This month marked four milestones.
September 24, 2011. The day the new group of Peace Corps Volunteers arrives in Baku. Their journey begins now, as they land in a strange new world. Who will these new people be? All we know about them, and all they know about us and about Azerbiajan is what they’ve read online, on Facebook, and in the Peace Corps electronic media. Now it’s real.
September 23, 2011. The one-year anniversary of my group’s departure from Philadelphia. A year ago, we spent the night in a hotel in Philadelphia, and said our painful goodbyes. We met each other for the very first time, and sat through our first of what would be many Peace Corps conferences. Buses carried us to New York, and we flew, through Germany, to our new homes.
We were all strangers then, unsure of each other, and of ourselves. Since then, we’ve lost people. Some right away, some were surprises, some foreseeable. They are missed, because even though they are gone now, they were and are part of our group identity.
And we’ve gained people. Not new volunteers (until now), but we’ve gained new staff members, new connections, and new friends.
I remember the first salty cheeses, the first plov (though we didn’t know to call it that then), the first PCVs I met at the hotel. Meeting our LCFs for the first time. We spent week in that hotel, only able to glimpse this new land over a wall and beyond a highway, before we were dropped at our host families’, completely unaware who would be dropped next. I remember the months of dolma sandwiches, the months of four-hour-a-day language lessons, mostly filled with venting and talking about certain movements inappropriate for polite conversation.
The past year has been a strange one. I’ve lived with two wonderful but very different families in two very different towns. Met some great kids. Met some real stinkers, too (I’m looking at you, snowball throwing brats). I’ve had wildly happy and fulfilling days, and other days when I wanted no one to talk to me or else I would snap. They say the highs are higher and the lows lower, and darn it, they mean it.
September 11, 2011. Ten years ago, you know what happened. Our generation’s JFK’s assassination: the event when everyone knows where they were. I had just gotten home from Boy Scouts. It was nighttime, which I enjoy telling people, since they’re always confused for a moment. It was nighttime, because we were in Jakarta, Indonesia. Ten years later, I am once more on the other side of the world (only nine hours difference in stead of 12 this time!). It is nighttime again. Ten years is a nice round number, but have ten years given us closure on the events of 9/11? I don’t feel particularly safer, or for that matter, in any more danger. I did not know anyone who died in those attacks. Instead, the attack that struck closer to home was a bombing at a nightclub on the island of Bali, in Indonesia in 2002. I flew out of the Bali airport the morning before the attack, and a teacher from the school I attended, JIS, was killed in the attack. That attack wasn’t targeting Americans, but Australians. But I still remember, instead of watching the memorial concert in New York (the soundtrack to which I do own), sitting in our school auditorium listening to John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and watching a montage of the lost teacher’s life.
September 22, 2011. Fifty years ago, Congress authorized JFK’s Executive Order 10924 which he had issued in March. It’s strange to realize that I wouldn’t be here without that event that happened twenty-six years before I was born. I would not have heard about Peace Corps from my parents, who both served, and would not be here in Azerbaijan myself.
Without a speech 50 years ago at a college on the campaign trail, the other milestones, milestones that have drastically influenced my life and where I am today, would not have happened. There would not be a group of PCVs preparing to return home, another gearing up for their second year in country, and another group starting out on a brand new journey in Azerbaijan. Without that speech, there wouldn't have been over 200,000 volunteers worldwide. Hooray for JFK encouraging all us draft dodgers and idealist hippies to go out into the world to try something new.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Buy Me Some Peanuts and Crackerjacks!
First of all, it was nice to have a reason to root for the Orioles in October. That doesn't happen too often. I remember being at Camden Yards the last time the Orioles were in the postseason, over ten years ago. This year they got to play spoiler, a role that I feel like they've kind of been playing off and on for a number of years, particularly when they play against the Red Sox. Kind of wish I had been home to watch that last game. It'd be nice if Robert Andino stuck around for a little while.
