My sister Heather is in the hospital right now, so say some prayers for her! And my other sister Jen is 9 weeks pregnant so say some prayers for her too! So exciting!
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. 
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.
Or Jesse can open a Saloon.
What do y'all think?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!
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.
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!
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:
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!
I was able to snap a pic today in the Bazaar of the aforementioned fish that are swimming up our water pipes. Apparently, apart from being a bit of a pest, they are also considered food. That just gives me the heeby-geebies. I also found out that their official name (according to the salesman) is Ilan Baliq (Snake Fish)!
Well, not exactly so easy, but interesting at least. We came back from our trip to find our city covered in snow, which from what we hear is very unusual. Since then temperatures have been in the 20-25 degree range at night and just above freezing during the day. This has created a bunch of ice everywhere. Not only is that a problem for transportation in general, but for our water supply and general comfort.
We have been fairly lucky in that our water only completely stopped for one day so far. Our water lines completely froze and we more or less had to survive on the water we had stored up prior to that. In the neighboring city of Ganja, they have had whole swaths of the city out of water for weeks now. In this case you must go to a central point where the water is still running and fill buckets to take home. Yeesh!
Another problem with our water is fish. Yes, fish are actually swimming up the pipes and clogging our faucets. Our host father has had to pull fish bits out twice now and I’m sure he’s not yet done for the season. Now, that might be gross enough for you, but there’s more. These fish are weird snake-like fish, resembling mini-eels. They sell them in the bazaar and every time I see them they throw my upchuck reflex into a frenzy! I’ll try to snap a picture next time I can.
As for our general comfort, I suppose we don’t have much room to complain. Compared to other volunteers, we live in relative luxury. We have a gas heater in our room and even though we get the dregs of the gas line it still manages to keep the temperature between 50 and 55. We can have daily showers if we want to tough out the walk to and from the shower, whereas some volunteers get bucket baths once or twice a week. In fact, we have a friend who lives south of us and she has a ¼ inch of ice on her windows and even on her walls and has stopped getting baths altogether. She has to make the two-hour journey up here every couple weeks to take a shower at a friend’s house.
However, it’s not all bad. Carolyn took advantage of the snow yesterday and helped our host brother make a snowman and we’ve had several days off work due to snow. It’s kind of funny, Carolyn and I have been spending so much time together that we are starting to get worried of what will happen when we have to go home and get real jobs and not be able to spend 20+ hours out of the day together!
Photos: 1. Walking down our street in Mingechevir. 2. Snowball fight with our host brother, which I dominated at due to my exceptional snowball making skills. 3. Icicles on the neighbor's house. 4. It just wouldn't be winter without the giant neon palm tree! 5. Just chillin wit da homies!
As promised pictures have been uploaded...
http://picasaweb.google.com/dabnut
Nush Olsun!
