I was inspired by one of my friends to start writing down some of my memories from the last two years. I know I look back on them now easily, but they are ones that will fade with time. I was trying to think of a list, funniest, saddest, most embarrassing, but I’m sure there are some that don’t even fit into categories. I also thought this would be a good way to update my blog a little more frequently. So, if I am diligent about it, there should be a few more of these to look forward to. If there is a specific question you have about cultural or memories or anything at all, please let me know and I'll be happy to write about it.

Somewhat fittingly, my first post is about my first night with my host family. I had arrived, unpacked my two suitcases, looked through what seemed like 1000 wedding pictures, and was shyly awaiting whatever was to come next. I had noticed the neighbors had been coming over throughout the past two hours to get a glimpse of the new foreigner. But then the men came in and the whole mood changed. Suddenly, everything switched to formal and my host mom brought out all of the nice china, a full tea tray, and plenty of candy, pomegranates, and cookies to match. I was sitting next to the grandpa, Baba, of the house when he told me to drink sugar with my tea. Traditionally, tea, chay, is drunk in a tea cup or pear shaped glass, and always either with sugar cubes, candy, or jam on the side. The sugar cube is usually dipped in the tea first to soften it, and then put in your mouth to slowly enjoy while you are drinking. Trying to appear sure of myself, I grabbed a sugar cube and almost put it in my mouth before my Baba stopped me and tried to show me to dip it in my tea. Not understanding, I just plopped it right into my tea and watched it sink to the bottom. Cute old Baba with all of his wrinkles started laughing and laughing and then showed me what I was actually supposed to do with it. It was good though, because he immediately lightened up the room with his big guffaw and I felt much better (or maybe I was extremely embarrassed and blushing, but look back on it fondly).

At the time, I could only say, ‘Hello, Good-bye, Thank you, and I want (pick from about twenty nouns I knew).’ A couple months ago I was visiting that family and retold them that memory and Baba laughed even harder the second time around. They were a really amazing family to be with for those first three months. I’m sure it took mountains of patience for my host mom listening to me practice my terrible Azeri, and I had displaced the three children from their one bedroom. One of my host sisters lived at her grandma’s the whole time, and the other two rotated the sofa and cot out in the living room. I have so many great memories of them, but that one with Grandpa is one of my fondest.

I couldn't find a pic of Gramps, but here is one with his wife, another North Dakotan volunteer and her host mother (we were "cousins")

A BIG Thanks to Mr. Josh Ehrenreich

As I have written about previously, I went to Turkey this past June with two friends from Peace Corps. I was contacted by my friend, Josh, about a potential yachting adventure last August. This had been his idea for years and years. And while getting ready to come to Azerbaijan, he started making this dream a reality. So for a year and a half he planned. He sent out a mass email to friends and family back home to see who would sign on and ended up with thirteen of his best friends and family and two of us from Peace Corps. The end result consisted of four days in Istanbul, a 15 hour bus ride to Bodrum, eight days on a private yacht, and four more days of bliss before returning back. Now to say, ‘Josh planned everything,’ may not sound that impressive. But let me tell you, it is impressive. He didn’t do this in America. This was done with shoddy internet connections, a bus line that only speaks Turkish, organizing thirteen people from America and three people from Azerbaijan to board the yacht together, and arrange payments on time. To top it off, he made every itty-bitty, teensy-weensy, tiny detail that could be made for himself for Mercedes and me as well. We didn’t do anything to prepare for this trip but PayPal Josh money (and once I did it wrong). Every plane ticket, hotel reservation, bus ticket, and hostel booking was done for us.

Needless to say, some thanks were owed, and we knew just telling him wouldn’t be enough. So through a few friends we got a brilliant idea. See, Josh collects fairy tales and myths from across the world, and a friend had told us about this book that Josh once found in an Ex-pat’s house in Baku. To hear him talk about it, you’d think he had fallen in love. It was this beautiful, big book with gorgeous illustrations which included all Azerbaijani fairy tales translated into English with intricate golden embossed pages and only bound and printed in Turkey.

