Qali Alti

Today is 90 degrees and cloudy. It’s great to be so cool for a while!!! It’s a great respite from the heat! I never thought I’d say that about 90 degrees… Such is life in the “Land of Fire,” which is what the word Azerbaijan means.

Carolyn here. Hey y’all. We’ve had a busy couple of weeks. We’ve been doing our daily 4 hour language classes, Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and Community Economic Development (CED) trainings a few times a week, playing with our friends and just exploring Sumgait. We take marstrukas into Sumgait most days for various reasons. We have to go in to catch different marstrukas to our sector (TEFL and CED) trainings in other outlaying communities. We go in for the internet café… we’ve found a great one finally!! It’s centrally located and get this…. Kind of air conditioned!! Sumgait has an Almali Market which has *some* western comforts. We’ve found Pringles, pasta, Russian spaghetti sauce, toilet paper, Dannon yogurt, Ecuadorian bananas, nuts and Snickers “peanut butter.” It’s also air conditioned.

There are also some restaurants around town that we’ve found and enjoy. There’s a Turk Doneri place that’s great. A doner is a sandwich with carved meat, cucumber, tomato, parsley, mayo and “ketchup.” It’s good stuff. Down by the “Dove,” a huge statue right by the Caspian, there are a bunch of outdoor restaurants that serve kebab, dondurma (ice cream), kola (cola), and piva (beer). A couple days ago Jesse and his language group found a restaurant where they serve complete meals. I honestly don’t think I’d had a balanced meal since Guba until we went to the restaurant with my language group yesterday. I had a boneless, skinless chicken breast, potatoes and a carrot and pea salad. I thought I was in Heaven. It was kind of expensive, but there were other things on the menu for 1 manat, which is about what you pay for a doner or something less healthy. If you can’t tell, I’m very excited about this!

Last Saturday we had a Cultural Event. We drove 3 hours in nice busses to Qali Alti Castle. When we got there, we all hiked up the mountain. Jesse made it all the way to the top and enjoyed looking around the castle and amazing views of Azerbaijan. I took a wrong turn with some other girls and got a bit stymied. I ended up turning around and helping one of the other volunteers back down. It was still very pleasant to spend some time in a cool, green forest. After the hike we all had lunch in the forest. It was fun to spend some time with all the trainees together.

Last night we went to our site mate, Bonnie’s house where we made pizza and studied. We were all given a cookbook put together by previous Azerbaijan PCVs and there was a pizza dough recipe in it, along with lots of other recipes we are excited to try when we get our own place! The pizza turned out really well. We used what we think was Gouda cheese, and it was surprisingly close to real American pizza. The best part was that Bonnie has a ton of basil in her yard, so we used copious amounts on the pizza!!

Today we had our mid-training language tests. We had to sit down with the woman who runs the language training and answer questions and talk in Azerbaijani. I think they went pretty well. Jesse’s language is coming along very well, mine is a little slower to come, but that’s what I expected. Jesse is good with languages, which is good because as a CED volunteer, his language needs to be at a higher level than mine since I’ll be working with English teachers and speaking in English much more often.

This week I start teaching summer school here in Sumgait Station. I will teach two 45 minute English lessons a day to between 7 and 15 kids with my friend and site mate Jen. I’ve never taught English before, so this could be very interesting. We also don’t know how old the kids will be, nor do we know their skill level. Wish me luck!

We get to find out our permanent site this Friday, so that’s what we’re looking forward to this week! We’ve been interviewed and assessed by PC staff, so hopefully they’re working hard to get us in the perfect site! We will let you all know as soon as we can, so you can Google map or Google Earth it and check out what it looks like!

Pictures are as follows: 1. Me in front of the Dove in Sumgait with the Caspian in the background. 2. The view from the top. 3. Jesse and Donnie (Oregon native, Southern Oregon graduate, just like my sister, Jen!) at the top with the castle in the background. 4. A Flower at the top. 5. Our Nana making lavash. This was a pretty cool process to watch. She expertly rolled the dough to be paper thin then put it on the fire where her daughter turned it a couple times until it was cooked. It’s basically just a huge tortilla, but it’s an amazing and welcome alternative to the chorek (bread).