My summer school practicum ended and I survived. I discovered that I really hate teaching, and am glad that I never have to teach a whole class on my own. My future work in my region involves working with a counterpart where we get to plan together and co-teach rather than me busting my butt trying to figure it out myself. Also a lot of what I do will be outside the classroom, such as grant writing and English conversation clubs.
This week I also found out my site, went to visit it, met my new host family, and most importantly saw my future place of work. The town itself is called Barde, its really small, but has and ATM, internet, and yellow cheese (which is usually hard to find). The city itself has a good water supply but on the negative has horrible electricity which shows during the winter where its on for only a few hours a day. The weather is really hot in the summer (40C; 100F) and mild in the winter (0C; 32F) with only a few snowstorms. Barde is 4-5 hours away from Baku and close to lots of other good locations such as a lake and Ganja which is the second biggest city. My new host family is really nice too; I have the second floor of their house to myself which includes a bedroom and a small living room. The bathroom and toilet are outside in a separate building, and the toilet is not a poo hole but the real sit down kind (so happy!). Needless to say there is no heating in the house just like most places and in the winter I will be freezing my ass off!
Now about my school…When I walked through the gate of the yard I saw the saddest picture of my life and remembered why I joined the Peace Corps. The school itself has two large buildings, a gym, and a huge yard. Sounds nice! Now imagine a lot of trash everywhere, almost every window being broken, and little room for classes due to the fact most of the rooms are occupied by IDPs (internally displaced persons). For those of you who don’t know Azerbaijan’s territory of Nagorno-Karabakh has been occupied by Armenia for nearly a decade. Only a few miles form my city there are trenches, landmines, and soldiers like at any war zones. There has been a ceasefire for a number of years but that hasn’t helped the number of IDPs and refugees who have not been able to return home and have lived in camps for nearly 12 years. The story of the conflict is really tragic and I won’t get into it or else this will turn into a book. Anyway, about 70 IDP families live in the school. They have created rooms in old classrooms and surrounded other areas of the school with wood panels for additional living quarters. Classes are held in a few rooms that are left for the students as well as tin trailers outside the school. The situation has been such as this for the past 10 years and the school is in dire need of refurbishment. I won’t even get into the fact that a new school was built just down the street from mine, and government buildings sprawl up every second in the surrounding regions…
So just like you I am trying to imagine my life for the next two years and I don’t know what to expect. I am nervous about working in the school mostly because I am sure that as an American there is a lot expected from me. I also have to figure out how to deal with boredom because there really is NOTHING to do in the city….But my spirits are not down and I am looking forward to learning 2 languages (my school has a Russian and an Azeri shift), and doing the best I can to make improvements in my school.
(The picture of me is taking a nap in front of Maiden Tower, which is a monument in Baku which dates to some time BC. I was obviously preparing for a night of partying. Unlike the rest of the country Baku is like any western European city. The contrast is quite striking and bothersome at the same time)
