"Yo, the name is Batty; The logic is erratic..."

So after an award worthy summer camp and a fun relaxing break in Baku and Lankaran with Mason, I took the 11 hour bus ride in 100+ degree weather back to Qazax. The only thing that kept me going through my dehydrated and sweaty mess of a bus ride was the dream of walking in my door, taking a quick rise and jumping into bed for a nap, ahhhh just the thought of it now relaxes me. Unfortunately this wish was just not my destiny. As I walked into my house that afternoon a wave of disgustingly warm air blew through my hair and so after putting my bags down I set out to open some windows. On the way to my bedroom window I opened the shower room door and noticed the soap had been knocked into the sink, but didn't think much of it. So like I was saying, I walked to my bedroom window and yanked in open. To my dismay I had smashed some sort of creator between the top of the window frame and the window when I had shut it leaving for my trip! What was it?? A frog? Wait! Its moving!!!! Those gross little features were mistakable no longer...There is a bat in my house. After taking this picture, with flash, the ugly, scary yet sweet all at the same time, little thing was scared to death and began flying around my bedroom in a panic! So I screamed and ran into the kitchen in a panic. I opened all the other windows and when my heart stopped racing went back to my room to help him find his blind way outside. But alas, Batty was nowhere to be found. I searched high and low, but instead of finding him I found little bits of poop all over my bed and the window sill,
and my soap, which seemed to have been lunch...maybe dinner. Piecing it all together I started realizing that Batty has been living in my house the entire time I was gone! Oh gosh, first a rat lives in my toilet and now this! Batty had to go.
But it wasn't until night fall that I found Batty clinging to the walls of my room, as terrified of me as I inevitably was of him. One homemade contraption after the next I couldn't seem to get him captured much less flung out the window I had ripped the screen out of. So it was time for drastic action-that called for my hat, I didn't want Batty to get stuck in my hair! So there I was, grey shorts, white tank top, green winter cap, sweaty and probably stinking to high heaven as I still hadn't gotten to take that shower, ducking low to the ground as Batty swooped and glided, flying an insane number of circles around my room. The only sound he made were his claws against the cement wall as he considered landing but then changeed his mind. Finally, sometime after midnight and hours since this whole debacle started he landed on the ceiling. Moving at about an inch-a-minute pace I crept up onto a chair with my big jar and slowly place it over him. He didn't even freak out, just sat in there until I brought him to the balcony and set him free into the night.

"Potato in a jacket; Toys in the attic; I rock and I ramble; My brain is scrambled!; Rap like an animal; But I'm a mammal..."

Baku in July

Just enjoying a little down time in Baku after my summer camp. Taking lots of walks and lots of pictures so I thought I would share some. HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy birthday to the most amazing woman I have ever met!I love you mom!

Qazax Summer Camp: Field Day

Our final day of camp was filled with a lot of hilarious relay races and games and a lot of laughter!
I'm wearing my tie-dye shirt from Wednesday's arts and crafts!
No-hands balloon between the knees relay. Each kids goes down and back and then passes the balloon off to the next kid. No one can use their hands at all :).
The MOST hilarious thing all day! The old clothes relay! Using a bunch of PCVs' old clothes left in the PC lounge we gave each of the two teams a pile of old clothes, each kid had to put every piece on, run down and back and then switch it all to the next kid. The laughter from this event drew a lot of attention from others around us. So funny!
The jump rope relay was also too funny. The boys could not for the life of them jump rope correctly and they looked like funny little frogs trying to hope the rope. We were all laughing quite a bit-including the boys don't worry :).
Water balloon toss! Mason and Kanan tied Rufet and Tural for first in this event.
We ended the day by breaking open the pinata's we had been working all week to make. While mason was out doing some other relays I snuck all the candy and prizes inside of the pinatas!

My summer camp was a huge success! It went over fantastically with the students and all of the teachers! Everything I planned to do worked out perfectly! Thank you to all of my PCV (or other American :)) helpers and to all of you back home who sent things over to make this camp possible! I hope you can all see the my students and I really appreciate all the help!!!

Qazax Summer Camp: Health Day

I was probably the most nervous about Health Day out of all the projects we've done this week. It's not easy teaching things like health in a different language. But with a lot of help from Zeynab, Mason and Josh today was a HUGE success!Dental Health. Thank you Kaitlin Poppe for all of the great ideas of what to say and how to show it! This went so well! On Monday we put eggs into water, juice, tea and coke representing what these things would do to our teeth. Today we checked out the tea and soda's discoloration and the sugary juice and soda's softening of the eggs. We talk a lot about how to keep our mouths and teeth clean and we ended by all brushing our teeth the right way out side, including Mason and I.
Physical Health. We talked about food, sleep, exercise; things to keep our bodies healthy. We followed this lesson with a game of kickball-getting all the kids exercising and spending time out side.
We ended the day with Mental Health. We focuses on being happy and creative and stretching our minds by reading, writing and playing logic games. We also just talked about laughter and how good it can be. To put this into motion we decorated our pinatas using creativity and hopeful some critical thinking to exercise our minds. But most of all we had a lot of smiles and laughing.

Qazax Summer Camp: Arts and Crafts Day

Today started and ended with putting layers of paper-mache on balloons to make pinatas! We will decorate them tomorrow and fill them with candy to brake open on Friday.
Then we moved on to friendship bracelets. A lot of my students already know how to make these as I have taught them how to make these bracelets before in after school clubs.
Tie-dye was my favorite event of the day! Thank you mom for sending me the materials! The kids thought it was the COOLEST thing ever :).
The kids also made pictures frames today. On Friday when the tie-dye shirts are washed and dried and ready to wear we will take a camp picture to glue on to these picture frames!

Qazax Summer Camp: Theater Day

Mason led a day of theatrical games today at my summer camp. We did lots of things to get the kids role playing and practicing being an actor :). Zeynab even came by to play a few games with Mason, Josh and I!