January 6
Today I had a “Peace Corps moment”. As my surroundings become familiar the wonder of the moment wears off. As I settle into my little town, my eyes focus more on where I’m going and less on what’s around me. Things I never imagined doing before have become common and cease to be inherently interesting. Except for every now and then.

Living with a family is difficult for many reasons. However, the language barrier has to be one of the toughest obstacles (for me) to overcome. I’ve been living with my family for 4 months and have just in the past two months begun to regularly play checkers with my brother (which I win a lot more now – see previous blog). The rest of the time I am either sitting silently or in my room.

This perpetuates a vicious cycle. It begins with silence. I was silent because I was observing and adjusting. My family was at first talkative, but as my novelty wore off and my silence persisted, they gave up and began ignoring me. To my credit, I am mostly quiet in large social situations in the U.S. as well – my family consisting of 7 people makes every day a large social situation for me.

As I began to feel more comfortable in my surroundings and thus more willing to try to communicate, I was being ignored and haven’t gotten past this barrier and thus the cycle continues. In addition, there is the T.V.. I don’t enjoy watching T.V. in the U.S. when I can understand what’s going on and though at first watching Spanish and Azeri Soap Operas dubbed in Russian used to be novel, now it is mainly boring. The Azeri’s I’ve met, including my family, watch a lot of T.V. and talking during the shows is frowned upon.

Thus it came as a surprise today when my family invited me to go “guesting”. This was a very big deal because usually they don’t take me anywhere, and because they perceive me as being overly shy, they don’t try to draw me out of my room when they have guests at the house (not that they should).

As I’ve written before, guesting can be a long process lasting hours and hours while food is shoved in the PCV’s face “Ye, Ye!” “Eat, eat!”. Azeri’s take pride in their strong familial relations and spend hours upon hours visiting one another, which can be foreign and uncomfortable for the American PCV. In addition, there is the added stress of not knowing half of what is going on.

I took a deep breath. Despite my fatigue and discomfort (I had been laying in bed all morning because the electricity was out and my room was freezing), I knew I could not decline this very important invitation. In addition, last month I promised my family I would take pictures of them and give them a picture disk. I knew this was my opportunity.

I began my preparation. One cannot go into a guesting situation unprepared. I’ve done this and it ends in disaster. I knew I was going to a village, where heat might be scarce, so I put on 3 pairs of pants – 3 pair of socks (2 wool) and 4 shirts. I tied a scarf around my waist and around my neck. I put a small book on Taoism in my purse, grabbed my phone and camera and took two shots of vodka.

We began our trek. We walked past familiar places and then took a turn I’ve never taken before. The narrow, winding road ended at the Kur – the longest river in AZ and which flows through my town. I’ve seen the Kur coming across the bridge into my town, but never from this angle. From the bridge it always looks slow and muddy. From this angle, it actually looked quite nice. I had no idea it was so close.

I thought we were going into one of the houses nearby, so I was surprised when I was lead into the riverboat. I don’t know why I thought this, but I thought they were just showing me the boat. I don’t know why they would do that, but that’s what I thought. “How nice”, I thought, “they want me to see the boat”. I thought maybe someone owned the boat. Then I had an increasingly rare “American Thought” moment (like last night when I heard a engine sound and I thought it was snowplow – or sometimes in the morning when I consider going out for breakfast – both situations which are ridiculous here) – So in my “American Thought” moment I thought we were going to have the party on the boat – which is ridiculous because first of all – it was 32 degrees outside and second of all – well, you can see the picture of the boat.

So I sat down, all starry eyed. People noticed and laughed. I took this opportunity to indulge in my otherness and asked to snap some pictures. Everyone thought that was hilarious, and agreed.

We sat in the boat for about 10 minutes or less and then everyone started to get out. “Okay”, I thought, “shows over”. I was surprised, then, to find myself on the opposite side of the river. I didn’t even feel the boat move! This was my “Peace Corps Moment”. When you’re lead along to and through some strange space nodding and smiling all the way and find yourself in an even stranger place still nodding and smiling. Life suddenly feels more alive and makes all the other stuff kind of worth it.

When we got out of the boat we walked along an incredibly muddy road. I took this opportunity to look around me. To smell and listen around me, experiencing my town and village. Villages look much more like the Peace Corps I’d envisioned when I joined and I always enjoy visiting them.

When we arrived at the house about 40 people were gathered. The rest of the afternoon was fine and without incident. We didn’t stay too long and I took lots of pictures of my family of which I later made a picture CD as a gift. They thought it was great.

I’ve been with my family for 4 months and this was the first really good day. It was an effort made a little by me and a little by them. Everyone warmly welcomed me and no one made me eat too much.

My experience of guesting has changed because I now know what to expect, which makes a huge difference. I know how to pace myself each hour and for each course. As I watch Azeri’s, I see even my grandmother is chided when she doesn’t eat “enough”. But for the most part, I now know this is mostly for show. I now allow them to put the massive amount of food on my plate, laughing all the way saying “besdi, besdi” “enough, enough” and then I eat what I can. No one will hate me if I don’t eat every last bit – this was an important lesson for me. The world will not end if I say, “no”. After a while they won’t take my small appetite personally.

