End of Summer Report

My long awaited vacation to New Zealand is over and I am now back to my little town in Azerbaijan. It was quite a shock to come back from winter to a scorching summer. Surprisingly the other way around didn’t seem to bother me as much. My trip went great and I got to do everything that I had my mind set to do: skiing, glacier hiking, bungy jumping, drinking beer, etc. It was a great time and I secretly hoped I would break something on the last day so I get to stay a little longer. Nonetheless the three weeks flew by and now I am a week into being back, still trying to get over how great civilization is.



I have been keeping myself busy the past two weeks in attempt to get over the civilization blues. Coming back did bring me one surprise in the fact that when I walked through my door I found a puppy in my yard. It was tiny, skinny, and balding due to malnutrition. Turns out my landlord picked it up from the street and would feed it with a few pieces of bread every morning which the poor thing wouldn’t eat. Of course Azeris hate dogs, so they never paid enough attention to notice that it was actually the chickens who took care of the few dried up pieces of bread. So now it is me who takes care of it, and am proud to report that little Kiwi (in commemoration of NZ) is growing new fur and in size. I wish I could say something to my landlord about the food situation, but I wouldn’t put it past them to throw her out on the street when they find out she is not eating. Doesn’t make sense I know, but in reality that’s all it would take. So now she keeps me company and hopefully soon enough will learn how to take care of the hoodlums bothering me on the streets. Here is a picture:



I also got the chance to go to training last week and meet the new group, all 52 of them. It looked like so many people, especially in comparison to us who have only 33 left (we were 47 when we started). They seemed like a nice bunch of kids, yet so inexperienced…”said grandma Ina, with all those skills under her belt.” It will be interesting how long it will take them to discover the reality of the situation. That sounds mean, and truth is if I can do it then anyone can. Either way it was nice to meet them and see who my new friends will be, especially since I had to delete half my phone numbers with the departure of the previous group. So this is it. I don’t have much energy to write more or make this witty and exciting due to the fact it is 95 degrees and I can’t think straight due to extreme sweating.
        (seems to be the theme this summer…)


PS. I tried to put up a lot more pictures but with each attempt the electricity went out...So this is all you get!