Sheki was beautiful, old and at the foot of very green mountains, a rarity here. The countryside was a bittersweet reminder of  the Smoky Mountains, memories of summers spent there with the kids a backround hum in my mind.  I went with the old Fart’s club, three of us older volunteers. We had planned to [...]

    Nope, you are in a police state, Dorothy and they are out to get you and your little dog, too.   Today, Thursday Sept.1) we had our own locally produced version of the Vizier of Oz, starring me as Dorothy (minus the braids and ruby slippers) Neal as the tin man, Larry as the scarecrow, and [...]

Aug. 27, 2005 Ganja, First Month at Site Chalk it up to culture, language mishaps whatever, but the miscommunication genie struck again Monday, I am going to ask my tutor, just what is up with this. Here we go, today, Saturday, Aug. 27, I had made plans to get together with some other volunteers in my town [...]

August  Ganja, 2005 – First Month at Site Today, I want to write about electricity. (Also the cops, the weather, safety and security and possibly chickens if I get to them.) [note from the author: due to the scrolly-read nature of these posts, it is perfectly permissible to skip past the bits you find boring, even [...]

  More adventures to report, though rather small and some glimpses of my new city.   A week ago, Sunday I was hanging around in the afternoon with my host mother, and she was cooking up a storm, which is nothing unusual. I was thinking about taking a walk, when she asked me if I wanted to come [...]

      I keep meaning to tell some of the quirky things about this country and somehow, I just keep forgetting, but here are a few:   Bread is sacred here, you always have to have the bread right side up. The loaves are basically flat and round or oval, so it is obvious which is the top. Also, [...]

July 16,2005   Well, it is hard to know just where to begin, things were poking along during my training and I just couldn’t seem to get what I needed to write a real blog entry. Plus, I needed to pull my blog off the web and make it for friends and family only.   Peace Corps is [...]

June-July 2005 PST Davechi   Well, I made it, hope we don’t all get sent home. We have a volunteer who just joined our group from Uzbekistan. Peace Corps evacuated there because of political unrest.   We were warned to look out for political demonstrations, but so far there haven’t been any in our little town. I am living in Davechi, a small [...]