Well, I had every intention of writing a few more posts in my last weeks at site/in country, but I seemed to be in a perpetual race against the clock and I just never quite found the time/energy to do it. So now I'm sitting here, in my parents' kitchen, fighting the intense urge to write this in a word document offline and copy-paste it in (who writes blog entries actually on the internet? haha, not people in rural Azerbaijan!). While many of the people who read this blog have seen me by now so there really is no need to write this, I know some of you don't have the privilege of living in good old Massachusetts, plus I guess I should bring this thing to a close, so here it is, one last entry.

My last week at site is truly a blur. I was racing around trying to get everything packed up (if you know me, you know that packing is not my strong suite) and putting the final touches on everything at school. I couldn't help myself and kept making more and more visual aids and games for the resource room until I finally had to tell myself no more and I gave away all my magazines, markers, glue sticks, etc. And the packing and organizing was broken up with goodbyes.

I left site on the morning of Saturday, December 10th, so I'm going to back up two days to Thursday, December 8th. That night I went over for my last time at my close friend and counterpart Tamilə müəllim's house. We had delicious kabobs and she cooked chicken as well (and almost burned it, which couldn't have been more appropriate because the poor woman always has so much going on while she's cooking that I don't think I've been there once when she hasn't had to leap up from the table to run and see if some food is burning or the çay is boiling over or something). Some of her neighbors, including our other counterpart Ceyran müəllim, and our students came over and sat with us as well, so it was quite a nice party.

Tamilə müəllim gave me this evil eye as a goodbye present to protect me always.

Next was Friday, December 9th, where Tamilə müəllim and other teachers (including her incredible husband Yolçu müəllim) worked really hard to organize a huge going away party for me. It was complete with a videographer, just like they have at all the toys (weddings), to film it! All the classes made beautiful cakes so we had a lovely tea while everyone got up to make speeches and some of the students gave me little presents. There were some tears, especially when Tamilə müəllim forced my mother (who is also a teacher at the school) to get up and speak. And the whole thing culminated with me making a speech but, just as I predicted, I could barely get a word out because I was crying so much. And it was the talk of the village that my speech (and party in general) made several of the male teachers and directors cry too.

After that party at school, I had an all afternoon party at my house where I received various guests who wanted to say their last goodbyes. The highlight of the evening was when I got to walk over into the neighboring village, Xatınlı, and bring their new volunteer, Andrew, over my house to meet my family, students, and Tamilə müəllim. He will be serving at Xatınlı School (which is about a 5 minute walk from my house) but he has agreed to help out in the resource room at my school and my students are surely going to force him to work with them in addition to his own students. It was kind of a relief that I wasn't expecting to be able to pass the proverbial torch like that. I had to work really hard to convince Peace Corps to send a volunteer to Xatınlı and I think I made the right call and Andrew is going to do a really awesome job there.

I only slept an hour and a half my last night because, although I swear I had been diligently packing and going through all the stuff in my room all week, of course there was always more to be done (little things like writing down the directions for ibuprofen that I was leaving behind for my family or putting photos on disks because I wanted to wait until the last possible moment). My sisters tried to stay up with me and didn't quite make it but my mom went to bed only 15 minutes before I did. I miss her so much. The good thing about only sleeping an hour and a half is that that is pretty much exactly how much time it takes to heat a tank of water to take a shower at my house! So I turned on the hammam (shower room) before I went to sleep and when I woke up everything was all ready for me! I was able to take one final shower before getting ready for the hardest part yet, actually saying my goodbye.

My room as of about 12:30AM.

They said it couldn't be done, but I proved them wrong!The thing to realize is that I was leaving so much stuff for my family that the room never looked completely packed even when I left!

The marşrutka was coming to pick me up at my house so I had told everyone that they were welcome to come and see me off. This meant that I had a whole crowd of little students and teachers to hug and I was crying long before the marşrutka even arrived. I hugged all of them and then my family and finally my mom and got on the marşrutka. It was a horrible, unbelievable sadness and I don't really want to describe it more than that because I'll just cry again.

So I was off to Baku. I got to spend a few days there, seeing the doctors and various staff, having final meetings and signing tons of papers. I also got to say more goodbyes because, while my site was in Tovuz, I had developed really close friendships with some ex-pats living in Baku from all the times I had to come in to buy books or go to meetings, etc. Trust me, the goodbyes were just never ending! I got on my plane at 4:50AM on December 14th and that was that. I said my final goodbye to Azerbaijan.

Should I end it on that last, sad note? I guess not.

After many very depressing hours of travel (where I mostly slept because, as I think you saw, I didn't sleep much my last few weeks) I arrived in Boston and found my wonderful welcome party of my mom, dad, and Grandma Pat. They were decked out with signs, balloons, the whole nine-yards. They brought me home where I'm having a really hard time wrapping my mind around everything. I simultaneously feel like I was only gone for a semester at college and like I have been gone forever. Everything seems normal, but then I can't remember the names of the streets in my neighborhood, or how to get to the mall, and I basically wanted to give up on the TV the minute my mom started trying to explain that we were in the 800 channels because that is where the hi-def is! But I'm getting used to things and eating more than my fair share of the food around this house. So far my little brother Jimmy is home, my mom and I went and picked him up from school the other day. He's the only member of my immediate family who didn't get to visit me in Azerbaijan so I was really excited to see him. My older sister Naima came home yesterday and then we only have to wait for the final piece of the Farrell/Bloomquist puzzle, Miss Kimberly to come in just before Christmas. And then, I am very proud to say, our family will all be together for the first time since the summer of 2008. :)

I'll leave you with that, a much happier ending!

Believe it or not (well, if you know how stubborn I can be then you probably aren't surprised) I continued to put every letter I received on my walls for the entire two years of my service. I owe a huge thank you to all of you who wrote to me over these years, you have no idea how much I loved being surrounded (literally) by all of your letters! Here is what my room looked like by the end:

Wall 1

Wall 2

Wall 3

Wall 4



Wall 5



Wall 6I told you I was surrounded by letters!

(I wrote this yesterday and my hands are too numb in the frozen resource room to adjust it...so pretend I posted it yesterday!)

Everything has been wrapping to a close for me here in Azerbaijan. I’ve had the first of my goodbye parties (more to come!) and yesterday I had to say my first real final goodbye. I went into Tovuz city to see Nuranə who I have known since my first week in Azerbaijan. She was my language teacher during our Peace Corps training and so I really owe much of my success here to her as without her I wouldn’t be able to speak! But more than that, she was my good friend because she continued to teach my Azerbaijani for about a year in Tovuz (her hometown) which gave us lots of time to hang out and talk. My first goodbye party was last weekend. My 11th grade students, who I have been teaching since the very beginning of my time in Qədirli, took me to our beautiful park in Tovuz city and then back to one of their houses for düşbərə (a soup with little ravioli like things – see the photo below!). The whole day was wonderful and I thought it was really sweet that they decided we would have düşbərə because they somehow remembered me saying that I liked it but I had only had it once or twice when I first arrived. That has been my only “party” so far, but I have also had my last English teachers’ lunch at Tamilə müəllim’s house and I went guesting for a final time at my aunt’s house, my grandpa’s house, and Jalə’s house (she is one of my best and favourite students). This means that I have been eating a lot of Azerbaijani food, which is good since in the very near (unbelievably near in fact) future I won’t be able to have all my Azerbaijani favourites! This means I’ve been making sure to get my fair share of mürəbbə (a sort of jam that we eat with tea), kabobs, kutlets (a patty of ground meat and vegetables – my mom undeniably makes them better than anyone else), nar (pomegranates), xurma/karaliyox (persimmons), köftə (meatball soup).

It is really starting to hit me that I’m leaving and today I’ve reached the point where tears are constantly just under the surface. I had my last lesson with my sister Nuranə’s 9th grade class today and as they went to leave I wanted to stop them and tell them what a pleasure it has been to teach them but I knew I would start to cry, so I decided to save it for the final party we are going to have at school on Friday (at which point I will certainly be crying the whole time so it won’t matter haha). I should also say that I know nothing about what will happen at this party (well, that’s a lie, there have been some leaks) because everything besides its existence is supposed to be a surprise, so you’ll just have to stay tuned to find out what’s in store for me!

Yesterday I celebrated my third and final Thanksgiving here in Azerbaijan. My host mom slaughtered my rooster (for those of you who didn't know, in the spring I got a gift of two roosters - the other one we ate a month or so ago for my sister's birthday) to serve as our turkey, so we had Snow White (when I named him I thought he was a hen) for dinner. I also made garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, garlic bread, apple crisp, and opened cans of cranberry sauce (I can't really take credit for "making" that). Plus my host mom made cutlets (ground meat patties - my mom makes them better than anyone else) and gave us kompot (really sweet, AWESOME juice that she made) and turşu (pickled cabbage) and she cracked a bunch of nuts. One of my counterparts and two of my best students came over to join my family and another volunteer, Connie (you've heard about her before, she is the one with the bike club in Qazax where I took my sisters to learn to ride) came down to my house too. Connie helped me with some of my cooking and helped to keep me from stressing out cooking for so many people. And my students and sisters helped to decorate our table with the various decorations and crafts sent by my mom and the ever wonderful Mrs. Collins. It was a really nice, delicious night!

I am currently wearing boots, 2 pairs of socks, a pair of leggings, a pair of sweatpants, a sweater, a fleece jacket, a wool jacket, a thin scarf, a knit hat, and finger-less gloves. I am also shivering cold. Why, you might ask? Because we have a policy here of not putting the heaters into the schools until November 15th and, unfortunately, this November is ridiculously cold (we've even had snow!). I've only been at school for 2 hours because we have a random school break this week (we've never had it off before so I don't know why) but I had to come in and open the resource room this afternoon. I'm trying to think warm thoughts. Wish me luck!

This week I began the final stage of my Peace Corps service, observations of my counterparts. When I first arrived at my school I spent a few weeks observing classes to get a feel for how my soon-to-be counterparts taught. Now, here I am, almost 2 years later, repeating the process to see how far they've come. I'm pleased to say that after only a few days, I can definitely say improvements have been made. I unfortunately also must say that this process is going to be the death of me. Why? Because this is really the beginning of the end. I've given up my classes! I'm a teacher with no classes to teach :( And I have to sit and watch all the classes that only last week I was teaching be taught by my counterparts. Not that we haven't been sharing the classes all along because we have, as "team teachers," but now I just sit there, unable to help with anything or jump in with a random comment (although I still do...and I need to stop!). I think this is going to be Azerbaijan's ultimate test of my patience! Good thing I've had 2 years of training in building up my patience to prepare me!

