and one woman remarked in Azerbaijani that the “Russian woman” must be drunk.

I popped up, irate, mud all over my coat, and told her that I am not Russian, I was not drunk, that I don’t drink and that I am American and clumsy. She apologized, but said that Russian woman are bad women and drink too much.

Among the American things that Azerbaijanis frown on are the ease of obtaining guns, the perceived sexual permissiveness, the fact that parents stop living with their children and supporting them in early adulthood, high divorce rates, the death penalty and the wars we start in other countries. But you have to know an Azerbaijani really well to find out any of their opinions on world events and issues.

One of my Peace Corps friends is staying an extra year, so she got to go home for a month. One of the “reverse culture shock” things she noticed while she was home is that Americans like people to know what they think about different issues and want to press their views on others in loud voices. She said she didn’t like this anymore and preferred to have people keep their opinions to themselves.

On the other hand, there is no word for “nosy” in Azerbaijani because nosiness is not considered a bad thing. So while Azerbaijanis don’t care to say what they think about issues, strangers still want to know how old you are, how much your house cost, do you think your ex-wife was fooling around on you while you were married, why you have no children, or if you do, could there be a chance your son will marry their daughter, how it feels to be fat or 25 and unmarried, how many of your teeth are real and why you have mud on your coat.

I won’t have to file taxes this year as taxable income will be under $300. My living allowance, which I pay to my host family isn’t taxable.

Sales taxes in Azerbaijan aren’t added on to the price of an item, they are included. Whatever an item is priced, that is what you pay and the storekeeper pays sales taxes out of the price of the item.

I live on what the Peace Corps gives me except for (of course) exceptions. They are the occasional vacation trip, US expenses, such as gifts, and unavoidables such as dog food. The dog food I have bought lately is for the dog I wrote about in my Starfish post a month or so ago. This little dog that lives outside my door had five puppies. My family and a couple of neighbors feed her scraps, like old bread, but I figure she needs the nutrition to feed the pups. I still hope to find a good home for the mom and now with the pups . . . . . ? My sister is coming in April. I really hope she will return to America with a dog.

Tangerine season is coming to an end. A kilo--2.3 pounds is 1 manat—about $1.20. Sort of sheepish to admit, there are days I have eaten a whole kilo.

The winter weather has not been cold for very long—usually milder than St. Louis and no snow once. But inside, you know it is winter. The gas heater that the family has does not keep the house anywhere near comfortable everywhere. It is okay within 15 feet if you are dressed warmly. Until the first part of December, there was no heater, so I am grateful for what I have.

Sad to say this winter I have watched more DVD’s than I watched in the US. I can recommend the first three seasons of Mad Men, the 1960’s era show. It is as absorbing as The Sopranos. I also liked Julie/Julia with Meryl Streep. Not sure if this and Season 3 of Mad Men is available in the US. All of the DVD’s sold here are pirated, so they come out quickly, but without bonus material. Earlier I said that I use my own money for exceptions. Each DVD is about $3, so a season of Mad Men is about $15. I can’t afford that on my living allowance, so I buy them with my own money.

Kids rarely drink milk and many families have very little yogurt and cheese. No one seems worried about kids’ bones. Anecdotal evidence tells me that this may be okay because I don’t see any more bent-over old women here than in the US.

It is surprising how many times clothing can be worn in the winter without washing it. I wear jeans 10 or 15 times. Wool cardigans can be worn on and off for two months. I have a wool coat and no dry cleaner. So I use a stiff brush on it and the coat is actually quite clean. I’ve started thinking how much water is wasted and chemicals are used to clean things that aren’t really dirty. And if you avoid white clothes in the fall and winter, the number of outer clothes you wash after each wearing or two is minimal.

Tte other night when I was in the kitchen cooking potatoes, I could see my breath. One burner was on, so the kitchen was getting some warmth. I am not sure why our water pipes haven’t frozen this winter. I started to feel sorry for myself until I thought of a fellow volunteer who is older than me. Her family’s kitchen is outside. Yes, in the yard is the gas stove,counter and sink. Inside is the refrigerator.

Her family washes dishes, cooks and prepares food while the wind is whistling through the yard and she does too when she wants to cook for herself. But this setup is pretty appealing in the summer.

The laundry is another matter. I have found that even when the clothes are frozen stiff on the outside clothesline, they still lose some water somehow. But on non-sunny above-freezing days in the winter, the clothes get to a clammy level and stay there. So then they must be brought inside and draped on furniture to complete the drying process.

While I was in the kitchen seeing my breath and cooking potatoes in the near-dark, my family—grandma, mom and two girls—were gathered around the gas heater looking at the People Magazine my sister sent. It was the annual Sexiest Man Alive issue. FYI the SMA for 2009 was Johnny Depp. They can’t read English but of course, it is totally not necessary for this issue.

There are over 100 fabulous-looking men in this magazine. When I returned shivering with my cooked potatoes, they were arguing over who is better-looking, but complained that there were no Azerbaijani men in the issue.

After hearing some of their arguments and giving my own opinion, I went upstairs and brought some of my clothes down from the line. They were frozen into strange shapes. I hung them on different pieces of furniture in my room, ate my potatoes and read a book.

Before I came here, I didn’t think much about the prestige of living in a country everyone has heard of and actually knows something about. Many Azerbaijanis know that people around the world may not know exactly where the country is, but are usually surprised to find out that many people have never heard of it.

One of the advantages of living in the Soviet Union to the Azerbaijanis is that they were part of a 15-country world power. Azerbaijan was proud to can fruit, grow vegetables and tea and produce china, silk, flowers and rugs for themselves and the other 14 countries. They in turn, got the benefit of receiving goods produced in other parts of the Soviet Union.

One way I can describe what has happened since the fall of the Soviet Union is to compare Wisconsin (which is a little bigger than Azerbaijan) in America to Azerbaijan in the Soviet Union:

As the Federal government collapsed, the states of the United States had become separate countries overnight. Wisconsin’s dairy exports stopped because no country has money to buy dairy products, borders are now closed and different governments are springing up, some of which may last and some of which won’t. The railroad and truck traffic that was so easy before is a major problem now, with different rules and laws. There is no payment system or even financial system in place. No one really trusts the other countries to pay their bills, plus it is more patriotic and cheaper to stick to your own country’s products.

Wisconsin’s tourist business collapsed immediately because most people could not travel outside of their own countries anymore due to lack of money and the difficulties of getting passports. National chains also collapsed because they would not be able to figure out how to operate in 50 countries with different currencies, laws and shipping difficulties.

