November drags to a close and I could not be happier. It’s been a pretty great month, all around, but as I sit here writing this, I am wrapped in blankets, wearing my long underwear once again. We made it though the first large snow, and gas levels rose, and my room was warm again. We got hit again, on Thanksgiving, which almost made it so I couldn’t get to Baku for our weekend Thanksgiving celebration.
The dinner, hosted at the charges d’affair (the second-in-command at the embassy)’s house, was absolutely. The cooking staff made us five huge turkeys, and we provided the rest. There were multiple gravies, mashed potatoes, rolls, stuffings, and tons of pies, cookies, and delicious desserts. After the meal, we had a talent show, though thankfully, participation was not mandatory (ha! Thankfully! Pun not intended when I started the sentence, but left in intentionally). Highlights included humorous excerpts from one volunteer’s diary from when she was 12, a ukulele song, and an original song about Azerbaijan to the tune of “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Finally, we left our poor hosts alone, so they could have their house back to themselves, free from the rampant horde that is the volunteer community.
We spent the weekend hosted at the homes of embassy staff. I ended up staying with a family that had lived in Indonesia several years after my family did. They had two great children, who I and the other volunteer staying there had fun playing with. Their son and I in particular had a good time playing Star Wars, which sent me back to my own childhood obsession with the films. He was also a great help when it came time to bake my contribution to the Turkey Day feast, pomegranate and chocolate chip cookies. All in all, we were completely pampered, with heat, with hot showers, with mattresses, with delicious food—including homemade pizza, good wine, coffee. A huge thank you to them for opening up their homes to us.
Returning to Ismayilli was considerably easier than leaving, though I found that once again the gas was low, and snow and ice still covering the ground. Once more I find myself counting down until the gas will be turned up. December 5th. While I understand that it is strange for it to be this cold so early, it seems strange to me that the gas cannot be raised as needed, especially in a country that is making billions on gas and oil. But, there’s nothing I can do about it, so I will curl up with my puppy, read a book, and wait till December 5th arrives.
Speaking of books, another reason I’m looking forward to the end of the month is the end of NaNoWriMo. I guess this could be considered a successful failure. A failure, because I didn’t reach 50,000 words, the goal of NaNo writers. A success, I suppose, because I wrote something. I reached 25,552 words, just over halfway, and I content to be done with it. Writing every day is unsurprisingly difficult, and took a lot of motivation, reminding me of my great skills of procrastination and distraction, which I was unable to completely conquer, though I had some days of 3,000 words or more.
I don’t know if I will ever pick up the story again. Not because the story isn’t one that I like, but it was one that I never got particularly inspired by. When inspiration hits, the words flow out onto the paper, but when I force myself to write, as I did this past month, writing becomes a chore, not a pleasure.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Holidays, Goodbyes, and Snow
In the last few weeks, life here has changed pretty drastically. First, my site mate was medically evacuated, due to ongoing stomach issues. She has until early December to recover or she won’t be able to return. I have all the faith in her and her determination to return, though I am of course worried she won’t be healthy in time, and we’ve heard horror stories about people who were screwed by bureaucracy.
Shortly after she left on short notice, we learned that Ismayilli would not be receiving a new volunteer from the new group. This wasn’t entirely a surprise, but was definitely a bit disappointing. On top of that, my other site mate, a member of the group ahead of me, is finishing his service. So Ismayilli stands to get a bit lonelier.
Lifting my spirits, my host mother celebrated my birthday by baking a wonderful cake, with Hershey’s chocolate icing, and a special pumpkin plov dinner, which my site mate shared on one of his last nights in town. The one benefit of his departure is that I have come into some inheritance, mostly consisting of some great food packets and cooking supplies, as well as an electric blanket, which comes in handy on the days when gas is low. I’d rather continue to have a site mate, of course, but a water heater and better cooking utensils ain’t too shabby neither.