And FYI I wrote a draft of this post while observing a lesson. I can't just sit there!

I'm happy to report that even though I'm overseas where we technically don't celebrate Halloween, I was able to have a pretty awesome Halloween celebration anyway!

First was my friend Eric's birthday party (if you don't remember, he is my friend who works at the US Embassy in Baku). The party was a costume party where we were all encouraged to wear 70's outfits because Eric was born in the 70's. Realizing that we couldn't find 70's outfits very easily in Azerbaijan, Beth and I decided to get creative. We made a little harmless joke at Eric's expense by dressing as cave women and saying that, as neither of us were alive in the 70's and it was just SO long ago, we could only imagine that this was how people dressed! He loved it. And we were the hit of the party, winning "spicy-est" costume (our prize was a thing of spices from America!).

Beth and I with our spicy prizes!

Then I came home just in time to celebrate the real holiday with my host family. It was a nice change from the crazy Halloween party that Beth and I had last year at my school. This time I stayed home and my host sisters and I carved three pumpkins, with the help of my counterpart Tamilə müəllim. And thanks to my mom sending an awesome pumpkin carving kit, we had all these sweet little carving knives that worked wayyy better than our big kitchen knives did last year. Our jack-o-lanterns were pretty sweet, if I do say so myself!

I'm currently in Xirdalan, a suburb of Baku, because I have come in to conduct sessions for our new trainee group this week. I was supposed to have to work all day yesterday to prepare for my sessions, but getting locked out of the training office gave me the great opportunity to go into the city and meet up with four of my students who are now in university. We had a great day eating at McDonald's, walking around the seaside, and taking a boat out on the Caspian Sea. I was so happy to have time to see them because I was worried that my schedule would be too full this week to give me the chance.

My students with their bunny balloons that the boys bought for them.

I have had friends at Türkel TV (our semi-local TV station with its studio in Tovuz but which broadcasts to I would guess about 1/3 of Azerbaijan) for a while and last winter we filmed a show called "English for All" a few times. It was my LCF Nuranə, me, and 2 of my sitemates (Josh and Beth). We PCVs took turns going in to teach a lesson with Nuranə, but we only made 3 episodes. The station has decided to start filming again, and this time in their newly built studio. I went in yesterday and this time they even sent me to their stylist for hair and make-up (I'll tell you right now that Azeris like to wear a lot more make-up than I do, but I let the guy do his thing). In addition to English for All though, the station has been eager to have me do a whole bunch of other things for them. This week Beth and I went in on Wednesday and were guests on their live morning show. They asked us our thoughts about Azeri culture and about our lives here in Azerbaijan. We even had one person call in, although his question was only would we marry Azerbaijani guys (so typical...and funny because the host had actually already asked us that!). And now the station also wants me for a new show they are making, Banu-çiçək, which from what I understand is going to be sort of an Azerbaijani version of The View. We are going to have bunch of women sitting around talking about women and our "world." We are going to film the first episode this week and the topic is going to be the treatment of children. They also want to film some other clips of me, first showing me teaching my kids first aid (to show that there are important health lessons we should be teaching our kids) and second showing me at an Azerbaijani wedding. So basically what I'm saying is soon I'm going to be an Azerbaijani celebrity and the Azeri paparazzi are going to be following me around the village, obviously!

But regardless of how often I am on our little regional station, my fame will never compare to my friends whose music video you have to see. It has become a huge sensation in Azerbaijan and you should totally watch!

Baku State of Mind

This weekend I was lucky enough to have 2 wonderful guests visiting from Baku, my good friends Evangeline and Eric who work at the US Embassy. They are the very sweet and wonderful people who let Beth and I stay with them whenever we come into Baku and I was finally given the chance to return the favor. We had a hectic weekend trying to squeeze seeing everything of importance in the village into a 2 1/2 day trip, but I think we did a pretty good job. Evangeline got cooking lessons from my mom (3 sisters dolma, plov, and paxlava) and Eric got a saz lesson from Beth's friend Estella. Plus we went to a wedding where Eric narrowly made it out without having his new best friend Vaqif drink him under the table and we went up for a drive/walk in the mountains where we freaked out some locals who don't get many foreign guests and they watched one of my classes where they learned about real conditional sentences (very thrilling stuff). It was fun showing them the "real" Azerbaijan and I give them serious credit for wanting to come out and see it! Not many ex-pats do!

Last night, our TEFL program manager, Gülnarə, passed away in her sleep. I can't even believe it. She was a really wonderful woman and I loved getting to know her. I was lucky enough to get the chance to work very closely with her because I was the TEFL representative to the Programming and Training Committee etc. And I'm just about to go in to work at Pre-Service Training for our new trainees and I was looking forward to seeing her! It's really sad and my thoughts are with her family. Allah rəhmət ələsin.

As I was walking through the village the other day, I began to think about some of the things that I will and won't miss when I've gone home. Here is a the very incomplete list I came up with during this particular walk:

I'm going to miss:

- seeing random women walking around holding chickens upside down by their legs as if this is the most normal thing in the world. And the chickens just hanging out as if to say "yep, this is life."

- going to people's houses and coming home with an entire tree's worth of fruit without having to even ask for a single piece.

- being able to see what seems like every one of my students by simply taking a 5 minute walk across the village.

I'm not going to miss:

- having to be constantly vigilant to protect myself from goose attacks. I hate geese, I have never gotten used to them and I doubt I ever will. They are spiteful creatures.

- needing to wash my feet constantly because the dirt roads kick up so much dust.

- procrastinating washing my underwear until every single pair is dirty and I have to hand-wash the whole load of it until my fingers are red and sore.

As I settle into my normal school-year life, I was taking a few minutes to look back over pictures from the summer and thought I would put up some of my favourite summer moments for your viewing pleasure.

June: Kim came to visit and found out just how much she loves outhouses.

June: Another delicious cherry season in Azerbaijan. Don't let that inviting dish fool you, they are chock full of worms. And as I was discussing the other day with some other volunteers, I can measure my growth here in Azerbaijan by how little that grosses me out anymore haha.

June: Welcome to Turkey and my first real vacation since coming to Azerbaijan.

June: I fell in love with all the beautiful tiles in Turkey.

July: Noticing the "Stalker Internet Club" in Tovuz for the first time made my day.

July: At summer camp we learned about countries and holidays from around the world one week. The kids were all talking about it when they came back to school last week.

July: Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) summer camp, a collaborative project for volunteers all across the country and our awesome counterparts. This year my host sister went and had a great time. We are actually getting together with some of her GLOW friends this weekend!

August: I loved seeing all these little guys guarding the construction areas in Fountain Square.

August: One of my favourite places in Baku is the front of this museum.

August: My last trip to Qobustan? (our outdoor museum with petroglyphs) I only went four times...for Naima and Jessica's visit the guy working there was trying to have me give the tour!

August: Matching pj's for girlie sleepover nights with Naima and Jessica.

August: So many beautiful tomatoes! My mom was preserving them for winter for days.

August: Proud volunteers as our Close of Service Conference in their sweet shirts! (Thanks to Alex and Beth!)

August: Getting ready for a hot air balloon ride over Göreme in Cappadocia on my 2nd trip to Turkey this summer.

August: Some of the cool (and less phallic) rock formations in Cappadocia. Do a google image search and you'll see what I mean about the phallic ones, it was pretty ridiculous!

August: Sunrise from a hot air balloon. Does it get much better than that?

I got a bit carried away so there were a lot of pictures! Hope you liked them!

School has officially begun! Today I taught my first real classes of the year because last week was mostly going over classroom rules and getting the kids to talk about summer. I was very proud to see how many kids talked about coming to my summer camp and how they were still excited about it 2 months later. And then I didn't have to teach on Friday (I was supposed to have Fridays off but today I just added another class so now I have one lesson...of course). Today Tamilə müəllim (my counterpart) and I also opened the resource room for the first time this year and we already had 4 kids come to borrow books! At least now they'll have something to read because my school seems to be having an extreme shortage of textbooks (which doesn't seem to be worrying anyone but my counterparts and I) so the vast majority of my kids aren't getting books so far! As you may suspect, yes, this makes it very difficult to teach! But my counterparts and I are powering through. Tamilə müəllim and I have an adorable 5th form class (this is the youngest that Azerbaijani kids start seriously learning English, before that it is only once a week and they start fresh in 5th anyway) that I'm really excited about. We started the alphabet today! For some reason the Azerbaijani textbook doesn't teach the letters in order, so today was E, B, D, N, P, and T. I also found it very interesting that my kids couldn't say the Azerbaijani alphabet. When we were planning for the lesson I saw that Tamilə müəllim didn't know it because every time she tried to say it she said the Russian alphabet not Azerbaijani (which makes sense as she grew up in Soviet times). I guess that's what happens when you change your lettering system like a million times, but I hadn't really thought about it. I knew that my kids were really bad at using dictionaries, but I just thought it was lack of knowledge of the English alphabet. I guess not!

This weekend I went to two weddings and I believe that I have now officially attended 20 weddings in Azerbaijan (which really just means I remember going to 20 weddings but there could be some less memorable ones in there somewhere haha, by the time you get to 20 that is highly possible). My host mom is already stressing out about having to go to weddings alone after I go home (I finish here December 14th!) so now I really have to go to all the weddings with her (although it may not seem like it seeing as I have gone to 20, I have managed to get out of several more).

