Village Living

Host family—I live with a 63 year old math teacher, who has three children that all live in Baku. Her husband passed away 5 years ago. She does not speak English, so our communication is contingent upon my top notch Azerbaijani. Most of the time, this works for us. She is very patient, and I can easily read her facial expressions that indicate when I say something that doesn’t make sense. We keep two dictionaries on the kitchen table: Az-->English and English-->Az. Both are being put to good use. 

Living space—My room is on the second floor (the main floor) of a huge village house that used to be inhabited by a family of 5. My host mom lives downstairs, in what used to be, the house’s basement. The downstairs now contains the house’s functional kitchen as well as my host's bathroom and bedroom. She and I spend a lot of time together mainly surrounding meals and/or tea downstairs in the kitchen. I feel like I’m living in super gashang apartment B above apartment A, but I have to go outside to use the bathroom, and apartment A has the kitchen.

Social sphere—I have an automatic in with the teachers and students at school. My main counterpart lives three houses down, and she’s invited me to come and go from her home as if it were my own. She regularly tutors students after school, so almost every time I go there, I have a chance to talk with kids and get to know them a little bit better outside of the school environment. 

Language—While I still have a long way to go in becoming proficient in Azerbaijani, it’s nice to enter a community knowing how to same some things. I can respond comfortably to simple phrases and greetings. I can express things like where I’m going, what I’m doing and time in basic Azerbaijani. I can also talk about my family and the types of food I like to eat in Azerbaijan which seems to go a long way with people I’m meeting for the first time… or the fifth.

A clear job description—as a teacher, it’s nice to not have to go into explaining what “Peace Corps Trainee” means when people ask me what I’m doing in Azerbaijan. I always mention Peace Corps, but usually after I say I am here as an English teacher, people are satisfied with that. For the truly curious person, I’ll go into a further explanation of Peace Corps’ work and say that I’m one of about 100 PCVs in Azerbaijan, my job is to mainly work with teachers, and I have responsibilities outside of school too. Thanks to the work of an Az7 in another Tovuz village, many people in Ashagi Ayibli have heard about Peace Corps before, and they’re super stoked about a native speaker working with English students and teachers in their village.

Family ties—it would be an exaggeration (albeit a very small exaggeration) to say that everyone in my village is related. However, I believe that the idea of the 8 degrees of separation could easily be reduced down to 1 here. Whenever someone speaks of a person I don’t know, they always seem to come to be identified as “my brother’s wife’s cousin’s son’s sister-in-law’s grandmother’s nephew’s etc…” The village is very interconnected.

Landscape—most of the houses in my village are big and beautiful. Literally. The metal roofs and gates have intricate, colorful designs. Many houses have gardens. Did I mention we have turkeys in our backyard? While the village itself is flat, the western border of Ashagi Ayibli is the Lesser Caucasus. I can see mountains from my front gate!   

Merry Christmas to you all! Lots of love and warm thoughts your way from Ashagi Ayibli : )     

First Thanksgiving in Azerbaijan

Last week, both Masazir cluster groups got together to celebrate Thanksgiving. Initially, this seemed like a fairly simple endeavor. One meal where we could come together and celebrate one of America's biggest holidays--each of us contributing a little bit of what felt like home to our collective whole. We decided that a potluck-style dinner would be the best way to go about it. My host family graciously agreed to host all of us at our house. It didn't take long for us to decide that Thanksgiving would be incomplete without a turkey. And it went without saying that turkeys aren't sold in mass quantities at the supermarkets the last week of November in Azerbaijan. I'll spare you the written details of what ensued between 4 PCTs and Franklin, our turkey, the night before Thanksgiving. Check out these pictures instead.

Our Thanksgiving gathering ended up including 11 PCTs, an Az7 who was in town for our technical sessions, both LCFs, and of course, my host family: 19 people in all. The fact that there was a blizzard (those PCTs from the north say I'm using this term rather liberally--but for real, it was a blizzard), that all of Masazir was covered in a few inches of snow, and that none of our houses had electricity this day didn't slow our roll. We were able to cook all of the food using our gas oven and stove. We ended up with a large, traditional spread that included the turkey, a chicken (a last minute addition purchased after we realized how skinny Franklin was without his feathers), a fish, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, waldorf salad, twice baked potatoes, Azeri potato/chicken salad, fruit, a variation of deviled eggs, corn, juice, as well as a pie, cookies and a cake for dessert. Where did all of this food come from you ask? Well, the stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce came in a care package to Hali, a fellow trainee. My host family contributed the fish. Nunu baked the apple pie and cake. Most of the side dishes (waldorf salad, deviled eggs, twice baked potatoes etc..) were made with ingredients from local markets. I had a really good experience with my host mom as I showed her how to make twice baked potatoes. Kartof (the potato) is one of Azerbaijan's staple foods, and I don't know what surprised her more.. 1) that there's a way to prepare kartof that she didn't about or 2) that I know how to cook! I think she was pleasantly surprised on both fronts. Before we ate, we all took turns saying what we are thankful for. The LCFs and my host family caught onto this quickly and took their turns too. During dinner, the LCFs took part in snapping the wishbone. And afterwards, when we were almost too full to eat dessert, we huddled around a laptop and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. My host family loved seeing the same traditions they took part in replicated in the show.

