Where Did My Voice Go?

On Friday we had our Site Placement Interviews, which I thought went well until I got out and realized there were about a dozen things I wished I had said. Oh, the tragedy of hindsight and second-guessing. It’s scary in a way; that the decision is now even more out of my hands than it was. A number of people have gotten the sense that Tarana, the Youth Development program director, already had an idea about where she intended to send them, and the interview was only a way for her to formalize the decision she had made. That’s almost scarier. Before she knew us, she knew where we were going to be for two years. And, it seems, more often than not, she’s right about where to send people.

It was a bit of a crazy day leading up to the interview. I had the house to myself this morning—my host mother left for a wedding in Nakchivan, the exclave, on Thursday—and got to cook breakfast for myself. I tried to shower, but ended up with scalding hot water that in fact would burn skin. When it came time to leave, I left my wallet at home, and Giovanni, my neighbor was nauseated, so we walked partway to school together. I then got on a bus, while he kept walking, and then realized the wallet was at home. In a bit of a panic I called Rashad, our LCF—language teacher—who wanted me to pass the phone to the driver or someone else on the bus. Fortunately, a man who spoke English overheard and offered me the money needed for the bus. Hooray for the kindness of strangers.

Another volunteer loaned me money for lunch, and on the way, I was attacked by a bag blowing in the wind, which turned out to have some sort of white powder—I think now that it was dry concrete or something like that, it was that sort of bag—and covered my legs in the stuff.

On top of all this, last night I started to lose my voice. In language class today, Rashad brought in students from School #4 to interview us in Azerbaijani as practice for our language test. In my hoarse voice I tried to describe my family, my house, and my room. This afternoon we had a conversation club, which was excitingly almost an actual conversation, as opposed to the English vocab lessons we’d been doing, but less excitingly for my voice. Then I had my interview. So, lots of talking, and not much voice to do it with.