School starts here every year on September 15th which means this Thursday I will be starting my last school year in Azerbaijan! (For those of you who don't know yet, my close of service date is December 14, 2011!). I'm excited for school to begin because it will put me back on a normal schedule, but not looking forward to losing the freedom of being able to stay up until 2AM watching Mad Men or whatever TV show I'm addicted to (and I take way too much advantage of that freedom haha). I'm busily working to try to get all the lesson plans my counterparts and I have developed over the past year and a half compiled into big, complete sets. It is quite a monumental task! To give you an idea of how big these sets of plans will be, I'm closest to finishing the 7th form book where I am on Unit 6 of 8 and the plans are already 51 pages long. Yikes. And I'm doing this for 5 textbooks, with hopes to do 2 more this fall. I have no hope of getting it finished by the start of school (which had been the plan, unfortunately I like to procrastinate and do other things with my summer time!) but I will have at least the first lesson for each book done, inşallah!

Other than the textbooks, I spent most of my day yesterday helping Tamilə müəllim, my counterpart, prepare jars of food for winter. I cut about a million peppers, tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes and in the process made a lot of little cuts on my thumbs! Here the knives are super dull so we just cut things into our hands instead of using a cutting board, which is fine when you are only cutting for one meal but mass production takes its toll!

I should have posted about this awhile ago, but I think we can all see that my posting record isn't the most consistent! My older sister Naima and Jessica Bruce, her best friend from Peace Corps, came to visit me from July 31 st to August 11th. We got off to a bit of a rocky start when Naima's plane from America was delayed so she didn't meet up with Jessica in London to fly to Baku (Jessica was sitting at Heathrow longing looking about the terminal for Naima, she even bought Naima lunch...and then had to take one for the team and eat it herself haha). Instead of arriving with Jessica at 9:30PM, Naima arrived at 4:30AM but then didn't make it out to us until about 5:30...without any bags. The next few days turned into us making several trips to the Turkish Airlines office where I horrified the staff by listing off all the items of my clothing Naima was wearing because she had none of her own. By the end of the few days every member of the staff seemed to know who were, would come in to check on the progress of our case, and would tell me how great it was that I could speak Azerbaijani. We did eventually get both bags back. After Baku we went down to Lerik which is a mountainous region down south and to Lenkeran which is down south on the Caspian. In Lerik we did a homestay through Community-Based Tourism Azerbaijan (http://www.cbtazerbaijan.com/) which is a project PCVs started. And then in Lenkeran we stayed with some volunteers. Naima and Jessica were really struck by how similar the housing could feel to the volunteer houses they stayed at in Benin. After that we went up to my site for a few days to meet my students, neighbors, family, friends, etc. We went to the mountains, my school, my counterpart's house, etc. It was a really nice few days that passed all too quickly! It was really nice to have the two of them visit because their perspectives as returned Peace Corps volunteers was really refreshing to have and I appreciated being able to show them all my work and get their feedback. I'm at our Close of Service Conference now and we have been talking a lot about how once we return home some of our best support systems will be other RPCVs (from all countries, not just Azerbaijan) and having them here could really make me see how that would be helpful! Makes me feel really lucky to have an RPCV sister!

So I definitely owe you all a post about my sister Naima and our friend Jessica's trip to Azerbaijan, but first I have a more current story to share, the story of the dead dog.

A few days ago as I went to school, cutting through the bushes behind my house, I noticed a big grain sack in the little canal. These canals are part of the irrigation system we have so sometimes water flows in them but generally they are just stagnate water or mud or dried up. As you can imagine with the stagnate water and goose poop and trash, these canals aren't always the most pleasant places, but this day it reached a new low. I could see that something was in the sack and at first I thought it was a sheep skin because often times the nearby butcher throws a gross skin from an animal he butchered (or random stomachs, etc) in the bushes. Then I realized the fur didn't look sheep-like. No, it was a dog, a dog dead folded up in a sack. Both gross and really sad. I immediately told my host mom when I got home and we both started ranting about all the disgusting things that people throw in the bushes by our house. Apparently just a week before my mom had to go throw some dirt on a dead cat that she could smell in our backyard when she went to the latrine (I missed that loveliness, but I did see the dead goose in the canal a few weeks before that, although that dead animal ended up thrown into the basement of the school to rot...but that's another story). As the days passed, the stink from the dog got worse (really? a dead dog in stagnate water/mud smelling bad? never!) and the breeze so nicely wafted his odor into our backyard. By yesterday morning it was getting really strong. I was trying to sit outside and work on my computer where it was a bit cooler than my room, but the smell was just rank. Finally I gave my mom a manat to go pay some kids to bury the thing. My mom and I vowed that we would go over to the mayor's office today or tomorrow to complain about the government's neglect (this is public land on the edge of a soccer field and connecting to the school property). But before we got a chance to go today, my wonderful and highly respected neighbor Hüsəyn müəllim called the mayor himself. My mother reported back the conversation to me and I found it quite funny. Here's my cliff notes version "People keep putting bad trash there behind their house. It is smelling so much that Jess müəllim can no longer do her work outside!" That's right, it's not important that putting dead animals in the water is just asking us all to get diseases, no problem that kids play on the soccer field next door every day, no problem that there are another 4 people living in my house with the smell, what's important is that I cannot sit outside and comfortably work on my computer! It leaves me with the following thoughts: 1) I'm glad that they respect me so much that they wouldn't want anything to be offending me, 2) I'm happy with anything that will stop the litany of dead animals that have been showing up near my house!

This post is a testimonial to how awesome one of my fellow volunteers is. For a long time I have been promising my host sisters that I would take them up to Qazax (a region about 40 minutes away) to visit one of my friends, Connie. My sisters love her, but even more importantly, Connie has been doing an awesome job developing a killer bike program to teach the kids of Qazax how to ride and how to do it safely and my sisters really wanted to learn how to ride. Wanting to be true to my word, I arranged for us to go up to see Connie the day after camp ended, knowing that I wouldn't really have that much free time at site for awhile after. Connie said that day was fine and I told my sisters and they got all excited. Unfortunately, I woke up the morning of with a bad stomach virus. Gross. Being the dumb idiot that I can be, I thought that I would be fine and had gotten everything out of my system (along with my breakfast) and decided to go to Qazax anyway. Boy was I wrong. I showed up in Qazax in pretty rough shape, but Connie didn't hesitate one second in helping get me settled and then teaching my two sisters how to ride bikes all by herself. I lay in the shade of her school's courtyard while she ran around with them for about 2 1/2 hours in the hot Qazax sun of late July. I was so impressed by her dedication (and the fact that she never said to me "you're an idiot, you are ill and still came up here, loser" or something to that effect). And this was the first time that I was able to see the bike club I have been hearing so much about and let me tell you, it was fantastic. So basically what I wanted to say in this post is that Connie is a super awesome volunteer and my hat's off to her.

Connie helping my sister Gülnar learn to ride.

Alright, I promised a post about my travels in Turkey and Bulgaria with Kimmy, so here goes, but I’m going to keep it short and sweet.

TurkeyOur trip was 4 nights in Istanbul, 2 nights by Ephesus (staying in Selchuk), 2 nights in Fethiye, and 1 night in Antalya.Ephesus was cool but had way too many tourists. And I must say, the picnic that Kim and I put together to have at the end of our walk through the ruins was phenomenal.Fethiye was gorgeous, just beautiful. And our day long boat cruise around the Mediterranean was awesome: stunningly clear blue water to swim in, distant mountains on the coastline, hilarious British tourists sitting by us who smoked like chimneys, super interesting father son pair from America who had been travelling for 5 months, etc. Only downside: I got ridiculously sunburned. Like ridiculously. Big time ouch.In Antalya I accidentally made Kimmy walk way too far to go to a museum. There was a very convenient tram that could have taken us. My bad. My continued apologies Kim L But the museum was pretty awesome right?? And the tram back was like a nice treat! HahaBetween Turkey and Azerbaijan, I have never had so many people fight with me over the fact that Kim and I are sisters! I get it that we don’t look much alike (except we both have blue eyes) but I guess I never realized we were so shockingly different. Didn’t help that as the trip progressed my hair was starting to bleach to be lighter brown and she was getting more freckles on her face…just soooo different!BulgariaOur trip was 6 nights in Varna at Kim’s friend Vesko’s house and 2 nights in Sofia at Vesko’s friend’s apartment.Varna was really pretty on the Black Sea coast and we drove north to see more of the coast, which was great. It was way colder than I expected and since I idiotically lost one of only two cardigan sweaters that I brought on the trip during a night out in Istanbul, I was constantly relying on Vesko and his friends to lend me various clothing. And we all know that I’m constantly cold regardless of if it is actually cold, so this was just a bad situation haha.We went on a walking tour of Sofia with one of Vesko’s friends and saw the really pretty downtown. Then we went to a really cool lookout over the city at sunset. Again, I froze.Vesko’s friends were all really great to us and we loved meeting them. They were so welcoming!

And now back to my real world where it is all about camp, camp, camp! On Friday of this week we finished off our Healthy Bodies, Healthy World week by talking about the environment and trash. Our activity for the day was to make creative things out of trash. Luckily for my kids, I’m an incredible pack-rat and I have been saving “interesting trash” for them basically ever since I arrived in the village. The result was 1) some pretty cool creations from the kids, 2) my room is cleaner because I finally got rid of all that stuff! I’m going to put up some photos of their projects and your job is to deduce the contents of all the packages my mom sends me from America! (I thank you for the real stuff Mom and my students thank you for their packaging! haha)

With all the trash explaining the activity

A lowly tube for glowsticks becomes glasses

The sign reads "Most Beautiful City" and another sign that you can't see from this angle explains that it is Harry Potter City (that's Harry Potter wrapping paper underneath it, very timely!). My vitamin bottles and orbit boxes make the buildings, bottle caps are the people.

This kid jumped up first thing to grab this box and was like "I'm gonna make a car." It ended up being a bus, and I really liked it. I also really liked the Reeses eggs that originally came in that box haha.

Houses, cars, and boats. Mostly out of Orbit boxes. What is my favourite type of gum again?

At camp we have 3 teams (Awesome Team, FCB - Football Club Barcelona, and Bomba) so we were counting up their points for the week. They get points for almost everything we do. So far FCB is in the lead...but there's one week left!

All photos courtesy of my awesome week 2 photographer (and all around awesome person) Peggy!

