Hello Again!!!

All right so I know that it has been a while since my last post and I apologize, but I have finally emerged from the darkness of Pre-Service Training which was a little bit intense. Last week my group of volunteers (the AZ8's as we are known) was sworn in and afterwards we moved to our permanent sites. I have been placed in a quiete town called Ujar which is smack dab in the middle of the country. I have been here for only a week and people have been very welcoming. Things move pretty slow here and it is a nice change from PST. I got placed with an agri-business information center which assists farmers with various different projects out in the neighboring regions. My counterpart is an awesome guy named Almusa. He is VERY excited about his work and about having me here. His favorite phrase is, "Daniel, problem Yoxdur" which means, "there is no problem". So far I haven't been doing much "work" mostly have been going around the community and trying to meet as many people as possible. I have been doing a little English tutoring which is interesting and going pretty well. Not a lot of people here speak English though so I am being forced to pick up the language pretty quick. I really enjoy learning the language in this setting but it can be exhausting, at times it feels like my brain is on overdrive trying to understand what everyone is trying to say to me and at other times it just shuts down and refuses to accept anymore Azeri.

Anyway things are moving right along in this little corner of the world and everyday I learn more about Azerbaijan. Despite not knowing where it was a few short months ago it is a very happening place. The fact that it is such a young country with a very fragile democracy makes it fascinating to watch. Azerbaijan is in its formative years and it will be interesting to see what direction it takes.

Me at swearing in with my host parents.

Me getting my Peace Corps pin

Me and my cluster AKA NINE-O-MITE!!

Menim Aihlam

So I have officially been adopted by a new Azeri family. Sorry mom and dad there is a new Ata and Ana in town and their names are Abgul and Nazaket. I have two host sisters and who are married and a little older than me. They have all been very nice to me so far and from hearing about other's host families I think that I really lucked out. They are fairly well off, Abgul is a retired engineer for BP and Nazaket is a teacher (I think) at the local music school. In fact the whole family is very musically inclined which is cool. Nazaket is a master at the accordion and Gunel is a vokalEEst.

They are also very good at helping me learn the language. In fact my first night here I am pretty sure that they were determined to teach me the entire language in one night. It was a pretty intense experience to say the least. Constantly pointing at objects and saying words in Azerbaijani to me until I repeated them correctly then moving on to something else. Needless to say after the first night my mind was a bit fried. After I went to my room to go to sleep I laid in my bed for a while just staring at the wall. It was the strangest sensation, it felt as though my language had been taken from me and all that was left was the few Azerbaijani words I knew that would skitter across my mind at odd intervals. I still get this sensation after an intense language lesson but not so bad anymore. My host sister has a son who is a year and a half old and I feel like he and I are on the same page. He helps me out with the language every now and again. Learning this language in such an immersed setting is very interesting. It is like I get to revisit the first years of my life and feel what it is like to acquire a language just by listening and paying attention to what other people are saying. I think it will come at a relatively fast pace but in the mean time it is a little frustrating.

On a gross side note I think I just saw my host sister suck the snot out of her child's nose with her mouth and then spit it into a napkin.

Thanks for reading!

Azerbejesus

So I joined the Peace Corps...and here I am almost exactly on the other side of the planet surrounded by a bunch of Muslims and Do Gooders. Today is my fourth day in country and it has been a bit of a blur. I started off in Philly for staging. I was there for almost two days and had a good time meeting the other sixty-two volunteers. I kept my eyes peeled for Mack, Dennis and the rest of the gang but sadly did not see any of them. I did see the Liberty Bell tho and I got to have a Philly Cheese Steak.

I am in the country of Azerbaijan which is about the size of Maine and just North of Iran on the Caspian Sea. My official title is Youth Development Facilitator and I am very excited for the work I will be doing. Over the next three months I will be in the town of Khirdilan for my Pre-Service Training mostly learning Azerbajani and different development strategies. After I successfully complete my PST I will be sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer and serve for the next two years.

For a lot of you who may not really know about the Peace Corps and why I would want to spend two years and three months in the remote country of Azerbaijan it is nicely summed up in their mission statement and consists of three separate parts:

1) To help the people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women.

2) To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.

3) To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans

Aside from keeping my family and friends updated on what is happening in my life over here the main reason for this blog pertains to part three of Peace Corps mission statement. I am very excited to be serving in a country that is mainly made up of people that are of the Muslim religion. I am extremely ignorant of what it means to be a Muslim. I am excited to learn about Muslim culture and convey what I learn to the people back home. I hope that I may provide an interesting window into a foreign culture and share the things that I learn. Anyway thats all for now,

Salam