One Year Down, One Year To Go….as it were

So I thought that I would dedicate this week’s blog to my general thoughts/feelings/observations on everything I’ve experienced over the past year. The pictures are just some of my favorites from over here. These thoughts are pretty random and just off the top of my head so I hope you enjoy!

What I liked:

The people, the food, getting to hang out with all of my fellow volunteers every day during training, chopping wood and lighting a fire in my room every day after work, my first host family’s café, Nene’s insanity, AZ4’s giggle fit affliction, dancing all night in Baku, nachos and beers on the patio at Tequila Junction, pumpkin rice, cooking for myself, all of the kids saying “hello” and “what’s your name”, ABLE Camp, our conversation club with the kids, and our America Days, reading a lot of books during the cold winter nights, walking everywhere I go, everyone trading all of our cheap dvds we all buy, Turkish music videos, both of my sites have been fantastic, writing this blog each week, making big Mexican feasts with my friends, our Program Managers really do try to help us in any way they can, my trips to Georgia, Egypt and Budapest, when my family (and other PCV’s families and friends) visited, when packages from America arrived, Novruz Holiday, all of the people that I at least say hi to every day when I see them in town, shopping for foods at the bazaar, walking down a road next to a cow, or chicken, or duck, or goose, random funny texts from my friends, Dalga Days 1 and 2, going to weddings, that our group gets along so well, my new acceptance of most fruits, the challenge of adapting to a new culture and way of life, and realizing that a lot of what we think about/worry about in our lives in America really isn’t so important in other parts of the world.

What I didn’t like:

The long bus rides from Lankaran to anywhere in the country, egg plant, Nene’s serving of cold fish for breakfast, roosters outside of my window, TAXI DRIVERS, non stop tea drinking-I just don’t like the taste, when Volunteers had their service cut short (for personal or PC reasons), filling out our extremely long quarterly reports, finding houses to rent, eating the same few things all of the time, people always walking around with their cell phones blasting music, all of the local permission you need to get in order to so a very basic project, stepping into a ditch of sludge, eating heart and lung, not hanging out with friends and family back home, when the electricity goes off when all you want to do is watch a movie on your laptop, not being able to watch OU football, how hard it is to travel and see the different regions in AZ due to our strict travel policies, talking to several friends that are going through a rough time and complaining about it a bunch can really wear you down too, trying to buy a ticket at the train station or getting a package from the post office (those basically both mean the lack of lines or order in those types of situations), when it rains for weeks at a time and your pants every day are covered in mud up to your knees, hand washing clothes, rubbing my arm and a ton of dead skin rubbing off, sitting in my hot office with nothing to do, kids puking on bus rides, Lankaran’s mosquitoes, and when I mess up my Azeri really bad or just can’t understand what a person is trying to tell me.

General Thoughts:

My first year here went pretty well I think. I’ve actually been here about 14.5 months, but I don’t count the first 2.5 months of training. After I finally realized my job wasn’t ever going to give me any work and started working on my own projects, my Volunteer life started to really pick up. I am very hopeful that the next year will be full of projects (small or large) that I feel will really help the people here/make some sort of positive impact. It is frustrating when you find a project you know would be great for you community but the motivation for the locals to do it just isn’t there. As a PCV in AZ you won’t really have any “big impact” through big projects, it is a lot more of a day to day, smaller impact type of experience. It’s amazing how good a random piece of food from America that I barely used to eat can make me feel when I’m having a bad day. After one year I am DEFINITELY glad I joined the PC and am proud of what we are doing over here and all over the world. I really think it is a great organization/concept and think it will definitely have a very positive affect on the rest of my life.

What I’m looking forward to in the next year:

AZ5 officially swore in last week as Volunteers and I had the chance to meet a lot of them during their training. Myself and the rest of AZ4 are definitely excited to hang out with them for the next year. We have Halloween and Thanksgiving weekends, our mid service and close of service conferences (so we can all hang out in baku together) coming up. Getting my bridge and medical supplies projects actually going, using what I’ve learned in my first year to make my second year much more productive, getting better at Russian, come January I will start thinking about what I’ll do with my life after PC is over (I think I’d go insane if I started to worry about that now), ABLE Camp next year, Novruz Holiday, and all of the little things that will fill in my last 365 days with happiness and interesting experiences.