I realized just now as I'm online for my daily 20-ish minutes of internet that I never got back on to write another blog post about Turkey or on to write any blog post about Bulgaria! And now that I've been back in Azerbaijan for 2 weeks, that all seems like a distant memory, especially since those 2 weeks have been spent doing summer camp here at site! Camp has been going really well and the kids have been really enthusiastic. I've had some great other volunteers up to help (so far I've had Moses, Alec, Julie, Peggy, Mariel, and Lori!) and my kids have been so happy to meet some other volunteers. Last week our theme was countries and their big holidays and then this week we have been doing stuff about health. We're going to finish up next week with arts and crafts. I'll try to remind myself to write a post about Turkey and Bulgaria at home to put up the next time I come online, but I can't make any promises as I've already been forgetting to do it for so long now! Sorry for being such a lame blogger :(

I got a panicked email from my mother this morning because my sister Kim and I apparently haven't been checking in enough as we travel through Turkey (sorry Mom) so I thought maybe it was time to put up a little post to let the rest of you know where and how I am!

I'm currently in Fethiye, Turkey (on the Mediterranean) watching my sister sleep because even though for my entire life I've never been a morning person, on this trip I can barely sleep past 6AM (which is 8 on Azerbaijani time, so I guess it makes some sense). Today we are going to go on a boat cruise to a whole bunch of little islands and swim and see ruins, etc. Try not to be too jealous :) Before Fethiye we first traveled to Istanbul and then on to Ephesus, but I'll write more about everything later (remember, this post is just so you don't all start sending me panicky emails!). And from here we are going to Antalya so we can fly to Bulgaria and meet up with Kimmy's friend from school! So that is my itinerary, you can all feel properly informed now and I'll write more detailed accounts of our journeys later. For now I'll just say that we are having a great time and everything here is just so beautiful!

Summer is here! The school year is over! On May 31st we had "Son Zəng" which literally means "Last Bell" but we would say graduation. One of my best classes (I wrote about them a few posts ago) was graduating and they asked me to make a speech and sing so I got to be in the ceremony. I spoke in Azeri (obviously) and I felt more comfortable doing it than last year, so I guess that shows improvement! And then I sang "Time of Your Life" by Green Day with 3 of my students. They were so funny about it! They decided all on their own that we should make cardboard guitars and violins to play when we sang, which I thought took a lot of guts! Everyone loved the song, even though they couldn't understand it. They said it was "romantic." :) Don't worry, I have a video of it and I just might put it on Facebook so you can go look for it!

Now that summer is here that means....more of the same thing! I'm teaching a second round of computer courses quickly before my sister arrives on June 8th and this time my counterpart Tamilə müəllim is helping me teach which is really exciting. Makes teaching 6 hours of computers a day (and by that I mean how to point and click a mouse) a bit more bearable!

Right now I'm in Baku (I had meetings all day) and we're about to go out to dinner so I need to stop writing this and get ready! Delicious food here I come!

Kim got her visa yesterday!! And by that I really mean that Naima went to the Azerbaijani Embassy in DC and picked it up, but regardless it is in the hands of someone I trust a bit more than the embassy staff after what they did with my dad's (don't let me down Naima, you don't want to intense hate thoughts I was sending to the embassy coming your way). So this means that I can breathe a bit easier knowing that at least we won't have the visa nightmare this time around! Congratulations Kim, Azerbaijan here you come!

As several people have pointed out to me lately, I've been slacking on my blogging. My apologies! And I really don't have a very good excuse because as of the beginning of May we have internet at my school! It is currently only to one computer in our resource room, but it is certainly a start! The resource room opened in April. We opened it with a week and a half long open house where kids and teachers could come and learn the rules of how to borrow books and sign up for computer classes. Then we had a big party on April 24 where students, teachers, important members of the village, and directors of other nearby schools came to have tea and celebrate the opening of the room. Since then I have been working super hard to open the room for 20 hours each week (in addition to my normal teaching schedule!), 12 of those hours are spent teaching computer classes. Ever since coming to Azerbaijan I have realized that I am maybe not the most patient person in the world but my god, teaching computers is a real eye-opener. I recommend sainthood for anyone who can successfully teach people (especially adult teachers) to use a computer from scratch without losing their cool. I'm doing my best, but I cannot tell you how exhausted I am all the time now! So what do I do when I go home? Watch way too much television! I've recently watched everything that I can get ahold of: several seasons of "Big Bang Theory", Season 3 of "The Unit", and most recently I started watching all the seasons of "Friends". I'm currently on season 3 and I got so upset last night when I watched Ross and Rachel break up that I had to stop watching and go work out to let off steam...I take this as a sign that I am watching enough TV to internalize it as my own life...I think I'm going to try to work on that haha... Luckily school will be ending soon (our "Son Zəng" which means "Last Bell" and is what we call graduation, will be on May 31st) and then it will be summer! I'll be sprinting to the finish giving final exams in all my classes and trying to start a new round of computer classes, but I think I can get it all done! And then once summer arrives, my sister will be coming to visit! Miss Kimberly Farrell is expected in Azerbaijan on June 8th, so get ready!

Despite all of the busy, busy work that I have been doing lately, I have had the time for one little vacation up to Qax where my saintly friend Lori was nice enough to host a whole bunch of volunteers for the twice annual pilgrimage to the local Georgian church. It was really interesting, I've never seen a celebration like it in Azerbaijan. We all hiked up this little mountain to a church and lit candles and walked around the church three times. Some of us did it barefoot (I'll proudly say I actually did it barefoot twice, thank you very much). And then at the bottom of the mountain everyone lays out super intense picnics, sometimes even rigging tables and stuff. We made delicious pork kabobs (mmm). Luckily we had beautiful weather too, so it was a very delightful day, and a nice break from school! (*note* If you look down at my March 30 post, the picture of my dad and me was taken in front of the pilgrimage church looking out over the Qax and Şəki regions)

Yesterday, my Program Manager Gülnara müəllim from Peace Corps came to my school to meet with my counterparts and me and to observe some of our classes. One of the classes that she sat in for was the 11th grade class that Tamilə müəllim and I teach together. Every week we have this class twice and all year we have had a system where one day we use the textbook and the other day we read a novel (I was lucky enough to be able to buy class sets of books from the US with a donation from our local shopkeeper). In the fall we read Charlotte’s Web and now we are reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. While the students liked Charlotte’s Web, they LOVE Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and yesterday they were literally cracking up talking about it. As we do every class, they gave summaries of the chapters they read at home, answered reading comprehension and analysis questions, and then read a new chapter of the book. Throughout the whole lesson they were just generally having a great time, laughing and joking around IN ENGLISH! It was funny to watch. At the end of the lesson, my manager asked the students to stay after class for a minute. She told them that she was so impressed with them and that in all of her travels around Azerbaijan (and she visits a lot of schools to decide where to place volunteers and again to visit volunteers), she has never seen an 11th grade class like them. And then for the rest of the day she kept repeating how wonderful they were, asking me how we got them to such a high level, and was likening their work to college classes she took. Tamilə müəllim and I were so proud. And I couldn’t agree with Gülnara müəllim anymore, my kids really do rock! In a system where it is almost encouraged to not come to school when you are in 11th grade, my students come to every class and I am blown away by not only their level of English, but their insights into the books we read. I really wish you could all meet them!

Last week we did our annual Peace Corps English writing competition "Writing Olympics." Basically we get kids grades 6-11 (and university students, but I don't teach university) and give them a few questions to choose from. They write essays that are judged first nationally in Azerbaijan and then we send the winners to the international round (which includes Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova...and I think a few other countries).

The main criteria for the essays is creativity, which is very difficult for my students. No matter how hard I tried to help them write more exciting essays during our practice writing activities, I got the same boring essays from all of my students. Usually they write something about helping poor people because, as I found, they can make anything about how you should help poor people (I guess that's a message that is really drilled into them). Finally, in one of our last practice sessions, I finally got an interesting essay from one of my kids. I had given my 6th grade students the start of a story about a magic, blue cat named Joe and they had to finish the story. While they were writing, one of my students randomly asked me to translate "bığ" which in English is "mustache." Hearing this, another student decided to use the word mustache in his essay and wrote some strange story about how the cat magician stole a man's mustache and gave it to another guy. The mustache then became gold and the man was never poor again. While it was a totally bizarre story and still talked about helping poor people, I was really excited that it wasn't just the same old stuff as everyone else. With this in mind, on the day of the competition, I gave my students a list of words from the 6th grade textbook that I thought were semi-interesting. I figured that maybe if they had interesting words in their heads they would write an interesting essay (makes sense right?). When I gave them the list I reminded them about the mustache story and how different it was… Here is one of the results (a few spelling mistakes corrected), answering the question "Which would you rather be, a bird or a fish? Why?":

I want a bird. I fly on the sky. I stole everything. I want a bird and I eat a reindeer. Reindeer is very sweet. I fry reindeer. I want a bird and I eat people. The people die me. The people fry me. The people eat me. I carve to the people. I go to my bird’s home. The people call magician. Magician made me carve my nose. I gave to magician my nose. Magician gave my nose to the people. The people are very rich.

Can you guess which word was on my list? And which other vocabulary words from this year the student remembered on his own that were entirely inapplicable?

My word: reindeerOther vocabulary words: to fry, to carve, magician

So I didn't exactly get the winning story I was hoping for, but I at least got a kick out of the randomness of this essay!

I'm pleased to report that my dad survived his time in Azerbaijan and has returned safely to the US! He was in my village for 5 nights, even though upon arrival he said to me "Jessie, I give this 2 nights and I'm out." See what he will put up with for me? He slept on the floor (I offered my bed but it was too saggy for him, I really wish I had taken a video of him getting out of it when he would get up from reading in it, the effort that it took was hilarious) and used my squat toilet/hole in the ground and he kept a smile on his face the whole time! I was very proud. After the village we went to Şəki and Qax regions to see the mountains and my friend Lori, the self-proclaimed "Qax Star." Unfortunately, as soon as we arrived in Şəki we got news that my dad's father died back in America. He had been ill and we knew he wasn't doing very well, but the news was still really hard obviously. I was again really proud of my dad for being strong enough to finish the trip. He went home on Saturday and I came back up to site to start school again on Monday. Only 2 more months until summer! And summer means that Kimmy is going to come visit me! And maybe Naima and Little Jimmy? Who else wants to come visit so I will have excuses to not work all summer??? haha (only kidding, I'm really looking forward to doing some awesome summer camps with my kids!)

