Random Pictures of Imishli

Our wonderful Heydar Aliyev monument in our Heydar Park. (He is considered the father of Azerbaijan and every city has a park, museum, statue, street named after him, his quotes plastered everywhere, as well as giant pictures of him all over. His son is now the president.)

An absolutely amazing poster I saw in a school classroom. Yes, I did say school. What else would you want your kids to learn about?

Me trying to get gum off my shoe.


Some random apartments with their toilets in the yard. It is common for apartment buildings not to have indoor bathrooms. Glad I don't live in an apartment, oh wait my toilet and shower are in the yard too - about 50 ft from my front door!

One of the amazing sites I see at the plethora of butcher shops. Sometimes the legs are tee-peed together on the road, or there are buckets of blood, piles of skin, intestines laying around, not to mention the hanging meat or the tied up animals waiting to be slaughtered. Makes me happy I am a vegetarian.

Its the small things

Amazingly enough I finally found a drink in Imishli I like! I am pretty pumped. My three favorite drinks are water, skim milk, and diet coke. Diet coke is a no go in my dear city (it was even hard to find in Baku last time I went much to my utter disappointment), but I can find milk. It is not skim milk, the lowest percentage I can find is 3.5% and it tastes a bit different. However, I water it down and enjoy the special treat of milk. Normally I only drink tea and water. But, a few days ago one of my site mates introduced me to Aquinafina carbonated flavor water, a drink I would definitely turn my nose to in the states, but I tried it and am instantly addicted. It kind of tastes like a water downed 7-up, but I will take what I can. So the point of this - none, I am just really happy I found something I like in Imishli!

Unrelated, I did not go to work this morning so that I could help my host mother clean and prepare my new house. We did a little cleaning, but I did learn how to make my favorite meal - meatless grape leave dolma. I am super excited about this! The coolest part of it was that all I had to do was walk outside and pick the grape leaves off our grape vines and gather the greens I wanted from our garden. I am not sure why, but that was really fun for me - going into our yard for the ingredients needed!

As soon as I am all moved into my new house, hopefully in the next few days, and it is fixed up the way I like, I will take pictures and post them for everyone to see.

Novruz Pictures

Me and the host family visiting one of my host sisters and her husband in Tartar (village outside of Ganja)

from right to left: host dad, host sis (her apartment), me, friend of host sis, host sis, host mom
On the trip to Tartar we stopped to climb a mini mountain. This is my host sis's friend, me, and host sis battling the wind

Host mom and me inside our house

Host mom just finished jumping the fire

Filling the hats with goodies to give back to the kids who threw them in the house

Me and host parents in our house (host bro is taking the picture)

Our fire

Latest in the AZ

So, I have been a bit slack lately about bloging - sorry about that. But there is some exciting stuff happening in Azerbaijan right now. One thing is that it is Novruz! What is Novruz and why should we care, right? Probably what I would be thinking, too. Novruz is, from what I understand, the biggest holiday in Azerbaijan. It is a symbol of the revival of nature as well as spring, according to my nifty Azerbaijan Culture book! It is throughout the entire month of March, marking the last month of winter. Each Tuesday of the month represents a different thing: water, fire, air, and earth. It is a fun time and a lot of guesting (definitely a verb here - going to go visit family and friends). So back to Novruz traditions, firstly, the house gets a hard core cleaning. Secondly, tons of food. Pakhlava, shekerbura, qogal, ploff, and dolma are definitely staples and tons of over stuff is cooked, too. You probably don't know what some of the food are - just know they are amazingly delicious and I am learning how to cook them. Hopefully, after two years I will be able to do it on my own and cook them in the States! Each Tuesday has different traditions that take place. Last Tuesday kids went around to different houses and throw their hats in the house. Why might you ask? Because each house then fills the hats with pastries they made, candy, and fruit. Tons of fun! However my absolute favorite thing is the fire jumping! Yes, you heard right. Each Tuesday everyone builds a bonfire in their yard and everyone jumps it 3 times. I don't know the exact roots of why people jump the fire or why we do it three times, but I was told by one person to think of wish while jumping. There is also a phrase you say while you are jumping, but not sure what it means in English, so I will just leave that out. So for the past two Tuesdays I have been fire jumping! No burnt clothes or shoes yet! I do have pictures, but I will have to post them later because I forgot to bring them with me to the computer. Another neat thing about Norvuz is that everything is shut down for 9 days of holiday - i.e. no work. That is always fun, so starting tomorrow my days will be filled with guesting! Something interesting about the nine days, in order to have nine days in a row off (since the main Norvuz calender day is the 21st - a weekend) the government changed the work schedule so that Sunday the 29th is a normal workday instead of going back to work on the 27th. That has no standing on anything to me(because I have clubs on Saturdays and Sundays anyway), I just thought it was interesting.

Speaking of interesting things the government in Azerbaijan does - yesterday was a big day here politically. I am not in America while the excitement of Obama is happening, I just read about it, but I can say I was living in Azerbaijan when it became a dictatorship. That is pretty exciting! (being sarcastic). Okay, not an exact dictatorship. March 18th was referendum day, where the country voted to on 41 constitutional referendums; the main one being to allow no term limits for the presidency. (Who by the way term's would in 2013, but not anymore since he successfully got the referendum passed.) Another one of the referendums that passed are stricter media restrictions. All very interesting things happening here.

