Well one year, one month, and one week to be exact. This past summer I applied for an extension of service. That means instead of leaving in the next couple of months with the majority of my group, I have an additional year here in Azerbaijan. I decided to extend because I felt like my work was just starting to go smoothly. I has a couple projects that I wanted to do, but not enough time to do them in. First I'm working on opening an Internet club in my village. I just received my money this week so in the next month I'll be working on getting the building in shape and installing Internet. Second I'm hoping to expand my movie club to other regions of Azerbaijan. As a third goal I'm hoping to blog more often!

I don't have an accompanying picture for this cause I don't have any pictures of Sheki or kids taking tests. Yesterday we got up at 7 and rushed down to the Zaqatala bus station for a trip to the city of Sheki. The occasion? FLEX EXAMS. FLEX is a program that allows students in 9, 10, and 11th grade to travel to the States to attend a local high school. While there they stay with a host family and learn about American culture. The test is devided into three rounds. Yesterday our students took the first two, and in five weeks we'll learn who will move on to the third! FLEX day is an incredibly stressful and emotional day, but also one of my favorites. Whether or not the kids pass they still have an amazing time getting out of school for a day, hanging out with friends, showing off their English, and traveling to a different region.

Movie club officially restarted this past Friday and we kicked it off with a horror movie. Horror movies are a welcome change from the comedies we usually, and much harder to edit. One of our first movies as a club was a horror movie about zombies, and the day we shot it was one of my favorite days as a volunteer. It was foggy, cold day in the middle of Novruz (a holiday I'll talk about later) and we spent the first part of the day just hanging out and putting on ridiculous make up. The rest of the day was screaming, running, and fighting, the good movie kind.

Missed updating yesterday because we spent the majority of the day without internet and phone service!

I'm a TEFL volunteer, which means, aside from the wonderful, wonderful summer months, I spend a lot of my time teaching English in my school. I live in a small village and my school is equally small, around 250 students in a one story building. This is great because I get know all my kids, if not by name than at least by face, and get harassed significantly less than I might at a larger school. I can walk my halls with freedom and confidence.

The other great thing about my school is that only a year or two ago the whole thing was renovated. Everything's new! We also have really cool teachers that are all about putting up art and whatnot on the walls!

Continuing on the road from yesterday you end up here!

How bout some background on where I live? Car (pronounced Jar) is a village right outside of the Zaqatala. This sign marks its beginning and similar style signs are outside many villages in Zaqatala. The word village is a little misleading. There are cows, sheep, and chickens, yes, but there is also an internet cafe, 2 schools, a doctor's office, a library, and about a dozen restaurants. On top of that many people have satellite TV and even internet access at home. Because of its proximity to the city I think of Car as a kind of unique suburb. Its uniqueness comes from two things, the people living there and the surrounding nature.

Car is an Avar village. The Avar are an ethnic group in the northern part of Azerbaijan with their own language and identity. I'll talk more about the Avar later on.

Car is basically one long road winding up a mountain with river valleys on two sides. In the summer the rivers are a hot spot for tourists and seasonal cafes will open up serving drinks and gutab. Eventually the paved road ends, but Car continues on for a few for kilometers along this road:

Movie club is my favorite club. We started it last March and have made 23 short movies since! A lot of the original club members are moving on this year, going to University, working in Russia, and one of them is attending school in America through the FLEX program. Kids of the Future 2 was our last major movie with all the original members. It is (obviously) a sequel to one of my favorite club movies, Kids of the Future, and both are about time travel via rock and roll. This picture is from our second day of shooting when we went to the Zaqatala fort to do our big musical number / escape scene. The green cloth my host brother is holding is used for special effects. Last month we opened a YouTube page here

The escape scene from Kids 2 is here

To get this started here's a picture from EXACTLY one year ago. Nuts, mainly chestnuts and hazelnuts, are a major source of income in Zaqatala, especially in Car village. Every year in the fall people will take off time from work to spend the day gathering nuts in their yards and orchards to sell either themselves or to a middle man who will sell them in the bazaar. for hazelnuts you can gather the nuts off the ground and by shaking the branches of the small tress, but chestnuts are more of a process. After getting the ones that have fallen on their own you climb up into the tree using a ladder and hit the upper branches with a long pole to knock the remaining nuts down. People have been doing this for generations in Car, but in recent years trees have been dying due to the spread of Chestnut blight in Azerbaijan. I have a friend and fellow PCV who has been working on holding back the spread of the disease, something which I'll talk about in future post.

October first of last year I arrived in Azerbaijan. A brief bus ride later I arrived the hotel where I'd be staying the next few days and signed onto the incredibly slow internet. The first email I opened was from my mom telling me that my dad had died that day.

