My 100th Blog-that’s weird

Well the spring has finally arrived! This is our second day of April and it only rained for five minutes yesterday and has been sunny the rest of the time. I just keep waiting for the clouds to move in, the rain to start and not stop for the rest of the month. Last year it rained pretty much all day 25 days in April, so I’m enjoying every ounce of sun we are getting. I did some spring cleaning last week which consisted of sweeping my house-pretty intense stuff. Tom and I are going to pile up all of my leaves and have a yard fire in the next week or so, weather permitting. This will be my first ever yard fire, so I’m pretty excited. We have some firecrackers left over from NYE to throw in for added excitement. I also put up netting on four of my windows in attempt to keep the bugs out and let some fresh air come in. The mosquitoes and ants are already out sadly-not looking forward to a summer full of them. I took my first malaria pill of the year last night, so that’s always exciting-sadly no crazy dreams. In the true spirit of ‘spring cleaning’ I decided to shave off the 15 months of hair growth on top of my head because it was just filthy and time for it to be gone. I didn’t have electric clippers so I had to use crappy scissors, then my Mach 3 razor for about an hour, sitting in my bathroom on a stool, freezing my naked butt off. It was worth it-I do love the feel of a freshly shaven head. I think I’ll keep shaving it for a while, just for fun. The locals think this hair is waaaay weirder than my long hair (which they found pretty weird), so I get a ton of looks, stares, and comments. They cut hair short here, but never bic’d completely off.

What else? A group of us went to Baku to watch some NCAA hoops games at an American bar. The owner gave us some free beers and appetizers, so that was really cool. Tom’s parents are coming back to AZ to visit (how ever crazy that may sound), so we are going to meet them in Baku this weekend again. That means we should have a batch of good American munchies. We put in requests with Tom’s dad for two Spicy Baconators from Wendy’s, so fingers crossed I’ll be eating a fresh (only 24 hours old) American burger at midnight Friday!

Other than that, not much going on. I’m trying to figure out a couple of small projects for Youth Day and Earth Day. I’m heading up to Sheki next week so Magda and I can finish our reports for our business training. We have been asked to set up another one, so we are going to have to see if we can get some money for that and how to make it better. I’m still waiting to hear on my medical supplies project-this waiting is driving me insane. Oh, I’ve started having a lot of “lasts” in AZ. Such as: two weeks ago I slept in my huge and hot PC issued sleeping bag, I’m going to buy my last huge can of cooking butter this week, I’m planning my last trip during my service (Russia in June), we just had our last holiday (Novruz), and things like that. It is kinda a weird feeling, but also a good one, to know that I’ve almost made it (21 full months and counting).

The pictures are of the trees in my back yard blooming, the netting I have to put up in all of my windows that kinda keeps bugs out, and what 15 months of hair looks like once it has been completely cut of