Harley-Davidson, Kohler plumbing fixtures and the sausage factories stopped production because people in Wisconsin don’t buy that many motorcycles, bathroom fixtures and sausage. All of these business problems put most of the country of Wisconsin’s citizens out of work.

Medical supplies and drugs from outside Wisconsin and wheat from Illinois became unavailable. Some of the dairy farms were converted to wheat to make up the difference. But the dairy farmers are not knowledgeable about wheat and the rocky soil is not good for growing it.

Fresh fruits and vegetables in the winter are non-existent because of the cold climate and importing is impossible due to the balance of trade issues and the difficulty of transporting perishable products on deteriorating roads and railroad tracks, so much agricultural production in each country rots in the fields because the interstate highway system deteriorated and collapsed since there was no Federal government to maintain it.

There is no dental school in the country, so dentists are becoming scarce. Maybe someone started a dental school, but there is no accreditation process or competition; a small country like Wisconsin doesn’t need two dental schools, especially if no one can afford to go to the dentist anymore.

No one was in charge for awhile, so capable, talented people sneaked out of the country and went to places where they could find work. The less-educated people who have fewer options stayed behind.

Wisconsin’s Indians are trying to secede and start their own country, while the country of Wisconsin fights it and a civil or terrorist war is brewing. Folks in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are trying to figure out if they want to merge with Wisconsin, since they are closer anyway, and this is starting tensions with Michigan.

And people in countries all over the world are saying they have never heard of the country of Wisconsin.

I write a lot about what I am doing and what has happened to me. This time I will write will more about what other volunteers are doing.

Some volunteers in different cities are running a baseball league. No one plays baseball in Azerbaijan except kids who have been taught by Peace Corps Volunteers since they started coming to Azerbaijan in 2003. Everyone is welcome and some of the kids who have been coming for a few years are becoming skilled. Girls come in some cities. Besides practicing in their own town, the kids travel to different towns to play two or three times a year. This is great because most kids haven’t traveled outside of their town.

Some English teacher volunteers are planning summer camps in their villages, towns and cities for their students, most of whom have nothing to do when school is out.

There are also two leadership camps, one for 13-15 year old girls and one for boys the same age. Volunteers attending the camp can choose 3 kids to attend with them. This is very exciting for the kids, because this is often the first time they have been away from home. They work on planning, teamwork and goal setting, play a lot of games and do a community service project when they get back.

We have a quarterly newspaper that the volunteers write and use to share tips and entertain each other. This quarter, Bill wrote about how to make a construct a holder for compost out of little more than chicken wire and also how to make pickles. My family doesn’t compost, so I wrote about what my host mother does with leftover food:

“For those who don't compost--my host mom helps homeless dogs all year. She has a small bucket in the fridge and puts food waste in it, such as pieces of old bread, old soup, vegetable pieces, stale baked goods and milk. She mixes in a little fat or oil. When she sees a stray dog outside that she knows, she puts a something from the bucket outside the house and they always eat it.”

In the winter, many people turn their fridges off. The temperature in the refrigerator is often the same in the winter whether the fridge is plugged in or not. So people save money by unplugging it.

My volunteer friends Denney and Linda are married and retired. Denney is 60 and jogs around his town. Azerbaijanis don’t jog; most people are unaware of the practice. Also, it can be difficult because the pavement is rarely level. Denney says “I am lucky to have lots of pavement and parks, one of which is about 3km long. I always wear long, athletic pants, never shorts. When I first arrived and talked about running, my co-worker was very encouraging, but said shorts were forbidden!

“The dogs are not a huge problem, they only strongly confronted me once. Before we came, there was a wild dog elimination program, (comment from me: they are shot) so there were few on the streets. I see a couple of dozen every outing. In one area, I always carry a good-sized rock for my protection, but have never had to throw it. Once, a pedestrian helped me with an excellent throw that scared away a pack of three.

I have the usual physical and emotional health benefits of exercise, but the social benefits surprised me a bit. Almost everywhere I go in my town, someone smiles, makes jogging motions with their arms, and says “Salam! (Hello!) One day, a rather large man followed me into a store and asked how old I was. I replied 60, he hugged me, and he is now our butcher.”

Azerbaijanis love Lady GaGa. The volunteers who came when I did don’t know much about her because she wasn’t famous when we left. But people ask me about her all the time. She is on TV and magazine covers. The other thing we didn’t have when my group arrived here was Twitter. From the sound of it, I won’t like it.

My group—50 percent of the volunteers in the country-- has our annual meeting next week. The exciting part is three nights in a hotel with hot showers and better heat. I will take daily showers, which seem excessive to me now in the winter.

I wash my hair every 3-4 days and it looks okay. Actually, I got a haircut today—just about an inch cut off. It looks different now, a bob, about an inch above my shoulders. This is considered short hair. Most Azerbaijanis think short hair on women isn’t appropriate. I got some strange looks from people I know when I returned from the haircut. They just don’t understand why I don’t want long hair.

I think many Azerbaijanis feel that American women are not attractive because they are too masculine. We tend to like short or medium length hair, tailored clothes, comfortable shoes, and have an aversion to lots of make-up. Sometimes we even dress for sports. Most women here over 21 are married or looking to be. Some see the mostly single PC women and think we decided to come here (or were “sent” here by our families) because we can’t find a man.

The Peace Corps gives us all kinds of tests when we are here a year—mostly medical but also a language proficiency test. So I have good news and bad news. The good news is I improved to an “advanced low” ranking on the language test.

The bad news is that I have intestinal worms. Actually, I HAD them because I have already taken anti-worm medicine. They are the kind that are the size of earthworms. They are very common in Azerbaijan and most people don’t know they have them. Like most people, I had no symptoms. I think I have changed a lot since I got here, because the news didn’t really bother me. According to volunteer gossip, over 50 percent of the group that left in September had worms.

More gross stuff—one of my fellow volunteers in this town peed on a rat last weekend. He was using his squat toilet, which is basically a hole in the group surrounded by a porcelain frame. A rat came out of the hole, was hit by the pee and ran back in. I can tolerate intestinal worms, but a rat coming out of the toilet is where I draw the line. I am not using his toilet.

One of the first things a visitor would notice in Azerbaijan is that a lot of things don’t work. Toilets don’t flush, stove burners don’t light, light fixtures and electrical outlets don’t work, apartment stairwells are always dark, windows are broken. Some electrical outlets feature bare wires and you are supposed to wrap the bare wires from an appliance around to get it to work. Sorry, I don’t wrap.

In the center of town, patio blocks are laid for sidewalks and soon they start to pop out of place. There is a continual need to replace the blocks. Apparently pouring concrete sidewalks, as they did in Soviet days is not possibly anymore. Cars may have working headlights or not, kids may go all winter with no heat in their schools because the heaters or electrical outlets don’t work or don’t exist.