On to real business. The PC-coached Azerbaijan Softball League season kicked off last weekend with a tournament right here in Ismayilli. Planning came right down to the wire, as I received what I thought was permission to host the tournament at our Olympic Complex, but was called a couple nights beforehand and told that the complex now had a contract with some soccer club that was paying to host the tournament there. A scramble for a new site revealed the possibility of having it at Ismayilli's village school, which is basically part of the town at this point. But wait! They're filming some movie there, and there are tanks on the field! At least that's what a teacher at school said. As I started to walk home, disappointed that we'd be stuck using my school's slanted, overgrown field, I realized we hadn't actually called the school to check in on this, and even if they were making a movie there, it'd be pretty darn cool to see a tank. I walked across town, and wouldn't you know it, there was no tank. The field was empty. A brief meeting with the school director later, and we were in.
Another potential setback, up until the beginning of that week, we'd only had two kids showing up for softball practice. Suddenly, with school and my announcements about practice getting around, attendance spiked! Six kids came the practice before the tournament. We were almost at a full team!
Tournament day rolled around, and the weather looked great. Nine boys showed up, giving us a real team, even though three had never played before. Two teams were coming, one of which, Bilasuvar, had to leave town at 5:30 am to make it in time. The other, Oguz, was coming from a good bit shorter, and arrived in time to have a small instructional scrimmage against my boys to help them finetune their skills and understanding of the game. This was the first time they'd really played a game, but everyone was impressed with how fast they picked up on the game. It's helped that one of the boys attended ABLE, where we played a couple games.
The main match was between Oguz and Bilasuvar, who have both been playing longer than our team, but the Ismayilli Tigers did play a couple games against Oguz's village players. They almost won, too. At the end of the first game, the score was 11-10. We lost a few kids after that, so our second game we had some substitutes from Oguz.
Since the tournament, attendance has continued to rise at practices, despite a couple days of bad weather, and the shortening of the day. I'm very hopeful for the tournament in Kurdamir we are scheduled to participate in on October 9th, and in Baku at the end of the month.
Huge thank you's and shout outs go to Oguz's PCVs, Kevin, Drew, Colin, and Lilly, who all came and helped run the tournament, and were great teachers for the Ismayilli boys, as well as to Bilasuvar's James and Gio, for making the long trek out here from the south.
Go Ismayilli Tigers! Ismayilli Pelengler!
On to real business. The PC-coached Azerbaijan Softball League season kicked off last weekend with a tournament right here in Ismayilli. Planning came right down to the wire, as I received what I thought was permission to host the tournament at our Olympic Complex, but was called a couple nights beforehand and told that the complex now had a contract with some soccer club that was paying to host the tournament there. A scramble for a new site revealed the possibility of having it at Ismayilli's village school, which is basically part of the town at this point. But wait! They're filming some movie there, and there are tanks on the field! At least that's what a teacher at school said. As I started to walk home, disappointed that we'd be stuck using my school's slanted, overgrown field, I realized we hadn't actually called the school to check in on this, and even if they were making a movie there, it'd be pretty darn cool to see a tank. I walked across town, and wouldn't you know it, there was no tank. The field was empty. A brief meeting with the school director later, and we were in.
Another potential setback, up until the beginning of that week, we'd only had two kids showing up for softball practice. Suddenly, with school and my announcements about practice getting around, attendance spiked! Six kids came the practice before the tournament. We were almost at a full team!
Tournament day rolled around, and the weather looked great. Nine boys showed up, giving us a real team, even though three had never played before. Two teams were coming, one of which, Bilasuvar, had to leave town at 5:30 am to make it in time. The other, Oguz, was coming from a good bit shorter, and arrived in time to have a small instructional scrimmage against my boys to help them finetune their skills and understanding of the game. This was the first time they'd really played a game, but everyone was impressed with how fast they picked up on the game. It's helped that one of the boys attended ABLE, where we played a couple games.
The main match was between Oguz and Bilasuvar, who have both been playing longer than our team, but the Ismayilli Tigers did play a couple games against Oguz's village players. They almost won, too. At the end of the first game, the score was 11-10. We lost a few kids after that, so our second game we had some substitutes from Oguz.
Since the tournament, attendance has continued to rise at practices, despite a couple days of bad weather, and the shortening of the day. I'm very hopeful for the tournament in Kurdamir we are scheduled to participate in on October 9th, and in Baku at the end of the month.
