Rain, rain, go away….

As you can guess, the rainy season is still in full swing. I’m actually fine with rainy weather and am glad we are getting all of it so that everything will be green soon. I may however blame the rain as the reason for any potential bad attitudes relating to my last month of my “Rocking 20’s” as I’ve heard it called. Where the rain is hurting me most (besides all of my pants needing to be hand washed constantly) is in my completion of my playground. As of Friday morning, the only thing I had accomplished was getting the combination soccer/basketball goals welded and the wood cut for the backboards. I hadn’t been able to get anything done with the ground where we are putting the asphalt. I have been gone for 5 days (nice timing hu?), so I’m hopeful when I go to work tomorrow my boss will give me some good news about some weekend progress! Today it is super windy and rainy, but hopefully it won’t last all week. My house doesn’t sound so solid when the wind blows hard, so that adds some excitement to my life.

I took off to Barda last Friday to help a PCV with a local trash pick up for kids and her town. We had a handful of PCVs come in to help Sarah’s project and about 25-30 kids help out. We all had rubber gloves and trash bags and picked up litter for about 1.5 hours. Some Azeri people stopped us and asked what we were doing and then why Americans were doing it. We told them it was good for the environment and that no one else was doing it in AZ, so thought we should do it. Most of them got the point and were happy about it. The kids were all in good spirits and had a good time with a good lesson learned. I really enjoy getting to visit new towns and helping out other Volunteers with their projects-even something as simple as a trash pick up. It gives us time to hang out together, but more importantly allows us to have a positive impact in AZ in other areas besides only working on things in our towns. We crashed at Sarah’s amazing house-she wins the award for coolest set up I’ve seen-she has a huge open outside area fully equipped with gymnastic rings and a FREAKING POOL! I’m not even joking on this. She has a 5 foot high, 8 foot wide and 30 foot long cement water container. I now know where I’ll be spending my free weekends this summer!

After our clean up we headed to Ganja to help celebrate Ben and Maria’s birthdays! We had a really good group of friends there and had a great time. It is fun going to Ganja because it feels like city living, but not as big as Baku. We ate well, played games, and had a pretty good birthday celebration for them. Charlie got Ben the lower half of a goat’s leg for $1 as his b’day present-life over here is swell…

I took off for Baku on Sunday because on Monday I had my first ever Small Projects Assistance (SPA) Committee meeting. I had to review two grant applications written by other PCVs (I didn’t get to vote on the one for the boy’s camp I wrote), and then our committee of 5 discussed and voted on each project. It was a really good experience and I’m glad to be on that particular committee, both short term and long term. Being in Baku solo isn’t too much fun though. I dined on nachos and chicken sandwiches solo both days which is delicious, but not too entertaining. I basically used my time there to get a bunch of little PC things taken care of and to recharge my batteries for the coming two weeks.

The next 11 days will be by far the busiest days of my time here to date. This week I have to try to do everything within my power to finish my playground for the orphanage-come on good weather-including buying supplies, managing the install of everything, setting up the opening day play time, etc., plan and hold my conversation club, get permission for all of the kids we are inviting to America Day, start to really organize it, and have dinner with a couple of people visiting Lenkeran from the Embassy. I’m really hoping it will be a good week and I won’t have too many bumps in the road, although I’m expecting at least a few solid dips.

Today’s pictures are courtesy of Magda and are from the weekend Tom’s parents came to town-only a few weeks late on getting them from Mags. We have: Tom, Me, Joy and

Kasey in a cab; Magda, Tom, Me, Kasey and Rachel Azeri style picture; Rikki George, Me, Kasey, and Magda; Me, Tom and Magda; and finally the entire gang. Incase you were curious, yes, I was in fact sporting a super sweet moustache that weekend…