In my house, currently the hot water heater doesn’t work, the kitchen sink runs constantly and the kitchen has one tiny bulb for light with no ceiling fixture. We have a washing machine, but it isn’t hooked up and only two burners on the stove work. The bathroom is tiled, floor, walls and ceiling, but the wall tile is buckling and much of the floor tile has come up. The shower has a tiny trickle of water and the toilet doesn’t flush.

Everything is tolerable to my family except the hot water heater. My host mother has taken an 8-hour train ride to Baku to get money from her sister to fix the hot water heater. Until then I take bucket baths with water heated up on top of the stove.

Azerbaijanis tend to take a relaxed attitude toward things not working. My teacher tells me that there is a new apartment building in Baku in which there was supposed to be a boiler in the basement (central heating is rare here), but they forgot to put it in while it would still fit, so now the building will not have central heat.

This is not a fix-it culture. Most Azerbaijani men don’t seem to have toolboxes, know how to use tools or feel it is their responsibility to fix any of this stuff. There are people who can be hired to do it, but they aren’t plumbers, electricians, or painters, just guys who are supposedly handy. Of course, there are some tradesmen in the country, but ordinary people can’t afford to hire them.

But if there is a continuum in which one end is “everyone knows it doesn’t work” and at the other end is “it works”, Azerbaijanis and many other countries do a lot better than America at some things. One is integrating the poor into the mainstream.

I notice that Azerbaijanis don’t try to keep people poorer than they are from living near them. Neighborhoods are mixed up, with very poor people living next to middle-class people. This is a huge benefit to the poor because they have access to the benefits that everyone else has.

I was in Toronto a couple of times in the ‘90’s. The first time, on the way to my hotel, I asked the taxi driverwhere where the bad neighborhoods were. He said that I must be American because we usually don’t understand basic things that other countries do to save money and make things work.

He went on to explain that in Canadian cities, poor people aren’t allowed to live together and create a place where resources are scarce and the atmosphere is dangerous and unhealthy. He said that the poor are scattered thinly in successful areas when the poor children are small. They are surrounded by working people, good schools, low crime, libraries, and few opportunities for getting into trouble. This is a powerful way of helping poor children to succeed and does not breed institutional poverty. His opinion was that in the US we would prefer to punish the parents of these children by not helping them get the basic things they need to raise their children to be successful. He felt that by doing this, we punish ourselves in the long run, because we are the ones who pay the social costs generation after generation.

Of course, in America this doesn’t just happen with poor people. Those who have $5 million homes don’t want to live near people with $2.5 million homes and want gates to keep them out. This happens in Baku, our capital city, to a certain extent, mostly with people from other countries who work here and want to live with people like themselves. And in America, it is common for communities to want to zone affordable rental apartments out of their middle and upper class neighborhoods.

One of the criticisms of the countries of the former Soviet Union is that there is corruption, with people paying money to get an advantage--a good place in a university or a job. However, I don’t see the difference between this type of corruption and ours that forces poor children to live in places that have none of the resources that better-off people have, giving us a permanent advantage over them.

I have talked about some of the unpleasant things that most of us encounter in the Peace Corps—cold homes, the problems of living with poor families, difficulties with language, missing our families—but these are all things that we expected and accept as part of the experience. Some other unpleasant experiences we didn’t expect or didn’t think about much before we came—but they are unpleasanat just the same..

One is that life goes on at home and sometimes it is difficult to miss out. One volunteer discovered in training that two of her children would become parents--her first two grandchilden—eight months after she arrived here. She quit and went home two months before they were born. Some have parents or siblings with health problems. One older volunteer lost two of his siblings in a three-week period. He and his wife went home for a couple of weeks.

Parents of twenty-somethings especially worry and wonder how their children are doing. Sometimes they don’t hear much. Those who have grandchildren try to stay close and miss the grandkids a lot while they are here. Some volunteers have significant others at home that they hope will still be there when they get back.

Then there are problems in the country. While most of us have friends in the Peace Corps, our best and closest friends are at home in the US. A quarter or so of our volunteers live by themselves and are teachers in small villages. As much as they may like their Azerbaijani co-workers and acquaintances, it is difficult to have no one from their culture around on a day-to-day basis. And depending on language skills, no meaningful communication may be going on with most people in the village.

Many volunteers find that once they are with their organizations, there isn’t much work to do or the organization seems to not know what to do with the volunteer. We don’t have to spend all of our time with our assigned organization and can find our own work, but most of us are disappointed when our organizations don’t seem to want to work with us. A few don’t feel that their organization is effective or that the staff are competent. This bothers them because they feel there may be too many obstacles to make an impact with that organization.

Others feel that even when they choose their projects they aren’t having much impact. Sometimes they are disappointed with the culture—for example, having someone request to meet with you and then having them not show up or call. Sometimes it is difficult to work on other projects due to lack of community interest.

Host families can be difficult to live with—if they don’t or can’t pay the utility bills you have no gas, electricity or water for awhile; some families fight a lot; and many times they don’t understand the concept of privacy. Living in one’s own rented home is sometimes no fun either—leases don’t exist and being kicked out with a couple of days notice is common. Some have vermin problems, lighting the furnace and hot water heater can be very dangerous (you only turn on the water heater when you need hot water) and if you run out of water, you can’t be sure when the local water system will send more to the water tank. One volunteer can’t use her fridge because she gets an electric shock when she touches it. The landlord is not interested in getting it fixed.

Then in the winter, it is dark by 6:00. If you live alone, you don’t see anyone in the evenings and it can be lonely. Some volunteers have internet at their homes and others need to travel 45 minutes to an hour to stay in touch with their families at home.

I think these conditions hit the younger volunteers especially hard. They tend to travel more to visit other volunteers and to spend an occasional weekend in Baku where there are ex-pats to meet and bars to visit. We have over a thousand books in the Peace Corps lounge in Baku. Volunteers have read them and donated them for others to use. We also exchange movies and downloaded music. There is a video store in Baku that sells pirated videos—for example I have “Dexter Season 4” and “Mad Men Season 3” (highly recommended) which are not out in the US yet. We can’t buy non-pirated DVD’s in Azerbaijan.

Sometimes we get sick and it is depressing to be sick here on our own. I have been pretty healthy here, but a couple of weeks ago I got a 103 fever and had the chills really bad. Luckily for me, I was traveling and stayed with a married couple from Kansas City. Their apartment was warm, they took good care of me and served me wonderful meals. In a couple of days, I felt much better. Our Peace Corps doctors are great and take wonderful care of us, but of course they can’t be in our communities.

