1 month in Lenkeran and we haven’t been kicked out yet!!!

Not a whole lot to report in this week’s blog sadly. Last week was cool and rainy and boring!!! Tom and I have taken to playing games for hours on end-Yahtzee and Monopoly are the only 2 we have (hint hint), so a 2 year battle is underway in both. We already have a spreadsheet for wins, losses, points/money, etc. that we are using to keep the final tally. We are still trying to decide the stakes of the bet. My nene’s sister died this week. They don’t show emotion when people die here, it’s odd but I think good. It took me three days to figure out that she had died and wasn’t just sick. Then nene made fun of me for not realizing what had happened….she’s great! They put a tent outside the person’s house and family and friends meet there all day for a week and chant, talk, and just hang out I guess. I went by for about an hour the other day and didn’t fit in too well as you can imagine. My host father, mother, and kids came in for the weekend. He is the assistant sales manager at the GM dealership in Baku. The parents both speak English, so it was good to talk to them. I gave each of the kids a package of Skittles from America, which they loved. I am going Baku this week for Eurasia training. I am mentoring seven 20ish year olds in Lenkeran. In 6 AZ regions the Eurasia Foundation gives youth groups $5,000 each to manage, and they accept proposals to fund local projects done by other youths in the community. My group is funding English classes for an orphanage, a local history and travel brochure, a book of local youth poetry, and an art exhibit fighting narcotics use. Eurasia puts us up in a nice hotel and brings in people from Europe and Asia to train everyone, so it should be interesting. Tom and I have invited the people in our offices over to my place next Sunday to carve pumpkins. They have grey/whitish pumpkins here, so they should be funky looking. Everyone is excited to see this weird American tradition, so it should be fun. The crappy news of the week is that we think I have a Urinary Track Infection, so I’m popping some antibiotics hoping to fix the problem. Everything is ok, but I just have no bladder control and am producing way more urine than fluids I’m drinking. Night Peeing is Good stuff! I get a flu shot this week and just got my Tamaflu packet for the Bird Flu-good times. They had a few cases last year in AZ, but nothing too major thankfully. I’m pretty sure face mask the PC gave me in my packet will be worn for some reason other than avoiding the Bird Flu. We found out the Ambassador is coming to town in two weeks and is taking the 3 Lenkeran PCV’s out to dinner, so that should be good times had by all. Sorry for no good stories, I’ll see what kind of fun I can dig up this week to make up for it.


The following pictures are of the following: Bacon flavored chips we found in Baku-sadly not good, a picture of us “people piling” at the hotel (I’m on the bottom in the dark colored t-shirt on Magda with tom, ben, and rikki on me)-a fun custom we tend towards when we are stuck in small hotel rooms with 10 people for days on end, and 2 pictures of the new park by my house (one is a statue of the former president). I walk through that park every day to and from work and they are building a new museum for the former president next to it.