Huge thank you's and shout outs go to Oguz's PCVs, Kevin, Drew, Colin, and Lilly, who all came and helped run the tournament, and were great teachers for the Ismayilli boys, as well as to Bilasuvar's James and Gio, for making the long trek out here from the south.
Go Ismayilli Tigers! Ismayilli Pelengler!
Thursday, September 15, 2011
First Day of School: Welcome to the Mad House
On a happier note than my previous blog, today was the first day of school. Wait, I said happier, right?
The day was fairly uneventful, in terms of work, but it was fun to see the kids again. I've felt a little rudderless without the school open, as in the hecticness of the summer, lost track of a bunch of the kids I had worked with last school year. Something to remember for next summer.
We had an assembly outside the school doors and then a little girl got to ring the first bell, and the kids rushed inside. From that point on it was basically chaos. You see, the teachers don't have their schedules yet. And they don't know when they will. The first few days are basically made up of meeting in small groups with the vice principals, trading shifts and classes around. So it'll be a few days (weeks? months? Who knows?) until their classes are really settled.
In the meantime, I spent today decorating my classroom. I made posters for the ABCs, with sample words for each word and a few sounds in English (TH, CH, PH, SH). I also put up several maps and posters I got from the National Geographic magazines I received in the mail recently. Several teachers came in to admire the work, wonder why Peace Corps didn't provide me with ABC visuals, and prove that almost all of my drawings are more or less understandable (the fox one is a little pig-like, I'll be the first to admit).
I also went around to a few classes talking about the mural exchange program I'm running with my counterpart this year, and make more plugs for baseball. Maybe one day we'll have enough kids for a team. Until then, I'll be singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" to myself.
The day was fairly uneventful, in terms of work, but it was fun to see the kids again. I've felt a little rudderless without the school open, as in the hecticness of the summer, lost track of a bunch of the kids I had worked with last school year. Something to remember for next summer.
We had an assembly outside the school doors and then a little girl got to ring the first bell, and the kids rushed inside. From that point on it was basically chaos. You see, the teachers don't have their schedules yet. And they don't know when they will. The first few days are basically made up of meeting in small groups with the vice principals, trading shifts and classes around. So it'll be a few days (weeks? months? Who knows?) until their classes are really settled.
In the meantime, I spent today decorating my classroom. I made posters for the ABCs, with sample words for each word and a few sounds in English (TH, CH, PH, SH). I also put up several maps and posters I got from the National Geographic magazines I received in the mail recently. Several teachers came in to admire the work, wonder why Peace Corps didn't provide me with ABC visuals, and prove that almost all of my drawings are more or less understandable (the fox one is a little pig-like, I'll be the first to admit).
I also went around to a few classes talking about the mural exchange program I'm running with my counterpart this year, and make more plugs for baseball. Maybe one day we'll have enough kids for a team. Until then, I'll be singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" to myself.
The Lost Symbol: A Book Rantview
I what must have been a combination of self-hatred and completeism neurosis acting up, I recently picked up Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. I knew what I was getting into, or thought I did, but figured, hey, it's in DC, why not see what crazy stupid plot he can come up with there.
It took 38 pages for me to get angry with Dan Brown. I ignored the clunky writing (Langdon at one point thinks "The other man I don't want to disappoint."), the exposition (and I'm not talking about the information dumps, I mean the exposition about the characters) which made me want to yell about showing not telling, and the odd exactitude about certain details (Langdon rides in a "Falcon 2000EX corporate jet," because most of Brown's readers know what that is).
On page 38, I hit this gem, as Langdon remembers a lecture he gave to his students at HARVARD about Occult Symbols. One student claims that Masons are a strange religion, and Langdon challenges the students to put it to the religion ABC test. "Religions assure salvation; religions believe in a precise theology; and religions convert nonbelievers."
At this point the anthropologist in me wanted to throw the book at the wall across the room, stomp on it and bury it in as deep a hole as I could find.
A: "Religions assure salvation." This is the closest he comes, and it makes sense, I suppose. If you do what the religion says, then good things will happen to you. But not all religions include the ideal of salvation, in the heavenly sense.