For me, the things that bother me most are missing my family and friends in America and impatience with myself when I do American things while I am here. I really want to experience Azerbaijan and when I get caught up in Mad Men I wonder why I am wasting my time with it here when I can watch it back in the US. Also, I get annoyed when I go several days without a shower and when I get low on clean clothes. Communicating with my family and friends by email gets old and calling is expensive. I would really like to have a real visit. My daughter visited in September and my sister is coming in April.

I want to have more meaningful conversation than my basic day-to-day language skills allow and want to accomplish something lasting and sustainable here. I find that changing attitudes and introducing possibilities is as close as I am coming to doing anything lasting. For example, a lot of Azerbaijanis have a twisted view of America because they watch American movies. Sometimes the only things that I can do with someone is have them realize that American women don’t all act like prostitutes, most Americans are not rich and that life in America is very competitive and challenging. I never thought that providing that information would be a major accomplishment for me in Azerbaijan.

Update--In my last post, I say how cold my home is. Since then, my family had a gas furnace installed in the living room. So this room is warm and some of the heat flows to my room.

Before I came to Azerbaijan, my biggest worry was about the toilets. I had heard that squat toilets are common. Also, I had heard that Azerbaijanis do not use toilet paper. Both of these things are true. Also, now they are non-issues for me and many times I think the no-toilet-paper thing is better.

The squat toilet is basically a porcelain fixture at ground level. It either flushes or you pour a bucket of water down it. Squatting is no big deal. Since everything is flat on the floor, it is easier to clean the toilet. Some people just turn a hose on it every day.

Toilet paper is replaced by water. The newer toilets have a spray attachment next to the toilet and you just squirt to clean yourself. The older toilets have a strangely shaped jug of water with a spout that you use the same way.

The Azerbaijanis feel it has two advantages—the first, it is cleaner—rather than wiping things, you are really cleaning them. The other is that you don’t have to buy or dispose of toilet paper.

When I think of how many millions of rolls of toilet paper Americans use every day, it converted my thinking pretty quickly. I wonder where all of this paper goes.

I know a family with a baby. Whenever the baby has a diaper change, they immerse the baby’s butt in water. They feel that wiping him off just is not clean enough.

We just welcomed four new Peace Corps Volunteers to our town. They have been in training for three months. They and some of their 59 fellow new volunteers have had time to experience the “Azerbaijan diet” and many have found the pounds rolling off. Just by eating like an Azerbaijani, people who have carried extra pounds for years appear to effortlessly be losing them.

These are the ways Azerbaijanis eat and don’t eat:

1. Lots of tea, maybe a cookie or something sweet with it.

2. Pop and juice as a special treat, not stocked regularly.

3. A light breakfast—bread, tea, maybe cheese or fruit.

4. Small portions and no snacks

5. Processed food eaten rarely.

6. No eating after dinner.

7. Dessert is often fruit.

8. Trans fats don’t appear to exist here

9. Lots of dairy fat in cooking

10. Cheese and yogurt instead of milk

11. Eating fruits and vegetables in season.

The other reason that weight falls off easily is that many volunteers do a lot more walking. Many have to walk to work and to get food and shop for anything. To visit friends involves walking also. So it is common that trainees pack a lot of clothes and can’t wear some of them within a few months. Often the weight stabilizes after 6 months or so A few people gain weight, usually the ones who are less active here than at home.

This is not a good time of year in Azerbaijan. It is cold and my family is poor. It gets dark at 6:00, so evening activities done in the nice weather are exchanged for staying at home in my cold house.

This is the first time I have lived in a house. I lived in apartments before and they were warm even if the family did not have a furnace. I think it was partly because the other families around them had furnaces and also because in a small apartment, the gas stove can spread the heat to the next room.

My family can’t afford to turn on the heat. We have a huge home by Azerbaijani standards and by American standards a large home. It is two-story with a large courtyard. The thing that one immediately notices is that the house is not finished. There is scaffolding and ladders around, wires sticking out of the walls and construction debris scattered around. The grandma says that the family ran out of money to finish the house.

My family consists of the mom, two daughters, 13 and 14 years old, and their father, who lives and works in Russia. This is because there are relatively few good jobs in Azerbaijan. Because foreigners can’t usually get good jobs there, most men don’t send much, if anything, home and usually can’t afford to come home either. I have heard a statistic that 1 of every 8 employed Azerbaijani men works in in a foreign country.

This is an area in which Azerbaijanis complain about capitalism. During Soviet times everyone had a job and families were not separated against their will. Also most people in Azerbaijan had similar living standards, with money for food, utilities and medical care with some discretionary funds.

But now, instead of working at jobs that pay enough to support a family, some men will not work at all for years. Most unemployed men, though, have a job that they designed themselves, like selling fruit from the trunk of a car, selling lottery tickets on the street , or setting up a shack in a parking lot and fixing shoes---anything to get out of the house and earn a little money.

My host mother needs a full-time job but can’t find one. She sells cosmetics from a catalog, bakes and cooks things to sell and has me as a boarder. She says her cosmetics and cooking bring in about 50 manat a month, about $60. The Peace Corps pays her 110 manat a month, about $132, with extra in the winter for heat (which we don’t have). Out of this she buys and cooks my food and supplies electricity, gas and water for me. She says food for a family of 5 would normally be 200 manat a month, but she does not have that much income, so they eat cheaper. The major way they do that is by having one item for each meal--such as a plate of macaroni, soup or potatoes. I am not sure how she pays the other expenses—maybe from my heat money?.

I have noticed that when Azerbaijanis talk about their salaries (not a private topic here) they make so little that one can’t figure out how they survive. One of the problems that people complain about is the underground economy. Also, I think that different generations of families living together and pooling their money, as well as the relative ease of growing food in much of the country, makes it easier survive.

Most homes have a gas pipe sticking out of the wall and they install a small metal contraption to it in the winter. This becomes the furnace. It is like a radiator, but is hotter. It is kept on when the family is home and is turned off when they go to bed. People close off parts of a larger home and sleep in one room to be in the warmth.

My house has central heating, a rarity in Azerbaijan. It was on last winter, when I didn’t live here, but the family is poorer now and can’t afford to turn it on this year. The kitchen is warm, though, because they have a gas stove burner going all day.

I was somewhat irate for awhile because I want some heat, but I notice that my family huddles in the kitchen and eats their one item for dinner, unlike other families that have several. So I eat my soup and plot how to keep my room from freezing so I don’t have to spend all of my time at home in the kitchen.

The talk in the kitchen revolves around issues of being poor. The girls are told every day that there is no money and the phone calls revolve around trying to figure out how to pay bills and get contributions from family members who have more money than they do.

