My First Trip to My New Home of Ucar...

So this past week all of the current trainees had site visits to their permanent sites. Oh, and I now know that there’s another AZ6 volunteer going to Ucar with me; his name is Kevin and he’s a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) volunteer. I don’t really know him much – there are 61 of us and we’re in different programs; obviously we don’t all know each other, we’re just happy if we can remember everyone’s names!

I left Tuesday night on the night train and arrived at 3:45am amid some confusion of when I would actually arrive (at least now I know for the future). Candice, who is a volunteer that’s already in Ucar, met me at the train station and I stayed with her for the rest of the night. That morning Candice walked me to my host organization where I met the director and some of the employees. I stayed for an hour or two that morning and then my director took me to meet my host family. I met my new host mother (she was the only one home), saw my room, drank tea, etc. There was even time for a nap that first day – I was able to sleep on the train but I was kind of restless – what with worrying about getting off at the right place and everything I kept waking up. That day I also met up with Candice, Jeff and Kevin, and the four of us made dinner at Jeff’s – the four soon to be volunteers in Ucar, two AZ5’s and two AZ6’s. When I returned home I met the rest of my host family – host mother, host father and two host sisters, ages 15 and 20. They seem very nice and I’m excited to move to Ucar, but it will be kind of hard to leave my current host family.

The rest of the week was spent in Ucar. I worked full days on both Thursday and Friday, observing some of the classes that are taught at Akinchi, having lunch with my director, meeting employees, etc. Everyone is very nice and I’m excited to be there permanently! I technically do not move until December 11th, but Alimusa, my director, has asked if I can come back for an important meeting on November 26th. I got the okay from my program manager to do this (because I’ll be missing a couple classes) and it will definitely be a great learning experience. Apparently this type of meeting only happens once or twice a year so it’s important that I’m there.

Friday night I went to a wedding with my host mother and sister of a neighbor. Technically my host father was there as well but since men and women sit separately at weddings I didn’t really see him there. It was an interesting experience – very different from the wedding that I attended in Ismayilli. It was not at a wedding palace but at someone’s home instead, there was no meal served, etc. It seemed like a neighborhood party. Traditionally, in Azerbaijan there is both a groom’s wedding and a bride’s wedding, but I don’t know which this was and to be honest, I didn’t even see the bride and groom! I don’t know if they arrived after we left or what was happening. Hopefully I can get some answers when I’m back there in December. I didn’t have much of a chance after the wedding because my train left early Saturday morning. An interesting note on the train station: Kevin and I went on Friday to buy our tickets but all we ended up doing was reserving our tickets. Apparently that’s what you do in Ucar. When we got there the next morning we returned to the ticket window and bought our tickets. I have decided that I need to keep a list of all the different ways that my name appears on my tickets – since they never know quite what to do with the W’s in my name. Tickets anywhere is never going to be a simple thing for me.

So now I’m back in Tagiyev for the next couple of weeks and they are packed full! We still have language sessions every morning and have CED sessions pretty much every afternoon; we even have language classes on Thanksgiving!

Have a great Thanksgiving! I’ll miss being there with everyone but I’m very thankful for your thoughts and prayers!

An Organized Trip to Baku...

So last Saturday, the 15th, my cluster, along with others, went to Baku as a group. This was a day that was organized by the training staff for us to have a chance to see a couple of the sights in Baku. First, it was quite the effort to get to Baku in the first place. There are busses that go straight from Tagiyev to Baku but they were all full and we didn’t want to keep waiting, so we finally just took one that would take us to Sumgayit and then we switched to one that would take us to Baku. Our first site once we were in the city was Martyr’s Lane, which is a memorial to those who died on January 20, 1990. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia site that will tell you what happened better than I can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_January. Then we loaded onto another bus and after a couple tries found the Peace Corps office. Good thing I’d already been to the city once (to buy train tickets for my upcoming site visit) because otherwise I’d feel that I didn’t learn anything about navigating my way around – we were just herded from place to place for the structured part of the day. One of the staff members was on duty at the Peace Corps office and we received a tour as well as the opportunity to take some books from the library/lounge. Yay! I had already finished the books I brought with me and was looking for something new. So I borrowed some books to hopefully tide me over for awhile. It’s amazing how quickly books can accumulate – we’re only the 6th group of volunteers in Azerbaijan yet there’s this full wall of bookshelves that are stacked multiple books deep. Many volunteers travel after their time in done in Azerbaijan instead of heading right home to the U.S., so they end up downsizing because of this. Also, why not share books? Apparently you don’t leave home much in the winter except for work, so a lot of reading will be done.