Right after my former site mate left for medical leave, we got a huge storm, which certainly took me by surprise. A foot and a half of snow, which knocked down many of the power lines along my road, since the trees still hadn’t lost many of their leaves. Winter was here, whether we liked it or not. Altogether, the power was out for about five days. While it was difficult with the sun setting so quickly, I got some good reading done. My host brother, Orxan, visited at the time, because it coincided with the Qurban holiday, otherwise known as Eid al-Ada. This holiday commemorates when Abraham nearly sacrificed his son, Isaac. It’s typical for wealthier families to sacrifice an animal—a turkey, a sheep, a cow, depending on their wealth—and donate the meat to those in need. As far as I could tell, my family did not donate any food, but we did sacrifice a turkey for plov, which was quite tasty. I’ve been watching the turkeys grow (and in some cases, helping to give them food and medicine), from tiny chicks to large ugly birds, practically asking to get eaten—they’re not always the friendliest of birds, though positively welcoming next to geese. Having Orxan here was nice, since I see far too little of him, and also because he had to clear the snow off the roofs instead of me. That’ll change when we get more snow later on.
The time off for Qurban was followed up the next week by fall break, meaning we only had school on Friday, and due to cold, no one showed up to clubs. Instead, a couple friends visited, so they could check out Lahic, the nearby mountain village. Once they learned my birthday was coming, they treated me to dinner one night, and also showed me how to make some homemade chocolate fondue. Who says Peace Corps has to be all suffering?
Shortly after she left on short notice, we learned that Ismayilli would not be receiving a new volunteer from the new group. This wasn’t entirely a surprise, but was definitely a bit disappointing. On top of that, my other site mate, a member of the group ahead of me, is finishing his service. So Ismayilli stands to get a bit lonelier.
Lifting my spirits, my host mother celebrated my birthday by baking a wonderful cake, with Hershey’s chocolate icing, and a special pumpkin plov dinner, which my site mate shared on one of his last nights in town. The one benefit of his departure is that I have come into some inheritance, mostly consisting of some great food packets and cooking supplies, as well as an electric blanket, which comes in handy on the days when gas is low. I’d rather continue to have a site mate, of course, but a water heater and better cooking utensils ain’t too shabby neither.
Right after my former site mate left for medical leave, we got a huge storm, which certainly took me by surprise. A foot and a half of snow, which knocked down many of the power lines along my road, since the trees still hadn’t lost many of their leaves. Winter was here, whether we liked it or not. Altogether, the power was out for about five days. While it was difficult with the sun setting so quickly, I got some good reading done. My host brother, Orxan, visited at the time, because it coincided with the Qurban holiday, otherwise known as Eid al-Ada. This holiday commemorates when Abraham nearly sacrificed his son, Isaac. It’s typical for wealthier families to sacrifice an animal—a turkey, a sheep, a cow, depending on their wealth—and donate the meat to those in need. As far as I could tell, my family did not donate any food, but we did sacrifice a turkey for plov, which was quite tasty. I’ve been watching the turkeys grow (and in some cases, helping to give them food and medicine), from tiny chicks to large ugly birds, practically asking to get eaten—they’re not always the friendliest of birds, though positively welcoming next to geese. Having Orxan here was nice, since I see far too little of him, and also because he had to clear the snow off the roofs instead of me. That’ll change when we get more snow later on.
The time off for Qurban was followed up the next week by fall break, meaning we only had school on Friday, and due to cold, no one showed up to clubs. Instead, a couple friends visited, so they could check out Lahic, the nearby mountain village. Once they learned my birthday was coming, they treated me to dinner one night, and also showed me how to make some homemade chocolate fondue. Who says Peace Corps has to be all suffering?
Sunday, November 6, 2011
NaNo Update
One of the simultaneously most encouraging and depressing things about writing for NaNoWriMo and keeping the website updated on my progress is that it has a page with a lovely little progress bar, and as you add more words, the bar is filled in more and more. Below that, are stats concerning your writing progress. This includes my average words per day, words remaining, words per day to finish on time, and the worst figure, "At this Rate, You Will Finish By," which currently depressingly reads December 27th, 2011. To top this off is a bar/line graph which shows how many words I've written every day, compared to the target words per day to meet the goal.
