Other Parts of Azerbaijan...and Looking Forward...

Last weekend all of the Peace Corps Trainees went somewhere within the country to visit a current volunteer at their site. I went to Ismayilli with three other trainees, which is about 3 – 4 hours northwest of Baku. We traveled by marshrutka (think of a large mini-van serving as a bus system, it’s what we use around town as well) and arrived late in the afternoon on Saturday. Three of us accompanied two of our three hosts (there are three volunteers assigned to Ismayilli, two TEFL and one Youth Development) to a wedding that evening. It was our first wedding in country and as such was quite an experience. To start off with, we went to the wrong wedding! Our hosts had misplaced the invitation and we went to the wrong wedding palace. So we walked in, sat down, and then walked right back out again. That sounds very innocent and like we may have not even been noticed, but let me tell you, Americans are always noticed (video cameras are a staple at Azeri weddings). So after we experienced the correct wedding, we met back up with the other volunteer and trainee and hung out for the remainder of the evening. We got to hear about some of what they’re doing, what it’s like living in their town, housing stories, and much more. Sunday would’ve been a great day to do some hiking (Ismayilli is near the mountains) but it rained all day so instead we went to the market to pick up some food and then stayed inside the rest of the day – we made American food (stir fry, apple pie & homemade pizza)! I hadn’t really missed food that much until a different option was given to me. Monday the trainees split up and went with the volunteers to work for the day. I went with Colleen, a Youth Development volunteer, and we had tea with a few of the youth that she works with and attended a meeting of her photography club. We also had lunch at her counterpart’s. Every volunteer has a counterpart, and they are the representative of the requesting/sponsoring organization. Sometimes it’s the person you report to, sometimes not. For example, at schools they are usually teachers. For Youth Development it can be a teacher, someone at a resource center, etc. For CED (Community Economic Development, my program) it will be someone at the organization that I will be paired with – branch manager, director, etc. Then Tuesday we were headed back to our training site. It was a great visit and I think really motivated all of the trainees. It also may have made us a bit impatient – we want to get out there! And while it would have been nice to see a CED volunteer’s work, the purpose of the visit was to see the regions of Azerbaijan and see a volunteer in their site, even if they aren’t in the same program that we are. And everyone varies so much in what they do that it very likely would have been different than what I’ll end up doing anyways.



The rest of the week flew by! Since we arrived back from the site visits on Tuesday afternoon what felt like Monday was already Wednesday. And we had a cultural event on Saturday, so only three days of language lessons last week.

Saturday, as I just said, was reserved for a cultural event. All 61 of us (yes, everyone’s still here) met in Sumgayit at the Peace Corps office to travel together to Gobustan. Gobustan is located 60 km southwest of Baku on the Caspian Sea and is an area that contains thousands of rock engravings dating back to the 12th century BC. They were only discovered in the 1930’s and just last year were included in UNESCO’s World Heritage list. It was amazing to see – both the landscape and the actual engravings. I know we have some areas like this (dry, rocky, etc.) out west in the US, but I’ve never been there. It didn’t remind me of anywhere that I had traveled before. It was also interesting to see a tourist area in a developing country. There was a museum area and there were paths, but it was definitely not commercialized (not a ton of brochures, no photo stations, not handicapped accessible, nothing blocking access to the actual engravings, etc.), which could provide additional income for the area, but it also feels much more real as it is right now. After Gobustan we loaded back into our two busses (chartered for us, after all, there are 61 trainees, 12 LCFs and some of the country staff) and went to the mud volcanoes located near Gobustan. The busses couldn’t travel the entire way because of the roads so we had a short hike to get there. I’ve never seen a regular volcano, so I guess I was expecting something much larger, but it was pretty neat. With the exception of the water (it’s kind of a key ingredient to mud) it almost looked like some photos you’d see of the moon. Little mud volcanoes scattered all over, some smaller than me, some bigger than me, with openings varying in size from plate size to swimming pool size. It’s definitely hard to describe, so there are some pictures too. Every so often mud would bubble up, and it’d be flowing down the side of the volcano just like lava would in a traditional volcano. Interesting. I’m not sure where all mud volcanoes appear in the world. We arrived back in Sumgayit around dinner time and some of us grabbed kabobs for dinner at a little place on the sea. This was the second time I’ve had kabobs and they are absolutely fantastic here. It was a great day spent in Azerbaijan!


