I hate Mondays, even in Azerbaijan…

I arrived to work this morning to find a huge pile of new wood for our office, which is great because we ran out last week and it was cold in the mornings. What sucks about this is that we have to carry that wood up to our 4^th story office without the use of a bag or anything practicle to carry it with. What also sucks is that my boss will carry a lot, but he goes slow and takes breaks, and my 24 year old co-worker is lazy, will only carry a little and goes slow. What that means is that I made as many runs as both of them combined and carried more wood than both of them combined. Since I don’t do any sort of real physical activity here, that wore me out big time…

I don’t have too much to report this week, so this should be a fairly short blog-lucky for you guys. I heard Ram’s mom found my blog, so a warm hello to Ram’s Mom!

I officially applied for my grant last week, so now it is just a waiting game.

I got chosen to be on the SPA (Small Projects Assistance) Committee for the PC-there is two Volunteers and a handful of PC Staff on this committee and we review grant requests from the Volunteers. There is a pool of money that PCV’s can apply for grants up to $5,000 from to do projects and the SPA Committee decides which projects get funded by that resource. It should be interesting to read about projects other PCV’s are trying to do, as well as hopefully it will help me become better and writing grant proposals.

Our beloved town has decided to start cutting down a ton of trees in the town and to tile the living crap out of it. No one seems to have a good explanation for this, although I’m pretty sure someone is making some good money off of it. My favorite answer when asking a local why this is going on is that “Lenkeran doesn’t get many tourists, so they are cutting down the tall trees so you can see the buildings better”. When I was told that answer, the person was pointing at a run down old apartment building that no one actually wants to look at for excitement. They are doing a really good job with the tiling and new flowers/plants/small trees they are putting in, but it just seems like they are going to flatten our town. It will be very interesting to see what it looks like in 19 months when we leave.

I just realized that my American food eating habits are really weird to me over here. From friends and family I have received care packages and have been getting a ton of candy, chips, and beef jerky (snack food)-which I am very thankful for everyone! What is weird to me is that when I was living in the US, I barely ever ate any of this stuff, except of course chips and queso or salsa. Just an odd thought…

Well, this past week I finally hit my wall for living with an Azeri host family. I have been living with a local family for 7 straight months and am ready to move out on my own. Nene is still good, but the constant being around her, being quiet, wearing clothes (which as anyone who hangs around me in my house knows I hate that BIG TIME), telling her when I’ll be home and where I’ll be going, etc. is driving me freaking NUTZ!!! My first host family and Nene have been as good as I could have possibly imagined, but man, I’m ready for my freedom/personal space back in a big way. We can officially move out on March 14^th, so Tom and I have begun our hard search for new living quarters. We have been told we cannot live together, which does not make me happy because now we both have to purchase 2 of everything and find two houses to rent, etc. Renting houses is a weird concept here, there are no contracts, the renter usually wants to keep possessions in the house, they usually think they can stay in the house or come in any time they want “because it is their house” etc. Most Volunteers have to move 2-3 times average in their 18 months of house renting for one reason or the other, so it is not an easy experience, but I think it will be worth it in the long run…..hopefully…

This blog’s pictures were of our 4 star hotel, the new section of the big park that they have been working on since we got here with the new museum dedicated to their first president and then the park that was covered with trees that now is obviously not. It backs up to the nicer looking park in the pictures, so we think they are going to just keep on extending the tile/park all the way down the street…who knows when it will end.

P.S. the random picture is the 2 dead fish in the room across the hall from me that I almost stepped on when I went to get my bag the other night…that would have really grossed me out since. I’m pretty sure we just ate one of those suckers for dinner, but haven’t officially checked yet…lucky me!!!