ABC Song

6, 7, and 8th grade conversation club's rendition of the ABCs! 

My frisbee kids call it frisball

What do you do when 74 kids, first to tenth graders, show up for your frisbee club one afternoon? Hand over the frisbees, abandon any hope of order you naively began with, and start taking pictures. 

My school's yard. You can see my school's main building in the background.

The All-stars.

"Indi sen kimi mensen. Onlara at." Now, you are like me. Throw to them. 

Can you tell I instructed them to catch the frisbee like a crocodile chomps?

This was part of his post-goal celebration dance. 

April is the Cruelest Month

Since I’ve been at site, I’ve attended a handful of Azerbaijani funerals. [I must add a disclaimer here: I am no expert on Azerbaijani funerals. My intention here is to write about my immediate experience and share my cross-cultural perspective with you, my dear blog audience]. So I live in a large village. Considering that everyone from the dead person’s third cousin twice removed to his barber’s niece attends, it’s not unusual for me to go to a funeral in my village, even if I’ve never met the person before. There are five very important days following a person’s death: the first day after, the third day, the seventh day, the fortieth day and the one year anniversary. Each of these days is marked by a large gathering of people at the late person’s family’s home to mourn, drink tea, and eat a meal usually consisting of beef, potatoes, grape leaf dolma and raw vegetables [bread goes without saying]. For the most part, I’ve been a passive observer at funerals in my village. I’ll usually find out about it the day of the event, and before I find out the person’s name or who they were related to, I’ll be whisked away in a herd of teachers from my school. I find myself sitting on a long bench amongst at least two hundred other people, a beautiful display of dishes and silverware in front of me, being served tea with lemons and sweets. Men and women are separated, usually under two different tents, but sometimes just by tables and benches on opposite sides of the house’s outdoor space. Oftentimes, I have to remind myself that I am at a funeral. Although people are wearing black or gray clothing, speaking in hushed voices, and nodding gravely at the late person’s close family members, they carry on normal conversations and catch up on the latest gossip with their neighbors. Ironically, if one were to take two snapshots: one of the attendees at a village wedding and one of the attendees at a village funeral, it would be difficult to distinguish the two. But that’s a topic for a different blog post.

A few weeks ago, I had the unfortunate opportunity to experience a funeral as much more than a passive observer. My host mom’s sister’s daughter (aka: my host cousin), living in Russia at the time, passed away from cancer. She had been sick for a while, but her death came as a bit of a shock. She was only 30 and has two young children. A day or two after she died, her mom, sister, husband and husband’s family members from Russia brought her back to the village on Tuesday evening. They came by plane and then in an ambulance motorcade procession from the capital with other family members who traveled to meet them in Baku. A group of 100 or so people, including my host mom, two host sisters, host aunts and uncles, and me, gathered at their home and waited for them to return. As we waited, all of the women gathered in one room. The close family members (aunts, grandmother and cousins) sat at one end of the room and began to weep heavily while the rest of us, seated on rows of benches, sat solemnly. Some people cried. Most just watched the family members weep.

When the ambulance caravan arrived, the mourners gathered around to welcome the teary-eyed mother and sister. Upon stepping out of the car and seeing the crowd of mourners, the mother burst into heaving sobs. The sister however, turned pale and shot panicky glances around the gathered people. Her expression went from shock to terror as she began to scream. Her high pitched shrieks pierced the sullen silence and punctuated the heaving sobs of her mother. A mob of women gathered around them, most of them in tears, trying to force both of them to drink a medicinal calming remedy. Everyone, including the young men carrying the coffin, was crying by the time the coffin was brought out of the back of the ambulance. Upon seeing its emergence, the sister’s shrieks turned feral. Shaking violently, she looked up to the sky and fell into a chair one woman had put behind her knees. Men and women alike, dabbed their eyes with handkerchiefs and the coffin was brought into the room where the women had gathered initially. The woman standing next to me turned and told me that the sister didn’t know her sister was dead. Her family didn’t think she could bear the truth when someone told her, so they left it to time for her to figure it out. And that’s exactly what she did upon seeing the couple hundred people, teary eyed and dressed in black waiting for her at her house when she arrived. She had been told her sister was in a coma.

