ONE BIG WEEKEND!

So I’ve had a fairly exciting past few days. Things started on Friday when we all found out our 2 year locations & the companies we will be working with while there. I am moving to Lenkeran, which is on the Southern most coast of the Caspian Sea if you are looking on an AZ map (that’s 20 miles North of Iran for all of those keeping score at home). There are about 200k people there, so it’s a good sized city. It has the best food in the country according to locals and has a tropical weather climate (they grow lemons, oranges, etc. there). The power and gas supply is very sporadic though, and it is very hot in the summer (it does get 3-5 feet of snow during the winter though). It was second in my rank of cities to move to. One of my good buddies Tom and another guy named Tim are also both moving down there (sadly the 3 hot blonde PC chicks are all leaving Lenkeran for the US the day before we get there). We will live with separate host families for 6 months and then everyone has decided that we should rent a house together to make an “Old School” frat house so people can come visit us and the beach. Tom and I already have plans to get a dog and a donkey as our pets! I got the best job offered potentially (at least in my mind). I’m working with a “Branch of Ministry of Economic Development of the Republic of Azerbaijan”. I’ll be at a regional government office working with the top dogs of the southern part of the country doing economic strategy and supposedly will get to travel a great deal in the country. This is the first time PC AZ has worked with the government and I volunteered to be a guinea pig (another guy who is 44 years old has the same assignment on the other side of the country). Since it is a new gig, it could go bad or great, depending on how open they are to working with me (although they did request a volunteer and give me the ok, so hopefully it will go smoothly). I met the Director of the Ministry of Econ today and he seemed really excited about our program. I have no clue what will be asked of me since no one has ever done this, so I’m both nervous and really excited. I’ll also be doing solo projects in the local community to help them out as well. On Saturday we all got to go to Baku to eat American food, check out the city, and go out on the town. I started off with a thick bacon cheeseburger, fries, and beers at an English pub for lunch, then followed that up with tons of nachos and chicken nuggets for dinner. I had a McDonalds buffet for lunch on Sunday too (double cheeseburger was better than the royal with cheese by far), chased down by tons of Gatorade (my lost American lover). A bunch of current volunteers also came into town to meet all of us newbie’s, so that was cool to meet everyone. We took over The Pollo Bar (think Colorado Mexican restaurant looking interior) with about 60 Americans and made it into Dance Party USA (pics attached of me, sachin-f/texas, and emily who is heading back to USA in 3 weeks and also a group shot). We all had a blast and it was fun to blow off steam with everyone and get silly. Walking home around 3am, one of the girls was skipping and somehow landed on her foot wrong (but didn’t fall or anything). The next morning she woke up with a black and blue swelled up foot-broken baby! She has a full boot cast and is hating life. Crutches and a full foot cast in AZ is not fun since you have to basically walk everywhere and there aren’t any good roads and it’s extremely dirty everywhere. We did get to color her cast though, which was fun. Ok, sorry for the long update, but like I said, lots to tell. I go visit my new host family, office and Lenkeran Thursday till Saturday, so I’m sure I’ll have a bunch of stuff to write next week as well. I’m jealous everyone gets to watch college football soon and am not happy about just reading about it online….ash