What this page and the figures don't show is that I restarted my essay a couple days in, and had reached over 2,000 words before throwing in the towel on that story. So really, NaNo, I've written 7,000 words...which is still 3,000 short of where I should be. Patooie. Is it too soon to start looking for excuses? Like the fact that we've been treating a sick puppy?
No, it is not the time for excuses, because we're entering the best part of the month, Qurban Bayram, or Eid al-Ada, meaning no school Monday or Tuesday, and Flag Day on Wednesday, and next week there's only school on Friday the 18th thanks to autumn break. So plenty of time to catch up. Plenty of time to get those taunting graphs to start looking a little friendlier.
What this page and the figures don't show is that I restarted my essay a couple days in, and had reached over 2,000 words before throwing in the towel on that story. So really, NaNo, I've written 7,000 words...which is still 3,000 short of where I should be. Patooie. Is it too soon to start looking for excuses? Like the fact that we've been treating a sick puppy?
No, it is not the time for excuses, because we're entering the best part of the month, Qurban Bayram, or Eid al-Ada, meaning no school Monday or Tuesday, and Flag Day on Wednesday, and next week there's only school on Friday the 18th thanks to autumn break. So plenty of time to catch up. Plenty of time to get those taunting graphs to start looking a little friendlier.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
NaNoWriMo
This coming month, I will attempt to embark on a quest. The quest of National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo. I will have 30 days to write 50,000 words. Hopefully I won't go crazy in the process trying to juggle Peace Corps responsibilities, clubs, reading, and general personal life at the same time. This should also be interesting because I recently took a small chunk out of my left pointer finger and consequently am typing this with nine fingers. Maybe that's my novel! No, no it isn't.
Why am I doing this? For fun, mostly, and to see if I can. Also, one of the easy to fall back on uses of time in Peace Corps in watching movies and TV shows. I know it wouldn't seem that way, but with Internet in the house, and portable hard drives being shared all over the place, the PC life can be overwhelming with media. Hopefully, writing a full length novel and posting it online (irony noted), I'll be able to make myself take a bit of a break.
So, let the words begin! The game is a-word! Insert your writing pun here.
Why am I doing this? For fun, mostly, and to see if I can. Also, one of the easy to fall back on uses of time in Peace Corps in watching movies and TV shows. I know it wouldn't seem that way, but with Internet in the house, and portable hard drives being shared all over the place, the PC life can be overwhelming with media. Hopefully, writing a full length novel and posting it online (irony noted), I'll be able to make myself take a bit of a break.
So, let the words begin! The game is a-word! Insert your writing pun here.
Losing a Friend
This past week, my host family's puppy, Bucky (short for Buckingham, from The Three Musketeers) passed away. This was a sudden passing, which started at the end of the week before, when Bucky stopped eating, and anything that was forcibly given would come right back up. We were baffled, and the local vet was only able to diagnose it as dog "plague." I'm translating, but it's either dog plague or dog pestilence, according to my dictionary, and neither option is particularly informative as a diagnosis. Our main theory is that he ate something that effectively was poisonous to his system, and we were unable to get him to a proper vet in time. By the time when we realized he really needed it, I think he would have required an IV and blood work, which we could not have afforded.
Still, Bucky was my baby. Against my host family's reservations he was even known to sleep inside. Pause for gasp. I've been fortunate in my pet ownership that my family's dogs have all been long-lived. Our first dog, Beauregard, lived until I was in elementary school, and our next dog, Maggie, died when I was abroad in India. Now we have Lucy. Our other pets have not lasted as long, including some fish that made the mistake of living in elementary school me's bedroom when I and my friends enjoyed jumping on beds while playing catch. My mom still remembers the water gushing out onto the carpet floor.
