The day we Nuş-ed!

I came up to Zaqatala with some friends and a super awesome competition ensued. 30 minute watermelon eating contest!
Once we arrived at Jessica's we figured out all of the rules:

• One 8 kilo (17.6lbs) watermelon
• One spoon
• 30 minutes
• All liquid must be drunk
• Seed spitting is okay

We left Jessica's and headed out to buy said watermelons but we could not find anybody nearby. Fortunately we live in Azerbaijan, so when we saw a car drive by full of watermelons we flagged him down and bought them right there in the middle of the street. All measured we headed up to the school where we planned to compete. Upon looking at the school we decided that the curb on the side of the street would be better...so we did.

Since I was involved there was trash talking. The best part was that all of the people who passed us were really cool about it. We were told "Nuş Olsun" (Bon Apetit) many times and the laughing was with us not at us. Great day for joint PCV and HCN(Host Country National) fun times!
Note this second video has a bit more pain in all of our eyes.

By the end a winner was determined, here are the results:
6th Place: Clarissa - 1.1 kilos (2.4lbs)
5th Place: Jade - 1.5 kilos (3.3lbs)
4th Place: ME - 1.7 kilos (3.7lbs)
2nd Place: John - 2 kilos (4.4lbs)
2nd Place: Sean - 2 kilos (4.4lbs)
1st Place: Stephanie - 2.1 kilos (4.6lbs)

Stephanie is a beast. If you look in the second video she doesn't even look like it's killing her. Who knew? It was totally worth it even though for the next hour we all had to lay down to prevent the watermelon from returning. As we were all in different states of horizontal-ness we were discussing Ramadan. Many Azerbaijanis are following this year (no eating and drinking for most of the day) and some PCV's too. Stephanie being the intelligent one realized that we sat on a street eating a watermelon in front of everyone. We all immediately felt like idiots. Luckily up north things are not so conservative so we are in a general consensus that it was not too offensive. Plus with the inability to eat and drink, walking about in this heat would not be so probable thus hopefully these people would not have seen us. All in all, good day in Zaqatala.