Host Family and PST

I have been at my training site for about a week now. Xirdalan is a modern city, for the most part. My host family lives a little bit outside the main town or city center, so I and my PCT neighbor must take the bus in every morning to the school where we have language lessons. Every day the bus is packed to the brim and it's a struggle to get off each day. There are four people in my language class, and another five people at another school in the city who we meet up with for our Youth Development lessons in the afternoon (along with another five people who are in the neighboring town).

Classes are going well, though they are definitely hard work. This is, of course unsurprisingly, particularly true about Azerbaijani language classes. However, we have a good teacher, who speaks very good English. His family was a host family last year, so he is very much in touch with our needs and has been very good about helping us get situated with our host families and the town. A number of current volunteers have visited our youth development classes to talk about their work and their lives. That has probably been the best part of the YD lessons so far to me. Six volunteers (two each from Youth Development, Community Economic development, and English Education) came during staging at the hotel to talk with us as well, which was very informative.

My host family primarily consists of a slightly older couple, whose children are all grown and live elsewhere. Their two daughters and their four grandkids visited over the past weekend. They each had a daughter about 10 years old and a son about seven. They've all been very sweet, though our communications are mostly pantomime or simple sentences, as they don't speak English, and I'm only beginning to get any Azerbaijani that can communicate meanings. Mostly it's one or two word sentences, though we are progressing rapidly. Not that I'll be speaking paragraphs any time soon, but we can almost conjugate verbs. For awhile it was frustrating because we were basically only memorizing phrases without learning how to make sentences, but that's changing as well.

It was hot for the first few days we were here, but overnight (literally), it got cold and windy and rainy/cloudy. Today we saw sunlight again for the first time in at least four days. I know that's nothing compared to what's been going on on the east coast lately, but it's been a very sudden shift here. My host mother wouldn't let me leave the house without a coat yesterday and today was worried because my hair was wet when I was getting ready to leave. She's been taking very good care of me and making sure I eat enough. And then some.

Last weekend, two other trainees and I played soccer (futbol) with their host brothers and other kids in their neighborhood. Otherwise, we have class from 9am until about 5pm everyday except Saturday when we have a half day and Sunday when we thankfully have off. By the end of classes, I'm usually wiped out.