In fact, as long as I’m making a visible effort, observing all of the big cultural norms and some of the small ones, my community will embrace me. Smiling and being nice and friendly counts for a LOT. It’s not enough to wear long skirts, go to work on time, and just be here. You’ve got to pick your battles, find out what you can tolerate and what you cannot. And you absolutely CANNOT take yourself or your situation too seriously. As my friend Joe says, bend, don’t break.

January 3
It’s been over a month since my last entry and my only explanation is that I’ve lacked inspiration, which to me is a good reason not to write. The holidays are over now – and good riddance. I was surprised at how much the holiday season – or lack thereof, affected me.

It’s true that this was the first Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years that I’ve been away from home, but I was taken aback by my longing for familiarity. All month I’ve found myself feeling very alien in this foreign land and what’s more, unable to communicate those feelings articulately.

Christmas was a travel day for all AZ 5’s as the following two days were spent at our first In Service Training (IST), which is meant to bring everyone together after being at site for 3 months to discuss where we go from here.

We met up in Baku throughout the day and into the evening. It’s difficult to explain what it’s like to be in a room of Americans on Christmas, so far away from home, after a day of traveling (and traveling here, which always inspires some good stories) in a country that doesn’t celebrate Christmas.

Throughout the night PCV’s sporadically disappeared and could be found in their rooms or staring out windows at either end of the hall talking to family and friends from home. Luckily, I was able to be one of these people, as the clock struck 7 and then 9, an acceptable time for a conversation back home.

PCV’s returned one by one to the lounge area in the center of the halls looking dazed and weary. They jumped back into conversation with whoever was around trying to bounce back to “reality”. As I stared out the huge window overlooking the twinkling lights (they do celebrate New Year’s here) and the Caspian Sea, all I could think was, “how strange”.

When IST was over I traveled to Qusar to visit a fellow PCV. Qusar is near the Caucus mountains and about 35 kilometers from Russia; thus quite far from me. It was beautiful there in the village and before I left I saw my first snow.

Today I woke up to the first snow in the South. Though it was very pretty, it made me wonder how much longer my reliable electricity would remain. When I returned home from my Azeri language tutoring session in the afternoon, the electricity was out. Fortunately, it was back on within a couple hours.

Doing laundry has become more interesting. What I mean is, I no longer really do laundry. My hamam (bath) is still hot in the mornings (which means I am one of the few very lucky ones who still gets to shower on a regular basis) but drying the clothes has become very tricky. I now have something more to be thankful for in addition to the internet and ipods. Febreeze. Ah, yes, it’s true, I febreeze my clothes until they smell alright again. I bring my underclothes into the shower with me to wash, but they still take forever to dry by my heater. For me, it’s worth it to wash my underclothes, but not worth it to wash my jeans, bath towel and bedding.

It’s been a good month, all in all. My conversation clubs have been successful and will morph into reading and writing clubs in January. I’ve recently received some amazing resources from a friend back home and I look forward to incorporating them into my lessons.

I’m going to try to reach out to some of the people who, though they do not fit the “15-24” age limitations of my program, are nevertheless very interested in being a part of what I’m doing. I am also running a workshop at the end of January teaching English speakers how to fill out applications for programs in the U.S.. Writing essays seems to be a bit of a challenge here. I’m also applying for some committees and planning to work jointly with some PCV’s both for my own sanity and to bring more interesting programs to my town.

However, as is the plight of volunteers in many places, I am only just beginning to make meaningful relationships which give me insight into “what the community thinks”. So far this has included the idea that the women who come to the club are only coming because they have nothing better to do (and this is bad because the woman’s place is in the home) and thus wasting time. This could explain why some librarians refuse to keep quiet during my clubs (everyone now gathers in the small computer room because it is the only room with heat). Others think I’m a spy. Great. The only thing cool about being considered a spy in a community where you’re supposed to do development is if I can add “international spy” to my resume, which I’m pretty sure, I cannot.

Hopefully this spy thing won’t become too serious. There was another PCV in the North who was booted from his home because they thought he was a spy. Vy, vy, vy (akin to Oy, oy, oy or jeez).

As I began my 7-hour trek home from Qusar, I thought about how far I’d come in the past 6 months. Here I am living 6000 miles away from home – dirtier clothes than I’ve ever worn before (and not getting cleaner any time soon) outdoor, squat toilets, host-family drama, loneliness, crazy marshrutka (bus) rides, greeting the morning with breath I can see and numerous other things that have now ceased to be novel and have become “normal”, and yet I am doing the most satisfying work I’ve ever done. I am one of the lucky ones in that regard. My community seems to really want me and I have been able to start programs that are wildly entertaining (at least to me) as well as educational. All that my town lacks is made up for in the people I’ve met and the things I want to do here in the future.

I didn’t join the Peace Corps with a great deal of idealism – I’ve spent too much time in the service sector to entertain ideas such as “changing the world” or “bringing world peace” but that doesn’t mean that change and peace aren’t possible in small doses.

So my New Year’s resolution isn’t to lose weight or eat healthy or exercise or any such thing. My resolution is for peace. Whatever that may mean, wherever I am, whomever I’m with, in whatever small or limited amount it comes. I don’t know if I’ll achieve it, but I’m going to try.