Mother's Day Crafts

Thanks Aunt Debbie for the awesome craft project! My 5th and 8th grade classes had so much fun creating these lollipop flowers the Friday before Mother's Day! Like I've said before crafts aren't a big thing here in the school systems so this project and all its tape, scissors and imagination was very new for my kids... and my teachers too! The whole school was in a buzz about what I did with my classes that day. Also, they do not celebrate Mother's Day in Azerbaijan so this art shared multiple things with my students. I told them they all had to go home that day and give them to their moms. Another fun aspect of this project was I let them all have a turn using my camera during class. Any picture with me in it a 5th grader took. Pictures are SO exciting for them. The idea of using a camera and foreign and seeing their faces light up it is just hard to beat. Yep, you get where this is going, new photo project :) Anyway, check out a tiny taste of our day of creating flowers!!!

Spring Has Sprung

I know its been too long since I have given you all an update on my life, but I wanted people to be reminded of the GLOW stuff every time they looked at my blog ;) Life has been pretty normal here this past month so I'm just going to update you through pictures (I know I never do this ha ha).
This last weekend I went to Baku, the capital. I stayed with some volunteers from Europe that we have made friends with. Their jobs are very similar to what we are doing here, except they get to live in Baku. Anyway, through them I got to explore Baku in a way I haven't had the chance to yet. On Sunday we spent the day at a beach way on the out-skirts of the city, it was neat to explore. This is the pier that we snuck onto by climbing up the rocks.

There were tiki huts like this all over the beach. I though it was so weird, when would anyone use these here? I don't know, but they fascinated me so I have about 1000 pictures of them.

Again, with the tiki huts!

Boats and nets full of gross half gone craw fish were all over the beach.

The day before that we spend the day walking around the city. We went to the Mosque, which I hear is "The" mosque in the Caucasus region. It was fabulously beautiful. This is one of the gates leading to the mosque.

Its huge, with a beautiful dome covered in gold. Of course I didn't get to see the dome from the inside because the area women get to pray in is the size of a closet and not in the middle where we would get to enjoy any of the beautiful decor. But it was a really cool experience going in. The women praying were very welcoming of me and eager to share with me what they were doing. If I didn't have boys outside waiting for my to move on to the next site, I probably could have sat in there for hours with the women. It had a very comfortable, clean feel to it, nicely lit and everyone was just praying at the their own pace. I wish I would have been allowed to see the part where the men worship, I hear its beautiful, but I suppose I have too many of those sort of "I wishes" in the place.

Approaching the mosque you can see the minarets from pretty far away.

This is back in Qazax. Remember this rose bush from the winter pictures with snow? I thought I would just share its spring lifestyle with you. Isn't it beautiful?! I can't wait to see it in a month or two.

If you haven't already heard, I finally moved into my own place! I found an apartment, up on the fifth floor with a fabulous view and a lot of space. I'm really enjoy it and once I get it all put together I'll take pictures to share. But I just wanted to let everyone know about my accomplishment of doing laundry. I guess what happens when you move out is you have to start completely taking care of yourself, including doing your own laundry ;) Don't get me wrong, I have done laundry before, but not in Azerbaijan. And as you can imagine, there is no machine in my apartment (or anywhere really), just two buckets and a bath tub. But bloody knuckles and all I got that laundry clean! And then hung it out to dry, five stories up, on my clothes line.

Also in recent activity was the wedding of our good friend Rafiq's wife's brother. All the Americans of Qazax were there. It was quite the party. this is my counterpart Zeynab, who you see a lot, and her lovely daughter.

The couple.

A couple weeks ago, with the coming of spring, was my good friend in Zayam, Jackie's birthday! Many of us volunteers made our was to her village to celebrate with her host family and students of her turning 23! There was chocolate cake from AMERICA!...

An Azeri dance off...

And many opportunities to pose for pictures. Always a good time.

And last but not least, and yeas I know it was a long time ago, but we dyed Easter eggs! Thanks Taylor's for the dye kit, I got to share it and make lots of memories with it! Also thanks to everyone who sent stuff for GLOW, you are really helping us to make a difference in these girls' lives! And for those of you who want to send something but haven't yet stand by because the final list of needs and wants will be posted here shortly. I'm so excited that my mom, dad and brother are officially going to be here at the end of June! I can't wait!!!