Happy Birthday!!!!

I had a nice 27th Birthday in Azerbaijan!

Our friends Kelsey and David came to visit from Ali Bayramli and Goranboy! On the Friday before my birthday, we had Nate, Mike and Cindy over, too! We always like having friends over at our house.

Saturday was a beautiful day in Mingechevir! We walked down to the River Kur and enjoyed the Spring-like weather. I made a barbeque chicken pizza for lunch a la Pegasus.

Kelsey gave me the wonderful cake! It was actual cake mix from America!!!! Very exciting!
I also want to wish some people Happy Birthday. I've been very bad at keeping up this year, mostly because I forgot to bring a calendar with everyone's birthdays.

So...

Happy Birthday

Aunt Kim!

Phoebe!

Cole!

Alex!

Angela!

Brit!

Hillary!

And, I'm sure I'm still forgetting people, so please accept my sincere appologies!

We love and miss everyone!!!

More Adventures in Grooming...

Jesse decided he was done with his beard.
He decided to chronical his experience...

And the finished product... meet Cowboy Jesse!

I did some grooming myself. I decided I wanted some bangs and layers.

Maybe if this Peace Corps thing doens't work out, we can open our own salon here!

Or Jesse can open a Saloon.

What do y'all think?

Politics

Hello friends and family! Carolyn here. I just wanted to say a little bit about the elections going on in the States right now. It's the first time I can remember that so much emphasis has been placed on the primaries. It seems like there's a media frenzy going on over there, on the other side of the world!

It feels strange to be so separated from all that's happening. I bet you can't turn on the TV, radio or walk down the street without being bombarded with campaign news, ads, signs, and more! Because we're here, we have to actually seek out news and information.

So, what did I do? I searched! I'm still not 100% decided, but I wanted to share a link. I'm sure most people know about the League of Women Voters and how they stive to bring unbiased information to the voting public. I've just spent some time on their website and feel it is a good way to learn about candidates and issues. http://www.vote411.org/

I hope everyone is having a nice Valentine's Day! Jesse is in Baku for a conference, and I'm in Mingechevir, so that's kind of sad, but oh well! We will have a nice dinner of baked potatoes or something when he gets back on saturday!

Housewarming!

This weekend we had some of our friends over for dinner, a movie and games! I made chili and cornbread, and they were quite a hit! I love it when I am able to make things that taste like America... comfort food has a whole new meaning!

Here is Nate, Aiching, Jody and Jesse curled up on our sofa enjoying some TV of DVD.
This is Mike, cornbread and Jesse.
Kate likes chili! Nate likes cameras!
Aiching and Jody adding the secret ingredient to our home-made khalua... powdered vanilla... actually powdered vanilla is kind of lame, but it's all we have here in Azerbaijan! Jesse, me, Jody and Nate after watching The Kite Runner... It was a very good film (not even close to the book, which I just read last week), and it was really interesting to see the similarities between Afghanistan and Azerbaijan. They use many of the same words we do (beli, jan, bibi, inshallah, mashallah, baba.... ), and there some cultural things that were hilarous. I'm sure if we had been in a theatre in America, people would have thought we were crazy because we laughed at a lot things that we're necessarily funny if you didn't understand the culture from which it came. Anyway, it was a good film, but read the book first.
We watched the Obama "Yes We Can" speech song about 10 times. I still haven't decided for whom I will vote, but this is a very impressive song and speech. It's a very powerful message he is presenting, that's for sure. Hopefully whoever wins in November will have the ability to bring our nation together better than the past few presidents. That's my hope.

Here's the gallon of khalua we have in our closet now. I hope it lasts for a while... :)

Consider our house warmed!

New Digs

When I got back from my counterpart conference in Baku last weekend, Jesse and Tahir (our host dad) had a surprise for me! When I went back to our room, it was empty! They had spent the previous two days moving all our things out to our new house! It really is the best of both worlds, because we get to stay near our family, whom we love dearly, and we get a little more freedom!
Our house has three rooms. Two bedrooms and a brand new kitchen! Tahir and Bibi (host mother) used to rent our house to university students and when they lived here, the kitchen was basically just a porch with a tarp around it. Now we have walls, windows and a door. It’s really nice and cheery! They even put in a water heater over the sink – this is a big deal! Outside of Baku, I hadn’t seen a water heater in a kitchen. Our family doesn’t even have one. It’s amazing… we can wash dishes and our hands without freezing! We can even do laundry in our kitchen because Tahir put up a clothes line. We have a full size refrigerator, three gas burners and tons of work space. It is the best kitchen in Azerbaijan, bar none.
Our living/sleeping room is also quite cheery. We have a gas stove, a sofa, book case/dresser, nightstand and a table. We have covered the walls in pictures, so it’s nice to have all our friends and family surrounding us!

We have a guest room/ storage room. It is pretty much just storage right now, but in the summer when it thaws in there, we might try to do something else with it.

One of the best things is that we’re 10 steps from the toilet now! We used to be in the back of the main house and to get to the bathroom we had to go through 4 rooms, across a porch, down 7 stairs, across the yard… it was a hike, especially in the night. I’m very happy to be so much closer!!! Simple pleasures, that what I live for these days!

If you can’t tell, we are really happy! Everything has worked out so well for us here in Mingechevir! We’re glad to stay near our host family. They are everything a host family should be. They are interested in the cultural exchange, they are very generous, they genuinely care for us and there is great mutual respect. We really lucked out this time!

Check out our Picasa album for more pictures! There's a link on the right.

and here http://picasaweb.google.com/dabnut

Numbers...

Hello everyone! Jesse here. I just wanted to post a blog with some numbers of interest that have happened since being here, just for fun. So in no particular order:

• 60: The combined number of pounds we have lost since coming here 7 months ago.
  
• 1605: The number of text messages I sent during my first 7 months of being here.
  
• 120: Number of minutes I spend walking to and from work everyday.
  
• $7: The amount of our readjustment allowance (salary) per person per day.
  
• $3: The amount a typical Azeri teacher makes per day.
  
• $1.50: The amount a retired Azeri citizen receives per day.
  
• 44: The approximate number of Turk Döner sandwiches I ate while in Sumgayit.
  
• $.10: The cost of one pound of fresh, local, vine ripened tomatoes in September.
  
• $.90: The cost of one pound of fresh, local, vine ripened tomatoes in November.
  
• $1.50: The cost of one pound of old, imported, over ripened tomatoes in February.
  
• $10: The cost of one bag of chocolate chips in Baku.
  
• 189: The number of hits on our website in September from a .gov extension.
  
• 5: The number of days it takes to get over a good case of food poisoning.
  
• 55: The number of people who came with our group to Azerbaijan.
  
• 8: The number of people in our group who have returned to the States.
  
• 47: The number of people who came with the group before us.
  
• 14: The number of people in the group before us who have returned to the States.
  
• 8: The number of people in our group from Oregon.
  
• 95: The temperature in our room at 10:30 at night on September 1st.
  
• 55: The temperature in our room at 1:30 in the afternoon on November 27th.

Fun, huh!?! On a side note, my office just had DSL installed so I will have reliable fast internet. Now, don't go thinking this will improve the quality of the posts...no, no, no...same old Jesse and Carolyn. Bye for now!