This was not a surprise. The week before I was supposed to leave my dad was in a hospice program at our family friend's house. My dad had been (mis)diagnosed with FTD about two years earlier, and I spent all of September in and out of the hospital after he fell and hit his head the day before his birthday. Despite this deciding to come to Azerbaijan knowing it would be either right after or right before my fathers death was easy. It sounds cold, but Peace Corps was something I knew I wanted to do, and more importantly I knew it was something my parents wanted me to do. While in the hospital my dad would wake up worrying that I was missing my flight to staging, and even with all the other confusion, 'Mike is going to Azerbaijan' was a constant.

One year later I can say this: Today, October first, is just another day. I woke up, went to school, taught classes, got frustrated, talked with friends, laughed, played some games, listened to music. That's not to say I don't think about my dad. I still have bad dreams and am perhaps a touch more sensitive (which is saying something), but as time has gone on its gotten easier. I was worried that today would bring it all back, that it would be like starting from square one. But its not. Its just October first. And if I remember this day for anything, its going to be for whats helped me the most in the last year: being in the Peace Corps. I think if I told a lot of my friends this they would laugh, but I love being here. My work isn't easy, but its introduced me to some the best people I have ever met. I spend my days walking through a mountain village that resembles the Shire. I teach classes and have clubs with amazing, talented kids. There are challenges, but every one of them is trumped by the fact that this has been one of the best years of my life. And I can't wait for part two.

Hey friends,

So I've been in Car for quite some time now, but before I tell you anything about I'm going to give you my new mailing address so you can send me stuff. There are few things better than walking into the post office and getting a giant package from America. I enjoy this feeling so much that, much to the chagrin of the lady who works there, I've started going to the post everyday in hopes that I can get my fix. Please encourage this addictive behavior by sending me many, many things.

Mike Raybourne PCV

Mǝrkǝz Poçt

Hold Upon Arrival

Tǝlǝb Edilǝndǝk

Zagatala, Azerbaijan

AZ 6200

A joke about offensive gestures. On Wednesday we got out permanent sites assigned. In the days and hours leading up to it I wasn't that worried, but once they started calling names I was freaking out. Thankfully I ended up with exactly what I asked for. Like down to the letter. I'm going to a village right outside of Zagatala named Car (pronounced 'Jar'. Do a google search of either for more relevant information). Its in the northern part of the country in the 'middle finger', its mountainous and cold and I'll be by myself. Can't wait!

A few weeks ago we all left our clusters on long road trips to find the REAL Azerbaijan. Sick of the dog-eat-dog/workaday world of our clusters, James and I struck out for the northern city of Oguz with only our dreams, the money in our pockets, and also our backpacks and other stuff. The ride up there took us first through the long stretch of desert right outside of the peninsula. The early part of this month was unseasonably hot, and this day was no exception. Thankfully we quickly made a new friend who helped distract up from the increasingly hot/stale atmosphere of our packed marshrutka. One of the great things about traveling anywhere here is that’s its nearly impossible not to make a friend in the process. I can just be running up to the market and by the time I get home I’ll know 5 new people. Other notable traveling events: About halfway through our trip we took a break at a rest stop that was home to a bear in rusty iron cage. Also, at one point the back door opened while we were on the highway.

Charlie considers our options

Oguz has a theater!

This is what every street in Oguz looks like.

later: we arrived in Oguz and it was totally great. A small city tucked into the mountains, Oguz was a totally different world from Sumgayit and its surrounding suburbs. Charlie, the AZ6 I was visiting, and I could easily walk out of the city and into the countryside filled with winding dirt roads, old neglected cemeteries, open fields, rocky streams, and the occasional shepherd. That’s like four of my favorite things concentrated into one place! When we weren’t fording rivers Charlie and I taught some well-planned English classes at the local school. While I had observed a few classes before this, it was really reassuring and informative to see the lesson planning process in action. I haven’t really taught a class since 2006, and to be honest what I learned in Thailand hasn’t always been that effective.

Its been just over a year since we moved out of our old house in Silver Spring. In that year I've lived in five different houses in three states and two countries, yet Piping Rock remains my default answer when people ask where I'm from.