When both mother and sister were calm enough to walk, exasperated and empty looking, they led a procession of women behind a mullah into the mourning room—as I’ll call it. The mullah read from the Koran while the immediate family members rocked themselves with sobs. The rest of us took our places on the benches. When the mullah finished, the mother, clearly the leader of the mourning, sat on the ground at the head of the coffin and began to cry out to her dead daughter, speaking to her and about her while the rest of the women looked on. She would build momentum, encouraged by the humming cries of the other women in her family. Several times, her emotions heightened, she beat on her chest with both hands, and as another women forced her hands down, she threw her arms around the coffin. Her passion seemed to come in waves. When she became lost for words, one of her sisters, nieces or daughter would pick up where she left off and lead the room in deeply sorrowful cries repeating their deceased relative’s name over and over again, talking about their sweet memories from the past as well as the things they dreamed she would have been a part of in the future. This went on for several exhausting hours before the guests, slowly began to filter out and go home.

The next morning, the close female relatives gathered around the casket again to cry. A new crowd of people began to assemble starting mid-morning. Men outside, and women sitting on the benches in the mourning room. The mother, aunts, grandmother and cousin wailed their final goodbyes to the casket before it was taken away by the male relatives and carried to the cemetery. At this time, the female relatives wept even harder as onlookers stood by in support. Many women cried. Two of the aunts fainted as they followed the procession out of the house. After watching the men trail off down the street, the women returned inside, washed their faces and hands, and sat down to eat.

The third and seventh day went on in a similar fashion—a gathering of women in the wailing room followed by a large meal. Each successive day saw more people and a little less drama as news spread about the woman’s death. In these seven days, there were at least a thousand people who passed through the house. The meals seemed to recreate themselves..the same plates over and over again. My host mom and sisters would return home late each night, completely exhausted from the days events and turn around and go back the next. The custom is to never leave the immediate family of the deceased person alone for the first couple of weeks. My family upheld their tradition. The whole week, the house was either empty, having been left in haste, or inhabited by a few sleeping people, many of whom I did not know, who returned to catch a few hours of solitary sleep.

This was a unique experience for me. As in all village occasions, I don’t fit into any one social category. I don’t have a clear role. In this case, it was odd because everything was happening around me, and I was never sure of what the appropriate thing to do. I attended the funeral events after I finished my lessons at school and felt myself becoming quite sad. More sad than I’ve ever been at a funeral of someone I’d never actually met. At the same time, I still felt so far outside of my family’s grief. What really struck me was the communal aspect of the funeral tradition. I felt the women’s heaving and wailing to be authentic, the way I imagine one would feel upon losing her child, but also so deliberately public. To me, these things seem to be at odds with each other. I’m not sure exactly why.

Several people at the funeral gatherings asked me about our funeral traditions in America. My response was loose and open ended at best. 

Two weeks later, life at home began to look more normal again. I was happy when Kaklik started going back to school. Although, now I realize that this is not a universal thought to think that going back to work may make someone feel better after losing a loved one. In my mind at least, it was the first indicator that life would indeed return to normal for my family here. It was nice to begin to actually see my host mom and sisters around the house again. And to see Kaklik up drinking tea in the morning, doing her hair for school, without looking completely drained and exhausted did make me feel good. I hoped her mind was on something other than her beloved sister and niece. Thus, I expressed this news with my counterpart one morning as we walked to the lesson we teach together. She asked me how Kaklik was doing, and I cheerfully chimed in that today she’s going back to school. With a slight furrowing of her eyebrows, she responded, “Of course she is, Annie! Nobody dies with the dead.” 

A Trip to Tblisi in Pictures

 

Glimpses of Familiarity

Just when I feel like home couldn’t be any further away, I’ll catch a glimpse of familiarity. The other night I was watching an Azeri news channel with Kaklik. Between news stories about protests in northeastern Azerbaijan and preparations for Eurovision in Baku, the youtube video of Mishka the husky howling ‘I love you’ played, her familiar half-human half-k9 I love youuuu ringing through my kitchen. Kaklik started laughing and repeating ‘I love you’ over and over again, as it’s one of the only English phrases she recognizes. All of a sudden, I was back at home, sitting on the couch, watching Emily come through the back door eliciting homecoming I love you howls from Panda. 

