2008!

I haven’t written in a while mostly because nothing has been happening and it seems that I have run out of things to complain about. Who would have thought! I am currently enjoying the last day of my winter vacation, which flew by way too fast. It was an eventful one and it started with me running a session at AZ5’s in-service training. Those of you who know me well, know that public speaking is not one of my strengths and in fact I hate it more than greasy men staring at me! I had to talk about environmental issues in Azerbaijan, what’s been done in the past, and give general tips on how to implement environmental projects. I was there as a representative of the Environmental Committee, and the least scared member of talking in public. What a great bunch we are! Even though over prepared, I was dreading speaking to the group. About fifteen people signed up for the session and as soon as my time to speak came my voice started trembling, my hands started to shake and I wanted to run away and cry. There were moments where my voice would literally shut off, and I would have to take a deep breath and continue with my mumbling. Needless to say my face was tingling meaning that I was bright red for everyone to see how terrified I was and the one thing that made me feel better was the fact that I had forewarned everyone about my inability to public speak. Eventually the session turned into a discussion on why Azeris choose to disregard their communities’ cleanliness, and I even had to cut it short in order to cover everything I wanted to. That’s the last time I ever speak in public, EVER!

Immediately following that disaster, I left the country for Bulgaria where I was to spend three days. As I had imagined the time was barely enough to say hello to family and friends before I had to return to Azer land. My time was spent running around here and there, attempting to do some shopping, spend time with loved ones, and devour everything in site. I ate something delicious about every 2 hours which resulted in me barely being able to button my jeans. I couldn’t help it; there are just so many tasty things there! I am mostly bummed about the fact that I didn’t get to go skiing. The weather was cold and snowy and I can only imagine how perfect the powder in the mountains was. Looks like I’m going to skip this season, and hope that my career as a ski bum takes off next year.

So I left snowy Bulgaria and came back to Azerbaijan, where the weather turned into what I had just come back from. As soon as I got back to Barda it started snowing and the temperature dropped significantly. For the first time my stove was unable to heat my house and I was cold in my -20 degree sleeping bag. Yesterday I woke up to frozen pipes in my kitchen, and a burst pipe in my hamam (bathroom). Thankfully now that I share the hamam the pipe will be taken care of, but there is really nothing I can do about my kitchen and have to work with the one running faucet in the bathroom. Fortunately I had showered the day before, which makes me way luckier than my site mates who were all looking forward to a hot shower that day (they had pipe troubles as well). My situation is still not that bad since there are volunteers who are in higher regions and have been snowed in and without water for days. This is it for now. Hooray for 2008; the year in which Ina gets liberated!