A day in the life of me, Ashley the PCV

Ok, so I figured I would try to give you all an idea of a typical day for me in Azerbaijan. I took an account of a work day and a weekend day for you all to sample. This may be boring, but I figured you all should have an idea of what I do since I know exactly what most of you do. Keep in mind this will probably change when I get projects going and I will only go to work a few hours a day and will spend the rest of the time on my projects around the region.

So my town has big electricity and gas problems. That means it doesn’t have them a lot of the time, and it’s never consistent when it will be off or on. My office, for whatever reason, doesn’t have electricity quite often (70% of the day). Well with the time change, the office is getting too dark to read by 5:30 already, and I’m sure that will only get worse. I’m not sure how they deal with this, but I see us leaving by 4:30 pretty soon! Thankfully my house has a really good electricity set up, so I have it about 95% of the time, at least enough for a light in my room to be on at night.

Work Day

7:15 the day begins with the roosters and chickens. I try to do yoga, but with the cold, it’s becoming harder by the day to get out of bed. I brush my teeth and wash my face outside on the balcony at 42 degrees with freezing cold water, eat the leftovers from dinner for breakfast, and drink a class of hot tea, clean out my room’s furnace, get new firewood for the day and load up the furnace so it’s ready to rock when I get home-Nene and I do all of these things together minus the teeth brushing

8:50ish off on my 20-25 minute walk to work. I pass the same people every morning and have several people I always say hello to (most of the women I always see never make eye contact with me or say hello-that’s not because of my hair, that’s just the culture). I say hello to: guy that owns local food shop, guy at car parts shop, the same 5 guys that sit on the corner by my office-1 works at a small shop and 2 drive cabs that they park there, and I say hello to as many young kids as possible that acknowledge me without being pricks.

9:10 I talk with my colleagues off and on while drinking tea, listen to my ipod, either read a book, or study Azeri-which consists of translating articles in entertainment magazines, memorizing flashcards of vocabulary words, or writing sentences practicing grammar and vocabulary

12:45 I bail on the office, say hello to the guys on the corner, go by Tom’s office and get him for lunch. His office plays James Blunt’s “You Are Beautiful” when I walk in, we all laugh, and then Tom and I go eat at a local Café on a rare occasion, but we usually go to one of our 2 houses-where we have tea

2:15 hello to the guys on the corner, back at work to do some more studying or zone out until Ferana gets to the office-usually involves drinking tea

3-5ish it’s Ferana Time Baby! She checks my homework, we work on some translating, and then we talk about a random topic or using the new vocabulary I learned

5:00 out the door home or to have tea with some locals and say good night to the usual locals

6:30 Nene and I chow and she talks the entire time, of which I understand maybe half-75% but nod and act as if I get 99% of it

8:00 I retire to my room, read, hop on the internet, or watch a movie, etc.

11:00ish I crash out

Weekend Day

Between7:00-9:00ish I wake up to the damn rooster that lives next door J or I somehow make it through it. Today I was up at 7:05 and its Saturday. I hang in my room for an hour listening to music, reading, watching a movie before I let Nene know I’m game to start talking to

10:00ish its breakfast time-today it is left over pizza and tea-that’s right, Nene made pizza last night. Sadly no pepperoni or Ranch dressing, but still good stuff!

10:30ish Tom will call, say he’s bored and we will make our plans for the day

11:00 we usually meet at the big park and walk around town for an hour or so just to get out of the house (we do this even if it’s raining because it rains here a lot and being out of the house and office feels nice)

12-1:00ish we go back to one of our houses for lunch with the family-lots of tea

2:00 it’s game time. We usually start off with a few games of Monopoly or RISK, followed up with a few games of Yahtzee. On a side note, these really boring and lazy afternoons sometimes involve us sneaking a few cocktails to liven us up.

5:00 we are usually gamed out so it’s movie time (Tom’s brother burned him over 200 DVD’s before he left, so we are set!). He also just got all of the Chicago Bears games so far this year last week, so we are on a big football kick lately which is fun

7:00 dinner time with one of the families-tea

8:00 it’s off to our respective houses and probably to another movie till I pass out from all of the excitement

Like I said, nothing to exciting to report, but then again, most days in America aren’t that exciting either. But, you do have TV, movie theaters, you can go out to eat with an assortment of friends and family, you can drive around, go out on the town, play a sport, work out in a gym, change the level of the A/C/heater, surf the internet for endless hours, etc. We are starting to get a few small projects going with local youths, so we are having meetings 1 or 2 times a week at work which helps break up the day and we have been consistently gone 2 weekends per month which also helps break up the monotony. Lenkeran shuts down at 6pm; literally everyone is inside at that time, so the nights are slow but fine. It’s the “easy life”. On a good note, I chopped wood for half an hour yesterday and it was awesome. I haven’t done that since I was a little kid I don’t think and I’m pretty sure it was just to act like my dad. I had a great time, so now I’m going to chop wood for 30-45 minutes every Saturday for us. That’s the most exercise I get which is pathetic, but it’s a great stress reliever and I can listen to some high energy music on my iPod and just go to town…it’s the little things in life that make us happy I guess…

The pictures are of: 1st-big park near where i live that is packed with people in the summer, there are 3 statues in town and we have named them Tim, Tom and Ashley so the 2nd picture is the statue of Tim looking at the playbill for the drama theater and the 3rd is the statue of Tom and I hanging out chatting on a bench, 4th-the leaves changing color on the nice walkway i take every day too and from work.