Another time, as I was conversing over Novruz dinner about pop culture with my 20-something year old host siblings, who were home for the holiday, Kaklik chimed in to announce the recent news that the American singer, Rihanna died. One of my host sisters almost dropped her fork as her eyes bulged dramatically. The other’s eyebrows furrowed while my host brother immediately jumped in with a “Mamaaa that was Whitney Houston!” and continued on about how incredibly different the two are. Standing corrected, Kaklik abashedly pushed her food around her plate with a slight smile. “Oh,” she conceded, as all three kids rolled their eyes and shook their heads in my direction. And again, I was right back at home, sitting over dinner with my family, or watching the news, or in the car on the way home from church. There was dad talking about the Fall out Boys, the origin of the Kings of Lee-on, or how he led his co-workers in the electric glide at the company Christmas party. Before he can finish his sentence, the jury’s all over the mistakes: me, as condescending as the next overachieving 17-year old, nit-picking every detail while Emily’s sitting beside me, disgusted, but thankful he didn’t say it in front of her friends. I don’t think there are many universal truths about families, but it’s interesting—the means by which my understanding of family seems to find me. And lucky for me, through these channels, home doesn’t seem quite so far away.    

  

Valentine's Week

Regardless of how I ever chose to observe certain secular holidays in the U.S. (i.e. MLK Day, President’s Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day), in Azerbaijan, these holidays make great topics for English conversation clubs with automatic segues to cultural exchange. For Valentine’s Day last week, I decided to use the theme for both of my student conversation clubs. Valentine’s Day is recognized in Azerbaijan as “Lover’s Day,” and I realized that my school-day version of Valentine’s Day, where all the kids wear red and bring valentines and candy for each other may be a bit out of touch with some of the current notions surrounding the holiday here. I decided to spin the theme so we learned about compliments. I taught new words like “kind, pretty, beautiful, interesting, generous, honest, friendly, patient” and told my students that Valentine’s Day is a good opportunity to give compliments to people we care about, like our family and friends. At the end of the day, I handed out a pink index card and had the students write a valentine (in English of course!) to one of their family members. The stipulation was that each valentine had to include a compliment and the line, Happy Valentine’s Day! As I was proof-reading through their notes, I made a last-minute addition that beautiful is an adjective that describes women, while we use handsome to describe men. I also gave my students the task of translating their valentines when they give their cards to the respective recipients to make sure they’re understood properly. One of my students wrote to her older brother who is currently in the middle Azerbaijan’s compulsory military service for young men. She wrote that he is a “kind and handsome boy,” decorated the card with red and purple hearts, and even included an “I love you” before she signed her name! As we were leaving, she asked me if it’s okay if she waits to give it to him next year when he’s home for Valentine’s Day.

The older group, which happen to be all girls, completed this valentine card task rather quickly, so I passed out extra index cards and gave them the opportunity to write to their friends, too. I ended up receiving a valentine from one of my 9^th graders that read:

Dear Annie!

You are a honest person!!!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

It’s always nice to know your students have such a keen eye for character, isn’t it?

On Friday, the final day of my Valentine’s Week, I was teaching articles a, an and the (which, for the record, was a coincidence and had no relation to the valentine I received from my student) to a 7^th grade class. Because the Azeri language lacks articles, it’s a rather difficult topic for my counterparts to teach and for students to understand. So I had presented most of the material for this lesson, and I could tell my counterpart was hanging on my every word to make sure the examples she wanted to present would be accurate. After I had given a series of example sentences, my counterpart jumped in and gave the example: He is a beautiful boy. She immediately shot an approval-seeking glance my direction, and as I was endorsing her sentence with a slight nod of my head, I heard “handsome,” come from one of my conversation club students sitting in the front row. “He is a handsome boy.”

