Barda Baseball

This week started off pretty slow. I had to recover from the America Day week for a couple of days. Tom, Carlo and I went to a natural hot water spring in Lenkeran to replenish our bodies and souls-man it felt great. There are several springs like that around Lenkeran so I’ll be hitting that place up a ton this coming winter. We painted the goals and put the nets on the basketball hoops and soccer goals on Tuesday. That was all that got done on my playground because this past week was full of Azeri holidays. We had a black holiday on Tuesday that was the anniversary of a town in AZ being taken over from their neighboring country, Victory Day on Wednesday, then Heydar Aliyev’s (the former President) birthday anniversary on Thursday. I hope to finish the grass on the playground this week so I can finally get my project over with and fill out all of the paperwork for PC and Disney.

This past weekend a group of Volunteers all headed to a town called Barda that is in the middle of AZ. Volunteers in four towns have been organizing softball teams in their towns with Azeri youths. They had a mini-tournament on Saturday and Tom and I got to play on the Sheki team due to their lack of Volunteers in their town. I am not known for my softball skills, but we had a blast! The Volunteers that organized the teams and the weekend did a great job. They had a great turn out of kids to play as well as locals to watch the games. We then had a massive Americans only game on Sunday that was a blast! My body was completely worn down after that game. It was really sunny and kinda hot out Sunday and my body just isn’t used to physical activity. It is freaking pathetic. One major surprise of the weekend was when we showed up Friday night in Barda, Mary had made a huge dinner for us including MEAT LOAF!!! Man, I love me some meat loaf and Mary did a great job! As if that wasn’t enough, Carol then whipped out a huge pan of apple cobbler and five tubs of Azeri ice cream. I mean I was stuffed beyond my limits but it was sooo worth it…

Other things that are going on:

The weather has been great so I have been sleeping outside most nights-it feels great

Ron and Becky get here in less than three weeks

I’m starting to plan the big Egypt trip for us

I had my first hot bus ride of the year this past weekend-man I’m not ready for the blazing hot summer yet

And last but not least, HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY MOM! That also goes for all of my friends who are apparently baby factories!!!!

Sorry for the lack of pictures this week, I am slacking. This is myself and Carlo fixing up the goals and nets last week.