School's out for summer

Well it's been out for a while actually. As I have been pretty inactive lately and I know you all wait with bating breath for my updates, haha, here's a big ol' fatty one.

School ended on May 31st with Son Zəng, which is final bell aka Graduation. It's very nostalgic with poems songs and heart tearing words about not wanting to hear the final bell. Then the graduates meet with 1st graders and trade gifts. For the graduates, flower arrangements and for the 1st graders, larger than life teddy bears and backpacks full of school supplies. Through a few more poems and speeches final bell is rung, the graduates celebrate and a hilarious dance party ensues. I personally spent the entire ceremony hiding behind my younger students. I really did not want to have to give a speech, I figure I have next year to do that. I was also laughing at all of my students who were hiding from their home room teachers because they did not want to stand in their appropriate sections. Personal favorite was the graduate who became bored, left the ceremony and returned eating an ice cream. Brilliant.

Right after the ceremony I hopped on the bus to Ləkit and spent the rest of the night celebrating Uzal's graduation. Good times that day, He was absolutely beaming. Jason gifted him a guitar and I walked into his house to him strumming along in his room. He called me in his room to show me something. It was hilarious. He has a whole box of silk worms and he started explaining to me how to feed them leaves and then they make silk which you can sell to make clothing. This is one thing I love about learning Azerbaijani. Since my language level is blatantly not fluent everyone seems to think that I need everything spelled out for me. I love it, so much. Great conversations in Azerbaijan. It's not condescending, so I just have a great time with simple conversations about silk worms or more detailed conversations all ending up with stating the obvious. If there's one thing I can do, it's state the obvious.

Next morning I headed into Baku. My friend Münevver gave Jason a pill for his stomach which was a little strong because he passed out. Not before he caught some sweet air as the bus hit a bump at a pretty good speed, he woke up hovering in mid air. I love traveling here. hDad says that anytime I'm on a bus something goes wrong, you know what? He's right. About 30 minutes outside of Baku the bus broke down. We waited about for a little over an hour while all the men folk messed around with the engine. Whatever they did worked well enough because we made it there! More about traveling, after Baku I headed down south to another PCV's(Clarissa) region, Neftçala (Oil Pit). I helped out at the Sports Week for their Summer Camp. I haven't quite left Qax in some time so it was fun to be hanging out with other PCV's. I made some cool friends with Clarissa's camp kids. They all enjoyed my party trick pants. Pretty much my mom sent me some fancy pants which are waterproof which apparently means that they are also air proof. So when I go from a standing position to a squatting position the air is forced out a small area at my knee and creates a brilliant farting noise. Classy. Whenever we got bored I'd just do a stand squat dance and see how many different sounds my pants could make. Of the campers Elnur in particular was my favorite as we traded friendship bracelets. We even pretended to be rappers. I'm Eminem and he's 50 dollars (he's too awesome to be worth a mere 50 cents). This guy was really cool. Clarissa's hFam is wonderful and her hMom is so intelligent. I could listen to her talk all day. All in all Oil Pit has some great people and is not so bad...just hot.

From this camp I headed a bit further south to Lənkəran. Eli lives near the Caspian Sea so we caught a little bit of the sea breeze as we journeyed about. Ate some pretty good food and spent more time with yet again some people I haven't seen in a while. It was great fun and then I hopped on another 8 hour bus to Mingəçevir. It stopped 2 times for a few minutes so the driver could check on something aka it broke just a little. When I told hDad I'm told him it broke, I can't translate aka yet. Well I can translate therefore which I did but he still agreed that I broke it. In Ming I went to the softball game. That was so much fun. Some PCV's have been creating or upholding softball teams in their regions. So a few regions came to represent and after the games there was another game with the volunteers and the remaining Ming players. I made a nemesis in this game. His name is Elvin but in my heart he will always be #3. Beca and I were co-base coaches in a region game and I spent my time trying to distract him, aka I cheated my butt off. You know, teh second someone hits a ball I try to get him to look at a myriad of made up objects I spot in the sky. I also made a little sing-song, it's jsut me singing number 3 in as many different voices as possible. When it came time for the volunteer game I made sure I was on his opposing team. He may have had some pretty wicked home runs, but when I made it to first base on my measly hit I had an even more wicked victory dance. He's my nemesis.

Final travels included being about 5 minutes late to catch a Qax bus and heading up to Zagatala for some good food with Löki and Jessica. The bus to Zaq didn't break down but it was only 3 hours or so, the other ones were longer. I made it back to Qax safe and sound after about 2 weeks of Baku, camp and softball. Qax is still here and it's amazing how home sick I was for this place. Now it's time to get in gear and get some projects I've been thinking about up and going. Slow and steady out here but you bet I will be drinking a lot of tea and trying to make these things come to fruition. Here we go!