Sunday was another great day. We have a variety of people in our training group and some people had expressed an interest in doing a Bible study, so I joined that group. While the stereotype of the typical Peace Corps volunteer is probably a hippie liberal (or maybe that’s antiquated, you tell me), there really is a broad range of people – liberal, conservative, religious, non-religious, well traveled, first time travelers, fresh college graduates, mid career professionals, retirees, etc. So it was great to find a group who wants to get together during our time here to have some sort of fellowship as Protestant churches are not plentiful here. Who knows what will happen when we get to our permanent sites, but hopefully it’s something that will last the entire time we’re here – maybe it will just be smaller groups or less often (even though the country is only the size of Maine, it can be quite time intensive to travel from one region to another). So that’s definitely been a blessing for something that weighed heavily on my mind before I arrived in Azerbaijan as I left a very supportive church environment. And the day itself was just beautiful – the wind of the Caspian made it chilly, but that’s okay. We found a great little restaurant for lunch, there was a chance to use the internet, and I even saw a new part of Sumgayit. Granted, the last part was a little unexpected after leaving a friend’s and not knowing where/what part of town the marshrutka dropped us off in, but Katie and I recovered and made it back in one piece – it just took a little extra time and an extra marshrutka ride. It’s all a part of the adventure.

This week is incredibly busy. Today we started our CED Practicum, which is essentially an internship. We are there two afternoons this week and next, and then one afternoon after that. It’s pretty much our first chance to see an Azerbaijani organization at work. I’ve been placed at a micro-credit organization which provides small business and consumer loans from $200 – $10,000 USD. Should be interesting to see how lending compares, especially since I spent some of my time in the US in banking. We also have our mid-PST (Pre-Service Training) language assessment coming up and language classes every day. Lastly, yesterday we saw the list of cities that CED volunteers are being placed – so who knows where I’ll end up, but at least now I can say that it’s one of fourteen different Azerbaijani cities! We have interviews later this week with Elmir, our program director, to help him get to know us and our experience better so he can match our skills with the organization’s requests. We find out during the first week of November what our permanent sites are…

The Beginning of a Routine...

So I’ve been with my host family for almost two weeks now (it’ll be two weeks tomorrow). It’s odd to say, but there’s already a “normal” routine. Last week there wasn’t much of a routine – being in a new place, the Ramadan holiday, etc. But now I’ve settled in. I’m beginning to know my way around the town I’m in, and even the next town over (where we have to go to use the internet). The food, for the most part, has been wonderful. Most of you know what a picky eater I am, but I’ve only turned away one or two things because of not liking it (and I am trying it first, I promise). And I feel like I’m given enough to feed 6 of me at each meal, so I feel bad that I can’t finish everything. But at least now I know how to say I like it, but I’m full in Azerbaijani. Hopefully soon I’ll actually be able to help in the kitchen.

The language is going well. I think I’m always going to feel like I could know it better, but it’s amazing to think that just three weeks ago I didn’t know any Azerbaijani, and now I’m learning all sorts of vocabulary and how to make small sentences.

As you know, right now I am considered a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT). This weekend everyone in my training group (AZ6, the 6th group of volunteers to come to Azerbaijan) is taking trips to visit various Peace Corps Volunteers (they arrived in June 2007) around the country that have volunteered to host 1 – 3 of us. Right now, in training, we’re fairly sheltered. We’ll have help getting to the bus station, we have our LCF to go to if we have communication problems with our host families, etc., but these volunteers are out on their own, so we’re seeing what it’ll be like 3, 6, 9 months down the road. It’s exciting to meet the current volunteers and hear some of their stories – right now everything is so up in the air for us as far as not knowing what city we’ll end up in or what job we’ll be doing – so we’re living vicariously through their experiences.

Well, that’s about it, hopefully I’ll get on next week to let you know how my site visit went. I’m going to what is supposed to be a very scenic part of Azerbaijan!

Some Pictures...

the Caspian Sea


our training group (AZ6)


traditional Azerbaijani dancing

the view from my host family's kitchen

the sheep herded across my road yesterday

language lessons

Yes, I Have Arrived...

