Anecdotes and Ponderings

1. The other day as I was leaving my school, a young boy approached me and shook my hand, introducing himself. And he didn’t let go. At first I thought this was another weird situation of someone being a little creep (not to sound harsh, but it’s happened). But then I realized the kid just wanted to hold my hand, and so we walked down the street as we talked. At the corner with the main road, he looked up at me and asked if I liked Fanta. Realizing he wanted to take me home with him, I couldn’t help smiling. I couldn’t go with him because I was late for lunch, but that was such a sweet little kid, it made my day.

2. Now that winter is in full force here, getting strong gas flow for our heater (petch) is harder and harder. Everyone in Ismayilli needs to use their gas, of course, so everyone just gets a little. So I take a special pleasure in the evenings when people start going to bed. Every evening, my fire grows louder, my room warmer. Recently, I lit my petch and the fire began to burn slowly; disappointed, I turned my bag and began to deal with other things. A minute later, I noticed my eyes were getting hazy, turned, and realized the paper I used to light the petch was still smoking. Fortunately, I have a pitcher of water on top of the petch, and in a panic, dumped the paper in. No permanent damage, thank goodness, but I had to air out my room for quite a bit.

3. In my recent conversation clubs, we have been discussing food. I showed them the food pyramid and we discussed the different food groups and then broke down meals to see that the ingredients came from the different groups, all of which we need to be healthy. One of the few Western food items the kids here really know is pizza, so we talked about pizza. I asked them whether pizza was healthy or unhealthy, and they mostly said, by the logic that there were ingredients from multiple groups, it was healthy. However, a couple said that it was unhealthy because the meat in pizza was not fresh. I love the health rationale in this country.

4. Another conversation club note. We talked about the human body and body parts. It struck me that they have problems pronouncing some words, including the word, “eye.” It then occurred to me that it’s weird that we pronounced the word “eye” the way we do, because we pronounced the word “aye” the same way. What a strange language, English. No wonder people have a hard time learning it.

5. It snows here regularly, but is not particularly cold, so that in the day, the snow that has fallen overnight has melted and any falling snow no longer sticks. It’s wonderful to see snow falling when I wake up—makes getting out of bed slightly easier, but it sure is depressing seeing it turn to water during the day.