Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Everything Else!

So I have been a blog slacker lately and I apologize. I’m going to do a two week update/inclusive blog so you guys will have something to waste time with on your 1^st days back at work after your holiday vacations.

I went to Barda the weekend before Christmas to hang out with several friends-Jason had an “All Holidays Gathering” at his house and we had a fun weekend. We realized our group of AZ4 PCVs has gotten old and lame when we looked around about 1am and most of the girls were knitting and the rest of us were playing poker while the new group was all up and still rocking away. I like to think we have matured and calmed down, but I think we are just all lazy and know how to pace ourselves. Then I headed to Sheki for actually Christmas at Magda’s. They have a semi-movie theater there with a projector on a white wall with good speakers and for $6 total we got to watch our own Polar Express movie and eat popcorn! It was a ton of funand I really like the movie. We also made good American food, played games and watched all of the typical American Christmas movies-Frosty, Rudolph and Co.

The entire country has all of this week off so it has been nice and relaxing. Due to the fairly consistent rain and mid 40’s temps it has become increasingly harder to get out of my insanely warm sleeping bag each morning. The Lankaran Gang had a NYE feast with games and then headed down to the main town square for the city firework show with music and the fountains going. We also stopped by Tom’s old host family at mid-night to say hello, then headed back to my place to set off a bunch of fire crackers. Firecrackers are kinda expensive here. For $10 Tom and I got a carton of blackcats, 4 roman candles, 1 foutain, 6 bees, 10 bottle rockets and maybe 1 or 2 other small things. I was hoping to buy a whole mess of cool stuff for $10 here. There obviously aren’t any rules against lighting them in the city. I’ve heard blackcats basically 24/7 for the past week or so from neighborhood kids. I’ll be glad when this week is over and that should be done hopefully. Today we all got our picture taken with the Azeri version of “Santa” and the “Winter Queen”. Tomorrow we are having a “Lonesome Dove” Mini-series marathon at Tom’s house. I got all of the sitemates to read my book over the past month, so they are all excited to see the movie.

Well, we have officially finished our one and only full calendar year in AZ. Only about 9 months left on the countdown. I made a deal with myself that I wouldn’t think/worry about post-PC life until 2008. Well that worked our great until yesterday-now I’m screwed. I’ve been reading a bunch of books and am going to start doing research about possible employment areas over the next couple of months so that once March/April hits I know where I want to focus my job search efforts. I’m also going to start planning my trip to Russia for June pretty soon, so I’m started to get excited thinking about that. I’m getting up at 5am to follow the Sooner game cast for the Fiesta Bowl. I have two boxes of cereal from US already out with my OU t-shirt and stocking cap ready for the game!

Pics are of "Happy New Year" sign, me and tom at the park for NYE, fireworks show, us lighting blackcats and the lank gang.

I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday Season! I guess I can probably say I’ll see you guys later this yearand BOOMER FREAKING SOONER!!!!