Novrus and Growing Up

So Novrus has come and gone. The rain and miserable snow has stopped leaving the streets free of the mud that sticks to my shoes.Now when the wind blows the air is filled with dust, but the sun is shining and it is warm. Not hot yet, but warm. I think that the lack of any sort of central heating or air conditioning has made me much more aware of the changing seasons. After a winter of continually being cold, at work and at home, this warm weather is wonderful. To mark the coming of spring here in Azerbaijan the people celebrate a holiday called Novrus. Novrus is kind of wierd mix of Easter and Hollloween with some other random traditions thrown in. The kids go around to all the houses and collect candy in thier hats. There is decorating of eggs but instead of hiding the eggs they "fight" them. The eggs are hard-boiled and each person holds the one egg then they hit them against eachother. The egg that shows a crack first loses and the winner gets to keep that egg. The other fun thing they do is jump over bonfires and as they jump over leaving all thier bad luck in the fire.

Work has been going pretty well lately, still mostly English tutoring and conversation which is fine, but I also just submitted a grant to purchase twenty bikes for my organization to start a bike club. If it gets approved I should be getting the money in late June and have the bike club up and running this summer which will be a lot of fun. It is really hard to believe that I am already a quarter of the way through my service. Even though I miss home a lot sometimes, I am really enjoying my time here and it is going fast. The more I get to know the people here the more I like them. I think many of them are shocked that I would go so far away from my family and home so they like to take care of me and watching out for me.

Following Novrus I was able to move out on my own and now live in a two bedroom house by myself. After nearly six months of living with a host family I can cook what I want to eat when I want to eat and only eat as much as I want. Living like a grown up again is very refreshing. It does come with its own set of new challenges though. I have to do my own laundry which is interesting.

Here are some pictures from the Novrus celebration and also of my new house.

My Kitchen Sink

Porch and Garden

Hammock

Novrus Celebration At the Culture House

I remember when I was little and my family moved from Utah to Washington. I must have been about six years old and the move was a pretty big deal for me at the time though I don't remember much of it. I remember going to the train station and vague impressions of baggage carts and a spacious building, people hurrying about. Then later on the train being lulled to sleep by the rythm of the train tracks clacking away. Once we were in the new house I had a dream that I was back in Utah and when I woke up I hurried to the window to see if it was true only to be disappointed when I saw that i was still in Washington. Over the past few months I have often found myself having the same experience, only instead of walking to the window I will try and go back to sleep to try and recapture the faded dream. Mainly I think these dreams stem from a longing for the familar. As I become more accustomed to life here in Ucar however this desire for the familiar is fading and slowly being replaced by the strange fact that life here is starting to be familar. I have a routine and the language is every so slowly starting to make sense. I am even making friends and getting involved in the lives of the people that I live and work with.

There are still a lot of suprises though, for instance my host family frequently makes what is kind of like chicken soup with potatoes and onions and pieces of chicken. The chicken is usually still on the bone along with the skin. I know that some people like to eat the skin but that is one things that I am not a fan of and my host family thinks that it is wierd that I peel the skin off before eating the chicken. The other day I was eating this chicken soup and there was a particularly large piece of meat that I was working on. I had peeled the skin off and was picking it up to take a bite of what I thought was meat but as my teeth made contact I realized was bone. A little confused I turned it around searching for a tasty morsel when instead I saw an eye staring up at me then I saw the little waddle of skin that chickens have just above thier beak. I put the chicken head back in the soup but the eye was still staring right at me so I covered it up with a loose piece of chicken skin and pushed the bowl away. I think Azerbaijan is making me want to be a vegetarian.

Anyway here are some pictures of the places where I spend most of my time in Ucar;

Some of the students that I tutor

Computer Room at Akinchi

My orginization Akinchi

My room

...

Alright, sorry that it is coming a bit late but here is an update on where things stand with me an my new buddy Said. Here are the contents of the letter that I wrote him back and gave to him the other day;

Hello Said,

I am well, how are you? My name is Daniel Farmer it is nice to meet you. I am twenty-seven years old. I am from Seattle, WA but now I live in Ucar. Thank you for the very nice letter and I would be very pleased to be friends with you.

Dan

P.S. All your free base are belong to us.

His response came the next day. Inside was another letter and a floral print card. The card said, "You very good human!" and was scented with a nice perfume. The letter goes;

Dear Daniel,

Thank you for the nice letter. Letter is very good. When is your birthday? What is your phone number? May I call you? What is you job? Do you speak Azerbaijan? What is your Ucar address? May I see you again? See you soon!

Said

It has been about a week since this last letter and I haven't seen him since.

I Am a Pretty Big Deal

Being in Azerbaijan has been interesting to say the least. One of the strangest things that I have had to deal with is the fact that I do NOT blend in. Diversity is something that I think I took for granted in the US. Generally speaking most people here have dark brown or black hair along with dark eyes. Anyone that breaks this rule stands out like a sore thumb. I remember seeing a couple of red headed kids after being in Azerbaijan for a few months and I could not stop staring. It was such a strange sight. What were these kids doing in an Azeri school? Where did they come from? We even tried to get the ginger (Jake you know who you are) that was part of our language group to sneak a picture with them. Being American we also stand out like a sore thumb. I am taller than most everybody in Ucar, I wear funny clothes and shoes, my eyes are green and my hair is light brown. Also the fact that I am the ONLY American in Ucar adds to my notoriety. It is strange because everyone seems to know who I am ( if only as "the American") while at the same time I know almost no one. As a result I have random people coming up to me on my way to or from work wanting various different things. One man, a taxi driver, drove up to me and wanted to show me a house that I might want to rent. Others come up asking me to teach them English. School children will walk in groups behind me practicing broken English phrases that they want to say to me and then giggling like mad before getting embarrassed and running off. Most recently on my way home from work a kid spotted me from across the street and then made a b-line straight at me. He handed me an envelope. Written on the front it was addressed "To: You" and underneath that is said, "From: Said". He tried to run off but I engaged him in conversation for a bit in azeri. Then abruptly he said, "at home read" and booked it, clearly shaken that I wanted to talk to him. Here is the content of said letter:

Hello!

How are you? What is your name? My name is Said. I'm 15. How old are you? Hither came as you much humans but you very good. What city are you from? I am from Ucar. I want to be friend. Do you to be pleased? If you to be pleased, tomorrow around of school reply letter give me. You write reply. See you tomorrow!!!

This was all written in pink sparkly ink and at the end three stars were added for emphasis. Lacking was any indication of where I would see him aside from outside of one of the six schools in the area. Of course I must reply, but what should I say? Any suggestions?

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

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!