B: "Religions believe in a precise theology." In fact many do not, and this one I can actually remember concrete examples for. A tribal group in Borneo decided in order to obtain the right to vote they would claim to be Hindu, one of the government-recognized religions. In order to qualify, they had to codify their religion, and in doing so, they actually ended up becoming less religious and practiced their own religion to a much lesser amount. In this case, developing the precise theology that Langdon claims is required lost the group their religion.
C:"Religions convert nonbelievers." No. NO. NO NO NO. The drive to convert others to their religion is obviously a prominent one, and it is said that wars are fought over land and religion. But in reality, there are two main conversion-oriented religions, Christianity and Islam. Hindus and Sikhs and Jews have conversion, but they are tied very much to one's ethnicity and heritage. You are born a Hindu or you are not. Religions that have branched off of these religions, such as Mormonism, have taken up the imperative to convert, but of the hundreds of religions in the world, really only a few are driven to convert others.
If one wanted a better definition of religion, one could turn to Clifford Geertz. His theory: religion is "(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic" (Geertz 1966).
Fun fact. Geertz's theory is broad. So broad in fact, that it can be applied to things that are not typically thought of as religions, such as baseball team fandom. Knowing this, he actually argued against his own definition, by saying that it was impossible to make such a definition because religion itself is so broad.
Get your ABC's out of here, Dan Brown. Also, learn to write books, not movie outlines.
It took 38 pages for me to get angry with Dan Brown. I ignored the clunky writing (Langdon at one point thinks "The other man I don't want to disappoint."), the exposition (and I'm not talking about the information dumps, I mean the exposition about the characters) which made me want to yell about showing not telling, and the odd exactitude about certain details (Langdon rides in a "Falcon 2000EX corporate jet," because most of Brown's readers know what that is).
On page 38, I hit this gem, as Langdon remembers a lecture he gave to his students at HARVARD about Occult Symbols. One student claims that Masons are a strange religion, and Langdon challenges the students to put it to the religion ABC test. "Religions assure salvation; religions believe in a precise theology; and religions convert nonbelievers."
At this point the anthropologist in me wanted to throw the book at the wall across the room, stomp on it and bury it in as deep a hole as I could find.
A: "Religions assure salvation." This is the closest he comes, and it makes sense, I suppose. If you do what the religion says, then good things will happen to you. But not all religions include the ideal of salvation, in the heavenly sense.
B: "Religions believe in a precise theology." In fact many do not, and this one I can actually remember concrete examples for. A tribal group in Borneo decided in order to obtain the right to vote they would claim to be Hindu, one of the government-recognized religions. In order to qualify, they had to codify their religion, and in doing so, they actually ended up becoming less religious and practiced their own religion to a much lesser amount. In this case, developing the precise theology that Langdon claims is required lost the group their religion.
C:"Religions convert nonbelievers." No. NO. NO NO NO. The drive to convert others to their religion is obviously a prominent one, and it is said that wars are fought over land and religion. But in reality, there are two main conversion-oriented religions, Christianity and Islam. Hindus and Sikhs and Jews have conversion, but they are tied very much to one's ethnicity and heritage. You are born a Hindu or you are not. Religions that have branched off of these religions, such as Mormonism, have taken up the imperative to convert, but of the hundreds of religions in the world, really only a few are driven to convert others.
If one wanted a better definition of religion, one could turn to Clifford Geertz. His theory: religion is "(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic" (Geertz 1966).
Fun fact. Geertz's theory is broad. So broad in fact, that it can be applied to things that are not typically thought of as religions, such as baseball team fandom. Knowing this, he actually argued against his own definition, by saying that it was impossible to make such a definition because religion itself is so broad.
Get your ABC's out of here, Dan Brown. Also, learn to write books, not movie outlines.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Sick...I Mean Ill
One year in, and I’m ill for the first time (can't say sick, since in Azerbaijani, that's a swear word). Sure, my stomach’s been upset several times, one way or another, but this was the first fever I’ve had since coming to Azerbaijan. That’s a pretty good record, if I do say so myself. Though I’m not sure what the cause was, but it seems to have only been a 24-hour bug. My host parents were very sweet about checking in to make sure I was recovering, and even though they insisted on some home remedies, it was nothing like the banka cups other volunteers have encountered. Banka cups are small glass cups that are suctioned to someone’s back after a small fire is lit under them to get rid of the oxygen. Instead, they gave me a glass of sumac mixed into hot water. Ugh. They also had me tied two cloths around my stomach to keep it warm. That was about the extent of the “weird foreign cures.”
