Eurasia and Prom…

I took off for Baku on Friday with my Eurasia youth group I volunteer with. They had a 3 days training in Baku to review all of their projects that have finally been completed. We stayed at the “Aqua Park”. I was excited about this idea until we found out it was way outside of town and they didn’t have any indoor water entertainment. They had a ton of slides and pools, but they were all out door, so we didn’t get to play at all. My group made a good presentation on their accomplishments. The group of 7 managed $2,500 that they funded 5 different projects done by youths in Lenkeran with. The projects were: a 4 part debate series that was televised on local TV, an intellectual competition for college ages kids on AZ geography, history, etc., an anti-narcotics art exhibit with paintings done by youths, they printed and passed out 600 poetry books written by local youths, and also had people teach local orphans English and basic computer skills. My group is really good, so they don’t need my help much at all. It is really fun just hanging out with them and listening to all of their thoughts and observing how they work together. The high lights of the weekend were: one youth from another region changed outfits 11 times in 2.5 days (yea, we kept track) and they hired a guy to play music and a woman to sing for the kids one night. Well the kids decided to act out an entire typical Azeri wedding, but mocking themselves. They had the annoying little kids, the sloppy uncle, they went through and did all of the family toasts and dances, it was hilarious. I’d never seen kids in AZ have so much fun.

This weekend was “prom” weekend in Baku, so a bunch of us all went out together both nights. Some of us dressed up, some went in normal clothes. Tom and I had our first clothes shopping experience in AZ two weeks ago when I bought a stretchy denim pants and jacket combo and Tom got some shinny pants and a top notch sweater for the prom occasion. We also celebrated Charlie’s and Magda’s birthdays throughout the weekend as well. It was good times had by all…

Tom and I spent a lot of time last week on our respective house searches. We have found a couple of good houses and apartments and a ton of not so good ones. The prices in AZ have jumped up (especially since we live in a larger city), so we haven’t been able to find anything really cheap that would meet the PC requirements of living. The guy in charge of housing is coming to visit on Thursday of this week to check out what we’ve found (we both have to provide a couple of options for him to inspect), so hopefully we can each get everything all set up by the end of this week. I had my talk with Nene on Thursday night. She took it well, although she wasn’t too excited by the idea of me moving out. I’m still going to go hang out there some and she asked me to chop wood for her each week, so that will be good. Hopefully I can get a meal every now and then out of her. I’m still having an internal debate if I’m going to request continued use of her clothes washing machine for me helping her out or if I’m going to suck it up and hang wash everything. I’m sure I’m going to do the right thing for my experience here and hand wash all of my clothes, but it is freaking miserable!!!

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to give a very special shout out to Parker and Preston Noffz who came into the world sometime last Friday. Welcome boys, glad to have you with us. Go easy on your mom….

The pictures in order are of: my Eurasia kids, a big group of the kids singing songs, Charlie and I in our room, Lucas and I going to Prom (that’s my super sweet outfit), Ben, Maria, Ram and me, and Charlie and I have some McDonalds while waiting on a bus.