Azerbaijan is cold.

We were warned during training that the first few months at site are cold. It’s a rough time to begin service as the winter months are difficult. Just make it to Novruz everyone says. Novruz, Azerbaijan’s biggest holiday, falls at the end of March and is a celebration of new life: the turning of winter into spring. I suppose I gave this warning as much consideration as I gave all of the disappointed scoldings [ie: “Annie, where is your jacket!?”] I received from my dad every year come November. In winter, Azerbaijan is cold. And not the kind of cold where the worst part of the trip is the first ten minutes you spend in the car waiting for your heat to kick in. It’s a no insulation, the walls in this building are merely conducting the cold from the ice clinging to the outside of the building, kind of cold. The kind of cold where you can’t tell whether or not you’re burning your fingers on the stove because they’re numb. The I can’t draw a straight line across the blackboard because I can’t feel the chalk between my fingers kind of cold. I walk around everyday wearing at least three layers of pants and three to four shirts to stay warm. It’s not abnormal for me to wear my scarf and hat all day until I’m in my bed and the two thick comforters I’m lying under have trapped enough body heat to keep me warm. And I wait to get in bed until I know for sure I don’t need to do anything else before falling asleep because I know that once I am under my covers, it will take a nuclear attack (or, in a similar vein, my alarm clock waking me up for school the next day) for me to get out. Last Sunday, I hung up my hand-washed clothes on our clothesline to dry. Today, 6 days later, they are still frozen to the line. I thought Mother Nature needed a laugh. And maybe Kəklik, my host mom, too. 

Despite this Georgia girl’s instinct to stay huddled near the heater until it’s warm enough to wear t-shirts outside, I’ve been in the process of establishing a semi-regular schedule. I began writing this post with the intention of describing a normal day for me and found that task to be an incredibly inaccurate portrayal of my life at site so far. Hence, the beginning about the cold weather because that seems to be the only day-to-day constant. During the week, I’ve been spending my days at school co-teaching English classes and conducting conversation clubs after school. My schedule evolved after I finished observations and actually began teaching. Now, I’m working with all 6 English teachers, and I’m teaching two 6^th grade classes, two 7^th grade classes, an 8^th grade class and a 9^th grade class. I have conversation clubs after school 4 days per week: 2 days for teachers and 2 days for students.

On Monday afternoons, I have conversation club for 6^th, 7^th and 8^th grade students. So far, there’s been a huge turnout for this group. I’ve had up to 30 students show up, which is radically different from the 12-14 student classes that I teach during the school day with another English teacher. This group is very enthusiastic and a lot of fun to teach. Because of the language barrier (albeit an ever shrinking language barrier from both sides), I have to demonstrate and charade through most of the activities at least once. We’ve covered topics like numbers, time, family, hobbies and animals. However, their favorite topic so far was learning the ABC song. And no matter how many times I sang the song to the tune as every literate person in America knows it, these students somehow managed to slightly alter the intonation of certain letters and created their own ABC tune. However, I’m learning to choose my battles, and the last battle worth fighting right now would be standing in front of a group of 30 middle schoolers in an attempt to alter their ABC tune. I take what I can get. Following the ABC’s, I did a special lesson on the vowels, which for them, are particularly difficult letters. I wrote “vowels: A E I O U” across the board and taught them each letter to the tune of Who Let the Dogs Out. While pointing at the letter A on the board, I sang “Who let the A out?” And the students responded “a, a, a, a.” Point to letter E, “Who let the E out?” “e, e, e, e”…so on an so forth. Apparently both songs, although pitchy and slightly off beat, were catchy because the next day at school, two of my 6^th graders asked if we could do the ABC songs during our lesson. If you had seen them ask so sweetly, trying so hard to ask in English, you wouldn’t have been able to say no either. My counterpart thinks I’ve lost my mind.

My street to the right. 

My street to the left. 

An activity for my 7th grade class. Thank you, Aunt Judy!

(front). A present for me from one of my students. The top says 'Happy Family!' And from left to right it's Dad, Emily, me and Mom.

(back).