Dad and Me in Qax

Some (me) thought it wasn't going to be possible, but amazingly enough, I am pleased to report Jim Farrell's safe arrival in Azerbaijan! After his visa failed to come in time for his initial flight, and then again failed to come on Monday, I have to admit that I lost all hope of it arriving in time for his Tuesday flight. I knew that we had given the embassy like 6 weeks to get the visa, which should have been more than enough, but it just didn't seem possible. But lo and behold, it made it Tuesday afternoon!

His plane got in a little ahead of schedule last night and I braved the all-male airport (as in there were only males there and everyone was staring at me and it was really uncomfortable, not as in I was not allowed there as a female) to get him. Then today I took him to see the rock carvings at Qobustan and the mud volcanoes outside of Baku before we went to visit with my host family from training. And now we are back at the hotel resting up before our long ride up to Tovuz in the morning!! Get ready Qədirli, here he comes!!

This week, for the second time since I came here, someone that I know has died. If you remember, the first time it was the mother of our local shopkeeper. While her death was of course very sad, she was quite old and ill with diabetes, etc. This death is much more of a surprise and much harder to bear. It was one of my seventh form (grade) students. But she was not only one of my students, she was in the same class as my youngest sister and they were close friends. She is also the younger sister of one of my very best students/close friends. She was a really shy girl so I won’t write all the details of her death here, even though it all seems to be very openly discussed in the village, but from what I have gathered she basically bled out after a cyst ruptured in her uterus and then no blood went to her brain. Even though she was apparently suffering for about a month, she didn’t tell anyone (friends, family, etc) and looked perfectly normal and healthy. On Thursday night (2/10) just before I went to Baku, I heard she was ill but no details. By the time I returned Tuesday (2/15) she had had an operation and was very ill in the hospital. By Tuesday night she had died. I didn’t know until Wednesday morning when students from my other 7th form class told me. At first I really thought it must be gossip, that the students had it wrong, but within a few minutes my counterpart confirmed the news. I went with all the teachers and students to her house after school and watched them carry her body away to the cemetery. It was so surreal and I still can’t quite believe it has happened. I think I’m going to use it as motivation to do some lessons about women’s health for this girls’ group (basically a Girl Scout troop) that I just started.

While she is the only person I know personally who died, unfortunately my village has seen a lot of death this month. In addition to Aytac, one of my fellow teacher’s father died, one of my fellow teacher’s husband died, and a small boy (age 3 or 4) also died. And probably more that I haven’t heard about. I guess February is just not our month. I hope we’ve had all the bad news we’re going to get.

Allah rəhmət eləsin.

Even though I knew I wouldn't be at site for Valentine's Day (I have a meeting in Baku), I used my English after school activity time this week to do Valentine's Day stuff with the kids. First we learned some new words that related to Valentine's Day (things like greeting card, to hug, etc). Then we had a guessing jar with conversation hearts inside (one of my students guessed dead on, 193 hearts!). And we finished it all off by making valentines with all the supplies my mom sent from America. I'm telling you , these kids had more stickers/doilies, etc at their disposal than I think I ever did when I was a little kid making valentines....not that I was jealous or anything....haha.

At our conference this week, I've had more internet access and while I've been talking to people from home, I've felt so boring saying that nothing is new or noteworthy in my life. So, I've been trying to think what are some of the more exciting stories from my life and here is what I have come up with.

I have a lot of new kids books that were donated by the Darien Book Aid. I put them in my classroom this month and we started a sort of library program in my classroom where the kids can borrow the books for a week. My kids are going crazy over it! They flock to my classroom every chance they can to turn in their book and get a new one. They keep track of which books their friends have read and enjoyed so that they can borrow them too. And I'm so proud of my host sister because she took out a short chapter book (one of the Magic Tree House books) and read the whole thing! And one of my students borrowed a history book that my mom (my real mom) gave me and it has created quite the stir in the region as one of our best history teachers (who works at my sitemate Beth's school) really wants it and is sending Beth's host sister and our other sitemate Josh's host brother to harass me about getting the book for him.

In my 11th form class recently we were learning about Shakespeare and I wrote a short version of Romeo and Juliet for them to perform. Totally independently, one of our casts made themselves little props for the apothecary character and they put pillows on the ground so that they could die comfortably and everything. They did an awesome job!

I started some new activities in January and one of the new things I'm doing is an Extra Help activity. Last year when I tried to do something similar, I just ended up with a bunch of kids coming to play games and I was disappointed. But this time, at least the one week that I have run it so far, was really successful! I had 2 girls come in to do their homework and have me around to answer questions and I had another girl come in with specific grammar issues to prepare for her test the next day and my host sister came to look up new words from her library book in the dictionary!

It's time for MSC (Mid-Service Conference)! That means that tonight I came back to the Neopol Hotel for the first time since our Welcome Week, which was really trippy... We have sessions for the next 2 days to learn how to make the most of our 2nd year, so things like how to be better at what we are already doing, new projects to start, and how to make everything sustainable for after we leave. I've been asked to present 2 sessions while we are here so I'll be teaching a session on English conversation clubs and how to build a resource room. It may be a little interesting because although my grant for a resource room has been approved, I haven't received the money yet! Hopefully I still have enough insight to lead the session...and one of our awesome Program Managers has agreed to come help me. Wish me luck!

Təbrik edirəm! Bayramınız mübarək!

Sorry I've been lame about posting lately, I've been generally lame about all things internet related because I've been too lazy to go online. Now that I have dial-up at my house I don't want to waste time going into Tovuz...but the dial-up is in my FREEZING cold kitchen and I only use it after 11PM when I figure now one is calling my house...which means I just don't go use it at all! But now I'll do my best to catch you up on what's been going down in my world:

For Christmas I stayed at site with my host family. We did stockings and presents for each other in the morning. In the afternoon my sitemate Beth came over and we made "brunch" (but it wasn't ready until like 3 o'clock, so can we really still call it brunch at that point?) which was a fantastic breakfast casserole thing. And then for dinner the shopkeeper bought a turkey for us and my mom killed and cleaned it for us so we had a big holiday dinner. Tamilə müəllim, one of my English teacher counterparts, came over to celebrate, which was really nice.

Next was my birthday, which I also stayed at site for. It was the first time I've ever had to work on my birthday! I taught 2 classes and then my 11th form students had a tea party for me down in our school canteen. They waited until after they knew I was finished teaching because they knew that I wouldn't give up my class time, even for my own birthday party haha. After school my old LCF Nuranə and her husband and mom came over to wish me a happy birthday. And then my mom cooked up another holiday dinner, this time with 2 chickens. One we made into levangi (which means stuffing it with walnuts, etc) and the other I made stuffing for. Two of my English teachers came over to celebrate with us and other neighbors and friends from the village. It was really sweet how many people came to wish me a happy birthday and give me presents. Almost made me forget that I'm 24 and thus super old.

Then came the last week of classes before school let out for New Year. I gave all my classes final exams that covered everything we had learned since September during that week. I had a marathon of grading them all so that my teachers and I could look at them when we wrote the students' semester grades. I have mostly blocked the grading experience from my mind, but I think I remember my students doing pretty well. I'm going to look at the breakdown of how many kids actually failed/passed etc...and decide how successful I am as a teacher. Maybe I don't want to look...

And finally, I finished off the holiday season with New Year's Eve in Baku. It was really nice to see a whole bunch of other volunteers, especially because I was at site for Christmas, and get to hang out with our new AZ8's, we had a nice big group. And on New Year's Day I went out and stayed in Ceyranbatan with my host family from training for a night.

Thursday was the Swear-emony for the AZ8's, which means that we have been actual real volunteers for a whole year!! How crazy? A whole bunch of AZ7's came in for the ceremony which was really nice, not only because we were there to support the AZ8's but because we got to see each other and hang out. And spend some time in Baku, which is always wonderful. It was cool to see the ceremony from the other side of things and just appreciate it. And my friend Carrie sang the national anthems (of Azerbaijan and the US) instead of having these heinous recorded versions that we had last year, and she sings so beautifully, it was wonderful. All in all, a pretty great time!

Came home one day to find these two dead chickens hanging out on the clothes line with the laundry. Apparently they died overnight (froze to death because they refused to sleep in the chicken coop with the other chickens and instead chose the tree next to the coop) and so my mom quickly plucked them and all that and decided to hang them up. Normal.

Even though I wasn't lucky enough to be home this Thanksgiving (it doesn't sound like my house could have fit me anyway since they said they had 23 people...), I did get the pleasure of celebrating it twice here in Azerbaijan!

The first was at my house with my host family. I cooked chickens (there has been a lot of fowl death in the village so a turkey wasn't available) with stuffing, mashed potatoes, apple crisp, and garlic bread. And then my mom sent me canned cranberry sauce from America. And my host mom made a cake-ish thing and bought another cake thing from the store. It was delicious. My whole host family got really into everything, helping to decorate the table, wanting to know what I was making and how, etc. And 2 of my co-English teachers and my neighbors came over too, which was so much fun. My host mom asked me to translate for her "your daughter cooks very well" so that I could put her on the phone with my real mom, but we had calling difficulties that day. Unrelated to the holiday except that this happened to my poor family several times as they tried to call me that day, a word of warning to anyone who tries to call me: frequently it will sound like someone answers the phone...and then you are listening to a porno! No, this is not me, as many of my family members have apparently thought... This has happened to people trying to call my friend Beth too, and her number is nowhere close to mine so we don't really know what is happening. Just an extra little surprise delight of calling Azerbaijan!

The second Thanksgiving I had was in Baku at the Ambassador's residence (we don't currently have an ambassador) for all the Peace Corps volunteers with our staff and some embassy staff, including the current stand-in for the ambassador. It was awesome. We did it like a pot-luck, so every volunteer brought in some food and we had like 10 turkeys and we ate a lot and were very happy! And, as an added bonus (as if it wasn't fabulous enough already), Peace Corps arranges for us to stay with embassy families. My sitemate Beth and I stayed with this amazingly sweet and wonderful couple. We couldn't have been luckier! They were so warm and welcoming and gave us such AMAZING food (french toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, blueberry scones...and that's all only what they made for us...they also took us to another embassy apartment to have Thanksgiving left-overs which was like a 3rd Thanksgiving with delicious pumpkin and buttermilk pies...mm). Can you tell that coming home after the weekend was a little tough?? I didn't even tell you how jealous I was of all the gorgeous apartments I saw! Foreign service here I come?? Tempting.

