keepin it alive

Interesting story. So here I was with my sitemate crossing the country from oh-so-beautiful Ganja which is on the west side of the country to my side of the east coast Baku/Siyezen. What was I doing in Ganja? Returning home from Turkey, but more on that later.

In the week I was gone someone decided to officially turn on winter in Azerbaijan and the proof was in the snow on the ground all across most of the country. Will and I were on a bus by 9 a.m. and didn't start touching down in Baku around 4 p.m. with no less than 8 disabled/crashed vehicles along the main highway due to the snow and layers of ice/slush. Per our training sessions where we had a case study of a real PCV incident that resulted in deaths, I expressed concern about the condition of the roads, coupled with bad weather, sketchy driving about getting home with the dark coming. Calls were made and what was the Peace Corps solution to our safety not being compromised? Camping out in the Peace Corps lounge in Baku overnight!! So here I sit in Baku with at least 2' of snow outside the building updating my blog. While I could use a shower, I'm glad that I'm in a safe/dry/warm place. Bonus that it has fast internets, a real flushing toilet and a dvd player.

Anyhoo, moving along. I spent last week using the first of my annual leave (aka vacation) in Turkey, more specifically in Istanbul. What an amazing city/time!! (I'll make a separate post for this one, with pictures) By chance the 4 of us ended up meeting quite a few other PCVs from other "eastern europe" countries. We met Travis and Kevin from Georgia, Jennifer from Albania, Josh and Joe from Bulgaria and Mary, Josh and Colt from Romania. We ended up spending the better half of our week hanging out with the Romanians and Bulgarians. It was really interesting to compare battle stories of work/lifestyle and all that. Despite Azerbaijan being lumped in with the EE block, I realized how much of a hardship post the AZ is compared to what is jokingly refered to as the "Posh Corps." Then again, it's never easy to leave your home and move to a foreign land to do what we're attempting to do.

So moral of this posting?
flushing toilets=win
meeting other cool pcvs=win
scary bus ride across azerbaijan=lose
being snowed in @ the peace corps lounge=fun!