After I recovered, and went to school to meet with my school director, one teacher suggested that perhaps I had gotten ill because I had sweated and then drank water. Love it. Along those lines, since I was ill, my host mother has been vigilant about ensuring I’m not sitting anywhere cold, at least not without a cushion, so that my stomach doesn’t relapse. I may complain and argue and fight her every step of the way, but it’s nice to know she cares.
After I recovered, and went to school to meet with my school director, one teacher suggested that perhaps I had gotten ill because I had sweated and then drank water. Love it. Along those lines, since I was ill, my host mother has been vigilant about ensuring I’m not sitting anywhere cold, at least not without a cushion, so that my stomach doesn’t relapse. I may complain and argue and fight her every step of the way, but it’s nice to know she cares.
A Couple Things that Have Made Me Smile Recently
Teaching my Host Parents to Use the Internet
Since we got an Internet line installed at home after my host brother moved to the US to study for his master’s degree, it has fallen to me to teach my host parents how to use Skype and email and most recently, Facebook. It’s wonderful seeing their faces light up when their son shows up on Skype and they get to talk to him. They come running. I spent about a half hour showing my host mother how to call and receive a Skype call and then practice calling and receiving calls from my computer to their home computer. It’s also great to watch them read every line of their Facebook news feeds, click from person to person via photos and links. It also makes me happy that my parents have always been more technologically savvy, and I have been spared having to teach them this stuff, though having to teach it in Azeri is a challenge unto itself (I’ve had to turn click into an Azerbaijani verb—“clickmek—clickerem, clickersen, cickersiz, etc.”).
Softball
Even though we don’t have enough kids together for a team yet (this is not great news since we’re hosting a tournament in two weeks), I’ve been having a great time with the kids that do come. One of them, Ibrahim, has a pretty good sense of the rules already, having played a couple short games during our ABLE camp, and has recently taken it on himself to start coming up with team name ideas. His ideas have ranged from the intentionally intimidating (Dragons, Wolves, etc.) to the humorous (Bees, Flowers) to the attempts at being representative of Ismayilli (which invariably center around nature (Mosquitoes, Mountains, Apples, Waterfalls).
Since we got an Internet line installed at home after my host brother moved to the US to study for his master’s degree, it has fallen to me to teach my host parents how to use Skype and email and most recently, Facebook. It’s wonderful seeing their faces light up when their son shows up on Skype and they get to talk to him. They come running. I spent about a half hour showing my host mother how to call and receive a Skype call and then practice calling and receiving calls from my computer to their home computer. It’s also great to watch them read every line of their Facebook news feeds, click from person to person via photos and links. It also makes me happy that my parents have always been more technologically savvy, and I have been spared having to teach them this stuff, though having to teach it in Azeri is a challenge unto itself (I’ve had to turn click into an Azerbaijani verb—“clickmek—clickerem, clickersen, cickersiz, etc.”).
Softball
Even though we don’t have enough kids together for a team yet (this is not great news since we’re hosting a tournament in two weeks), I’ve been having a great time with the kids that do come. One of them, Ibrahim, has a pretty good sense of the rules already, having played a couple short games during our ABLE camp, and has recently taken it on himself to start coming up with team name ideas. His ideas have ranged from the intentionally intimidating (Dragons, Wolves, etc.) to the humorous (Bees, Flowers) to the attempts at being representative of Ismayilli (which invariably center around nature (Mosquitoes, Mountains, Apples, Waterfalls).
More School Conferences and Pondering
School’s about to start, so it must be conference time! Last week, the rayon’s teachers and staff met at the Youth Center auditorium in Ismayilli’s Heydar Aliyev Park. I hoped to sit in the back (or at least the middle) and observe, especially since I am not strictly speaking a teacher, and because I knew the event would be in Azerbaijani, but no sooner had my counterpart and I selected seats in a reasonable location than we were ushered straight to front and center. Had this been a rock concert, I would have been thrilled. I know they mostly mean well with this sort of thing, but I always worry that they’re also in some way using me, showing me off, reminding their superiors that they have an American working with them. I guess that’s part of Peace Corps, but it’s not one of my favorite aspects.