I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings!!

I guess technically it is still “fall.” But really, even months ago, people kept telling me that winter had arrived. At first I would respond by saying it was fall, mostly because I didn’t want winter to be here yet! But by now I’ve given up. It is winter. Yes, for a few hours in the afternoon, most days it warms up a bit and the weather is nice, but the rest of the day/night is just so cold! Plus we have all the other tell-tale signs of an Azerbaijani winter:

1) Needing to keep your peç (gas stove) on all day: Inside the buildings, it just doesn’t warm up like it does outside during the day. If you don’t leave your peç on, you’re freezing. I hate returning from school or whatever because I turn it off when I leave and that means returning to a cold, cold room! In our house, November 1st was peç set up day, but a lot of other people had started using theirs a lot earlier in October, and trust me, they had the right idea. October was FREEZING and before we even started using the peç, I could see my breath while lying in bed in the morning!

2) Getting dark early: It is completely dark by like 6:30 now. This severely limits what you can do in a day, let me tell you. I have one conversation club that goes until 6:00 and by the time it ended this week I couldn’t see my students’ faces!

3) No late marşrutkas: I was in Gəncə last weekend and caught the last bus home at 4:30! In the summer I could get to the bus station at 7:00 and still catch one.

4) Bundling up to teach: My school hasn’t put the peç in my classroom yet, so it is pretty darn cold in there. I teach wearing my coat and my fingerless gloves (so I can write on the chalkboard) and I’m still freezing. I’m hoping they give my room a good strong peç this year because our electric one last year just didn’t cut it.

5) The return of weekly showers: Who needs to shower more than once a week anyway right? The other week I literally had this thought: “Geez, why is my hair looking so dirty? It’s only been 5 days since I showered. That’s not even a week!” Gross.

But, on the brighter side:

- Winter makes you very appreciative of the Azeri love for hot tea.

- All this cold gives me an excuse to lie in my bed and watch movies on my computer.

- I get to wear my very large collection of scarves.

- The rain/mud of winter hasn’t set in yet!

- The cold and darkness means that my whole family spends more time at home hanging out together.

- Our garden looks all pretty with the leaves turning yellow.

In other news, my home has been a cesspool of chicken pox for almost 3 weeks now. My oldest host sister came home from where she goes to school in Gəncə just before Halloween with the chicken pox (she had kissed a baby that had chicken pox on the mouth having never had chicken pox herself...go figure she got sick!) and has been home ever since (yes, she has been better for about a week, don't worry, she doesn't still have it). And then, because my 2 younger sisters hadn't had it, they got it too. Their pox started last weekend, so they are still nice and spotty. In Azerbaijan instead of pink calamine lotion, they use this green/teal stuff, the result being that my sisters have looked like swamp things for a few weeks. And now there are green smears all over things in our house from them touching them. The Azerbaijani fear of cold and showers also means that the doctors tell them that they cannot shower while they are ill or even as they are getting better because it will come back/get worse/whatever. I'm sure I've painted a lovely picture of my house for you and now you really all want to come and visit don't you? I'm just thankful that I had chicken pox in 2nd grade so I don't have to worry about getting it from them!

Well, I finally did it. I finally bought an internet card to use the dial-up internet at my house. I have always predicted that if I got it I would become addicted and then I would spend countless hours in my cold, slightly funky smelling kitchen at night on the internet when I won't disturb my family's phone line too much. We will see how accurate this is. What finally made me break down, you may be asking? When I was in helping for training I was staying with my friend Emily and her family bought her an internet card but we couldn't use it on her computer but realized we could on mine and, as I knew would happen, once I saw how easy it was (regardless of how slow and painstaking), I had to buy one for myself. It isn't fast enough for anything besides basic html gmail and my facebook chat won't even load (it did when I was in Sumqayıt though...), so don't get super excited that now I have so much more internet access. False.

Yesterday was Halloween (as you all know, duh) and thus Beth and I put on a big Halloween party at my school. It was nuts. We had at least 70 kids and 6 teachers all running around and doing things like making masks, getting their faces painted, playing pin the tail on the black cat and musical broomsticks, etc. Pandemonium. In the end Beth and I declared it a success because our kids had fun, but man was it stressful! My throat hurt so much afterward from having to yell over the din of 70 students at a party. Ouch. One special party surprise (even for us party planners) was that my new friends from our local (and by local I think I mean like 1/2 of Azerbaijan) TV station came and filmed our party! I had mentioned it to them when we were filming my new TV show (have I mentioned this before? The TV station approached my Azeri teacher Nuranə and me and asked us to teach a televised English class and now we are doing that with the help of 2 other TEFL volunteers in Tovuz) but I didn't think that meant they were going to come...and then all of the sudden my school was calling my house to say my "guests" had arrived...2 hours early for the party b/c they thought I said 12 not 2. But they stayed around the village and waited for us, which was really nice and exciting!

On a sadder note, we had a death in the village this weekend. Not that that is really uncommon, but this time I actually knew the person for the first time. It was the mother of our shopkeeper (and the shopkeeper also happens to be my mom's best friend and really, really likes me). I went to the 3rd day after the death funeral ceremony today and heard the shopkeeper telling everyone how much her mother loved me and how I was like her granddaughter. It's a custom here that at every funeral ceremony, the women sit in a room crying around a big photo of the deceased and, although I haven't seen it yet, I have been told that for hers they are using a photo I took of her a few months back. We did a little photo shoot so that I could send the photos to her son's family who lives in Germany. Apparently it was the only photo of her with good quality because it wasn't taken on a cell phone. Anyway, just pretty sad. And I feel especially bad because she didn't start getting really sick until I was in Sumqayıt for training so I didn't know it was happening and by the time I came back, she had died the day before. It hasn't really hit me yet. I don't know when it will.

I'm back in Baku about to go out and "mentor" this week as the trainees begin their practicum teaching. It will be interesting because just watching a lesson is always tough now. I just want to jump in and teach it myself, especially when I get bored. But it will be nice to get to know some more of the trainees!

Last week one of the trainees, Julie, came out to my site and watched my classes, came to lesson planning and clubs, etc. We had a fun and very busy time, constantly going from one thing to the next. She took a whole bunch of pictures, so the one to the right is of me teaching my 10th form (grade) class in my new classroom! It's way better than my classroom from last year because it's like 2.5x the size and I've made some much better posters for it (you can see a few of them) and everything. I'm still working on it, but it's coming together!

Now I'm off to Ceyranbatan so that I can visit my homestay family from last year before going to find my host family for this week of training. I wish I could be staying with my family, but there are no trainees in Ceyranbatan this year, so I'll have to settle with just visiting for a few hours. I would go stay a night at the end of my week here, but I have to rush back to site because Beth and I are having a Halloween party at my school!

This Friday (as in 2 days from now) is the deadline for me to submit my SPA grant which will hopefully be getting money for my school's new resource room. Unfortunately, a large wind storm 2 nights ago left my village without power. Some sort of procrastination god hates me. My computer battery died yesterday morning and I have now been in the internet cafe for like 2 1/2 hours researching for the grant but also waiting for my battery to charge because who knows if we'll have power when I get back to the village! As I'm only at 83% full, I figured, what a great time to stop staring at book and computer prices and write to my family and friends :) Can you tell from reading this how exhausted but like giddy I am from sitting in this internet cafe surrounded by little boys playing computer games and blasting Azeri music?

When I got back Saturday morning from being in Baku/Sumqayıt for training, I saw my host mom as she was running out the door to go to a wedding in Baku Sunday night. She still isn't back. She's going to be arriving tonight though, so maybe she'll be there when I get home from the internet cafe. In the meantime, it was only me with my youngest host sister for 2 nights and then my middle host sister came home before my mom from the wedding so she has been with us for 2 nights as well. But basically this means that I get to play fake-mom and make sure the kids get up for school and that they close the chicken coop and walk them to the tualet (that's toilet for those of you who didn't get it) in the yard at night when they are too scared. And since my youngest sister wasn't in the best of spirits the first night, we got into a pattern of watching a Disney movie a night on my computer...well until I didn't have a computer thanks to the power outage. I really don't mind watching my sisters (or Disney movies), but I'm just too stressed right now with all this grant stuff to put more on top of it!

In happier news, on Saturday when I got back in addition to starting my babysitting duties, I started filming on a televised English course with 2 of my sitemates. The head of our local TV station (although I think it broadcasts to about half of Azerbaijan...) approached my Azerbaijani language teacher and me over the summer about starting "English for All" and we agreed to do it. We've been planning ever since and getting more volunteers involved, and it all really started this weekend! Our first show was only us introducing ourselves, although I think the episode will really be quite the comedy because they decided that we, the American volunteers, should introduce ourselves in Azerbaijani. Let me tell you, it is stressful enough to be on television, and then to add to that speaking in a foreign language! Now we are going to film every weekend (the volunteers will switch off weeks, thank goodness). This weekend I'm really begin the course by teaching the alphabet!

I'm about to get on the night train to go back to Tovuz after spending a few days in Baku/Sumqayit for training. I don't really have much to say except that I'm really excited to see that we have a good group of new volunteers and I want to wish any of them who are reading this luck in the weeks ahead! Coming back and teaching 4 sessions a day was absolutely exhausting and reminds me of how tough and just draining PST was, but hang in there because it's worth it when you are finished! I hope I didn't scare you guys too much with all the talk of lesson planning and textbooks and "school reality" and if I did, email me and I'll reassure you that it's going to work out!

Happy one year in country to me! (and to all the other AZ7's too...). I'm in a state of complete disbelief that I've been living here for a whole year. That just seems absurd. But to prove the point, a whole new group of trainees arrived in country about a week ago. Next week I'm going to head back to the beautiful Sumqayıt to help the newbies learn fun things like how to write a lesson plan and work with the English textbooks. I know you are jealous you can't sit in on these sessions, try to hold it in.