I was expecting my host parents to take a more traditionally non-Western attitude towards animals, that they are animals and should be treated as such, not as family members. But my host mother was very upset at the loss, and mourned him over tea that night. My host father helped my dig the grave, and though he made a point of saying that animals don't get funerals, I think he realized he might have been a bit insensitive to how I was feeling, because later that evening, he came to me explaining that you do not have to treat animals that way, or wish them to heaven, because God automatically absolves them (the same goes for kids, apparently). I knew he cared because he clearly looked up both "absolve" and "sin." Thank you, Ata.
Thank you, Bucky, for making my life happy for the five months you were a part of it. Maybe you chewed on my fingers too much, but I will miss you. You were a great little buddy. I hope that in whatever dog heaven you're in, you're happy.
Still, Bucky was my baby. Against my host family's reservations he was even known to sleep inside. Pause for gasp. I've been fortunate in my pet ownership that my family's dogs have all been long-lived. Our first dog, Beauregard, lived until I was in elementary school, and our next dog, Maggie, died when I was abroad in India. Now we have Lucy. Our other pets have not lasted as long, including some fish that made the mistake of living in elementary school me's bedroom when I and my friends enjoyed jumping on beds while playing catch. My mom still remembers the water gushing out onto the carpet floor.
I was expecting my host parents to take a more traditionally non-Western attitude towards animals, that they are animals and should be treated as such, not as family members. But my host mother was very upset at the loss, and mourned him over tea that night. My host father helped my dig the grave, and though he made a point of saying that animals don't get funerals, I think he realized he might have been a bit insensitive to how I was feeling, because later that evening, he came to me explaining that you do not have to treat animals that way, or wish them to heaven, because God automatically absolves them (the same goes for kids, apparently). I knew he cared because he clearly looked up both "absolve" and "sin." Thank you, Ata.
Thank you, Bucky, for making my life happy for the five months you were a part of it. Maybe you chewed on my fingers too much, but I will miss you. You were a great little buddy. I hope that in whatever dog heaven you're in, you're happy.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Tigers at the Bat
The Ismayilli Tigers spilled out of the bus yesterday evening, tired but happy. They had just returned from their first full tournament as a team.
We left for Kurdamir at 8:30 that morning, and managed to survive one of the bumpiest roads around, a road so bad only one driver was willing to take us, with a couple stops for kids to make mad dashes to the nearest ditch. Along the way, as we would pass herds of sheep and goats, kids would call out the names they knew in English, and ask about words they didn't. At the same time, the driver of course had the radio blaring. Once we hit the main highway, things evened out and I was able to read a little, collecting myself before we arrived.
The Kurdamir stadium lies to the south of the main roundabout, where we had played (American) football Christmas Day. The kids hid behind the bleachers to change clothing, and then came out ready to play.
Our first game was against Xachmaz (a town in the northeast of the country, near the Caspian Sea). The Tigers batted first, driving in four runs, almost reaching the mercy rule (five run per inning limit). Still a little rusty in the field, they let three runs the first inning. This was especially impressive since they were pitching themselves for the first time, something I had not prepared them for, but surprised them with as the other teams were planning to pitch. Trial by fire in the Land of Fire.
In the second inning, both teams hit the mercy rule switch, and in the final inning, Xachmaz managed to pull ahead. The Tigers had one last chance to retake the lead, but the game ended on a rule misunderstanding--one boy hit a pop up that was caught for an out, and then threw to the bases that the Ismayilli boys had abdicated before they could return. Final score: 12-11
The second game was a pitcher's duel against Goychay, our nearest team, though this was our first match. This was the height of their fielding for the day, and the game ended at 4-3. Again, they almost staged a comeback, but a pop up ended the game once more.
Finally, the Tigers took on the Goranboy team (from the west, near Mingachavir), which has recently had to start over basically from scratch with very few old-overs from previous years. They were the only team to have girls on the team, at least as far as I saw, something I hope will become a larger trend across the country. The boys’ bats came alive, driving in 10 runs to Goranboy’s four. This was a huge win for them, after the two disappointing losses, and there was much rejoicing.