While I missed my family in America tremendously, I felt very thankful to be able to spend Thanksgiving with the family I've created here.

Telling it like it is.

Azerbaijanis have a way of straight up telling it like it is. In some ways, this is awesome. The directness puts you in a place where nothing is left to the imagination. If I am doing something one way, and my host mom knows of a better way to do it, she will take the knife (or rag or pen or nozzle) right out of my hand and show me how. If my host sister spots a mistake in my language homework--and this NEVER happens--she will inform me that I am wrong, cross out my error and write the correct response above it. If I walk into school with mud on my boots, the women sitting around by the door will stop me, point at my shoes, and lead me back out the door in the direction of the fountain where I can clean the dirt from my feet before re-entering the school.

On the other hand, this directness can be brutal. Coming from a land (and by land, I mean America) where most of us, if we're feeling particularly honest one day, might say "you don't look your best" rather than "you look bad." No matter to what degree our thought actually takes, we tend to present our opinions, about people particularly, in the most-likable fashion without totally lying. And it's not that we're being purposefully deceptive. We're just doing the best we can to not offend. In Azerbaijan, this is not the case.

My relative: "Did you ever have braces?"
Me: "Yes. I had them for two years."
My relative: "That's strange. Your front teeth are uneven."

Same relative, different conversation.
Me: "What happened to your fingernail?"
My relative: "I crushed it while I was grinding apples for jam." [She holds up her hand.]
Me: [I carefully take her hand to survey the damage to her nail.] "Ouch, that looks like it hurts. I'm sorry that happened, I know these take a long time to heal."
My relative: [quickly withdraws her hand] "Why is your skin so dry?!" [then touches the back of my hand and then my cheek] "Don't you moisturize?"

Only with the help of my host sister could I really understand what was being said during these exchanges. I can only imagine some of the other things people have said that I don't understand yet. I find myself laughing when I'm talking to my host sister about someone, and she, in all honesty and innocence, identifies who we're talking about as "the fat one." Earlier on, these expressions really surprised me and I didn't know how to react.  Now, I explain to her that I'm laughing because in America, it's very impolite to identify people by their appearance. But in Azerbaijan, people use fat, skinny, ugly, pretty as identifiers like Americans use blonde, brunette, tall or short. I realized in my explanation to my host sister that Americans do identify people by their appearance, but we choose non-offensive adjectives. On some level, there's a culturally embedded agreement that it's okay to identify someone as the "tall, dark haired guy with freckles." All of these identifiers are part of the man's physical appearance. However, to throw in "fat" would be quite rude. Americans, either consciously or sub-consciously, tend to avoid the more subjective adjectives because of their potential to offend. I totally get that.

What I'm also coming to realize is that the directness I've experienced here in Azerbaijan generally doesn't come from malice. On the flip side, the directness often times comes in a string of really nice compliments. People simply say what they mean. Sometimes it's more subtle than other times. And of course, like any opinion, it's all subjective. The funny part is the recognition of the inconsistency.

Çox Cups of Tea

Yesterday, I drank 6 cups of tea. This is no record (not that I’m keeping track!), and on Azeri standards, 6 cups of tea in one day is probably sub-par. Upon arrival in Azerbaijan, I started drinking tea with my host family to be polite. It’s also a very appropriate way to socialize. I didn’t particularly love drinking the tea itself, but I appreciated having this gateway into broken conversation with my family, relatives and guests. As time went on, I stopped wishing the tea in my glass would magically turn into coffee, and I began looking forward to the times when tea would be served. I enjoyed experimenting with the assortment of jams, sugar cubes, and cadies served at the same time. Now, with winter temperatures setting in, I enjoy drinking tea the most because it provides warmth to my body in places where the heat from our petch can’t reach. It’s more of a survival tool. And when yesterday, a group of 10 TEFLS ordered three pots of tea at the place we went to hang out at after our technical session, I felt that maybe I wasn’t the only one beginning to really appreciate Azerbaijan’s tea culture.

Site Placement

Today, after much anticipation, I found out that I will be spending my service in a small village, Aşağı Ayıblı, in Tovuz. After swearing-in on December 8th, I will head out to Tovuz to teach in my village school of 400 students until December 2013! I am really excited because (1) I am one of six Az9s headed to Tovuz. I'll be joined by 3 other TEFLs and 2 YDs. (2) My village is in a mountainous region in the northwest part of Azerbaijan. It's 360 km (about seven hours by bus) from Baku, 70 km from Ganja (the 2nd biggest city in Az), and 100 km from Tbilisi. (3) I'll be living in a village. The closest region centers are 20-30 minutes away. (4) I'll be REALLY close to Georgia and Armenia. Not that I'll doing much traveling to Armenia, but I think being so close will be interesting. (5) I'll be the first Peace Corps volunteer in Asagi Ayibli. (6) Tovuz is the home of F.C. Turan, an Az Premier League team. I'm so stoked.

Tovuz is red.