School started a few weeks ago, as I wrote, and has been amazingly smooth sailing so far, which is unheard of in Azerbaijan. My schedule has only had one change, which I requested because two of my classes were at the same time. And my classroom is shaping up (I finally got a bookshelf yesterday! Tamilə müəllim went and "quarreled" with our director haha). Work has even been started on our future resource room, which is exciting!

I've been playing catch up all this week because last week my good friend and language teacher, Nuranə, got married. All the other members of my cluster from training came out to Tovuz and we had matching dresses made like bridesmaids. Nuranə wanted her wedding to have some American flair to it! In Azerbaijan at the bride's wedding (there are two weddings remember, one for the bride and one for the groom), the bride doesn't always wear a white dress. I can just say that makes it more difficult to choose a color for a bridesmaid dress! In the end, we ended up in the same color as the bride, bright red! Everyone loved it and it made us very easy to spot anytime we did anything! Nuranə was told by the owner of the wedding palace that it was the best wedding they had ever had their because of us (and I'll have you know that this was at the most expensive wedding palace in Tovuz, I'd never been before). I don't know if it was the best wedding ever, but it was certainly the most fun wedding I've been to in this country. I could sit with all my friends and dance and really be genuinely happy for the couple because I actually really knew them (at the other weddings I've been brought to, I haven't known the people getting married). All in all, it was a huge success.

On Monday I got to go to my very first “kiçik toy.” Those of you who have been trying to learn the few Azeri words that I sprinkle throughout my posts will recognize the word “toy” because it is the Azeri word for wedding. But, although the literal translation of “kiçik toy” is “small wedding,” it is unfortunately not a wedding that happens to be small. It is a ritual circumcision party! In this case, the young boy going under the knife was about to start 3rd grade, which seems to be a fairly typical age for having this ceremony. First there is a big party where, much like a wedding, everyone you know comes and has a big meal. There is music and dancing, the whole nine yards. The little boy has a sort of godfather who comes with his whole family and brings lots of presents for the little boy. For this toy, my host cousin was this godfather figure, so I got to come into the party bearing a huge gift of candy for the poor child and dance around showing this pretty present. Most of the time, the actual circumcision doesn’t happen until the next day, I guess so that the kid can enjoy his party (he kind of knows what is going to happen to him, but not really how much it is going to hurt…), but this time, because his godfather guy had to go back to Baku, they did the cutting day of and I, as the American guest who should learn everything about Azerbaijani culture, was brought into the room to watch the circumcision. At first I was totally fine. I watched them set the kid up on the table and hold him down and soothe him so he wouldn’t freak out as they gave him a big shot and then snipped him. But then, as I was watching them kind of sew him up, I started getting all woozy. My head was spinning and I knew I was on the verge of passing out. Of course I thought “no way, I’m tough, I can handle this. I’ll just go stand by the window.” Unfortunately standing by the window wasn’t enough and before I knew it, as I was having my mother take me outside for more air (yes, amazingly enough, in my half unconscious state I was still able to articulate myself in Azeri enough to ask for help to go outside), I passed out. I woke up on the floor, surrounded by large xanıms who were splashing water on my face. They even took the doctor away from his penis operating procedure to come over and look at me. How ridiculous is that? This little 3rd grader was stronger than I was. I sat in a chair, drinking tea to revive me, as they got him re-dressed post-cutting and brought him out to dance again in front of the party (see the photo). Nice, Jess. And in the process of falling, my mother scratched the heck out of my chin, so I have 2 nice gashes to show for my adventure. I guess I just didn’t want the little kid to be the only one giving a little blood for the party.

On Wednesday school started again. I am so blessed to have the school that I do. While a lot of other volunteers had no idea what their schedule would be and are having fights with their directors about it, I sent a note to my assistant director over the summer explaining what classes I wanted to teach and when I wanted to teach them. He arranged the schedule just to my liking and everything is perfect. I'm sure there is still the typical Azeri practice of teachers duking it out over their class hours going on at my school, but I don't think anyone will let them touch my hours. My classroom is not quite ready yet, but it should be for Monday and we can start real classes at that time!

A shout out to Little Jimmy! Happy birthday!! I’m so sorry I can’t be there to see you turn 18!!! It seems like only yesterday I was coming to hold you at the hospital (who are we kidding, you were too tall for me to hold you even then and Dad would barely let me because he thought I’d drop you!).

I slept over my sitemate Beth’s house this week and we made Kraft macaroni and cheese (Toy Story shapes – I think the shapes really makes quite a sizeable improvement over the normal Kraft macaroni and cheese noodles, don’t you?) and Duncan Hines cupcakes (yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting). It was a culinary delight of an evening. And then I followed that up the next day by opening a jar of peanut butter Beth had bought in Baku for me. I had been waiting to get apples (I know they are in season and at people’s houses, but they aren’t at the stupid village shop yet) so I could put peanut butter on my apple slices (I feel like some of you are going to judge my peanut butter eating habits, but I say don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, it’s fantastic), but then I realized that my mom had bought the nice soft bread from the store (she usually buys the lame hard bread) and we had plum jam that my co-teacher Tamilə müəllim had given me. It was potentially the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich I have ever had. And then I had like 3 more. And then I have been having them for breakfast ever since. But I have been sharing my peanut butter with my host sisters and teaching them how to make a peanut butter and jelly (they also think it is heaven…or at least I’m sure that is what they would say if they knew how to express that level of love in English or I knew it in Azeri). It is a big step for me to share something as holy to me as peanut butter. I think I can now graduate from kindergarten.

School starts on Wednesday the 15th, which is super soon! They are painting and fixing up my classroom (inşallah) so that I can go on Tuesday and hang up all the cool new posters I have been making. And I found out my director really is going to give me a whole wing of the school as he said at the beginning of summer but I didn’t really think was happening (I was just hoping for one room and the big open foyer area). I get a classroom, the foyer, and another classroom to make into a resource room for teachers and students! And the director says he will put a sign outside the hallway to the wing naming it the English Wing. Not really necessary, but pretty sweet!

I finally got the pleasure this week of going up to Qax, a region in what we call the "middle finger" of the country because if you look at the top of Azerbaijan it has 3 "fingers" going up and this is the middle one (duh)...plus it just sounds funny. My friend Lori lives there and I had yet to go visit, but she was having a summer camp and I thought that would be a great excuse to get out there and see 1) her and 2) what is supposed to be one of the most beautiful regions of Azerbaijan (truth, it is gorgeous).

Being in Qax was great because I got to go hiking around, something I haven't done in a while given the summer heat! We went out to a gigantic waterfall, a "river" (more like a dried up riverbed with a trickle, but still pretty), and some church ruins. Qax is right in amongst the Caucasus Mountains, so you're constantly surrounded by these great, green mountainsides. Very picturesque.

Ceyranbatan 1 cluster love by the waterfall

Helping at this camp was really interesting because Qax has a large population of Georgians. Even though my home region of Tovuz is also close to Georgia, we don't have a large Georgian population like this and so I had no idea about the racism that goes on between the Azerbaijanis and the Georgians in the regions of the middle finger that have Georgians. We were even dealing with the kids fighting about it at camp! I won't get into it more here, but if you're interested send me an email.

And of course being in Qax was great because I got to hang out with other volunteers, watching way more Glee and friends than I would like to admit, eating way more ice cream than I would like to admit, and loving it.

Volunteers at the church ruins

Finally, a little funny story before I go. I was walking to catch my marşrutka to Qax (well, my marşrutka from my village to Tovuz, where I caught another marşrutka to Gəncə, and then a final marşrutka to Qax) and my post-man drove up and handed me 4 pieces of mail. One of them was a postcard my mom sent me in February, you know, only 6 months late, no biggie. Moral of the story: if you send me mail and then never here from me about it, it probably got lost...or just really, really delayed!

So I wrote this with the intention of posting it a week ago, but through a series of internet mishaps and such, it hasn't made it up till now...which means some of the information has changed but whatever, just pretend I posted it last Wednesday, ok?

Because I am constantly (alright, constantly is certainly a bit of an overstatement, but often enough) getting questions about my daily life here, I wrote up this little snapshots of some facts about my life right now. Enjoy!

Tea today so far: 1Tea yesterday: at least 5Most recent junk food purchased: M&M peanuts, Fanta, Dannon yogurt bar that can only be counted as junk food because I only eat it due to the fact that it tastes like cheesecakeCurrent books: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows; Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship by Jon Meacham (I didn’t even mean to do it, but I wanted to read a novel on the side while I read this book about FDR and Churchill during WWII and I picked a book my mom brought for me which is all about the aftermath of WWII…good coincidence!)Recently finished books: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (never finished it in Mr.C’s AP English class because I took the test and said “screw that” to more work before graduation, it took me months this time, but I was determined not to give up again and have to restart a third time); The Innocent Man by John Grisham (I read it like crazy on my marşrutka ride home from Baku, only stopping when we hit the ridiculous road construction patches because I didn’t want to get sick)Most recent movie watched: Braveheart (another volunteer hadn’t seen it – ? – so we had to watch it during Biləsuvar camp)Most recent TV show watched: Glee (this show makes me so happy)Most recent thing I cooked: Peach sorbet thanks to Mathias’s recipe and instructionActivities I’m currently teaching: Conversation Club for University Boys with Tamilə müəllim, World History Discussion Group, English Writing, Mini Camp for Middle School Age Students (starts today!)Last time I was in Baku: August 14 and ready to go back, if only for the Twix ice cream I found during this visit and should not be allowed to buy any more because I’ve already eaten too much of itLast time I saw Beth, my sitemate: August 7 (and before that it was July 14th…how am I surviving??)Latest decorations added to my room: Maps of Azerbaijan and the US which like to fall back off my wall so I’ve had the pleasure of hanging them many times, more pictures from my mom for my picture wallLast time I had an Azerbaijani language lesson: August 16Last time I had a lesson before that: first week of June (oops)Last time I talked to my family in the states: August 12 (only for like 5 minutes before it got cut off, I was super disappointed, it was the first call from Naima! And I hadn’t heard her voice literally since I came to Azerbaijan)Most recent song obsession: Tik Tok by Ke$ha (a little bit embarrassed to admit that…)Songs I reminisced listening to this week: Stumbling into The Barenaked Ladies on my ipod, I first listened to “One Week” which reminded me of Little Jimmy trying desperately to learn the words and say them fast enough and then to “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” which took me back to freshman year with Steph Miller in our sweet double blasting that as one of Steph’s song obsessions. Then I also listened to “Walcott” by Vampire Weekend which has lyrics all about getting out of Cape Cod and all the bad things about it…but my response was more like “Oh my gosh no Cape Cod is wonderful and I want to be there right now more than anything!”Biggest success of the week: Actually remembering to consistently take my vitamins every day, something I haven’t done in months and something which can be pretty important here where I feel my diet is generally lacking a few (many) things.Biggest disappointment of the week: One of my fans seemed to stop working last week. And yes I said “one of” even though I live in one room. I had to buy a second one during the heat wave while my mom was visiting (she was about to get violent if I didn’t go make the purchase), but I have been leaving one in my family’s room for them to use…and so I was I jerk and went and took it when mine stopped. I’m still hopeful mine will make a complete recovery and I can go back to sharing like a nice person.