My plan for not freezing in my room is that my PC friend gave me an old space heater. I found out, though, that this is not a good way to become warm. The heater blows hot air, but if I put my cold hand right up to the grill, the side facing the grill becomes warm, but the other side remains cold. Usually I give up and wrap up in a blanket.

The shower is another problem. The shower room is freezing cold and the hot water stream is a dribble. So if I am wetting my hair, for example, it takes a minute to get enough water on my hair to work with the shampoo. My body is freezing during this time.

I could move to another home and have heat and a warm shower. Every family has their drawbacks, though, so I think I will stick out the winter with this family. Come spring, I think it will be livable here.

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I am always talking about how great the food is in Azerbaijan. Besides the fresh ingredients and bountiful fruits and vegetables available during most of the year, in Azerbaijan almost everything is made from scratch daily.

Many families also make their own bread. It is mostly white bread in round loaves. I always had the impression that making bread required lots of hand-kneading or time spent with a mixer. Azerbaijanis make bread without a lot of kneading and it looks and tastes just fine.

Gutab

Take some lavash bread (round and flat—flatter than pita bread), sprinkle with a few tablespoons of grated or crumbled sheep or goat cheese and a few tablespoons of some fresh, chopped herbs. Put a little oil in a pan, fold the lavash in half with the contents inside. Fry for a minute or two until hot.

Roll up to eat or cut in pieces to eat it.

We have freshly cut bunches of herbs available every day. A good-sized bouquet of herbs is about 25 cents.

Garlic/Yogurt Sauce

Mix a couple of cups of plain yogurt with a few cloves of minced garlic. Let it sit for a day or so in a glass jar in the fridge. It makes a great topping for vegetables, pasta or to add to the top of soup or stew.

Beet Salad

I know, you don’t like beets, you don’t know what to do with them, etc. But many volunteers here like beets now. This salad is great and easy to make.

Serves 6

One pound of beets, cleaned and peeled

½ cup of small pieces of walnuts

8 cloves of garlic, minced

some mayonnaise or sour cream

Cook the beets in boiling water until you can get a fork through them, but not easily. Cool them off. Either shred the beets on a medium or fine part of a hand grater or put them in a food processor on the “grate” setting. Mix the walnuts, garlic and beets together and stir until everything is well mixed.

Add enough mayonnaise or sour cream and mix again until everything is stuck together somewhat. The amount of mayonnaise/sour cream is an individual decision. Taste and add salt and pepper if you want. Cool in the fridge until cold. Added excitement--your urine will be red for a couple of days. Maybe save this for Valentine's Day?

There is a little dog that lives outside my home. She is unusual because usually the dogs in Azerbaijan are homeless and feral. They stay away from humans and are around mostly at night, when they go through garbage heaps to find food. Muslims traditionally don’t like dogs, but I understand in Christian countries nearby there are many homeless dogs too.

My family lived in Moscow for 10 years and learned to like dogs there, so we have an inside dog. The neighbors think it is crazy. Her name is Julia and she is a chow. She is a beautiful, smart dog.

My host mother has been tossing an occasional scrap to this medium-size brown dog who lives outside and has been here since September, when I moved here. I guess this is why she stays nearby. She is about 30 pounds, brown and non-descript, but always greets me when I come or go. I don’t encourage her by giving her food, but she doesn’t stop trying to communicate with me. I am afraid to make friends with her because some people here mistreat dogs—I don’t want her to think it is okay to be friendly to humans.

It is winter and she has been sleeping on cold, wet ground now for several weeks. The days are still sunny, but it will get cold and dark for a couple of months. I don’t know what to do for her. There are no shelters here. Every so often at night, I hear her yiping in fear. I can’t see out my windows to figure out what is going on.

Our city is unusual, because we have a veterinarian who will treat pets. One Peace Corps Volunteer a couple of years ago actually found a dog while here, took care of him for over a year and ended up taking the dog home with him. All he needed was a veterinarian’s certificate of health and his dog went home with him on the plane.

That makes me think of the story about a beachcomber who comes upon thousands of starfish that had been beached by a tide. They would die if they stayed on the beach long. She was walking along the beach, picking some up and tossing them back into the surf. Someone saw what she was doing and asked her what impact she could have because she couldn’t begin to toss them all back. The beachcomber nodded at the starfish in her hand and said “What I am doing is everything to THIS starfish.”

There is only one starfish outside my door. But I don’t know what to do about her.

Here is a story written by an Azerbaijani woman who received a loan from my micro-credit organization.

“My name is XXXXX and I am from XXXX (a small village). I am married with three children and have been a client for four cycles (two years). Before I owned my business, the only source of income for our family was the small household in the village (her husband is apparently unemployed, which is common. She means that the household is surrounded by a small amount of land and that they can grow vegetables and fruit trees and raise a few animals for food). Despite the fact that I started my own business, our family’s financial and living position did not improve. Also, my business was not growing because there was no financial institution to support small businesses like ours.

Our group began (loans are made to groups, who choose their own members. The group is responsible for paying back the loans if one of the members doesn’t pay. This is because there is usually no collateral) when a group of women was talking about micro-credit loans. According to what they said, loans from this organization had caused a lot of changes in their acquaintances' lives. We agreed that we would apply to change our lives as well.

So, our group of women received our first loan. Possibly this was one of the happiest days for each member of the group. As women, we were given a chance to change our lives independently. Now our trade is recognized and well-known all around and we feel respected and surrounded by support. This experience has helped others to have confidence in us, which we intend to justify. Because of these loans, the turnover of my inventory has become constant. Formerly my business was almost going down due to a lack of financial resources. Sometimes I had to use some portion of cash on hand for solving financial problems in my family, then restart everything from the beginning. But later, thanks to these loans, I could purchase more goods of high quality and get more income.

I used the loans efficiently for improving my business. The loans absolutely changed the lives of my family members and me. I increased my working capital, and even at the cost of the income obtained from the business, I expanded my household in the village, organized a wedding for my son and most important, resolved my domestic problems. (Hmm, not sure what she did with the husband :-) ). The loans also caused a change in my thoughts regarding my business; in the future my goal is to extend it again and increase the number of my business premises (she means she wants to add another store) in the trade center.

I have a great and everlasting gratitude and respect in my heart towards this organization. I am just one of their clients, but I know that they have a lot of other clients whose paths in life were brightened up and their trust in the future was encouraged thanks to this organization.”

It is very gratifying for me to work with this organization. Besides helping people who are very poor, the organization provides good jobs with benefits to its employees. These employees are not poor and are able to provide well for their families.

Loans start at $100 and go up to about $5,000. They are usually for six months, but can be renewed. The repayment rate is well over 99 percent, an eye-popping figure for a former American banker like me.

