(These pictures are from the beginning of February. A bit dated, I know, but it's hard enough to find a place with enough bandwidth to post at a reasonable rate, and I'm lazy. The one not snowy pic is from out March Mustache Madness/Ujar Fried Food Festival that took place during our Spring break. Rest assured, this is the first and last mustache I've ever grown, as I realize how ridiculous I look. Thanks to Dad for providing the wonderful shirt that topped off my award winning ensemble. The writing on my shirt says "My name is not English!", which I wear around town to let people know not to call me that, to marginal effect.)
Spring is here! Normally this would be cause for celebration. Flowers blooming, bees buzzing, critters running to and fro after a long winter slumber. And in a way, it is a celebration. In fact, here it's the biggest holiday of the year, Novruz. Originally a Zoroastrian celebration of the coming of a new year, the return of life to the Earth and all that good stuff, in Azerbaijan it has simply devolved into a mishmash of various ancient traditions combined with the two things Azeris love doing most: eating and drinking to excess. People jump over bonfires, sprout wheat in little dishes, cook pilaf and dolma, children collect candy from neighbors, men drink hurculean amounts of vodka, and generally a good time is had by all.
As for me, I had my own party, a reincarnation of a gathering I had last year known as the Ujar Fried Food Festival. Seeing as how I am one of only 4 or 5 volunteers from the South in this country, and the only one from Alabama, I felt it a personal duty to my fellow countrymen to introduce them to the best thing my state has to offer--namely, battering and frying pretty much everything. We had fried pickles, onion rings, chicken, and even some pork a thoughtful volunteer had the foresight to acquire from Georgia. We also had falafel, which I prepared for the wussy vegetarians who think that eating a huge pile of molten grease might not be "healthy". Bah! The way I see it, if eating deep fried yumminess is going to make my heart explode then clearly God intended for me to die young, otherwise he wouldn't have made it and me so wonderfully compatible. Throughout the day I kept getting various partygoers to help me in the kitchen, teaching them the alchemical arts of southern fried food, and after I got tired of cooking I did what any good chef does: I sent other people to cook for me. Despite making a complete wreck of my kitchen and nearly burning my house to the ground, they produced a passable example of fried goodness, and for the first time since I've been here I revelled in the wonderful feeling of teaching students and having them actually learn!
Adittionally, another gathering that had been planned for the same time was incorporated into my gathering, a fake holiday made up by another volunteer with impeccable facial hair and clearly too much time on his hands(pictured above wearing the big fur hat)--Mustache March. This is why, in the above photo, I am sporting a trash-stache that would make Kid Rock melt with jealousy. Since mustaches are the facial hair of choice for 90% of Azeri men (and about 10% of the women), my marriage proposals increased tenfold during the course of my anomalous facial growth. Alas, I got tired of looking in the mirror every morning and seeing a backwoods trailer park resident staring back at me, so I removed the offending hairs from my face immediately after the party was concluded.
So, is all this partying over a concept as simple as Spring really warranted? Here, definitely. That's because "Spring" really only lasts a couple of weeks here, followed by about a month straight of rain. The weather has been nice lately, but we had our first downpour yesterday, marking the beginning of a very wet, muggy, muddy, and generally gross month before summer. And once that ends, "Spring" is over, and summer comes right in with little regard for how I or anyone else feels about it. So in America, April showers bring May flowers, but in Azerbaijan they simply bring sweltering, overwhelming, inescapable heat. Wish me luck.