I took a bunch of pictures before I left, and while they may not be my best, they are definitely among my favorites. Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeraybourne/sets/72157609078890740/

Last Wednesday we headed out of Philadelphia on a fleet of buses to get to JFK. The buses were fairly snazzy and featured such luxuries as reclining seats, a bathroom and 20 televisions. That’s one TV for every two people! The bus also came stocked with plenty of Jurassic Park and Zoolander, but while we got through the latter, we were only halfway through the former when we got to New York and now I’ll never know what happened to those poor dinosaurs (no spoilers plz). My time at JFK was ok but the trip got increasingly nightmarish as it went on and I lost all sense of time. In flight movies included Night at the Museum II (thumbs up would watch again. Readers at Cherry Hill note that this movie would be a surefire hit) and every movie I saw this summer.

After getting to Azerbaijan we spent a week in a walled hotel for orientation week.

On Monday I moved in with my host family and they are amazing. I seriously live better here than I did in the U.S. in terms of amenities. More importantly everyone in the family is super laid back and friendly. My biggest problem at the moment is not getting homework done because I want to spend time with host brothers. Next weekend I’m heading up north for my site visit which is going to be awesome!

Will write again soon with more details on school etc.

Just finishing up my staging forms in the hotel. We have a meeting in half an hour that will take the rest of the day. Tomorrow we're taking a bus up to New York in the morning and flying out in the afternoon. Today has been hectic and I didn't sleep much last night. For the first time I'm feeling nervous about this decision but am pretty sure it was the right one.

Leaving at 7am tomorrow. Just finished shopping packing a few hours ago!

Here is my mailing address for the three months I'm in training. Please send me as many entertaining things as possible!

PCT Michael Raybourne

Peace Corps Azerbaijan

Sumgayit şəhərı

Azerbaycan pr. 15

Mərkəzı poçt

Azerbaijan

Finally received my staging kit which for whatever reason didn't get here a week and a half ago like it was supposed to. While my shopping is going well I can't help but feel a bit panicked as the 28th approaches and I haven't filled out all my papers and purchased everything I'll need. A lot of stuff has had to go to the backburner now though as my mom and I try to work through our latest family crisis. I'm not sure what I should be concentrating on honestly, its had to worry about whats going to happen even two weeks from now when I'm worrying about my mom and dad and closing down the camp etc. This seems like the worst possible time to be leaving my family behind but I know my dad wanted my to do this and I know the rest of my family wants my to do this. If anything this just means I'll have to work even harder in Azerbaijan to make my time away worthwhile.

In December 2006 after spending the summer and fall taking a TEFL correspondence course I headed to Thailand for two weeks of hands-on experience that would finish up my classes.

I was drawn to teaching overseas mostly just to away. The four years I spent in college were for the most part lousy (no one’s fault but my own, I just had laughably bad judgment) and my senior year was the low point. Between a bad diet, lack of exercise, and loads of stress I was really floundering. My first idea was to do the JET program but after blowing the interview (it was my first one ever and how am I supposed to take a guy in his fifties patting his stomach and pretending to not know English seriously?) I had to go another route and started to online course.

Thailand was fun and strange. Almost all of us stayed in a hotel a few blocks from the school (some stayed in the actual school and one guy stayed with his wife who left him part way through) with rooms that were bitterly cold. During the day this was easy to counteract by opening the doors and letting in hot, humid air. At night you had to wrap yourself up in the scratchy hot pink blanket they provided. Even though I was there for teaching experience it’s the stuff that I did outside of the classroom I remember best. When it wasn’t raining I spent my time wandering for miles in and around the town. The streets there were filled with mopeds with little regard for pedestrians and stray dogs that would growl at a distance then hide when you approached. The sidewalks were covered with open-air restaurants (these great home/businesses that are basically outdoor kitchens where the food cooks in one big pot all day long and is served up on rice with fresh garlic) and would often just end abruptly and spill into the streets.

The most memorable place in Phuket is a mountain that lies on its outskirts. A road runs from a temple at its base to a mess of towers and wire at the top. At dusk this road is filled with packs of wild dogs and groups of monkeys that climb along the electrical wires; occasionally they’ll fight with each other over food left by the temple. At the top is a great view of the city and a bunch of roosters wandering aimlessly.

PEACE CORPS UPDATE:

I’m about 4 weeks away from leaving and just getting around to packing. Even with my departure date so close it still is hard to wrap my head around the fact that I’ll be out of here in few short weeks. Fun!

I don't have the best track record when it comes to recording my thoughts. I can remember getting my first journal as an early Christmas gift when I was around seven, I was so excited to give it a go I wrote entries for the next several days which I then attempted to act out. This got old quickly and soon I just gave it up. My next attempt was in college and remains a painfully, painfully embarrassing reminder of that time.

This time I will try to keep up with it though as it may be my primary way of communicating with friends and family at home. I'm about a month and a half away from leaving and I'll try to spend some of that time detailing my prep work.