The company was started in 1984 by someone who had been a Peace Corps volunteer, then spent 15 or so years in organizations trying to help the poor before he started his own organization. It now operates in 21 countries. Out of over 500 employees in Azerbaijan, I am the only American, but there are a few people from other countries.

One fact that can be hard to get over is that interest rates are usually around 35 percent. This can sound shocking and exploitive to the uninitiated, but it makes sense when you understand the alternatives and the cost of putting small loans on the books.

For example, if someone borrows $100, they would pay $18 in interest for 6 months. Our organization has an office, many employees, computers, heat and lighting to pay for and we advertise. With the $100, the borrower can buy some goods from a wholesaler or buy some livestock, sell the goods for possibly $170 and make a profit to buy more goods.

Before micro-credit organizations, the only way to get a loan was through what we call a loan shark. And many people went without credit. Before for-credit organizations dominated, charity organizations were tried. Many of these organizations failed because the clients did not see the loan as an obligation, but as charity, and did not pay them back.

Many foreigners in Azerbaijan lament the status of women here and wonder how things can change. I feel that preaching, arguing and becoming outraged did not work in America and will not work in Azerbaijan. What works is having tools available so that some women can take advantage of them. Some will, most won’t. The women that do take advantage and succeed will change things for all women eventually.

Living in Azerbaijan, I have noticed a few things that Azerbaijanis swear by or that they don’t question, but are tips that work for them and maybe for you, too.

For women--wash hair about once a week. I never thought I would agree with this practice, but I can see that it works for Azerbaijani women. Their hair is glossy and does not smell. In America, I washed my hair every day. Now, I am down to washing it once every four days and have noticed it has more natural oil, but is not greasy.

Help for dry winter skin—no central heat, no problem. Turns out the high temperatures in low humidity is what causes the dry skin.

Cut down on laundry by wearing “house clothes”. When you are at home, wear your sweats-type clothing, but never anything that you would wear outside. This lets you wear your street clothes longer without washing them.

If it’s not cold enough to turn on the heat, but you want a little warmth, turn on the gas burners in the kitchen. Have the whole family sit in the kitchen and then go to bed in your cold bedroom with your skin that doesn’t need moisturizer.

Tolerate poultry. I have read that Clayton, Missouri is roiled by a debate about chickens in suburban backyards. Some residents want them, some don’t. Here no one minds. They do make noise, but people are used to it and tune it out. The fresh eggs and antics of chickens are worth it. For some reason, the dogs and cats leave the chickens alone.

Tolerate clotheslines. Most communities in the US prohibit the hanging of laundry outside. About 6 percent of US energy consumption is said to be for drying clothes. I would have agreed with the “no clothesline” rules before I came here. No more--I love the way the clothes smell and think that a dryer is hard on clothes. Of course, in the winter, clothes can take a couple of days to dry and still might be clammy.

You can get a lot of dirt out of rugs by using a stiff broom on them. In the good weather, just take them outside and beat them (after you hang them on your newly-installed clothesline).. A couple of times a year, after you sweep and beat them, let a cold hose run on them for awhile, then put them in the sun for a day or two to dry.

Instead of washing blankets and quilts so much, just hang them on a clothesline on a windy day. Some of the dirt blows off and they smell great.

Instead of using bleach on your white cotton and linen things, just hang them on the clothesline in the summer and they will bleach right out.

Azerbaijanis rarely throw out glass jars, such as ones that pickles or mayonnaise come in. They use them for storing pasta, rice, beans, cereal—any food that Americans keep in a box or bag. They think this is more sanitary.

I thought that cockroaches were some super-pest that was everywhere. I heard they survived when the dinosaurs became extinct. But I haven’t seen or heard of any here.

Shave your baby daughter’s head and her hair will be thicker. It is not unusual for a girl to have her head shaved every summer from babyhood through about age 4. The little girls look really cute when their hair starts to grow out and it is very cool for them in the summer. Azerbaijanis believe that this is why their girls have such thick, pretty hair.

Make sure you have a few fruit or nut trees in your yard. It is common for Azerbaijanis to harvest mulberries, pears, apples, plums and grapes, all from their own yards. They don’t prune or fertilize and get plenty of yield.

Refrigeration is overrated. People leave food out all night in pots on the stove and then have leftovers the next day. No one gets sick.

Azerbaijanis mostly can’t afford cleaning solutions like Pine-Sol and Mr. Clean. They use vinegar and water, which is strong, antibacterial and better for the environment.

Use metal dishes in the microwave. A few families are beginning to buy microwaves. We have one at work now. People put metal dishes in it every day with no problem. They throw a fit when I put my Rubbermaid container in there. They think it will melt.

No shoes inside. No bare feet either. Each person has two pairs of slippers for inside. One is plastic and for use in places there might be water. The other is cloth for other parts of the house. This method keeps everything cleaner.

Be suspicious of any food that comes from far away. Azerbaijanis feel it may not be fresh or may have unhealthy ingredients. We get quite a bit of nuts, beans and dried fruit from Iran, our neighbor, but not much from other places.

Cut down on laundry and paper towels by not drying your hands after you wash them. It feels really strange at first, but your hands will air dry. Some Azerbaijanis feel that using a communal hand towel is just not sanitary—that air drying is better.

After you wash the dishes, you must go to the bathroom and wash your hands. I don’t know why, but if I don’t, people are offended.

In my city, the Peace Corps volunteers are mostly older people. I think this is mostly because many of the young people teach English in schools or work with youth. In our city, we have no English teaching Peace Corps volunteers and more businesses in which those with business experience volunteer.

So when I traveled around Azerbaijan this summer and spent time with more young volunteers, I had a bit of culture shock. I already knew that I am the least traveled of my group of 60 volunteers. Most have been all over the world, even the young ones. Before coming to Azerbaijan, I had been in two foreign countries—Mexico and Canada. As I met some of the volunteers who have been here for two years and got reacquainted with my group, I kept hearing things like—

* When I backpacked through Mongolia

* When I lived in Prague

* You need to avoid the (blank) food in Cambodia, but it’s okay in Laos

* My relative and her husband (he is 90) went to Antarctica last year

* When I get out of the Peace Corps, I am going to bike from Alaska to South America

I started to understand that the adventure demographic is very prevalent in the Peace Corps. One of my fellow volunteers told me after it was clear that I had adjusted to the Peace Corps that he earlier had a bet going that I would be the first dropout out in training. He thought I would not adjust after having traveled so little. Others appear startled by my lack of travel experiences.

But when I was in another region of Azerbaijan this summer, with a crazy taxi driver and three other volunteers, I realized that I may be the only plain vanilla person that I know here.

