Qax Düşərgə 2010!!!

Gakh Summer Camp 2010 was a lot of fun. I had help from about 10 other PCV's who came out to help me blow these kids minds away with summer camp fun! It was at the end of August for 6 days from 9a-1p at the Kids Sports Stadium in Gakh. The days went as follows:

Monday - Welcome Day: loads of games
Tuesday - Sports Day: Capture the Flag, Kickball, Soccer and Volleyball
Wednesday - Hiking Day: Group hike to Qum (the closest village)
Thursday - Theatre Day: Theatre Games, Sock Puppets, etc
Friday - Surprise Day: Water balloons, egg drops and dancing
Saturday - Carnival Day: Think 5th grade Field Day

First off we played games...lots of games. Here the kids took my grossly over-sized clothing (2-3 sizes) and relay raced in teams across the field. It was hilarious. The clothing was bright and fun which made the kids excited and made the Americans laugh even harder when the kids thought they were clown clothes. Thank you Target PJ's!
Then we played Red Light Green Light, Simon Says, What time is it Mr Fox?, Sharks and Minnows, and many other classics. Here are the kids waiting for the green light to come.

So much happiness up front - that's because she made it. However in the back those girls were a bit terrified. This game was taken way too seriously.
Now they're asking permission to advance. Aren't they adooooooooorable?Now we can see Stephanie overseeing Mr Fox himself. The kids cheat so much we had to have at least one judge to keep every player honest. I love the looks on their faces when you catch them and they're deciding whether or not to argue. Last up, Ninja! I love this game. Everyone gathers in a circle and one by one you get a chance to karate chop another players hand (you can move if you're being attacked). It's a very quick and intense game beause people can be coming at you from all sides. Here you can see the Qax Star (ME!) and Romiko battle it out for the win! If I remember correctly, he kicked my butt.

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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.

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I broke a rule

All around Qax there are ditches allowing the water from the mountains to flow cleanly through the city without me having to step in the water. For these ditches Jason gave me a rule with two options.
#1 - If I'm going to fall in the water road thingy he must be present.
#2 - If I can't make number one happen, I need to push an ogling boy into it.

Well my friends Friday night neither of these two situations occurred, thus I broke the rule. I was over at Nona's and we were chatting our lives up and doing push-ups and crunches for quite a few hours. The sun had set and I needed to do some laundry so I said goodbye and headed home. Very few people were on the street and the w eather was perfect for my little stroll. The arc of my right foot was already aching. I had dropped a freakishly heavy glass artificial maple flavor on my foot earlier in the day. Thanks Alicia. By this time a nice big bump and a bruise is already showing so the only shoes I could wear were my flip flops. I'm down the hill and can see my door from the road so I decide to cut across a road to make a diagonal. You know the shortest distance between to points is a straight line, I paid attention in 6th grade. Unfortunately I did not pay attention to my dad's many warning to pay attention where I was going. I cut across and as opposed to walking in a parallel direction with the water ditch I am now nearly perpendicular to it and rapidly approaching it. Unsuspecting of my impending doom I walk freely and my right foot plunges in scraping my shin fairly deeply about 3-4 inches as my left foot plunges right on down to the knee scraping mildly. My flip flopped feet are now in the water as my toes cling to t he strap while I am doing everything in my power not to scream out in pain. I lift myself out of this stupid water road thingy and limp to my door whimpering and telling myself not to look down knowing I'll freak out if I see how bad it is. As I'm limping I'm remembering again how grateful I am not to be living so far down the hill and I open my gate. Standing with my legs under the cold running water I get the soap and clean out my battle wound, It's a battle I'm in a form of US Corps in a foreign country and I'm claiming this. It's pretty deep and even though I still can't walk 2 days later it's slowly healing. BTW thanks to Ruth for my extra little medical kit, totally helped! This is why you should always listen to your dad and follow Jason's rules, also this is why I now have a new nemesis. These are my battle wounds immediately after cleaning the gravel out.

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