Anbar (storage shed) behind my house.

view of my front yard

the bathtub where we store our water has been covered by the snow!

most of this is gone now, but it started snowing again today when i left Lerik!

who knows how much snow will be there when i get back.

I was too lazy and cold to step outside my house to take more picture,

but i’ll take more pictures of the snow covered valleys and mountain tops when i get back!

So the lesson here is to not write someone off as rude or unfriendly the minute you interact with them.  Give them at least 2 min to warm up to you – (you might get some free candy or fruit for your effort )!

There just isn’t a lot that I can do here to relieve stress.  Leading clubs would only increase my blood pressure because I spend 20 hours a week in the classroom as it is, and I just can’t get myself to go back to face the kids again once I leave school.  Kudos to all you teachers out there, what you do is way underappreciated!  My time in the Peace Corps so far has me rethinking what I want to do when I finish, but one thing I know for sure is that I DO NOT WANT TO EVER BE A TEACHER!!! I’m just not cut out for it. I don’t like kids enough to want to spend my entire day with 20-30 of them five days a week.

And speaking of intensely disliking children… the one that lives in the apartment above me is slowly driving me insane.  The 5 year old girl, who I once thought adorable, a long, LONG time ago, literally has me cringing and breaking out in goose bumps every time I hear her say “mən gelirəm!” which means “I’m coming!” Then she comes running with her little notebook that I use to teach her the English alphabet, and while I love that she wants to learn… the LAST thing I want to do is deal with her the minute I come home from school.  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t come over EVERY SINGLE DAY, or if she didn’t cry at EVERY LITTLE SINGLE THING THAT DOESN’T GO HER WAY, or if on the weekends the sound of her voice in my house isn’t what wakes me up in the morning but because these things are a daily occurrence, it makes me not want to be in Lerik on the weekends anymore. I have nowhere to hide but my room and it’s too cold now for me to be hiding in there anymore. I’m slowly being driven insane… and I CAN’T WAIT TIL I CAN GO BACK TO NYC this summer for a month or so.

I don’t want to end on such a depressing note, so I’ll say it again.  Lerik is a great place and I, for the most part, love being a volunteer here… just one more year left!

so here’s to new beginnings!

the cemetary we passed by.

food break!

donkey's in the village we passed through.

jade and i with the mountains behind us.

tim and eli.

mason's counterpart... went hiking in this geshank getup.

mountain village.

a cloud trapped in the valley.

a cloud.

amy, tim, me, jade, mason, eli, james is taking the picture.

After our long hike, we all went back to Mason’s house to hang out for a bit, and played dominos.  Then we all went over to his director’s house for dinner!! The whole family was just so hospitable, and the food was AMAZING!!  We had levengi, which is basically tomatoes or chicken or egg plants stuffed with a mixture of I’m not exactly sure what, but it doesn’t matter cuz it was SO GOOD, and we also had plov, which is rice cooked in butter (big surprise there), mini meatballs which were also super delicious.  We ate like kings that night.  Then after dinner, they brought out bowls of fruit, and let me tell you… banana’s are so damn cheap back in the U.S., but here in Azerbaijan… bananas are so damn expensive!  They’re a luxury, so whenever us PCV’s get served bananas… that’s the first thing we go for!  It was such a great dinner, and such a fun night.  I really enjoyed having everyone here, and was so sad when the weekend came to an end.  Hopefully we can have get togethers like more often!

Anyways, I’ve been in Lerik for about 3 weeks now, and let me just say that this town is GORGEOUS.  I live up in the mountains, and my house is on top of a hill!! That means I have to walk up and down either a baj-illion stairs, or walk up ridiculously steep hills to get to and from school, and basically anywhere else I want to go… my calves are going to be so damn big at the end of two years!  I guess I really can’t complain much, since that’s about the only form of exercise I have.  I’m going to climb my way back into a size _ (that’s one of my new year’s resolutions)!! Since I’m all the way on top, the view from my house is amazing.  I’m surrounded on all sides by snow capped mountains, and when I walk to school in the morning, the sun rising up from behind the peaks casts a red-ish/pink-ish glow in the sky.  It’s SO pretty, it makes me feel a little better in the mornings when I’m walking to school.

My school is one of the new ones in town.  It was built a year or two ago… in just 3 months!! Yes, you read correctly, the entire school was built in only 3 months.  While it is a very nice looking school, chunks of the ceiling have already fallen off in some of the rooms.  I was told we occasionally get earthquakes here too.  Let’s all pray that the next two years are earthquake free.  Please.  My school’s director is an awesome lady.  She speaks great English and is really enthusiastic about having me here.  The teachers that I have to work with are all really sweet too, so I have nothing to complain about regarding school.

My host mom is such a sweet lady.  She reminds me a lot of my own mom back at home.  At night she cuts fruit for me, something my own mother did a lot back when I was home.  She even bakes bread.  FRESH BAKED BREAD IS SO HARD TO RESIST.  That’s the one thing I’ll never get tired of.  There’s nothing better than breaking off a piece of bread, fresh out of the oven, with that nice crispy outside and hot, soft inside. Say it with me, YUMMM!  I hope to be able to bake my own bread at home when I get back… but it’s such a pain in the ass.  Making the dough is so hard, so much kneading involved.  She also bakes cakes, which may or may not be a good thing.  While it tastes really good… it’s probably the last thing I ought to be eating.

With my new host family, I HAVE MY OWN BED! No more sleeping on the couch for this girl!  My room is super comfortable and is just the right size.  Although I still don’t have a closet, I don’t mind living out of my bags… that just means I have less to pack up later!  I have a wood burning stove in my room to heat up my room at night.  It’s so cozy and I love falling asleep to the sound of the fire burning and the wood crackling, it’s like my lullaby.  My host mom has a gas burning stove in her room.  It’s scary because almost every night, there’s a news story on tv saying how an entire family was wiped out by a gas stove exploding…

my gas petch.

I literally go to sleep every night praying that I don’t die in my sleep because our, or our neighbors’, gas stove exploded.  The last thing I want is to wake up in my sleep to a burning apartment.  I’m also getting used to/prefer the squat toilet, and my little outhouse is starting to grow on me.  I’ve come to realize just how lucky I am that my bathroom is just around the corner from my house, because I’ve seen how much worse it could be.  A lot of people have to actually walk a few yards from their house to go to the bathroom, or its way out of the way, and there is no light so in the dark at night you’re basically screwed.  This town and it’s people are starting to grow on me.

For the next two years, I will be living in Lerik, which is a region all the way down in southern Azerbaijan.  My town is up in the Talish Mountains, which borders Iran.  For more information, go to http://www.mct.gov.az/?/en/cities/view/265.

Lerik is the region colored in Red!

Now, if any of you are interested in sending me a package, here is what I would like.

Sriracha Sauce

and

taco seasoning! so i can make "burritos" using taco flavored lentils as a filler since i can't afford meat.

anything else you kind people would like to send me would also be just as equally appreciated.  I would also LOVE to receive letters from you people that i call  FRIENDS (get on it folks!) back at home

I miss you all and once I get to site, I’ll have a ton of more stuff to write about here.  Until then, tootles!

*on a side note, i had no idea that turkeys bled so damn much!! the chickens barely bled, but when i saw pictures of the blood spray that came out of the turkey we killed… good god!

Now, time for some pictures!

thanksgiving was a bad day for one of these gobble gobblers.

the turkey before.

the turkey after.

the table spread

All in all, Thanksgiving was a huge success!  I felt like my stomach was going to pop after eating all those delicious foods :] there are more photos on facebook!