The conference was fairly interesting, reviewing the current state of education in Ismayilli, and the progress the schools are making. The only downside came in that when reporting the numbers, they only considered the straight numbers. I know that sounds strange, but when you’re comparing a school with 122 students and see that 96 graduated against a school with 50 students and 48 graduated, it doesn’t make sense to come to the conclusion that the former is necessarily better because more graduated. In some cases, percentages are also important.
The head of the department spent a period of time showing the schools that have been recently been built and are being built to replace older, smaller schools, particularly in local villages. Watching the small dilapidated school houses flashed by, replaced by their huge imposing uniform brethren, I was reminded of how different my Peace Corps experience must be compared to volunteers in other countries—in small villages in the mountains of South America, or on an island in the South Pacific. Here I sit, with Internet access in my house, electricity almost every hour of every day (storms and periodic scheduled outages notwithstanding), with running water and gas for cooking. This is the Peace Corps, but it’s not the Peace Corps I expected, or that imagined growing up. I love that Peace Corps must be different for me than it is in Mozambique and China and Belize and Honduras, but at the same time, we have many experiences, goals, ideas in common, across the world and across generations. That’s a pretty cool feeling, one the idealist in me loves.
The conference was fairly interesting, reviewing the current state of education in Ismayilli, and the progress the schools are making. The only downside came in that when reporting the numbers, they only considered the straight numbers. I know that sounds strange, but when you’re comparing a school with 122 students and see that 96 graduated against a school with 50 students and 48 graduated, it doesn’t make sense to come to the conclusion that the former is necessarily better because more graduated. In some cases, percentages are also important.
The head of the department spent a period of time showing the schools that have been recently been built and are being built to replace older, smaller schools, particularly in local villages. Watching the small dilapidated school houses flashed by, replaced by their huge imposing uniform brethren, I was reminded of how different my Peace Corps experience must be compared to volunteers in other countries—in small villages in the mountains of South America, or on an island in the South Pacific. Here I sit, with Internet access in my house, electricity almost every hour of every day (storms and periodic scheduled outages notwithstanding), with running water and gas for cooking. This is the Peace Corps, but it’s not the Peace Corps I expected, or that imagined growing up. I love that Peace Corps must be different for me than it is in Mozambique and China and Belize and Honduras, but at the same time, we have many experiences, goals, ideas in common, across the world and across generations. That’s a pretty cool feeling, one the idealist in me loves.
I've Got That UN Feeling
I’ve been feeling pretty UN-y lately. That’s United Nations-y. I’ve mentioned that this summer the US ambassador visited our boys’ summer camp, ABLE (as well as the girls’ GLOW camp), but since then I’ve had several other ambassadorial run-ins. In a way, spotting and meetings ambassadors is kind of like celebrity spotting or Pokemon catching here. Gotta catch ‘em all! Six down, 48 to go!
Here in Ismayilli, there’s a new vocational school, at which my sitemate and I have worked off and on with English teachers, that trains students to be hotel staff, chefs, waiters and (soon) tourism workers. For about six months, a group of expats, lead onsite by a Dutch man named Alexander, has been helping the school in the development of their curriculum. Recently, their contract ran out, and they prepared to depart, making as many preparations to ensure that the work they had implemented would be sustained after their departure. In the midst of all this, it was decided by the powers that be that they would also conduct a conference to showcase the new curriculum and progress the school has made. They had a week to organize this. This is not abnormal for Azerbaijan.
At the conference, many local education leaders were present, as well as the ambassador from the European Union delegation to Azerbaijan, Roland Kobia. The conference seemed to be a success, and was assisted by the fact that they had a man instantly translating via earphones. After the conference, there was naturally a tea session, and I had a chance to speak briefly with the ambassador. Most amusingly, after I explained my work and the goals of Peace Corps, he noted how he wished France had more programs like that to spread the French language around the world. (Interestingly, French is a common language being taught in schools here and my school’s French teacher was actually disappointed I had studied Spanish instead of French in school.)
