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!!!

I need your help

Azerbaijan is one of the many Peace Corps countries where us volunteers put on G.L.O.W. (Girls Leading Our World). G.L.O.W. is a camp for girls in the summer where we try to incorporate activities that my seem everyday-normal to us in America as far as camps go, but are things that girls never get to do here, as well as bring in Azeri women role models to empower younger girls. To make our camp simply AWESOME this summer we could just use a few things from the states :)I've been waiting for a while to gather more of a wish list but it seems to be taking too long so I'm just going to start with a few things and add as I learn. As of now I know that white t-shirts, tie-dye kits, s'more makings and things to make friendship bracelets are on the wish list (we can't really get any of that here). SO... if you have any extra time, money or whatever, it would be so so great if we could get a few of these things! You can just send the boxes to my address (look to the right :)).Of course theres always a catch, the boxes have to be sent by the 1st of May! Sorry for the short notice. I'm still waiting to hear what else is needed so keep checking the blog and if you're able, send a box :) THANK YOU!

Novruz!!

Byraminiz Mubarek! Happy Holiday! It's Novruz in Azerbaijan and I thought you would want some pictures of the adventures we've all been experiencing.

For the four Tuesdays before Novruz (Starting the end of February) families here have a celebration with lots of tea, sweet treats and FIRE JUMPING! Each Tuesday is one of the four elements, water, earth, wind, and fire. They also decorate eggs the way we do on Easter and leave hats at gates to get treats in them, sort of like Halloween the 16th of March, the last Tuesday before Novruz on the 20th and 21st I went to one of my teachers houses to celebrate.

Shefeq and her husband cooked a wonderful meal with Kebabs and other Azeri foods.

Her son and daughter built us this raging fire to jump over and we all jumped 7 times, leaving the bad things from the year before in the past and taking the good things for the year to come.

I swear it was bigger before when I was jumping but for the picture of course it looks little. Don't worry, I do it again...

Shefeq's family and I in front of our fire. This is about the size we were all jumping over.

The next day I went over to Zeyneb's again to learn how to make sheker bura, a sweet roll sort of thing they drink with tea. It's SO time consuming, it took us all day.

I'm no good at rolling out dough into these thin little sheets the way they do here!

But Zeyneb tried to teach me.

Ends up I'm better at filling the dough with the sugar, hazel nut, walnut mixture. And eating them!

Then Qazax had a big festival in the park. The sun was shinning and the whole town was out and about. All of these really great antique carpets were on display, along with old ways of making wool, cooking and clothing that was out to be seen.

These girls are in old-fashioned Azerbaijani clothes, on antique rugs with old water jugs and other really interesting things.

Each village of Qazax had a table on display of their Novruz treats and history. This was the Qarapapaq table and the women how put it together (That's where my host family lives). In the middle is wheat grass, every family grows one of these, starting to first Tuesday, to have as a table setting. Then the put candles around it and have 7 different kinds of foods around that on the table.

My site mates Connie and Susan were there. As well as a lot of the teachers from our schools, and Zeyneb and her family.

Then, on the actual Novrusz Holiday, the 20th, my host sisters and I went over the jump the neighbors huge fire!

We had to wait till it got a little smaller, but see! I did really jump over fire :)

This was our Novruz sheep--This photo was taken on request but it is kinda cute with his little bow. I did not eat him FYI. But anyone the point is, Novruz is the most celebrated holiday here in Azerbaijan. Partly Muslim with a mix of other things that mean a lot to this area and it was really amazing to be a part of the party!

Foothills

My site mate, Connie and I love to take walks, exploring the city of Qazax but also what is outside of the city. A little while ago we found the canal behind my house (I know I've mentioned it). Every time we walked back there we seemed to go a little further, exploring a little more until finally we discovered that the foothills of the Lower Caucasus aren't as far away as they seem!

From the start, it looked like it would take a few hours just to get into the hills, but we just kept walking, clocking our daylight left so we knew when to turn around and soon enough we were there!

There was no one around except for us and the shepards out in the distance with the herds of sheep and goats.

Eventually we started walking up hill. The ground was covered in little pink and white flowers, growing close to the grass.

Once we made it up to the top of that hill there was so much more to see! We could even begin to see the white caps of the actual mountain range in the distance. It was absolutely beautiful, these pictures don't do the experience justice. Arriving at the hill-top was a time to rest, think and remember some of why we are here and what we want to do. Connie and I are excited to start hiking further back into the hills in the spring.

Our walk home was during the last parts of full day light. The canal looked amazing. It was a fun and rewarding day of exploring and off-the-cuff soul searching.

Gettin' Down To Business

Things in Azerbaijan just seem to be getting progressively better! The sun is out, the snow is melted (tricked ya with this picture, I know. Its old) and I am a busy bee here in Qazax. (This picture is from Valentine's weekend. Amanda and I went to visit Lexi in Berde. We made Chinese and Mexican. I know, I know, I'm becoming quite the cook!)

Yesterday I went to one of my teacher counterparts after school for lunch, She taught me how to make Georgian Xangal. Her daughter and I were filling the dough with meat while she was rolling the dough out flat for us. I even got her son to help us. Or I forced him to help, but either way, I think he had fun in the end.

I've gotten two after school conversation clubs going. One for 5th graders (there are so many of them! And they are CRAZY) on Tuesdays and one for anyone older on Wednesdays. This week I taught them how to say "what's up?" instead of "How are you?" and then obviously the proper responses. Mostly we just play a lot of games. I feel really good after ever club, like I'm finally sort of doing what I need to be here. Also this week I went and met the English teacher at the refugee school ( After regular school hours my school becomes a school for refugee children). I'm going to observe some of her classes next week and start going once a week to play games and do other activities with those kids. Also, this weekend we are starting up a softball league in Tovuz for us and our kids. (It sounds really cool, like I came up with the idea on my own huh?! But alas, I did not, there are softball leagues all over Azerbaijan run by PCV's. Sometimes they play each other.) I am really excited for this because my counterpart (in the pic) told me I could take both of her kids down to Tovuz on Saturdays to play! This is sort of unusual because parents here get nervous letting their kids go places outside of their own towns, but she trusts me. And one of the points of this softball league is to get kids from other regions involved with each other. ALSO, I met a 22 year old girl here who speaks great English. Her and her friends want to start meeting with me! This is what I've been waiting for here! A group of young girls who I can get to know and try to pass on any sort of wisdom I may (but probably don't) have. You know what I mean, its just super exciting! So, as you can see, all of a sudden, work has really picked up for me, I feel really involved in my community and I am happy :) Now if I could only get an Azeri tutor and a house to move into!

Oh yeah, mom and dad, my host mom says thank you for the honey! (Can you send more cause I think I've eaten more then her. Its so good!)