Anyway, I am doing well and healthy. Once I come back to work - starting the last week of March, I will add pictures and more updates of everything going on.

Latest Trip

Yesterday I finally finished a grant I was working on and sent in it! Exciting for that. It has been a very frustrating process due to the time frame and lack of support I was given. But, regardless it is finished and I will know in 3 months or so if we got it. I am not sure if we will though because my organization did not do some of the things I asked them to do for the grant (which were required in the application). However, it is all over and done with.

Saturday I am going to Baku for two days for Peace Corps stuff and then headed to Sumqayit to visit my old host family. Actually my entire cluster is all going to Sumqayit at the exact time so it will be just like PST! I am really looking forward to that trip.

The last weekend in February I went to Quba to visit my friend Amy. Below are some pictures from my trip.

So, what do you have in your neighborhood? If you are Amy the answer is an archaeological site full of human remains! Of course we totally went there to check it out.

Day 1 of the trip. Beautiful weather and gorgeous views.

Day 2. We went to Xachmaz (about 30 minutes by bus) to visit Jake. This picture is from this crazy park they have full of plastic animals all over the place. It was like a fake zoo.

Day 2. We went for a walk down the railroad tracks. (Some of you make think this is unwise recreational activity, however, I visit them in Imishili, too because it is the one place, besides home, I can go and not be the center of attention, i.e. constantly stared at, yelled at, etc...) We stopped to hang out on the bridge where we were almost run over! Okay, I am exaggerating just a bit. But we were on the bridge we suddenly Jake yells to get off the tracks because a train was coming. One would think you could hear it or even feel it coming from far away, but no way. That bad boy was coming fast and it just appeared.

Day 4. (Day 3 I spend inside because it was snowing literally all day). Woke up to over 1 foot of snow. If you notice I am wearing pink boots that came up to my mid-calf. I was standing in the snow and you can barely even seem them. This was my travel day back to Imishli, and thankfully my bus didn't get into any accidents. However, it was a rocky start as a tractor had to tow us out of the snow so the driver could actually start driving.

No Hannah, like this

So about a couple of weeks ago, all I heard was "No Hannah, like this..." I think I might have mentioned before that Azerbaijani people already think something is wrong with me because I am older than 25 and am not married. (Lets not even bring in the fact when asked if I do want to get married I say in like 4 or 5 years- that puts me in my early 30s and they just can't imagine that. Then I put the icing on the cake when I say I am not sure if I want to have children - this in a culture where husbands can divorce their wives if they do have a child within the first year of marriage.) So needless to say they already think I am completely inadequate as a woman. Well, now my new host family (who I absolutely love!) thinks I am completely helpless, too.

It all started when I wanted to wash my clothes. I went outside with my host mom to start washing my clothes (no washing machine). Well, evidently I do not know the proper technique of hand washing. My host mom couldn't fathom that I didn't know how to hand wash well. Then, my five year neighbor came over and she said "No Hannah, like this..." and then proceeded to demonstrate the proper hand washing technique. I almost peed on myself I was laughing so hard, so was everyone else for that matter! You would think that is it right? But no, my incompetence keeps coming! I don't know how to hang clothes properly on the line either! My host mom was shocked and asked how do I dry my clothes in America - I responded we have machines to do it for us! Again, I could not stop dying laughing.

Then a few days later I was in the kitchen and my host mom and some neighbors were baking some traditional Azerbaijani sweets. I thought I would help out, I mean how hard can it be to put filling inside dough, close it and decorate it to make it look pretty. Evidently harder that it looks! I got the "No Hannah, like this..." But the like this part obviously didn't click so I got regulated to only putting the filling in and passing it on to someone to close and decorate. Then the next day my host mom again was cooking with friends, this time they were making grape leave dolma. I again offered to help and I started putting the meat in the grape leaves and wrapping it up and putting it in the pot. Evidently, I am not fit for that task either! I didn't wrap it up correctly, so again I got the "No Hannah, like this..." But it didn't click either. So this time I was regulated to pulling apart the grape leaves that were stuck together.

It may sound like they are being mean, but they aren't. A woman my age is supposed to know how to do stuff like this - the proper way! It is really quite funny and they and I find it very amusing! Being considered helpless does work in my favor though. My host mom had a big party at our house, about 20 people came over for dinner. After everyone left there was a giant pile of dishes. Of course I wanted to help clean up. I told my host mom that I could wash the dishes if she wanted. She turned and looked at me and said very seriously "Do you know how to wash dishes?" I held in the laughter, I didn't want to offend her, and seriously thought about saying no, I mean there were tons of dishes. But I couldn't in good conscience lie, so I said yes I do know how - I am not sure if she really believed me though!

My host mom keeps saying after two years I will be a really good Azerbaijani woman! That is after she teaches me how to cook, clean, and wash clothes properly! I mean she is shocked that my mother didn't teach me how to make home made jam or pickled vegetables or the proper technique for hand washing clothes! I told her we buy stuff like that or have machines to do it for us. My host mom here does not like to buy anything pre-made, everything - from drinks to jams - is home made. So I have my work cut out for me!

Work Pictures

Boys Conversation Club

Boys Conversation Club

Girls Conversation Club

Girls Conversation Club

FINCA Teaching English Club (Greta & and I teach it)

FINCA English Club

Information Meeting for Conversation Clubs