After visiting the Peace Corps office the structured part of our day was over. When we came to Baku earlier in the week to buy train tickets we ate at McDonald’s, so it was no big deal on Saturday. But that first time, wow, McDonald’s was good! I think I ate a BigMac for the first time in my life! And it tasted wonderful…although I think it was more the familiar food (hamburger and fries) than it was actually McDonald’s – I much would’ve preferred one of my dad’s Angus burgers, but McDonald’s did the job and it wasn’t Azeri food.

During the afternoon we went down to the old city and went up in the Maiden Tower. This is the location of an Azerbaijani fairy tale/folklore. In the end the woman jumps off the tower into the Caspian and her lover follows her to his death. No happily ever after there. But it was interesting to climb up in the medieval tower and see the views of the city. The old city is also where there are a lot of goods for sale – rugs, weavings, scarves, traditional shepherd’s hats, etc. Hopefully at some point during my 2+ years here there will be a chance to return – I’d love to have time to actually look at the items. We were on a pretty tight schedule with needing to be home around dark.

So from there it was pretty much a ride on the Metro back to the bus station where we caught the bus home. It was a mixed day – for part of it we felt like the antithesis of what we should be, American tourists shuttled around on a bus, while the rest of the day was pretty relaxing and fun, just exploring the city. If only it didn’t get dark so early!

So Where To For The Next Two Years...

So on Wednesday the CED and Youth Development Trainees gathered for our site announcements at a local school. Of course, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to get us settled down after finding out our sites, we had some stuff to do first. We broke up into our program areas and talked about expectations and concerns. These will then be shared with our counterparts at the conference we have on Friday. At this conference we’ll be meeting our counterparts for the first time, learning more about the organization we’re partnered with, coordinating our site visits, etc.

The actual announcement: the program managers for CED and YD essentially listed off the cities one by one and who would be going where. Each person would go up front, mark their spot on the map of Azerbaijan and get their packet of information about their city/organization. And since they went by city you would also find out if another volunteer is going to be in the same city (except for TEFL volunteers – their site announcements aren’t until the end of next week because of how their schedule fell). And I had an idea of the city from my site placement interview, so as soon as that name was called I was ready. And it turned out to be correct – nothing was definite as of the interview.

I will be going to Ucar (pronounced Ujar), which is pretty much right in the center of the country. It’s about 230 kilometers west of Baku and the area has about 75,000 people. I will be working with “Akinchi – UA” which is an Agribusiness Service Center. It’s new (established in 2007) and their main objective is to help farmers increase productivity in all areas of agro-business and to support development of farming by providing chargeable advises and other services.

Here’s what my information sheet says my scope of work will be:
- Create connections and establish relationships with different international organizations.
- Inform local farmers about farming in other countries. Provide them with updated and modern information on international farming.
- Preparation of business plans.
- Support farmers and founders of the “Akinchi” in learning English language and computer.
- Support development and strengthening of the organization.
- Help with preparation and implementation of projects.
- Help to improve Finance, Advice Services, Management and other activities in the organization.
- Conduct marketing trainings.
- Help with design and implementation of micro-projects for the communities.