Armed with the knowledge that this was going to be the best present ever, Mercedes and I collected money from everyone on the yacht trip (fifteen people splitting up a present reduces the hit on one’s wallet). But once we finally got around to trying to get our hands on a copy, we realized we did not exactly know how to go about tracking it down. Mercedes finally got the number of a “guy” in Baku that we could call. We only knew his name, but didn’t know who he was, if he spoke English, if he sold the book or knew someone who knew someone, etc. So after arguing a bit about who would have to navigate the phone call, I gave it a shot. The conversation went something like this:


Emily: “Hello, Is this Arif?”
Man: “Allo? Yes?”
Emily: “Hi. Do you speak English?”
Man: “Inglis? Okay.”
Emily: (In her head… “Obviously not.”) Switching to Azeri..
“Hi, I got your number from a friend who said you know that… you can find a book about…. Well I am looking for this book and it is about…. Somebody else is going to call you.”

Luckily, Mercedes and I did this in the Peace Corps office in Baku with endless sources of the best translators I have had the pleasure of meeting in Azerbaijan. We approached our language coordinator, Afet, explained the whole situation, and she called him back for us. Listening to her end of the conversation, we already knew it wasn’t promising. It turns out, the man we called is actually the illustrator of the fairy tales himself. We figured he was just a bookseller or something. In reality, he was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to illustrate pictures for this book and has his own gallery in Baku. What he relayed to Afet Xanim was that this book was originally sold but now has been taken off the shelves completely. No one is able to buy it and the only way to obtain a copy is to be an International humanitarian aid organization and send a letter on behalf of the agency to the Ministry to request a book. They would review the letter and determine if they would send a copy or two to the organization. Afet Xanim asked maybe four or five times if there was any way at all to buy a copy from the Ministry but the answer remained ‘no.’

Hanging our heads after hearing the news, Mercedes and I had some thinking to do. The good news is that Peace Corps qualifies for the humanitarian organization. The bad news is, it wasn’t guaranteed that Ministry would grant it, and we still had all this money from Josh’s friends. If we didn’t get the book, what were we going to do with the money? Take him out on a night on the town? PayPal seven dollars back to everyone in the States? We decided to see if we could find a replacement on the internet first.

Then the best news in the world came. While sitting at our Close-of-Service conference on the outskirts of Baku the next day, I received a call from Afet saying the illustrator had called her back. He was touched that we were so intent on getting the book for our friend that he made a few calls out to people, got his hands on the one and only copy available for sale, and would be in Baku the next day if we still wanted to buy it from him. And boy, did we. The problem was, we were at this conference and couldn’t leave, and he was only going to be in the city for one day (because he had to return to his Villa). Afet, who like almost all of our Peace Corps staff is amazingly kind, offered to use her entire lunch break the next day to go to the illustrator and buy the book for us. We sent our money along with a Peace Corps driver who brought it to Afet, who gave up her lunch hour to go on this goose chase for us. She even called to confirm with us that is was okay that we didn’t get a receipt because it was sort of an under-the-table kind of deal.

The next day when I saw Afet and received the book, I was in shock. It is, by far, the most beautiful book I have ever seen and touched. The illustrations are breath-taking, gorgeous. It is ineffable. It even included a CD-ROM audio recording. Once we actually had it in our own hands, Mercedes and I kept hinting to Josh about his present. We told him he’d love it and he wasn’t going to believe it, but when we told him he might cry when we gave it to him, he started to get skeptical and couldn’t handle the wait any longer. The look on his face was priceless. He didn’t cry, but I think it was the amount of air he sucked in from shock that prevented him from shedding any tears.

As Mercedes has pointed out, while we gave the best present EVER, we, ourselves, did not actually have to do a lot for it. But the story behind what other people went to at lengths for what is now, literally, a rare copy of a book is moving. The best part of it all is that we knew we couldn’t just say thank you to Josh. The work he did for a year and half to get ready was above and beyond a simple “Thanks.” I feel good knowing that we were able to show the extent of our gratitude. Without him, I wouldn’t know what it truly means to be on a once in a lifetime dream vacation.