Culture Shock

I’ve been here about two weeks now, give or take a few training days. Things have really been amazing so far. We are definitely really lucky as far as trainees and volunteers go. The weather is pretty nice. It is warmer than North Dakota for the fall, and also brings rain (and lots of mud!), but it is not exceptionally hot, nor cold, and keeps the mosquitoes at bay. Some of the other volunteers have already dipped into their long underwear though, and I think it is going to be a long winter for them.
At first I kept thinking, “I wonder when culture shock is going to hit me?”. And then it did… in more than one way. It sort of crept up on me, like a spider in your sleep, and then I got smacked right in the face with it. First it started when I realized all of the cultural things I was doing wrong, like sitting in the back row of the bus that is apparently only for men (who knew?), forgetting to put on my house shoes when I have socks on, and dropping my sugar cube into the tea instead of holding it in my mouth while I drank it. But then a couple of the people in my cluster (there are six of us per cluster, about eighteen per site) started getting sick, and for the first time since I have had my tonsils out, I got a terrible cold. Now, normally this wouldn’t be much of an issue. However, there are some odd things that go on in Azerbaijani culture related to colds. Basically, almost all things (besides germs, bacteria, and viruses) give you colds, except for the few “remedies” that make you better. For example, walking out of the house with one strand of hair wet even if it is eighty degrees out gives you a cold. Drinking cold water gives you a cold. Sitting on the floor gives you a cold. On the other side, drinking your tea with jam in it will help cure you. (While I don’t adhere to this principle, it is mighty tasty and I don’t turn it down). And then there is this odd practice of “sucking” the cold out of you with a hot jar on your back. And that’s when it hit me. This is “Culture Shock.” It’s not this big defining moment in your life when you realize you are out of America, but more of a series of events leading up to your body completely rejecting everything going on around you. So currently my body is rejecting Azerbaijan in the form of being constantly tired, coughing up some weird stuff out of my lungs, being perplexed on a daily basis, and just saying over and over and over again, “What?! Where am I?!”
But cold and all, things really have been terrific here. I love my host family and leaving for site in ten weeks is going to be really tough. I am not picking up on the language as well as I would like, but that seems to be the same phrase coming out of all of the trainees’ mouths. The people here are so patient when it comes to learning it because they are so excited a foreigner is attempting to learn Azeri and not pushing Russian upon them. Although most of us get asked if we are Russian and/or spoken Russian to when we are walking down the street. And for the next two years, I am resigning myself to being followed by a mob of children yelling “Allo! Allo! Vhat is your name?!” I think it’s going to be really good.