Exciting, right? There are already two volunteers in Ucar (TEFL, they arrived in 2007) and no other CED or YD volunteer will be sent to Ucar this year. As I mentioned, we’ll find out the TEFL sites at the end of next week, so there could be another volunteer or two headed the same way. We’ll see! It’s exciting to finally know where we’re ending up, how close we’re going to be to people that we’ve become friends with, have an idea of the industry that we’re in so we can learn job specific vocabulary, and on and on. I’ve already heard how wonderful the organization that I’m going to is from multiple PC staff members, current volunteers, trainees who went to Ucar on their site visit, etc. So it gets a little hot in the summer (over 100 degrees daily for a stretch). I’ll live through the heat and have an amazing experience in my new home – Ucar, Azerbaijan!

More Pictures...

At a local restaurant practicing our restaurant language skills, getting together one evening to make pancakes, french toast & potatoes for dinner, followed by game night!

The Busyness of PST...

Time has been flying by! Last weekend (the 25th) we had our time change so it's now pitch black by 6:30pm. This makes doing anything after our afternoon sessions almost impossible as we need to be home/in our small communities (all of the trainees are in small communities around Sumgayit) by dark. The weather has definitely cooled down during the past couple of weeks – to the point where it's warmer outside in the sun than it is in our school where we have language class. We've still been having language classes every morning from 9am – 1pm, but we've become much busier with CED sessions and projects, which usually take place in the afternoon. A few weeks ago we were divided into groups of two or three and last week we had to present Peer Seminars. This was both a chance for us to learn from each other and for our program manager to observe us (many volunteers will end up doing some sort of training at their permanent site assignment). So each group had to give a 45 minute presentation on topics such as Marketing, Customer Service, Writing a Business Plan, Motivation & Evaluation, etc. My group had been assigned Marketing and it was a pretty straightforward topic. We reviewed the 4 (well, my group made it 5) P's of Marketing and had lots of examples and case studies, so hopefully we made it fun while still trying to relate it to the potential assignments that we may face during our time here in Azerbaijan.

As I mentioned during my last post, we have started our CED Practicum. I, along with two others, am spending some time at a micro-credit organization located in Sumgayit. We've learned about the customers they have (IDP's (internally displaced persons) and those with low-income), how they process loans, how they work with their headquarters office in Baku (they are one of 11 regional offices throughout Azerbaijan), how their customers make payments and a lot more. It's been very interesting and educational as we'll all soon be going out to the regions and become a part of a local organization. So while very few of us will actually be working with a micro-finance/micro-credit organization, it's definitely beneficial to see an Azerbaijani work environment. We still need our translator (one of the LCF's goes with us each time) but as the days go by I'm beginning to understand more and more.

We also had a language test the week before last – okay, I guess it wasn't really a test; the Peace Corps calls it a Language Proficiency Interview. Someone came and interviewed each of us in Azerbaijani and essentially graded our speaking. I had to introduce myself, talk about my family(both here in Azerbaijan and at home in America), say how long I've been in Azerbaijan, what I like about it, what meals and fruits and vegetables I like, etc. I did just fine, although I did learn a few new words in the process. Then we have another one of these at the very end of our training.

Lastly, early last week I had my site placement interview with my program manager. All of the CED trainees had one and it was a chance for our program manager to get to know us a little bit more in a one on one setting – he saw our resumes before we even arrived in the country and has had some time to observe us but not much conversation time about our skills and experiences. So we talked briefly about what I have done and also about any preferences that I have about my work site. Honestly, I don't have any preferences. The only thing that I expressed is that I would like a strong organization who would like me there for the majority of my time – I would prefer that over an organization who only wants me 20 – 30% of my time. And if everything else is equal I would prefer to be in a colder environment, but really it doesn't matter. I'm flexible. I don't have anything specific in mind; he knows the country and organizations much better than me and can probably place me much better than I could myself. As I told one of my friends – I know what I've done successfully in the past, but I don't know what I could be successful at in the future. So I don't want to limit myself, for example, to just the banking industry because I've done that before. I think that by the end of our meeting he had a good idea of where to place me, but nothing's definite until later this week. I think because of my flexibility I'm more likely to be one of the later ones placed. This must be an extremely stressful and busy two weeks for him.

Commencing countdown to November 5th (the day site placements are announced)!