i'm a traveling girl

while I typically open my blog with an apology and an explanation of my what is now becoming monthly updates, I've decided that monthly is appropriate since at the 18 month mark of my departure from Seattle for Peace Corps, life here feels more comfortable than life did during my short visit home in August. Strange? Alarming? Feelings of complacency? True story, I've noticed how little the way of life here doesn't make me raise an eyebrow these last few months.

The month has been busy, mostly due to travels for a multitude of reasons. Early in the month was Nar Bayramı, which is a pomegranate festival in a rayon called Göyçay in the middle of Azerbaijan known for its awesome nar growing. Narfest reminded me a lot of a typical street festival in America – there was a main stage with a concert planned for the evening, smaller stages with local children performing dances or recital-esque music numbers, little munchkins in pomegranate costumes, a local man who was doing a tight rope act (which included a scooting seat on the line!) and lots and lots of pomegranate anything you can think of. PCVs looooove FREE pomegranate juice! Since there was a fair number of us there for Narfest, us being foreigners who oddly spoke Azeri were given celebrity status and were being followed by flocks of children and sometimes Azeri men. It was definitely overwhelming giving the “I'm an American who lives here to help the Azeri people” speech about 25x though some of the kids really were sweet, trying to speak in English and wanting pictures with us.

The following week had me in Şəki where I presented for a friend's organization. My fellow Asian-American sister Dwight works for an organization that does a lot of youth-oriented work so that includes exposing them to different cultures, lifestyles or even waste management practices like composting. She told me to present on something that I'm passionate about so I chose to present on Hip Hop culture, which I angled as a culture and means of self-expression. While attendance wasn't as high as I had hoped, the kids seemed like they were genuinely interested in learning about hip hop and I even got some of them learning a very basic 3-step/6-step footwork of breaking aka breakdancing/bboying/bgirling.

Other miscellaneous bits: I'm soon to be celebrating my 2nd birthday in country, one that officially announces I'm in the 2nd half of my 20s. School is going well, I've been working mostly with younger/newer teachers at my school who don't speak English all too well at the present moment but I'm hoping that this school year with me will improve that along with new ways of teaching and making learning fun. I'm working on bringing an organization called AzETA (Azerbaijan English Teachers Association) to my town and hopefully that will improve the quality of English language instruction, had been busy busy busy with helping locals in Siyezen with applications for study abroad programs in America, finally tracking down doctors and other people in town to hopefully begin a HIV/AIDs education awareness project. I was recently informed that in my TINY rayon that is populated with under 35,000 people (there were more people than that who attended my university!) - 10,000 in the town center there are 13 cases of infection with the HIV virus, and this is only with people who have been tested which is at best 20% of the population! I'm no doctor but that statistic seems a little bit high, even more unsettling is the fact that many people don't get tested nor do they have much education about HIV/AIDs at all. Other than that? I find myself daydreaming a lot of life after service, usually leaves me with lots of hope, excitement and anxiety to have to readjust to a lifestyle so different from the one I'm currently living.

addendum: It feels really good to be able to say that I've been laughing, smiling and enjoying myself more – be it with Azeris in my community or meet on my travels or my time with close friends. I'd been experiencing what I call “the dark side of service” for the last few months and hopefully it is all behind me for good considering the number of months remaining of service is now in the single (!!!) digit count.