We were in a very hot region and were helping a volunteer by working for a week at her children’s camp. She felt that there was not enough for kids to do in the summer in her region, so she had planned a camp from 10-2 each day for four weeks. After camp, we decided to go to up to a nearby mountain town to cool off—a volunteer who lives there was going to meet us and we planned to hike.

We told the taxi driver we wanted to look at the scenery on the way up, but apparently he never heard of the leisurely landscape tour. He took off tearing around the mountain roads. While we were careening up the slopes, the others talked about their travel experiences, while I periodically interceded with the taxi driver to slow down.

During the ride, I heard about all of the interesting and (to me) exotic places these young people had worked, lived and traveled. When it came to my turn, the taxi driver suddenly pulled over and we noticed that a group of people were peering carefully over the edge of a cliff.

He hustled over, had a brief conversation and came back to tell us that a BMW had gone over the side and 3 people were dead. (There are normally no guard rails, but I have seen a makeshift—looking guard rail along some roads. It is a pipe about two feet off the ground that looks pretty flimsy. I commented one time about it with a companion and found that these are gas lines running to the country. So I guess as you would begin plunging off an embankment, your vehicle would possibly blow up on the way down) I thought this tragedy would make him slow down, but it appeared to energize him even more.

I mumbled my story of having visited Mexico and Canada, while everyone soberly contemplated this pathetic travel history. They then asked me about my job. I am afraid that they also thought that 32 years in banking did not sound too interesting either. This is when one of the young women told me about her unconventional life.

Her parents were circus performers and her grandparents founded the circus after meeting a large troupe of talented midgets (little people, I discovered, is the current correct term) in Europe. The midgets even helped raise her and sometimes walked her to school. She is a very talented, creative young woman who began doing the administrative work of the circus when she was about 13.

This volunteer and half of the volunteers in Azerbaijan recently left, having finished their 27 month commitment. Some will attend grad school or have other education plans, a few will go back to their previous jobs, a few are retired, a couple have found jobs in Baku (our capital city) some want to travel to different places, but most will look for a job in the US.

I wonder what it is like to have a conventional job after the excitement of their lives so far. Maybe they won’t have conventional jobs. The founder of the organization that I volunteer for in Azerbaijan joined the Peace Corps in 1962 and founded this micro-credit organization in 1984. It is now in 21 countries and has served over 1 million families.

I don’t have the same desire to travel the world and sightsee. This experience has changed me so that when I visit a country, I want to be more than a tourist., I also would like to visit more places in the United States. That alone could keep me busy for a long time.

I go guesting frequently. This means that people I know--relatives of my host family, co-workers, people I meet in my town--invite me to their homes for tea or a meal. At least twice when I was in the company of women, I thought that women were asking me how many abortions I have had. I didn't know the Azerbaijani word for it, but it turns out it is the same as the American word.

Thinking that they surely couldn't be asking me this question, I asked them a question, and the conversation got back on track. Azerbaijani culture allows nosy questions, even to people one has just met. So I am frequently asked how old I am, how much money I made in the US, how much money I have in the bank and why my children are not married.

Then one day, the news came on in my home and it was about Barack Obama giving a graduation speech at Notre Dame. It was news that some Americans have an objection to abortions. My host mother, who has two children and teaches first grade, asked me about this, telling me that she has had several abortions. She asked me how many I have had and asked me why some Americans object to them.

I told her that Americans usually don't discuss any abortions they may have had and explained that most people feel that abortion should be legal but that it is something that should be avoided if possible by using contraception.

She agreed with me that in an ideal world, abortions would be rare, but said that Azerbaijani women have no choice because abortions are cheap and easily obtained, but the government does not supply contraceptives. I asked about condoms and she told me that men won't wear them. During our training, the Peace Corps doctors had mentioned to us in training that it is not unusual for women have 10 or more abortions, but we were absorbing so much at the time, that I put that fact out of my mind.

I was shocked and usually my way of dealing with shock is to do research. I found a study that an American university had done which confirmed that very few Azerbaijanis use contraception because it is not available, they don't know what it is or how to use it, it is too expensive or because most men won't wear condoms.

I should interject here that I am talking about married women. The lifestyle of a single woman outside of Baku does not normally include dating or going anywhere alone with a man, so pregnancy in a single woman does not normally happen. The average woman has had 3.5 abortions--since some are not married or are young enough to have future abortions, presumably over their lifetimes, married women average more than 3.5 apiece.

A book I consulted on the dissolution of the Soviet Union declares that abortions were legal and free in USSR countries beginning in 1920, but have risen since the collapse of the Soviet Union due to the disappearance of state-subsidized day care, the collapse of the state welfare system, and the deterioration of health care services.

One of my Peace Corps friends here told me that her host mother, who has two teen daughters and whose husband has a professional job, has had 4 abortions in the 18 months she has lived with that family. Others I talked to said Azerbaijani women tend to be very matter-of-fact about abortion--women feel there is no choice because they can't afford to raise more children. Most Azerbaijanis have 1 or 2 children--people who live in the country may have more.

I completely support a woman's right to choose, but find this practice disturbing, mostly because of the fact that men apparently would rather have their wives have repeated surgery than use contraception themselves. And also that women would be so passive in the face of this problem that to us is easily prevented.

I recently traveled to Georgia, which is similar to Azerbaijan--a post-Soviet Caucuses country next to Azerbaijan. I asked some young women about contraception there and they said it is available to all and that Georgians frown on abortion.

A few days later, after I had recovered somewhat from the shock, I began to think of what topics shock Azerbaijanis about Americans. I could identify several--the existence of the death penalty (many Azerbaijanis feel that the government should not have the right to kill people), the high number of teen pregnancies (unthinkable to have an unmarried teen girl pregnant here), the status of women (feeling sorry for women who have no husband or children or who are divorced) and the idea of people walking around with guns. All of these things frighten and shock many Azeris as much as our learning about a tradition of abortions.

About 6 months ago I wrote about how difficult it is for me to learn the Azerbaijani language. I studied 2-3 hours a day, took lessons twice a week for 2 hours, lived with an Azerbaijani family who didn’t speak English and worked at a place in which few people spoke English.

Things are still the same, but I have been getting better. I recently took an informal test and my language rating is called “intermediate high.” I started at “advanced low” after 6 weeks, after 11 weeks tested at the same level and after six months tested at “intermediate mid”. My progress seems so slow to me.

I still don’t understand much of what is said to me. But in traveling, buying things and communication with my host family, I can say what I want. When they have their family discussions, I usually have little idea of what they are saying. The TV news is usually unintelligible too as is most business discussion. I am typical of most of the other volunteers.

