Life with little money...

We are all heading to Sheki (a beautiful city in the mountains up central north region) for an American Day-15 volunteers go to a school for a day or two, talk about America, show the kids American movies, feed them American food, play some American football etc. It should be a really fun time. Tom, Tim and I are taking off Thursday and coming back Sunday (2 days of America Day and 2 days of 8 hour travel). Charlie, Terah, Magda, Rikki George, Rachel, Ben, Joy, Kasey, and Josh will all be there, so it should be a really good time. Tom and I are in charge of helping Magda bake pies on Friday-so the kids can all blame Madga when their “American Pies” taste like “American Poo”! Other than that, not too much else to report over the last two weeks. The Sooners play A&M at 6am my time tomorrow morning, so I may wake up really early and try to listen to in on the internet or something (since the roosters wake me up by 7am anyways). Wish me and my 3rd world dial-up connection luck!!!

A quick insight to my life:

So we got our monthly stipend the other day (we get automatic deposits in a bank account and we all have ATM cards to take the money out as needed). We got $218 (in Azeri money-probably $240ish in US$) for the month of November and I wanted to give you guys an idea of how I spend my money right now and the budgeting process we all go through at the beginning of each month.
$218 for 1 month provided by the PC
$110 goes to Nene for rent and food and the constant entertainment she provides
$20 for cell phone
$3 for internet
That leaves me with $85 for spending money for each month. This has to cover everything from meals eaten away from home, candy/snacks, any travel that I do (the killer) and expenses when I’m away from my house. So here’s how my remaining $85 is budgeted for November (keeping in mind if I go over, I have ZERO dollars to cover me and there isn’t such a thing as credit cards over here).
We are having an America day in Sheki for 2 days (with 2 days of travel) so that’s $20 for travel and $12 in food for 4 days (gotta make sure I keep the beers to a minimum).
We will go to Baku for Thanksgiving at the Embassy, but I need to get there and back, as well as pay for hotel both nights (split with no less than 6-8 friends for 2 single beds) and eating while in Baku minus the Turkey Dinner.
$12 for travel, $14 for hotel, $5 for McDonald’s, $5 for nachos, and then $10 for beers, maybe a DVD or a miscellaneous expense that always comes up in Baku-total of $46 for the trip.
That leaves me with $7 of “free” money for the month of November after my rent/meals at home, two weekend trips, cell phone and 2 hours a week of internet. That means I can eat lunch away from home 4 times maximum during the week and get a couple of Cokes and a Snickers!!! The chances of me making it till the end of the month with anything more than 50 cents in my bank account is ZERO. I had 35 cents at the end of October 

This was in no way made to make you feel sorry for us; we get plenty of money from the PC. This is just how I am choosing to spend my money this month. Some people eat every single meal with their host family and don’t go into Baku or to visit other Volunteers and they save money each month. I choose to live as cheap as possible when I’m in Lenkeran, and save up my money to meet up with my friends 1 to 2 times a month, either in Baku or another city in AZ. When we all get to move out of our host family houses and get our own places, I would imagine we will travel to visit each other a lot more instead of going to Baku like we do now. I did manage to save up money from the stipend the PC gave us in Philly before we left and from my moving allowance I got when I moved to Lenkeran, so I’m going to use that money to fund my ski trip to Georgia in the spring. I’m hoping to go 100% on PC money while here besides my trips outside the country, so we’ll see if I can actually pull it off….Now go spend $8 on your caesar salad and bottled water for lunch, and remember you just ate my months “free” money!!!

The following are pictures from Halloween, sorry they took so long. Tom and I as the AZ3 Angel and AZ4 Devil-my hair was ridiculous, Kasey and Rachel as BBF Babies, Magda the Pirate, and Rikki George the Witch, and the Devil with the Babies…