So it has been three weeks at site and I am settling into my community. Things are going pretty well but at times I do feel pretty isolated. Almost no one here speaks English so it is a constant struggle to communicate. It is good for my language though. I did get to spend the holidays with other volunteers though and that was nice. There was a small Christmas party in the nearby town of Kurdemir with about fifteen other volunteers and then last weekend most of the volunteers went into Baku for the New Year which was a lot of fun, but very strange. Going to Baku is like going to another country. It is a VERY beautiful but expensive city, especially on a Peace Coprs budget. There was an amazing firework show and lots of lights strung up. In the city center there was a HUGE Christmas tree and you could get pictures with Santa Clause (shaxta babba) and his side kick Snow Girl (qar qiz). They do some of the same things that we do for Christmas mostly just lump it all in with New Years. Also Santa Clause is not fat and sometimes wears a very creepy Santa mask.

I also ended up staying with my old host family for a few days and had the VERY strange sensation of coming home. I only lived there for three months but compared to where I am now it is the most familiar place that I have access to. The people here are so kind and it suprised me how much I had missed my old host family and how much they had missed me. I was greeted with hugs and kisses from everyone and immediately fed too much food.

Now that the Holidays are over though I have to start doing some real work. Up till now things have been pretty quite and mostly I have just been going around the city trying to meet as many people as I can, which isn't too hard as people often come up to me wanting to know why I am here and what I am doing. I hope to start some English conversation clubs over then next month and also get started on planning for a few grant proposals. My host organization wants to start a bike club which I think would be lots of fun for the spring and summer.

I went to the bazar the other day just to do some exploring and a man came up to me and said that he knew my counterpart Almusa and started chatting with me. He took me over to his jewelry store and showed me around a bit, then asked me if I was married. I told him that I was not and then he said that I should come to his store if I ever wanted to "qadin almaq" which translates directly as, "to buy a woman". I thought he was asking me to go visit a prostitute with him and immediately got a wierd look on my face said no and then walked away. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized he was saying that if I ever wanted to get married, which is what "qadin almaq" actually means, that I should come to his store to buy an engagement ring. While it is kind of funny these types of misunderstandings happen with incredible frequency and are actually pretty stressful, but I guess that is why I signed up. Lately I have been thinking a lot about why I decided to do this and this qoute by Viktor Frankel came to mind, " When we are no longer able to change a situation...we are challenged to change ourselves." To be immersed in a foreign culture is a hard thing to do but forces a person to change. Even in the short time that I have been here I have been forced to grow and adapt. It has been hard at times and isn't likely to get easier for a while, but I do believe that it is worth it.

Things I have grown to like:

Mayonaise and beet based salad

Dolma of every variety

Baklava

Twenty glasses of tea every day

The kindness of strangers

Things that I will NEVER like:

Xash AKA Boiled Cow Hoof Soup

Any and all animal organs

Squat Toilets

Showering once a week

Frequent power outages

Schister taxi/marshrutka drivers