April Showers Bring May Mosquitoes

Pictures of kids in my conversation club. All these kids are in 5th and 6th grade, most of them at my school but a handful of the boys are from other schools.

So, it's April here in Azerbaijan, which unbeknownst to me is the rainy season. This means that for the past week it's been raining every day and freezing cold, which makes me seriously wonder why everyone here celebrates Novruz and the coming of spring right before the weather turns to absolute crap for an entire month. As icing on the cake, either my change in environment or the change in weather gave me the flu, so I've spend the past 4 days locked up in my house feeling like I got hit by a Peterbilt full of influenza. I finally returned to school today, where I was scolded by teachers for being a child and being unable to take care of myself, to which I sincerely wanted to (but did not) respond that compared to the level of maturity of Azeris my age I may as well have the life experience of a Highlander, and at least I'm not 40 years old and still having my mom cook meals for me.

I've been told not to worry about the weather, because in a month it's going to start getting so hot it'll make Alabama seem like Nova Scotia, but I beg to differ. If there's one thing I know about my home state, it's that it's HOT, and I can't wait to see how my sitemate from Michigan reacts to the heat compared to me. Also the mosquitoes are already terrible and only posed to get worse as summer rolls in, but fortunately I've got an awesome mosquito net hanging over my bed to keep me safe from malaria and such. If the heat gets too unbearable I'm just gonna escape to the mountains or head to Georgia or Russia, as school will be out and I'll be out of work and bored out of my mind anyways.

On the positive side, I've got a house! A place all my own, located on the edge of town about a 15 minute walk from my school. Being able to to sit in peace and QUIET has left me quite a bit less nervewrecked than I was with my host family, but it is not without it's difficulties. Foremost is the water situation, which isn't intolerable but is far from ideal. Basically, I've got a hose running in from the street where the water runs for 3 hours a day, 2 in the morning at 9am and then another at 4 or 5 in the evening. It's my job to get this water from the hose into a cistern in the yard and a water tank above my hammam (shower house). Since the water has no pressure coming out of the hose, I have to use an old, worn out and fickle water pump to get the water into said containers. This has provided me with hours of hair-pulling screaming frustration, but I think after a week of messing with it I've finally got it worked out. It involves a process of plugging and unplugging the pump while repeatedly reinserting the feed hose into it so as to get a flow of water running through it, and once this is established it will flow more-or-less steadily until I get enough water in my tank. Once the water is in the tank it doesn't get any easier though, as there is no running water in the house and I have to wash my dishes in a tub in the hammam. And of course, being Azerbaijan, it wouldn't be a house without a squat toilet out in the yard, making midnight trips to the can in the freezing cold and rain quite a special delight.

All told, however, my new house is pretty sweet. I've got two rooms, so there's plenty of space to have guests over (if any of you are planning on making the trip! :). My kitchen is huge, but fairly sparse: two tables, a fridge, a small freestanding cabinet and a range. No oven, no microwave, and no insulation. The neighbors I've met are fairly nice, and it's right down the road from a place which PCVs here have dubbed "The Awesome Store", due to its western supermarket style setup, its selection of imported goods, and a fairly incredible liqour isle. If only I had more than 5 manat a day living allowance I could be dining on Russian caviar, German sausage and a bottle of Chivas Regal special reserve. But alas, one can dream.

To switch gears for a bit, I have a request for the readers of this here blog regarding the pictures you see at the top of this post. I have recently been approached by the director of my school to help make an English education library in my school. Books in English here are in short supply, and the textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education for use in schools here are legendarily awful. Mispellings, bad grammar, confusing texts and complicated lessons that are about as succinct as a Tolstoy novel. So, I would like to ask all of you, when you have the time, to look around at your local thrift stores and such for anything you think might be useful for a kid learning English to read. This includes dictionaries, thesauruses (sadly enough, I'm an English teacher and I don't even know if that's the correct plural form of "thesaurus"), classics of English and American literature, and kids books. Now don't go overboard on finding stuff, as it will cost a ludicrous amount of money to send it all here, but maybe a book or two stuffed in a padded envelope will add up to a substantial collection once they all get here. I'm going to try to find other sources for book donations, but if you guys feel inclined to help it would make a lot of little Azeri kids quite happy. Take care,

Kevo