C and C Baby Factories

I would like to start this week off with an Azerbaijan shout out to Cole Pregler and Crew Boyd and their respective parents and grandparents! Two of my best friends, Chris Pregler and Dagen Boyd (and of course their lovely wives Jennifer and Michelle), had their first children over the past week or so and I can’t wait to meet them! Jennifer got things going with popping Cole out a whopping 5 weeks early and Michelle followed up with popping Crew out a couple of weeks early. I got an early morning wake up call Sunday morning with Crew making some funny noises to introduce himself to me half way around the world. Oddly enough, after I finally answered the phone after 3 separate calls from Dagen, I think I made the same noises in my sleep daze.

Last week was pretty standard-I’m sounding like a broken record each week I know. My friend Bethany came to visit for the weekend. Tom and I decided not to head to Baku to watch the Super Bowl due to money and me thinking the game wasn’t going to be so good. We also watched Sweeny Todd-freaking weird but good movie. We were trying to organize a joint Georgia and AZ boys camp with PCVs in Georgia this summer but I just got word things on that end aren’t going to work out so no dice sadly.

I had a horrible Russian lesson yesterday and it was a total wake up call for me that if I’m going to learn that language at least conversationally while I’m over here I need to really bust my ass. This is going to be a BIG week of review and getting my head on straight.

I just got back from Nene’s. Today is the 40^th day of her return from Mecca, so she was giving out food and invited me over for some chicken and rice. I’m stuffed and she gave me left overs to take home for tomorrow! I forgot how much I love walking into her kitchen in the winter after work. It is always the perfect temperature of warm with the wood fire, never smoky and smells delicious. This is a 180 from my kitchen that is 40 degrees, a tiny fire from my gas balloon, and the smell of pasta and ketchup. She had a bunch of visitors over to eat and celebrate her trip to Mecca over the past 40 days and showed me my old bedroom. Well she probably has about 50 huge boxes of chocolates stacked up in there. Chocolate is the preferred gift when visiting a person’s house in AZ. She told me she’s going to take them all to the store later this week and sell them to the shop owner and keep the money-which is also perfectly acceptable over here. Re-gifting is also a constant thing.

This week’s insight into my life makes me feel ridiculous. So I was skipping work this afternoon because I’m just more productive at home than in a small office with 4 people constantly yelling/talking. Well I got a call from Nene inviting me over to eat at 4, then a call from Jane saying I had a package at the post office. All of a sudden my quiet afternoon at home reading, working on Russian and doing internet stuff (like this blog) wasn’t panning out. I had an extreme sense of being “too busy” all of a sudden. How pathetic is that? I had to go eat, hang with Nene and pick up a package. That’s how slow life in the AZ is right now. Those two simple and normal things made me feel all rushed-that kills me when I think about life in America.

I’m reading Martin Luther King, Jr.’s book Strength to Love right now and highly recommend it to all.

Since we are in the winter hibernation period of the year, I figured pictures of me and my friends sleeping would be appropriate: me and Ina, Ram in his normal late night position, Magda, Jason & Kat in a normal group weekend setting, me and Ben at an early morning PC training during a tea break, Ben in his normal state any time of day, “fetal” Tom, me and Ben after a softball game taking an afternoon nap at Sarah’s house, Carlo and the only thing that would share a bed with him at the time and finally one of my favorite pictures of Ram after our America Day in Lankaran at one of my old houses…