BEGINNING WEEK 4

We call this "the dove." Its in our training city.

My room

My life for 2 years!

My host brother

My host mom cooking for us

My host grannie

My laundry drying

My host sister

One of our language instructors

The awesome PC staff in charge of PST

Kids from my apartment building

On the bus to Gorbustan

This is Stacy also from Sacramento. I must really like her because Im letting her Giants shirt touch me. I cant escape the Giant's fans. Stupid Dodgers!!!

 

This rock makes music when you hit it.

Petroglyphs. Better than I can draw!!

Tour guide showing petroglyphs

This is Jess. She's a YD in my village and we do conversation clubs together

Some of the volunteers really like the mud volcanoes!!

Im told that periodically they will erupt and shoot up flame and mud. They are just gurgling right now.

BEGINNING WEEK 4 IN AZERBAIJAN!!

 

I can’t believe I’ve only been here 3 weeks. I feel like I have been away for months. First off, I miss everyone. Second, River Rock youth, Remember how you taught me Ninja last Christmas? That has now become our favorite “break” game and we are playing it sometimes during language class and saying Azeri words each time we move. Kason, I am now unbeatable at Ninja!! My host family rocks. (Im trying to include pics of my host family) and every day when I come home, there are 4 or 5 kids who run up greeting me by name and want to talk, be hugged, give high fives…. I already want to take some of them home. I cant wait to be able to work with youth full time.

 

We have been very busy. As I’ve mentioned before, we have classes 6 days a week. In the morning we have some kind of technical training. Something about culture or safety and security or development or gender…. It’s all very interesting and good information. We’ve also been able to have a little fun. Today we went to Gobustan National Park. This was fun for a lot of reasons. First off, all of the trainees were together all day! And, a break from language class today. The language instructors are great but 4 hours a day is exhausting (but needed) so a break was helpful. (plus we got to wear jeans, baseball caps… all of the comfort clothes!) I hated it. You all know how much I love wearing skirts J

 

Golbustan is a place that has many archaeological monuments. It has more than 6000 rock engravings (petroglyphs) dating back between 5000-40,000 years old. I’ve been told that some of the first human beings lived there. Also, some more interesting trivia is that Zoroaster (founder of Zoroastrianism) came from this area. At Golbustan, there was a pretty cool rock there call Gaval Dash which makes different musical tones when you hit it with your hand or with a rock. Then we to see some mud volcanoes. Azerbaijan and the Caspian coastline are home to nearly 400 mud volcanoes, more than half the total in the world. They were gurgling and spitting mud. Some trainees got very muddy and there was a lot of laughter.

 

I want to take a minute here to talk about Peace Corps staff. As in Lesotho, I’ve been very impressed with how hard they work to make this PST (pre service training) happen. The logistics of planning the trainings, most days different trainings at different places for the different sectors (youth, business and TEFL) is impressive. But more than that, they do everything possible to make sure we are ok. I had a small problem which I figured Id need to solve on my own and the person in charge of PST called me to see if he could help. Its hard to really get across how appreciative I was of this. You come into Peace Corps with an attitude of needing to be tough and adapt… which there is a certain amount of truth to that. But the act of extending emotional support to 1 trainee when there are so many other important things to worry about means so much. Thanks PC!!

I don’t have internet at my home… some of the PCT’s do. But that’s ok. Once I swear in and go to wherever my permanent placement is, Im planning to invest in either a modem or data card… whichever works best. Then, I will have more of an opportunity to communicate. I can’t wait to Skype with some of you!!!

 

Im trying to include some pictures. They are of Sumqayit (training city) my host family, my room, laundry hanging on the line, our awesome PC guy who’s in charge of PST and todays trip of Gorbustan.

 

If anyone has any questions, let me know in the comments and I will blog about it.

 

Know that I am praying for all of you. I miss you guys. Take care!!