Interesting little stories of late:Sitting in a car on the way to town with my host mom and an acquaintance, I noticed that the woman was looking at me strangely and kind of cocking her head to one side. I tried to ignore her, assuming she was just being curious and trying to look into my purse (and at this point of this sort of typical Azerbaijani behavior, I just sit still for it most of the time). Suddenly she looked at me and told me she had been counting the freckles on my left arm. In case you were wondering, there are 47.

In a sleepy daze one morning, I heard a strange scratching sound from outside my window. Looking out I could see some sort of animal in a small tree just over the property line in our neighbors’ yard. I was trying to make out what animal it was and at first wrote it off to my eyes not working properly because of sleep, but no. It really was a rat. A big rat eating what I now learned is a chestnut tree. Probably 10 feet from my bedroom. Not a big fan of rats. And especially because I heard a story last week about another volunteer getting bit by one in her room while she slept! Ew!

I watched a guy get arrested at a road tea house on my way back from Baku. I have no idea what this guy did, but it was very interesting to watch the two cops try to get him into the backseat of their car. He was literally doing splits against the door frame so they couldn’t get him in. And he lost a shoe. A third cop would kind of walk up occasionally and watch and not help, which was maybe the best part. And the other cops were yelling “You’re a cop! Help!” but he just walked away. This incident made me realize the value of having a partition for the back of your cop car because as I watched them drive away, I saw that one cop was having to sit with the guy and keep him in a headlock until they reached their destination. I bet that got fun at some point.

I feel like summer should be wrapping up, but I still have about a month left until we start school! This is not complaining at all, I certainly have plenty of things I want to do with my teachers, students, classroom, etc before September 15th!

I just spent a week down in Bilәsuvar helping with a summer camp that my friends Jon and James were having. It was a really great week. Their kids were so sweet and excited and we got to do fun things like make picture frames, drop eggs from the second-floor of the school, and play the ninja game (if you haven't played the ninja game yet, try it, you won't regret it! This is a game that involves a bunch of kids standing in a circle taking turns doing ninja moves to try and hit another person's hand, no one gets hurt, every one gets to be a ninja...awesome). And in addition to all this fun at camp, there were some great volunteers down there as staff and so we would go play softball (really "left-field ball"...the other volunteers can attest to how thrilled I was to be playing...which is not very much at all) and make amazing food (fruit sorbet, donuts, and general overall wonderfulness). Only downside is that Bilәsuvar is not exactly close to Tovuz which meant I had to take a really long and ridiculously hot bus ride, the highlights of which include the little girl next to me vomiting (she stood up and did it on her father not on me, and I think she and I both are thankful for that because I was in no mood to be barfed on...not that you are ever really in the mood for that...) and the bus breaking down so I got to stand on the side of the road for like an hour and a half before giving up on the bus and getting a ride from a passing car. Sounds like fun right? Wanna visit me now?

I'm in Baku about to head back to site. I just went to the dentist yesterday and got my teeth cleaned. I was talking to staff yesterday before going and one guy asked me if before Peace Corps I would have ever dreamed of being so excited to be getting my teeth cleaned? Especially because I was paying for it out of my own pocket (Peace Corps only pays for us to get our teeth cleaned once a year...and that's a year after actually swearing in, so it would have been a year and a half without seeing a dentist and given the amount of sweets we have here with our çay - tea, I didn't feel so great about that). I thought he made a really good point because never before would going to the dentist be the highlight of my month, but I'm super happy with my clean teeth haha.

So yeah, as the title says...sorry. As I wrote in my last post, my mom came and that meant no time for posting for a while and then the task of explaining everything we did seemed too large, so I just didn't do it! But now I'll just tell you that you can go to Facebook and find all the photo evidence of my mom's trip and maybe someday I'll write up some of the craziest moments!

You may be thinking, well Jess we all know your mom left like weeks ago, no excuse for not posting since then. True story, however after she left I was busy for another week because within like 12 hours of getting home from Tbilisi, I left again to go to Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) the summer camp that volunteers and Azerbaijani counterparts put on for girls from all the regions of Azerbaijan. It was fantastically fun. It was so great to see these girls work so hard in sessions (I planned a day about leadership and courage that apparently went really well, but I wasn't there to see that one b/c I was a bit late due to getting back from my trip) and then let loose at our nightly dance parties/talent show/etc. And I got to hang out with some of the most amazing other volunteers in country, which was so refreshing and fun.

I need to be running along (I know, I know, I only just got started) but I wanted to throw a big shout out to my sister Naima who returns today (!!!!) having just finished her Peace Corps service in Benin. How ridiculous/unbelievable/crazy/exciting is that? Call me Naima, now you have to b/c you're in the US where Mom will pay the bill and I just told you to in front of my entire blog audience (and you know that has to be huge right??? I mean, Mom prints it for Grandma and Aunt Lillian to read and everything so I'm even in print!!). Congratulations!

So I'm sitting on the balcony of my hotel in Georgia, looking out over Tbilisi while I wait for my mom to arrive in a few hours, and I thought, what a perfect time to use this free wi-fi to write a blog post!

My current view while writing this :)

I came to Tbilisi early this afternoon. It was very strange leaving Azerbaijan. Believe it or not, I've been there for 9 months now (maybe you can believe that, but I can't) and it was kind of unnerving to leave. I think it was really just the feeling of not having our Safety and Security Officer/ninja bad-ass Ceyhun a phone call away should anything go wrong. And after being so scared of Azerbaijan's borders, given all the fighting that goes on over some of them, it was strange to be intentionally walking right up to one. And police and officials in Azerbaijan can give you trouble just out of boredom, so I didn't really know what to expect. But I am happy to report that in less than 2 hours I was able to leave my friend Connie's house in Qazax (our last region), cross into Georgia, and get to the marshrutkas. This was when it really hit me that I was not in Azerbaijan anymore. I couldn't read anything! If you haven't seen Georgian, it's like elvish from Lord of the Rings. Seriously. And then all the other signs were in Russian which means Cyrillic which means my head was spinning. Luckily, a minute before I had memorized what the Georgian looked like for Tbilisi off a road sign before I crossed the border, so I was able to find the right marşrutka. Of course, stepping onto the marşrutka, I basically returned to Azerbaijan because everyone there was speaking Azerbaijani! Just like home. And I have to give a little shout out to perhaps the nicest marşrutka driver, Əli. I told him I wanted to go to a certain metro stop in Tbilisi, and asked if he could tell me when it was nearby. And what does he do? He takes the sign out of the window telling people where he is going so he can go off route and bring me directly there, even up a ridiculously steep cobbled street. And he even gave me his phone number so if my mom and I want an early morning ride back to the border, he will come back to the same metro station and pick us up on his way. Really sweet.

And now, like I said, I'm just waiting for my mom. Inşallah she will arrive in about 4 hours so that in the morning I can proudly bring her home to Azerbaijan where my host family will be preparing a welcome party for her. Yes, the whole village does know she is coming and yes, they are all SUPER excited (and nervous things won't go perfectly). My host mom dragged me to the bazaar this morning and made me taste all the different fruit before she would buy them and kept asking me what I want. Unfortunately, I am not an Azeri xanım and expert market shopper, so I don't think I was much of a help. But I think we will have a wonderful party tomorrow night even if I couldn't pick the perfect fruit!

Since my last post, I've literally been at site for 2 days...if you don't know, that's like unbelievably long! I haven't been away this much since I moved to Tovuz. You'd think I'd be having separation anxiety, but I'm doing just fine right now haha.

First I went to Mingəçevir on Sunday morning with the Tovuz softball team for our Peace Corps softball tournament. We had kids from 3 regions playing and then an volunteer game when the kids were done. It was a really good afternoon, even if it was really hot.

Then the next morning I hopped an early morning bus down to Neftçala where I and 2 other volunteers helped the 2 Neftçala volunteers with their summer camp for 3 days. I got to stay with my friend Clarissa who has a room in her apartment that we called "America" because it had a wonderful air conditioner that we would occasionally turn on and just watch the satellite TV which actually had some English channels (read crazy music videos). And we ate delicious, vegetable-filled, non-oily food! Basically, it was heaven.

Then I stopped off in Şirvan for like a day and a half. I just got to hang out and even go to this ridiculous çayxana (tea house) that has air conditioning and big screen TVs and wireless internet (I know, I don't believe it exists either...but it does! We have nothing like that in Tovuz, not that I could really go anyway because women don't go to çayxanas). We watched the second USA World Cup game there.

The conference ended yesterday (Friday) and after it was over I had an appointment with my doctor, Dr. Fuad. Remember how I mentioned a few posts ago that I had a disgusting cough? Right. Still have it. I've had it for a month. This was the first time I saw the doctor, although I have been on some medicine for a few weeks. My new prescription? Dr. Fuad is calling my Program Manager and telling her I'm not allowed to do any work for a week, no going to school, no activities, no anything. Those of you who know what a complete work-aholic I am know that this might actually drive me crazy instead of making me better, but let's hope I have enough entertaining shows and movies on my computer to make this bed-rest bearable!

Alright, I want to go look at some of the shops by the metro for cheap stuff before I catch the night train home in a few hours. Maybe the next time I write a post I can tell you how many people I weird out on the train when I cough all night...I've even been weirding out Beth when we were roommates at the hotel. Hott.