The ambassador encounters didn't stop there. Every year, before school begins, the rayon holds a large education celebration, honoring the best teachers and students of the rayon. My counterpart was in the past honored as one of the best teachers, a huge honor, one for which some teachers becomes an obsession. At this ceremony, which seemed to be attended by all of Ismayilli, packing the entire central park area, and watched over by a statue of Heydar Aliyev, the Japanese, Turkish, Russian, Belarussian, and Latvian ambassadors all gave speeches, mostly in Russian, clearly just to thwart my understanding (and not, you know, because that’s their native language and is widely understood here). Most amusingly, while they called up the winning students, who each received a new flat-screen TV, a new telephone, and what may have been a DVD player (almost made me want to be a student), fanfare-style sound clips were played on the sound system, almost always stolen from US television or the Olympics, and often playing over the speakers. On a related note, the Pirates of the Caribbean movie theme music is the theme song for one of the news programs here.
After the announcements, a singer from Baku emerged on stage through the haze of several smoke machines. This, apparently, is one of the best singers in all of Azerbaijan, Nazperi Dostaliyera. An oboe/keyboard/accordion/drum group accompanied her. Their blaring solos (the only acceptable volume for live music is “feel-it-in-the-very-core-of-your-soul loud”) reminded why I am not an oboe fan (sorry to all my oboe-loving readers). Meanwhile, a brilliant laser show danced across the square, while kids danced and ran around. Even though the ambassadors had long since disappeared, it was one of those perfect end-of-summer nights.
Here in Ismayilli, there’s a new vocational school, at which my sitemate and I have worked off and on with English teachers, that trains students to be hotel staff, chefs, waiters and (soon) tourism workers. For about six months, a group of expats, lead onsite by a Dutch man named Alexander, has been helping the school in the development of their curriculum. Recently, their contract ran out, and they prepared to depart, making as many preparations to ensure that the work they had implemented would be sustained after their departure. In the midst of all this, it was decided by the powers that be that they would also conduct a conference to showcase the new curriculum and progress the school has made. They had a week to organize this. This is not abnormal for Azerbaijan.
At the conference, many local education leaders were present, as well as the ambassador from the European Union delegation to Azerbaijan, Roland Kobia. The conference seemed to be a success, and was assisted by the fact that they had a man instantly translating via earphones. After the conference, there was naturally a tea session, and I had a chance to speak briefly with the ambassador. Most amusingly, after I explained my work and the goals of Peace Corps, he noted how he wished France had more programs like that to spread the French language around the world. (Interestingly, French is a common language being taught in schools here and my school’s French teacher was actually disappointed I had studied Spanish instead of French in school.)
The ambassador encounters didn't stop there. Every year, before school begins, the rayon holds a large education celebration, honoring the best teachers and students of the rayon. My counterpart was in the past honored as one of the best teachers, a huge honor, one for which some teachers becomes an obsession. At this ceremony, which seemed to be attended by all of Ismayilli, packing the entire central park area, and watched over by a statue of Heydar Aliyev, the Japanese, Turkish, Russian, Belarussian, and Latvian ambassadors all gave speeches, mostly in Russian, clearly just to thwart my understanding (and not, you know, because that’s their native language and is widely understood here). Most amusingly, while they called up the winning students, who each received a new flat-screen TV, a new telephone, and what may have been a DVD player (almost made me want to be a student), fanfare-style sound clips were played on the sound system, almost always stolen from US television or the Olympics, and often playing over the speakers. On a related note, the Pirates of the Caribbean movie theme music is the theme song for one of the news programs here.
After the announcements, a singer from Baku emerged on stage through the haze of several smoke machines. This, apparently, is one of the best singers in all of Azerbaijan, Nazperi Dostaliyera. An oboe/keyboard/accordion/drum group accompanied her. Their blaring solos (the only acceptable volume for live music is “feel-it-in-the-very-core-of-your-soul loud”) reminded why I am not an oboe fan (sorry to all my oboe-loving readers). Meanwhile, a brilliant laser show danced across the square, while kids danced and ran around. Even though the ambassadors had long since disappeared, it was one of those perfect end-of-summer nights.
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