Listening to someone speak is like solving a word puzzle. For example if someone says

My blue sweater is in the kitchen

the order of the words in Azerbaijani is Blue sweater mine kitchen in is.

If they are speaking quickly and I don't know some of the words (in a more difficult sentence), I might retain only-- Blue Sweater Kitchen---before they barrel on to the next sentence.

With a few more sentences of partially heard words, I would have trouble figuring out what is being said. There are still many misunderstandings. My vocabulary is much increased, but there are many words I don't know.

I am doing a lot of professional training at my assigned organization--Time Management, Conflict Management, Supervisory Training, Company History and Culture. I require a translator for much of the training and someone to help me understand all of the comments in the discussions.

What strikes me though, is that since I have been in the country for a year with hundreds of hours of language lessons, live with a host family and work with non-English speakers, Azerbaijanis could express frustration with my relative lack of skill. But most don't. People are extremely kinds and supportive.

I think of immigrants to America who speak with an accent or people who work long hours every day and have no time or money to learn English. They may have no access to the level of instruction or exposure to native speakers that I do. Some Americans tend to be very critical of these people. At this point, that attitude makes me cringe. I wish that Americans wouldn't say "Why can't he speak English? If he lives here, he should learn!." It's just not that easy. It seems to me that it has always been that the first generation of immigrants usually doesn't learn English, the second generation knows both languages and the third generation usually just knows English.

My great-grandparents came from Germany as young adults, never learned English or wanted to. They needed work and settled in a German neighborhood, cooked German food, and worked at jobs at which they could speak German. My grandmother and her six brothers and sisters learned English easily, but not from their parents.

One problem that immigrant Americans don’t have is that many nouns that Azerbaijanis use are Russian. Sometimes, I hear a word being used, look it up, and find it isn’t in the dictionary. I find out that the Azerbaijani word is not popular, just the Russian word. Azerbaijani is similar to Turkish, as Spanish is to Portuguese. So when I get back to the US, to put the knowledge to good use, I would like to take Turkish lessons.

Besides their extremely patient attitude toward learning their language, the other thing that I admire about Azerbaijanis is their facility with languages. Most can speak Russian many know Turkish and dialects are common in many areas. Since few books are published in Azerbaijani, speaking another language is important in having access to the world of information.

When Azerbaijanis learn English, they don’t seem to have nearly as much trouble learning it as we do in trying to learn Azerbaijani. The same effort with them seems to yield better results.

Meantime, I have stopped feeling guilty if I watch an occasional American DVD or read a book in English. I will continue to study, speak, and work and see what happens.

I miss a lot of things. Before I came here, I didn’t have a strong desire to sightsee all over America. But now I have a desire to see many things I haven’t—like LA, the Grand Canyon, the Pacific Coast around Oregon, Williamsburg, New Mexico and spend more time in San Francisco, New York, the Florida Keys and Colorado. I also miss milk shakes—here and in Georgia a milk shake is milk with ice and sugar.

But there are many things I don’t miss.

Most American Food

The fruits, vegetables, fresh yogurt and milk, freshly baked bread and cheese made on site are wonderful. Also, the cooking style is great—soups made daily, great mixtures of cooked vegetables and fresh salads and plates of fresh fruit for dessert. The baked goods are also delicious.

In February and March, there is little fruit and fresh vegetables are limited to root vegetables and herbs, but I can deal with that.

Driving and Having a Car

I don’t need one here. I can walk most places and there are always buses for short distances and trains if I need to go a long distance. I don’t miss the expense of a car, cleaning it, buying gas and insurance and wondering when it will break or need expensive repairs.

Paying for and Taking Care of a House

I’m like a kid again—mom and dad take care of paying the bills, fixing stuff and providing heat and meals. I give my host family a set amount every month and I live there, am served food and only have to buy fruit for myself. If something needs fixing, frankly it might not get fixed, but again, it is not my problem.

The Media

I didn’t have a TV for the last few years I lived in the US. I kept up on current events and still do by reading. If I wanted to watch a movie, I got it on Netflix and watched it on my computer. But I still heard a lot of people talking about TV shows like American Idol, The Bachelor and other shows I never watched. I don’t miss this.

Also, advertising is not as aggressive and pervasive and events and buildings are not normally sponsored by any company. No one send mail or email asking for charitable contributions and no one asks you to buy candy for their kid’s school. If there is no playground and the school windows are broken, parents don’t raise their own money.

The Split

In Azerbaijan, there is not a huge cultural split with people on both sides angry with each other. They depend on the government, or want to depend on the government, to get things done. The president appoints the mayors of the cities, has control of the Supreme Court and appoints other legislators so citizen involvement is not as necessary--once the president is elected, that takes care of a lot of things. No one is deckaring on the radio about how they hope the President fails, because it is illegal to criticize the President.

This sounds alarming to Americans, but in practice, it makes for very little rancor. I am not endorsing it, but people are not constantly angry about issues like guns, gays and God. It is difficult to explain how appealing it is to me, an outsider. not to be surrounded by partisan anger every day.

I have heard that Americans living abroad sometimes read the news and are surprised and bewildered at something going on in their country. They find that you have to be there to understand it.

Right now, I want to know why everyone seems to be so upset about the death of Michael Jackson. I thought he was being shunned because he was a child molester. Also, when I left last September, Michelle Obama had a low approval rating. Now she seems to be popular and people are excited about her clothes. So what has changed?

Also, I am really puzzled about why Republicans don’t love the mandatory health insurance proposal. They are supposedly for personal responsibility and everyone paying their own way. They love mandatory auto insurance, so why would it be okay for people to have no health insurance and show up at the hospital for free treatment?

I am not sure if I will work when I get back to the US. However, I have a medical condition that precludes me from buying insurance from a commercial insurance company—they won’t sell me a policy. I know others with the same issue. So why is it not okay with some Americans for me not to have an option to buy health insurance? Without that option, I would have to work to get employer paid medical insurance at a job that I would take away from someone who needs one or go without health insurance. I guess you have to be in America to understand these things.

Doing Paperwork

I don’t make enough money to file taxes, get no mail except boxes from home with cool stuff in them and don’t have to fill out expense reports, applications for anything or figure out my bank statements.

Unrelated Question

A few people in my town have a question for Americans. Maybe you can help me answer it. Husbands and wives in America sometimes say that they don't let their spouse do something--for example--they won't let their husband go to a football game on Thanksgiving or let him work part-time. Or a husband won't let his wife go to Las Vegas with her girlfriends.

In your circle of family and friends, what types of things won't they let their spouses do? You can email to me or comment on the blog. Thanks!