Step 1:
Sorry for the long absence! I arrived in Philadelphia on Saturday,September 20th and was there until Monday, September 22nd. During that time I met the rest of my training group (there are 61 of us) and went through Peace Corps "Staging," which is essentially new employee orientation. None of the information was specific to Azerbaijan, but to the Peace Corps as a whole: policies, procedures, get to know each other exercises, etc. There's a variety of people in our group – just graduated from college, mid career, retired, single, married, etc. Monday we traveled by bus to New York City and flew from there to Frankfurt,Germany and then on to Baku, Azerbaijan. Let me tell you, it is not a quick process for 61 people to check in at the airport.

Step 2:
We were greeted at the Baku airport by some of the Peace Corps Azerbaijan staff as well as a few current volunteers. Right now there are about 45 volunteers in Azerbaijan that arrived in June 2007. We traveled to a hotel just outside of Baku and stayed there until Saturday afternoon. During that time we covered things that are specific to Azerbaijan – host family requirements, schedules for the next three months, etc. We also started our language training. The first language lesson was in random groups, but after that we met in our assigned clusters, which are the training groups that we are in for PST (Pre Service Training). PST will last until the middle of December or so, and the 61 of us are divided into groups of 5 – 6 trainees. These are also the people that we will live near during training. During the rest of these few days at the hotel we spent more time getting to know each other, the Peace Corps staff in Azerbaijan, culture and other information. Ramadan was on September 30th, so we had a session on that too. On our last night at the hotel we had a cultural event that was traditional Azerbaijani dancing– it was beautiful. I'll try to post some pictures when I have a chance. And lastly, we recovered from our jet lag. Azerbaijan is nine hours ahead of home (Eastern Standard Time); we left New York City Monday evening and arrived in Baku Tuesday evening, but it was really only 13 – 14 hours of travelling. One nice thing during this time was that the Peace Corps (PC) arranged to have 5 – 6 current volunteers at the hotel with us to be available for questions and to hear about their experiences as a volunteer. That was definitely an added bonus.

Step 3:
Saturday afternoon we were transported to our host families. I am in a community near Sumgayit, which is north of Baku. In my host family there is a mother, father and three children, although the eldest son is married and lives in the next apartment building. The remaining kids at home are a 17 year old daughter and a 26 year old son, and so far they've been really helpful in learning the language. It was definitely overwhelming on Saturday, but I'm becoming accustomed to not knowing everything I hear, yet being able to pick out words that I do know, and I'm picking up more vocabulary and knowledge each day. The food is wonderful – fresh and varied (lots of fruits, veggies, bread and potatoes), and I now have a new favorite fruit (the pomegranate). On Monday our normal schedule started. I have language class every morning Monday thru Saturday (except this past Tuesday, which was Ramadan) from 9am – 1pm and then in the afternoon we either have time set aside to work on our sector assignments (I'm in the Community Economic Development (CED) sector) or we meet as a group in our sectors. There are 18 of us in the CED program and there's a variety of experience – banking, HR, accounting, non-profits, real estate, insurance, IT, etc. We've had a busy first week with different events – getting our local cell phones (a Peace Corps requirement), learning our way around, how to take a local bus, and on and on. Each training group is assigned a Language & Cultural Facilitator (LCF) who is both our language teacher and who we go to for everything else we need or have questions on. We also learned in more detail about what some of the potential permanent site assignments are, but nothing will be determined/assigned until early November. I don't have internet access at my site but am able to check it at least once a week, so there will hopefully be another update soon. A lot has happened in the past two weeks!

A Long Day of Traveling...

So today we're headed to Azerbaijan. I've spent the past two days in Philadelphia with the rest of my training group for "staging," which is essentially orientation to the Peace Corps. Now it's time to leave the USA and really begin this journey.

Please don't worry if you don't hear from me right away. No news is good news. When we first arrive in Azerbaijan we'll be in an area without internet access and we won't have our cell phones yet. We'll spend the first few days at a hotel and then be moved to our host families over the weekend. After that we'll have more frequent access to communication via cell phones and internet cafes.

Not too much more right now, but just a recap of the past couple days to say that our training group is amazing! We have 61 people in our group, including 4 married couples and a huge variety of ages. It's definitely nice to have someone (60 other someones) to share those anxieties with and realize that I'm not the only one who has things that are making them nervous...

Check back next week, I'm sure there'll be more by then; after all, I will have traveled halfway around the world, been there for a week, moved in with a local family, and much, much more!