Hedgehogs and volunteers

Well it has been about 10 days since my last blog, but they have been crazy days. I said goodbye to my first host family on 9/10 and moved with everyone to a hotel for our last 4 nights of training. They were very sad to seem me go for some reason and have been calling and texting me like crazy. I guess they are bored. I’ll get to see them when I go into Baku for weekend trips since they only live 20 minutes away, so that will be good. My host father’s family all lives in my new town, so I’m sure they’ll come visit me as well. My mom gave me an Azerbaijan tea mug and my brother’s present is insane-see below picture. It was weird being here for the 5 year anniversary of 9/11, can’t believe it’s been that long since all of that crap. We had a moment of silence with our group and some people said a few words. The US Ambassador officially swore us in as volunteers on Wednesday and there were a few top government officials and about 200 people in the audience (it was covered by 4 of the 7 TV stations in AZ). It was good to finish up training getting to spend so much time with everyone since we are all split up now and will only see each other for about 2 weekends a month on average. On Thursday Tom, Tim and I packed up a taxi and drove to Lenkeran. Tom and Tim together will now be referred to as TNT. My nene is still as crazy and fun as ever. It has been cool and rainy here, which is a nice change from the heat, but this is supposed to last through October so I’m sure I’ll get sick of it. Day one of work was a good indicator of how frustrating of a process it will be at first. My boss and two counterparts were busy all day, so I sat alone quite a bit. They are supposed to get me a computer, but it doesn’t sound like I’ll have internet for a while-I’m going to push for it big time though. The language barrier is going to be a tough one since they speak zero English and my Azeri is only good for basic stuff-I have zero work vocabulary. So that means I’ll be busting my butt on Azeri for the next months so I can help sooner rather than later. It will eventually be good, just going to require much patience from all of us at first. I think I’ll spend most of my days studying instead of working for the rest of the year. I watched Russian TV with my nene last night and laughed at her laughing all the time about nothing I could understand-welcome to my world. The night before Tom’s office took us out to eat a huge feast. They told us they had a surprise for the last course (they all speak English-as it turns out I’m 1 out of about 4 volunteers that doesn’t have an English speaker at their school/office, lucky me). They proceeded to tell us we’d be eating "hedgehog" (kidpee in Azeri) and then started dying laughing because I think Tom’s and my eyes were as big as our head in freaked out confusion. It turns out they call American shredded hash browns "hedgehog" because that’s what they look like. I was already stuffed and yet I killed the hash browns fully accepting the consequences of my stomach. It’s amazing how something so plain as hash browns can get us excited because it has some American food resemblance. Last night I had my first late night squat session. I stumbled on wet stones through the garden using my cell phone as a light (going to start using my little headlamp I brought from now on) to go pee early in the am. It is 60 uneven and crooked steps from the door of the house to my squat spot-that is going to be awesome when it’s freezing cold!!!
One picture is the gang at my café the day before we all headed to the hotel (from left front to right front): Rikki, Magda, Maria, Ben, Tom, me, and Terah. The other picture is us after swearing in: in front is Joy (shortest) and Rikki, next row is Anar-one of our teachers, Rachel, Kasey, Magda, my mullet, and Maria, then Tom and Ben are in the back.