Ron and Becky Rock Azerbaijan!

Well pretty much all of my friends came into Baku Friday for meetings, a big Baku weekend, to meet my parents, or all of the above. I had to start my weekend off having a meeting with Charlie and Carlo trying to get our boys leadership camp planned out and rolling for late August. We still have a ton of things that need to be taken care of, but I have confidence that it will all work out in the end. We ate some delicious pizza Friday night and then headed out for a typical night of hanging with the gang and dancing our butts off!

Mom and Dad flew in from London around 4am and then I met them at the hotel around 9:00 when I woke up. They treated a group of us to some good American food lunches and then Rikki George and I took them on the typical Baku tour for a few hours. It was pretty hot and none of us had gotten much sleep the night before, so we all took naps before the real fun began. We met up with some of the gang and Erin’s parents who were also visiting for some beers late in the afternoon and then Mom and Dad bought us tons of nachos, chicken nuggets and beers for about 25 of us. Thankfully we hit happy hour, so the damage to my dad’s bank account was minimal. We then took them to a few “hot spots” in Baku for them to get a taste of the night life. Ron and Becky got major cool points for going out with that big of a group of us and dancing like crazy with us until at least 3am! No one ever accused my folks of not liking to have a little fun every now and then.

Sunday we went to my first host family’s café and were treated to my favorite Azeri meal-fried chicken and French fries. My dad was not happy when my host father pulled out a bottle of vodka for toasts after the previous nights sampling. We ate a ton of food and it was fun to see everyone interacting. After that we hopped a taxi down to Lenkeran and just bummed around all night.

Monday morning we headed up into some hills just outside of Lenkeran for a scenic drive with my Azeri tutor. I took Mom and Dad to my favorite quick lunch spot-think mashed potato quesadillas basically. We put yogurt on them, but they didn’t seem to like that addition. We started to take the normal Lenkeran town tour, but for the first time in 6 weeks it started raining. This forced us to head home for a lazy afternoon. Mom and Dad helped me move all of my things into my new house and then we went out to the nicest dinner in town. They enjoyed every part but the goat liver (which none of us like).

Today we took the Lenkeran city tour-hotel, train station, places they make fresh bread and chickens, had some tea, and then met the people at my office and tom’s office. Topping off the big day in Lenkeran we hit the hottest of hot spots-Nene’s House!!! She cooked a massive meal with Lenkeran’s famous Chicken Levangi as the main course. Mom and Dad both really liked all of the food that Nene prepared, but they didn’t eat near as much as I did. Nene joked with them all through dinner and then showed them her photo albums for a while. We had a good time and the translating all week has gone a lot better than I thought it would. Heck, maybe I am learning this language a little.

Tomorrow we will take it easy, let them try a little more Azeri food, then I’ll put them on a train to Baku and off to London for a quick stop and then on to Cairo. Ali is in Rome right now and Tom and his family are getting ready to leave America soon. We will all meet up in Cario on Saturday for 10 days of blistering heat, sand for miles, the enticing smell of camel dung, and BELLY DANCERS 24/7!!!! Have a great couple of weeks everyone. I won’t put up another blog until I get back on the 18^th or 19^th, assuming I don’t melt into the desert…

Pictures this week are of: the family by the Eternal Flame in Baku, a big 1^st host family picture, my host brother Hafiz and our moms, three pictures from our trip the mountains next to Lenkeran, and finally Ron, Becky and Nene.