Okay…so, I’ve been a really craptacular blogger.
My apologies to my adoring fans (Mom and Dad).
I knew it was time to update when my mom was repeatedly sending me text messages along the lines of “I’ve been reading other Peace Corps blogs to try to figure out what’s going on in your life.”
Here’s a quick, inadequate, and probably incomplete rundown of exciting recent(ish) events in my life:
November 18: Site announcement day!
During a nice little presentation given by the Peace Corps/TEFL staff, I learned that I’ll be heading to Oğuz! Oğuz is a small mountain town near the bottom of Azerbaijan’s middle finger, very close to the border with Russia. Right in the middle of the High Caucasus, I can expect gorgeous scenery, awesome hiking, and very cold winters…needless to say, I’m thrilled. I have three awesome site mates: Colin (CED), Drew (YD), and Kevin (TEFL), and I’m super pumped! I’ll write more about Oğuz soon…since I’ll be arriving there this week!!
November 20: First Baku Trip
Before I was even sure I was coming to Azerbaijan, the little research I had done on the country brought up the obvious disparity between the capital city of Baku and the rest of the country. After living for nearly two months in Sumgayit, only 40km away, nothing could have prepared me for the shock of going into Baku, which is by all means a first world European-class city, on par with most of the major cities I’ve visited in Europe or the US and a completely different world from the soviet-block apartments and trash-strewn streets only an hour’s bus ride away. We had a really great time and visited some tourist landmarks, the Peace Corps office, and Finnegan’s, a bar frequented by PCV’s and English/American expats who live in Baku.
November 23: Counterpart Conference
On the 23rd, we had the TEFL Counterpart Conference: one English teacher from each of our schools came to Sumgayit, so I was able to meet and talk with one of the teachers that I’ll be working closely with at site. Shahla Muellima came from my school (Oğuz school #3), and it was a really great experience.
I will be teaching at a school that is separated into a normal school and a Lyceum school for students who excel in math and science, although I’m not sure what that split will mean for me, as there are English teachers in both halves. There are a total of 5 English teachers at the school, and I will, within my first few weeks at site, select 2 or 3 as “counterparts” to work with.
Although we’re not required to select the teacher who came to the conference, I was really impressed by mine. Not only does Shahla Muellima speak excellent English, she was very open and excited about working with me—she even said that she wanted to meet each week to plan lessons! (Side note: one of the biggest obstacles for many TEFL PCV’s is getting teachers to lesson plan; it simply isn’t done here, so I was obviously SUPER pumped that Shahla Muellima came to me with the idea!)
November 25: Şukur Bayramı (Thanksgiving holiday)
One of the best things about being a part of a Peace Corps community is being able to get together to celebrate American holidays. For Thanksgiving, my clustermates and I decided to have a big Thanksgiving dinner at my host family’s house.
It ended up being one of the most fun, interesting, and memorable days of PST. Since getting, killing, and cooking a turkey seemed like a pretty daunting task, we decided to stuff and roast three chickens. In addition, we had stuffing, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs, mashed potatoes and waldorf salad. We finished up with apple crisp and pumpkin pie. Cooking was a huge group effort in which we took over my host mom’s kitchen starting at 9am and worked all day. During the meal, we listened to american music, drank wine (olar since it’s a holiday and my family is pretty liberal), and said what we were thankful for. It was awesome.
I could probably write 3 posts to document the craziness that ensued later in the evening, but I’ll attempt to be brief. In short, my host father decided that he didn’t want to be left out of the action, and decided to have his own holiday. In other words, there were soon 5 heavily intoxicated Azerbaijanis at my house—including (or possibly featuring) an Iranian Azerbaijani. This colorful character took turns trying to convince me to come to Iran with him and asking Joe if he was really a woman. (Mostly because the group had just veiwed pictures of Joe with super long dreadlocks—the Azeri’s were horrified.) It was an overwhelming, hilarious, and story-filled evening.
December 3: Final LPI
During PST, we have had two LPI’s (Language Proficiency Interviews) to mark our progress with the Azerbaijani language. The first was a little over a month ago, and I did quite well…now I’m just waiting to hear the news on the final one. Mostly, I’m just happy that it’s over. Language-wise, I’ve done much better than I thought I would. The last time I studied a language intensively was in Italy almost three years ago, and it was a really big challenge for me. I guess I must have made some language connections in my brain since then, because I’ve been progressing well. It’s incredible to look at how well I’m now able to communicate with my host family compared to only 2 ½ months ago, when I was limited to words like good, bad, I like, I want, my name, etc.
So…that’s pretty much up to date as of the 5th.