While it's still really hard to have a good idea of what life at site will be like, it's really cool to finally know where I'll be spending the next two years.

Pictures: Gobustan and Mud Volcanoes

They call it 'sabah'

Tomorrow (sabah), the Az9s are headed to Gobustan National Park to see the ancient rock carvings called petroglyphs (which PC staff says are older than the Egyptian pyramids but not to quote them on that because they don't know where that information comes from, but that's what the Azeris say so as it goes..) and more importantly, we get to hike up to the notorious mud volcanoes! Pictures to come. I'm very excited. Tomorrow also marks the two week anniversary of my not too terrible (or too terribly surprising) knee tweak that happened mid-pick up soccer game with the neighborhood kids. After several days of rest immediately after the injury, I've made good progress in recovery over the past couple of weeks. There's still a little bit of swelling left, but with an ace wrap and ibuprofen, it's manageable. I'm hoping that in another two weeks or so, (inshallah!) I'll be back to my early morning runs. Unfortunately, soccer will probably have to take a backseat for a while longer. Apparently Azerbaijani pick-up on the rocky, uneven vacant plots of dirt between houses isn't the best place to avoid knee injuries. On the flip-side, it is certainly a good place to make friends with all types of people--young and old, neighbors and strangers, boys and oh wait...I'll be working on that. And finally, tomorrow marks the first month of completed service in Azerbaijan! 1 month down. 26 to go.

So a couple of the highlights in recent weeks have been (1) practicum: our first opportunity to teach Azeri students in an English class and (2) a PCV site visit: our first opportunity to venture out into the rayons to see a current PCV (an Az8) working their PC magic out at site. I had the opportunity to teach a fifth form (grade) class. I think the kids were more excited to have an American in their classroom than they were to learn the grammatical difference between him and her. An interesting part of the Azeri language is that there is no distinction between the 3rd person pronouns him and her. So this grammar point is one of the first thing Azeri students learn in their English classrooms. We approached the ambiguous he/she distinction by drawing stick figures on the chalkboard and then having students practice oral dialogues about their classmates. It was actually pretty fun, and now I'm looking forward to having my own group of students and counterparts to get to know and work with consistently. Most of the kids, especially the young ones, seem to have so much energy and enthusiasm for learning. In short-hand, and with what I've experienced so far, it seems like channeling this energy most effectively by working with the existing resources and infrastructure in place will really be the task at hand once I'm at site.

My PCV site visit was to an Az8, Caroline, out in Kichili village in the Shemkir region in northwest Azerbaijan. It was about a six hour trip from Baku to Ganja, AZ's second largest city, and then another hour out to Kichili. The trip overall was really fun because I got to travel with my friends (other Az9s going out to the same region) and meet other PCVs who work and live near Ganja and Shemkir. I learned a lot by observing Caroline, a fellow TEFL, teaching classes at her village's school, leading a conversation club after school, and carrying out secondary projects in Ganja. Because we've been in training for what our service will be like after PST, it was cool to actually see the type of work we'll be doing actually happening.

We often times feel like we're in a "PST bubble" because we're being trained and told lots of things--many of which are hard to conceptualize because working and living in Azerbaijan is so different from what we've experienced in America. In a classroom, we learn from others' experiences while being molded by Peace Corps' model for development. The more I think about it, this bubble is probably the most deliberate part of the madness of PST. The method, if you will. The barrier between trainee and volunteer. However, both practicum and the site visits were the first opportunities to experience first-hand what certain aspects of life at work and at home will be like as a PCV in Azerbaijan. It was refreshing and exhilarating for us kinesthetic learners.

I've been having a lot of fun with my host family. They really appreciate my attempts at speaking Azeri with them, and they always try to help me with my language homework. One time, I was studying phrases for buying produce, and before I knew it, my living room had turned into a bazaar (an outdoor market) with my ata selling apples and my ana helping me bargain for a better price. Today, I whipped out an Azeri saying I learned on my site visit to Shemkir. It goes "yavash yavash pendir lavash" which literally means: slowly, slowly cheese and bread. So in context, we were eating dinner and I told my family I'm frustrated because my Azerbaijani is bad, but yavash yavash pendir lavash. They were in stitches. Ata and my host-brother watch a lot of Turkish CNN and they try to let me know what's going on in international news. I can actually understand some of what they say because of the similar sounding English and Azeri words that relate to world news. After an extremely general conversation today about ETA's denunciation of violence, ata told me that I should run for president.

Our card-game guide. I taught my host family how to play BS. For obvious reasons, I told them the game was called liar. You can imagine how hard it was to say yalanci (like yall-awn-chuh) instead of BS when I wanted to call a bluff. 

Nar. Pomegranate is in season right now, and it is amazing--not just because it comes from our garden but because it tastes delicious.

It is culturally olmaz (not allowed) to throw bread away. You must put any uneaten piece of bread in a place where either the birds will eat it or someone can pick it up to feed their farm animals. 

The VERY FIRST LETTER I received in the mail from BMHB. LOVE! 

Good morning! Waiting for the Ganja bus

Part of the highway between Shemkir and Ganja

Beautiful farms AND mountains in the Shemkir region.