Becoming old ain’t so bad…

Well, I guess turning 30 is just like any other birthday, it just sounds a lot older than 29. Maybe I don’t feel that much different since I still act like I’m 16. What ever it is, I’m officially cool with being 30 so BRING IT ON!

I hung out with Tom in Lenkeran for a mini Ashley birthday/Tom going to America party (read we made queso, cocktails, and played games all night) on Wednesday. On Thursday I headed up to Sheki (north central AZ) to help Magda with a marketing project for her company. My program manager Elmir was in town, so he treated us to a nice birthday dinner, which was really fun. Sheki has a really nice hotel that serves American food, so I had 2 cheeseburgers with fries and 2 caesar salads over the weekend. I do miss a good salad being over here. Then on Saturday, a couple of us headed up to some mountains near Sheki to hike and camp for the night. The weather was perfect all weekend! We hiked for about 3 hours each way and found some really cool water falls up in the hills. It was by far one of the best weekends I’ve had in country so far!

What else? Lenkeran is becoming hotter and more humid with each passing day-not excited for the summer what so ever! I am starting to remember how miserable last summer was and am not looking forward to the sequel. Sadly I missed the Lenkeran soccer game yesterday. We are officially the AZ Champions! I am hoping that is a good omen for OU football this year!

This week I will be spending a ton of time trying to plan our trip to Egypt, so that should keep me busy. Alison is off trekking through Europe right now and Ron and Becky will get into Baku Saturday morning. They are in for a bit of a shock I think. Rumor has it most of the PCVs are all coming into Baku this weekend to play and meet them. I hope they survive Saturday night!

I hope you all had a fantastic Memorial Day!

Pictures this week are of: the hills/mountains we hiked in, the cow that decided to visit our camp site, madga dumping rocks out of her boots, the river we followed to the water falls, the water falls, Charlie cooking our toasted meat and cheese sandwich, and the perfect night sky looking up from my sleeping bag.