Summer

I was nervous when school ended that I was going to be terribly bored in the village all summer. I kept thinking of the activities I had planned, but spaced out over three months, it did not seem like it was going to amount to much. I had my host brother’s wedding in June, a summer camp to help out with in July, and a trip to Georgia (the country) in August. It always seems to be the little things, though, that make a person feel really busy. So what did being an English Education Peace Corps volunteer entail during the off season of school?
It meant I was doing conversation clubs three to four times a week at my house. Now, during school this is a little more formal. Usually I have approximately six to twelve children who come, I make lesson plans, mix it up with games, encourage speaking in English, listening to English being spoken, incorporate life lessons such as taking turns, health and hygiene, etc. The summer is not drastically different in terms of the content of a conversation club, but with the school being closed, the clubs are less credible when they are held at my house. In fact, I change the word “club” to the word “course” in hopes that parents will still send their children even if they have a lot of work at home to do. (*Difference between Azeri culture and U.S. culture: If it is free in the U.S. as far as Education, anybody and everybody participates. If it is free in Azerbaijan, they all think it is useless, even if they cannot pay for private tutoring). Each week this summer, I was lucky to have four children at most coming to club. Consistently the same three kids showed up (my next door neighbor girl, one of my host cousins, and a boy whose mom teaches at the school and forces him to come). Nevertheless, making lesson plans and homework assignments kept my mind somewhat on school mode.
Right after school was let out, I went to a Lady Gaga themed birthday party, spent a few days in Baku for work (getting ready for the new AZ 9’s!), and worked diligently on our six month report that requires you to write down EVERY single activity you have ever done in regards to work. I helped out with my host brother’s wedding preparation and clean up, had a lunch date with my Azerbaijani language teacher, spent a night at my Training host family’s house in Sumqayit, and celebrated the Fourth of July with a true American BBQ in Khachmaz that invited ten Americans and 40 Azerbaijanis.
I went up to Sheki for a week of summer camp, which was a blast. We had life skills week so we did trust falls, human pyramids, health and nutrition classes, obstacle courses, yoga, and blanket volleyball.



At the end of July I went up to Qabala (big tourist region in AZ, most Azeri’s would say they think this is the prettiest region) for the International Music Festival. My friend Rikki and I stayed at my host brother’s soldier friend’s house in a village. It was really interesting. It was the first time I have stayed at an Azeri’s house without knowing anyone living there. My host brother’s friend had been staying at our house for the past two months because of a job opportunity him and my brother were working on. I had told him I really wanted to go to the music festival, and he called his wife and dad and arranged that we would stay with them for the two days. So my friend Rikki and I piled into a mashrutka, made our journey to Qabala, and had a blast at the festival and with Afgan’s family.


In August, four of us went on our big trip to Georgia. It was the first time out of country for me, and I went with three other girls all from the group ahead of me, so it was their last chance to use vacation leave before going back to America in November. We left Zaqatala at eight in the morning on a Friday, and did not get into Batumi until about nine pm that evening. All on a bumpy, hot, smelly mashrutka. We also realized when we arrived in Batumi that nobody knew where our hostel was, so finally we just shouted to the driver to stop in front of the Sheraton (thank goodness for international business) where we were guaranteed English speakers to help us. We stayed in Batumi for four nights –two nights too many in my opinion. It was nice to be in a different environment, though. We went swimming in the Black Sea, ate tons of pork kebabs, ate tons of food in general, and met a lot of interesting people. The weather proved to be so-so, and the day it was awesome, a Turkish boy drowned in the Sea as we were there. It was really sad and probably an interesting study into crowd behavior and another country’s medical response regulations.

After Batumi, Rikki and I split off from the two other girls and went to Borjomi for two nights in the middle of Georgia. They have a gorgeous national park (Georgia’s tourism sector is starting to really pick up speed) which is connected to a European national park system. It is really legitimate. We stayed in a home stay the first night we got in, but then geared up for our next big day. We climbed up the first trail the park provides which was about sixteen kilometers up the mountain. Then we stayed in the tourist hut provided at the top of the trail.
Unfortunately, while we had lugged our sleeping bags all over Batumi, we did not have any sleeping pads, and the park had also rented out the last of theirs, leaving us some pretty hard, wooden beds to sleep on. I’m not sure even a comfortable night sleep could have combated the soreness of my body the next day though. Was I out of shape? Yes.
But we climbed back down the mountain, hiked the remaining five kilometers into town, grabbed our stuff, and as we were trying to figure out which noodle letter sign on the buses was going to the bus station, a stranger offered us a ride for free. Now, this normally would go against everything I was ever taught growing up, but I find myself often doing that in the Peace Corps. Taking unknown food strangers? Check. Sharing water bottles, spoons, forks, hats, sheets, clothes, etc? Check. Taking rides from strangers? Check. So we got in. He “spoke” some English and we found out he once lived in Colorado (what?!), had a wife and a daughter, was an attorney (pulled out my Russian for Advokat to tell him what my mother does, and he pulls out his bar association card). But this nice man brought us to a town about an hour away which shaved off three dollars from our trip to Tbilisi.
We arrived in Tbilisi and spent two nights roaming around the town being tourists, making friends, eating more food, and spending one unforgettable afternoon in the public sulfur baths. I paid to shower in some really strange smelling water, get all of my dead skin scrubbed off, and then my body massaged by a Georgian woman. I think it was worth the eight dollars.
Now I am back in Azerbaijan. I spent a few days in the village, washing clothes, showing pictures to my host family, catching up with my conversation club kids, and getting food poisoning which my host mom was certain it was from having my fan on at night while I sleep. I have to go back to Baku for another meeting in regards to the new Pre-Service Training the new trainee’s will have coming in September, see my training host family one more time before school starts, and then head back to Goychay.
School will start September fifteenth. I need to meet with my counterpart to brief her on the American assault I am about to bring to our school this year. Behavior rules, homework assignments, raising hands, Halloween costume parties, it is going to be wild.
This has been a really awesome summer. It makes me a bit nervous for the school year, but I am not coming in half way through this year and I think it will make the semester a lot better. Sometimes it is hard to keep positive here. It is easy to get down on yourself about your service, or about site, or the culture, or whatever is the compliant of the day. But September 23 will mark my first year in country and I am looking back on this in a pretty awesome light. Granted, I wish my work was more successful (after all, that is why I was sent here), but I lucked into an amazing host family, I have made some awesome Azerbaijani friends, amazing American friends, I had a blast doing summer camp and sharing our Fourth of July traditions, and can’t wait to get back to school in September.