America Day Sheki Style….

Hello world! Quick announcement before the stories:
I heard the Wulf Family has found their way to my blog and I just want to say hello, nice to meet you, tell Texas hi for me, and if your son (Ben) does anything I feel you should know about, I’ll make sure to include it from now on…

Well, I just got back from a really long and really fun weekend trip. Tom and I took off Thursday for an all day bus trip to Sheki. Sheki is in the North Central of AZ at the foot of the Caucus Mountains, which already have snow up on the peaks. Magda, Charlie and Josh set up an America Day in their home town of Sheki and invited about 15 of us to come up and participate. Volunteers are supposed to show, explain and involve locals in American traditions, holidays, and customs as much as possible while we are over here and America Days are one of the most common ways groups of people do that. We had about 30-40 local students (8th-12th grade I think) that could all speak some English come to Josh’s office for 2 hours on Saturday and we explained to them Halloween (showed them pictures of jack-o-lanterns and costumes, had them bob for apples, and a Simpson’s Halloween cartoon) and also Thanks Giving (we did a play for them explaining the Pilgrims and Indians, had them cut out “Hand Turkeys”, talked about traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, football, and naps and also made cider and cookies for them). After that we took them all to a soccer field and explained then played American Flag Football. They got it good enough to play and have tons of fun. We were all amazed that the girls all played and loved it (women in AZ generally are very quiet, bashful, and told not to do things like that so it’s great that these girls were willing to try it out). Everyone had a blast and no major injuries to report (a few girls didn’t catch the ball and got nailed in the head and Charlie almost got drilled in the worst spot on a guy from about 30 yards away on a perfect toss by Rikki George ). We had about 12 of us crashing in Charlie’s new house in Sheki and most of us slept on the cold floor (40’s at night in Sheki) in our huge and warm PC issue sleeping bags. We had pancakes for breakfast one day and Charlie made a huge batch of AMAZING chili for dinner one night which was awesome!!! Friday night we entertained ourselves with a long series of sock puppet shows for each other depicting some of the ridiculous things that have happened to our group since getting over here. That may sound dumb or lame, but it was honestly one of the funniest times I’ve had in a long time-I cried about 50 times during the skits since I cry when I laugh. Charlie was the best impersonator of the group and Magda won for grossest sock used.

This should be a really low key week I think. A new business center my office and a German company created opened last week and I sat in on their first official trainings. The center has 10 new computers, internet, copy machine, and nice conference room with TV and projector. It is open to anyone for free but is going to be focused on local business people and will have trainings on English, computers, business plan writing, etc. I think I’ll be working a lot with them on their trainings and hopefully making the center a big success. This is the first of it’s kind in AZ, so we are hoping to get good results for everyone. It’s cool and rainy in Lenkeran now-late fall/winter seems to officially be here. Temperatures here are high 40’s/low 50’s at night and get up in the low-mid 60’s in the day. The breeze off the Caspian is pretty freaking cold but temperatures shouldn’t get below 40 too often. We have the potential to get some snow (either none or 3+ seems to be the normal-all or nothing deal I guess). Thankfully I have a furnace in my room and will stay warm at night! Tom just gets a ton of blankets it seems, although he’s hoping his family breaks out a mobile heater or something soon. Rikki George might come to visit next weekend, so Tom and I will get to show her around town and have something to look forward to this week. We officially have 12 days until our Thanksgiving Dinner with the Embassy folks and Tom and I began our rehearsals for our act that is officially going to blow everyone’s minds. If there’s anyway I can figure out how to put a video on here, it’ll be up ASAP. It’s going to be the most ridiculous thing seen in the PC easily.

Ok, the following story is gross (not rated R dirty, just 3rd world weird gross), so if you don’t want to read it, just skip the next short paragraph.

First of all, everyone better be reading this, because everyone I know likes gross and weird stories. Tom and I were on our way to Sheki Thursday and stopped at a restaurant to eat (the buses all stop mid-way of their trip for food and bathroom breaks-we usually stop along the way for someone to use the side of the road to go to the bathroom or puke too fyi). I had to go #1, so I walked into the bathroom and there were 4 squatter stalls, with only the last one unoccupied. I walk in and there is a huge fresh pile of doo-doo just sitting on the squatter-the person before me didn’t use his bucket to wash it way for me. So I just take care of my business trying not to look at what I’m peeing on. I finish, zip up the pants, turn around to leave my stall and a local man is standing there waiting for me to finish my business holding his bucket so he can clean his doo-doo off. I say hello and walk straight out the door before I broke out in hysterical laughter. The look on his face and the fact he just waited for me to finish and then hosed his mess off was hilarious! This story in no way was meant to be mean towards Azeris or AZ, I’ve seen stuff just as bad in America, but this kinda typical here……..and was funny!

Ok, that’s about all I’ve got, which was probably more than enough with the last story. The following pictures are of: all the America Day kids on the stairs (I’m top left), Terah, Charlie, and Tom playing flag football with the kids, Me-Pilgrim, Terah and Kasey-Indians getting ready for our performance, a view of the Sheki mountains with a mosque tower in the distance that we saw when we hiked on Friday, and Charlie’s, Tom’s, and my sock puppets during our performance Friday night. Have a great week everyone-I have to go iron my clothes to dry them off since nothing ever gets fully dry outside here!!!