I’m a travelin man…

So my sister Alison came back to Lenkeran with Tom and me for a few days to check out where I live. We did the same tour I took Mom and Dad on. During the summer nights here the main park fills up with all of the locals who come out because the weather is much cooler at night, and also to see our new, super cool musical fountains! We took Alison down there to check it out after we ate some Lanvangi and played a ton of Yahtzee. She only stayed for 2 days, so it was a short time, but she had to press on to Vienna…probably a smart choice ;)

I recovered from traveling and tour guiding all that weekend and then took off for Mingechevir for a couple of days to talk with AZ3 Tom about some projects he has done. Ming was the first city that I visited during my training, so it was good to finally go back. Besides work, I got to practice with the Ming softball team, eat some good kabob and take some money off of the local PCVs playing poker.

After that I headed to Ganja for the rest of the week. Myself and a couple of other PCVs had meetings about getting medical equipment and supplies donate to AZ. This is hopefully going to be a big scale project for me to work on the rest of my time here. Hopefully we can find enough donors and get a good enough system down for delivery, training and implementation that we can really help out the under funded hospitals out in the regions. I also got to practice with the Ganja softball team and help Ben move into his new apartment some.

On Saturday and Sunday we had our last softball tournament of the summer. It is just too freaking hot to travel and play sports during the day. There is never any chance to cool off since most places don’t have A/C. I’m horrible at softball for some reason, but finally started hitting the ball decently on Sunday. I finally hit a home run after screwing up on a couple of fielding plays, so I got to gloat a little bit.

We headed to Baku Tuesday for a 4^th of July although we had it on the 3^rd) Party at the American Embassy. For 2 hours they had burgers, hot dogs, chips, and Miller Genuine Draft bottles! I had to control myself to make sure I didn’t eat myself sick. It was a great party and fun to hang around a large group of Americans on “American soil” for a while.

Now, after all of my travels and visitors, I am back in Lenkeran and glad. It will feel good to go shopping for food, hanging out with local friends and living the slow life again. My boss wants me to make an internet site for Lenkeran and the other five regions our office serves, so I’ll be working on that as well as busting my buns on my big projects.

Oh yea, one last thing. A big WELCOME TO AZERBAIJAN to AZ5! The new trainees got here last Wednesday and all moved to their training host families last weekend. My old host family got another volunteer. I told him that he will get the best food out of anyone since he has the café to eat at every day. Sadly the PC is not letting many of us go meet the trainees until they are sworn in as PCVs. Our group got to interact a lot with the other Volunteers and that was one of the best parts of training. Tom, Tim and I will each get a few trainees down to Lenkeran for a three day site visit in a couple of weeks, so that should be fun.

Happy Belated 4^th of July Everyone!!!!