Recovery and America Day Barda

Last week was fully dedicated to operation “Ashley Recovery”. I got all of my stuff moved into my new house and basically crashed every night at 8pm and slept till 9am. My body and mind completely shut down after going to America, having 4 days in baku for training and playing, having friends in town working on projects, the Halloween Party and then moving. My dog Lyka also completely flipped out and went into heat. She ran away from Tom’s house about 25 times over the weekend, was scaring the crap out of the neighbors and was snapping at people she knew. My new landlord would not allow dogs and no way would any local take her, so I had to take Lyka to a village and set her free. She was a dog from the streets of AZ and she decided that’s the life she wanted to go back to. It made me really depressed for a couple of days to let her go, but I’m sure she is much happier with life now. There was just no way anyone could control her any more. That will be my last attempt at a pet in AZ…unless I can find a good donkey to hang out with.

About 12 of us headed to Barda on Saturday for Ina’s Halloween Carnival/America Day for the kids at her school. She did a really good job. A ton of kids dressed up, all the PCVs dressed up, we had a haunted house, bobbing for apples, ghost stories, trivia and mask making. She had a ton of teachers also participating which was nice to see. After that the teachers surprised us with a delicious meal and my favorite fall treat-pumpkin rice-DELICIOUS!

This week has been pretty low key. Tom and I are starting to get geared up for our Thanksgiving Dinner performance so lots of practice will be going on the next 10 days. We are headed to Ganja this weekend to play softball and have a pig roast-if Carlo can pull it off. There isn’t much pork over here, so the idea of an actual pig roast is really exciting!

Attached are pics from our Halloween Party for your enjoymet: Ron Burgandy and Brian Fantana from Anchorman, the Lankaran crew-us, and the Chaquita Banana and Land 'o Lakes Ladies, the Jolly Green Giant, Bethany the Witch with Kat the Kat, our Herbal Escence Girl, school girls and our very own Baltica Girl!!!