I hear it's just getting to be Spring back in the good old Willamette Valley! Well... it's Summer here, so I thought I'd post some pictures of our Spring here in Mingechevir!
Spring was full of friends, family and fire!
My mom and step dad came for a visit in March... pictures of that will follow in a blog when I get a package with photos from mom...
We went up to Qebala to visit a friend and got to see what life is like in the village. Some of you might remember last summer when Russia wanted the US to use a radar station in Azerbaijan instead of Poland or wherever it ended up. The radar station is in Qebala and you might be able to see it in the photo of me and Gulnaz...
Novruz is THE holiday in Azerbaijan. It is the Azeri New Year. I think it's Muslim as well. It is made up of the four Thursdays before the Equinox and the Equinox itself. Every Thursday represents either fire, water, wind or earth. People jump over fires to leave all their troubles behind them in the old year. We had a great dinner with our family while mom and Steve were here, and yes, we did jump over the fire! We also had a fun dinner with our friend Elvin and jumped over more fires. We went to some celebrations in town, ate lots of baklava and did some heavy duty egg fighting...
We also had the Writing Olympics. I'm on the committee for this, so I wanted to be sure Mingechevir had a good turn out. And did we ever! We had 65 students from 12 different schools come to participate! We also had 6 university students particpate. Out of those 71 kids, we had 13 regional winners, 3 national winners and our friend Elvin placed 3rd in the national contest! Yay Elvin!! I was really proud of my students and happy that Mingechevir will be well represented in the book we publish of all the winners from Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.
That's pretty much our Spring in a nutshell... check out our Picasa album for all the photos!!
Happy Spring!!
Spring was full of friends, family and fire!
My mom and step dad came for a visit in March... pictures of that will follow in a blog when I get a package with photos from mom...
We went up to Qebala to visit a friend and got to see what life is like in the village. Some of you might remember last summer when Russia wanted the US to use a radar station in Azerbaijan instead of Poland or wherever it ended up. The radar station is in Qebala and you might be able to see it in the photo of me and Gulnaz...
Novruz is THE holiday in Azerbaijan. It is the Azeri New Year. I think it's Muslim as well. It is made up of the four Thursdays before the Equinox and the Equinox itself. Every Thursday represents either fire, water, wind or earth. People jump over fires to leave all their troubles behind them in the old year. We had a great dinner with our family while mom and Steve were here, and yes, we did jump over the fire! We also had a fun dinner with our friend Elvin and jumped over more fires. We went to some celebrations in town, ate lots of baklava and did some heavy duty egg fighting...
We also had the Writing Olympics. I'm on the committee for this, so I wanted to be sure Mingechevir had a good turn out. And did we ever! We had 65 students from 12 different schools come to participate! We also had 6 university students particpate. Out of those 71 kids, we had 13 regional winners, 3 national winners and our friend Elvin placed 3rd in the national contest! Yay Elvin!! I was really proud of my students and happy that Mingechevir will be well represented in the book we publish of all the winners from Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.
That's pretty much our Spring in a nutshell... check out our Picasa album for all the photos!!
Happy Spring!!
2 comments:
Great pictures from sunny Azerbaijan. That is great about the turn out for the Writing Contest. Makes it seem worthwhile, huh?
Debbie (Eugene)
Great photos! I like seeing the persimmon & pomegranate buds/blossoms. Cool! All of the celebration pictures are so colorful too! You guys look great & happy...Yay! Miss you. :)
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