Introducing Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne!!!

And I mean it was ridiculous!!! Tom and I came up with the idea to dress up as Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne and perform a few songs for our Annual Turkey Day Talent Show performance back in April I think. We did a “VH1 Story Tellers” session where we talked about songs and being idiots, then played the first parts of six songs total. Tom’s really good at guitar and I suck, so he helped me learn how to play two of my three songs. We got some help from my sister and Tiffany Bryant with our costumes and a fellow PCV Karen was in charge of our beautification process. She did a great job. Sadly Tom and I aren’t much to look at. Oddly enough a ton of people told Tom he looked hot as a girl. I only got two compliments between a bunch of disgust, so I guess my aspirations of becoming a drag queen are shot-I’m strangely ok with that. We will try to get a video clip or two up on youtube some time for you guys to watch. Talent is not a word I’d use to describe our performance, but general merriment was had by all I hope. People definitely didn’t hold back laughing at us the entire time. We followed some pretty talented people singing, playing guitar and violin, so we had to mix it up a little. My stomach was a mess leading up to the performance because we CHOWED DOWN on some amazing food and I was pretty damn nervous for some reason. Once again this year our director and the second in command at the embassy provided us with a delicious spread of turkeys and all of the fixings. Each PCV was in charge of bringing a side dish or desert so Tom, Ben, Carlo and I made about 10 pounds of mashed potatoes as our contribution. We stayed with the same amazing American host family as last year, so we spent all day Saturday relaxing in their indoor pool and sauna!!! All of our friends went out for a long night of dancing at the meal and talent show and we were treated to a huge pancake, eggs and bacon breakfast Sunday morning. The entire weekend was simply FREAKING AWESOME!!!! Thanks to everyone who was a part of it.

I’m now back to Lankaran and going into hibernation mode for a couple of months. After all of my travels it is time to shut it down. I don’t plan on going anywhere near Baku for a month or two and will be at site pretty much non-stop except for a probably Christmas get together at someone’s house. I think the Lank Crew will make some good eats this Thursday night and will be movie watching bums all weekend for our version of Thanksgiving AZ. Mom mailed me pumpkin pie ingredients, so we will be chowin on that for sure.

My Russian lessons are back in full swing-I learned how to conjugate verbs today. I’m starting to write some proposals for a few training projects for the spring, so we will see what happens. I’m going to be spending the next couple of weeks figuring out my last 10 months here so hopefully I can figure out some good stuff.

I’m not talking about the OU game…

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! I hope you guys all have a great week and enjoy all of the delicious food. I could use some Turducken leftovers covered in gravy right now…