Sadly, we never played the home Kurdamir team, a team made up entirely of IDPs, or Internally Displaced Persons, a special project focus for Todd in forming the team. Not so sadly, we also missed out on playing the Bilasuvar team, which has managed to thoroughly beat all the teams they’ve faced. They’re an intense team that could teach our kids a lot, they’re just not ready for that lesson just yet.
The only major hitch came when two boys on the team got into a skuffle, after one made some joke at the other’s expense. The tussle resulted in bloody noses, and a one game suspension courtesy of yours truly. Today at practice, it led to some questions about what happens when there are fights in the major leagues (they’ve been checking out youtube, I’m guessing), and will continue to discussions about teamwork and respect.
Huge thanks go out to Todd and Sarah, the Kurdamir volunteers, for hosting us, as well as to the team captains of all the other teams, and to the boys and girls from throughout the country who came out with their game faces on and their bats and gloves at the ready. We’ve got one more definite tournament, in two weeks in Baku, and until then, we’ve got our work cut out for us.
We left for Kurdamir at 8:30 that morning, and managed to survive one of the bumpiest roads around, a road so bad only one driver was willing to take us, with a couple stops for kids to make mad dashes to the nearest ditch. Along the way, as we would pass herds of sheep and goats, kids would call out the names they knew in English, and ask about words they didn't. At the same time, the driver of course had the radio blaring. Once we hit the main highway, things evened out and I was able to read a little, collecting myself before we arrived.
The Kurdamir stadium lies to the south of the main roundabout, where we had played (American) football Christmas Day. The kids hid behind the bleachers to change clothing, and then came out ready to play.
Our first game was against Xachmaz (a town in the northeast of the country, near the Caspian Sea). The Tigers batted first, driving in four runs, almost reaching the mercy rule (five run per inning limit). Still a little rusty in the field, they let three runs the first inning. This was especially impressive since they were pitching themselves for the first time, something I had not prepared them for, but surprised them with as the other teams were planning to pitch. Trial by fire in the Land of Fire.
In the second inning, both teams hit the mercy rule switch, and in the final inning, Xachmaz managed to pull ahead. The Tigers had one last chance to retake the lead, but the game ended on a rule misunderstanding--one boy hit a pop up that was caught for an out, and then threw to the bases that the Ismayilli boys had abdicated before they could return. Final score: 12-11
The second game was a pitcher's duel against Goychay, our nearest team, though this was our first match. This was the height of their fielding for the day, and the game ended at 4-3. Again, they almost staged a comeback, but a pop up ended the game once more.
Finally, the Tigers took on the Goranboy team (from the west, near Mingachavir), which has recently had to start over basically from scratch with very few old-overs from previous years. They were the only team to have girls on the team, at least as far as I saw, something I hope will become a larger trend across the country. The boys’ bats came alive, driving in 10 runs to Goranboy’s four. This was a huge win for them, after the two disappointing losses, and there was much rejoicing.
Sadly, we never played the home Kurdamir team, a team made up entirely of IDPs, or Internally Displaced Persons, a special project focus for Todd in forming the team. Not so sadly, we also missed out on playing the Bilasuvar team, which has managed to thoroughly beat all the teams they’ve faced. They’re an intense team that could teach our kids a lot, they’re just not ready for that lesson just yet.
The only major hitch came when two boys on the team got into a skuffle, after one made some joke at the other’s expense. The tussle resulted in bloody noses, and a one game suspension courtesy of yours truly. Today at practice, it led to some questions about what happens when there are fights in the major leagues (they’ve been checking out youtube, I’m guessing), and will continue to discussions about teamwork and respect.
Huge thanks go out to Todd and Sarah, the Kurdamir volunteers, for hosting us, as well as to the team captains of all the other teams, and to the boys and girls from throughout the country who came out with their game faces on and their bats and gloves at the ready. We’ve got one more definite tournament, in two weeks in Baku, and until then, we’ve got our work cut out for us.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
One Day, One Year, Ten Years, Fifty
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)