Thumbs Up

Apparently, I’m doing well.  I mean, I could have told you that things are fine, but in the grand scheme of things, the Peace Corps has decided that I’m doing just fine.  Or at least that’s the impression I got after one of my supervisors came to my site and checked out what my situation is over here.

My boss came to Ujar as week for a look-see into how I’m doing as a volunteer.  It was an evaluative check in, but more of a ‘is there anything you need to get started’ kind of visit.  She met with the director of my school, with my host family, and with Rasmiyya and Ulduz, the teachers that I co-teach with.

She mentioned this, and I think it’s true, but I really am lucky with what I have here in Ujar (or poojar, as I like to say).  A lot of people are struggling with unsupportive counterparts who don’t want anything to do with modernity, or dealing with bossy directors who are only interested in how much money we’ve brought with us (zilch, by the way).  Instead, everyone is supportive of me, and I haven’t had anyone stand in my way and tell me that I need to slow down or anything like that, because the people at school generally supports what I’m doing.  I would have a much different outlook on things if I had these sorts of issues to deal with everyday.

For example, some volunteers complain that they never get a chance to really teach.  In reality, we are assistants and the teacher can choose to utilize us as much as he or she likes.  Some people come in everyday but they don’t get to teach the students because their counterpart is stuck in their ways, and don’t want to share the stage.  Or maybe their afraid of looking like they can’t really speak English.  There are a lot of different possibilities.

I, if anything, have the opposite problem.  I teach too much.  My ideal would be a seamless lesson where be are both involved in how the day is taught because the idea behind our lesson was mutually created.  But now, I write all the lesson plans, and teach most of the time, I think because my counterparts are curious to see how I do it.  They tell me that my style of teaching is so completely different from what they’ve seen that they don’t really know what to do with it.  They do like it though.

So as I teach my classes, I also want to be showing them how I do it.  I’m not gonna be here forever (27 22 Months in Azerbaijan), so I need to show them how to write lesson plans and make interactive lessons themselves, so that their classes will be better then they were before I came.

And according to Peace Corps, I’m on my way to doing just that.

This just happened

I don’t mean to be alarming, and there really is no reason to be concerned, but here’s a link to a pretty serious news article.

Everything is fine here, and is back to normal.

The Pilgram

My host dad, who I usually call Narman the cameraman, has recenty returned from Iran.  I don’t have the language capacity to figure out exactly what he was doing, but from what I gather, he went on a pilgramage to a mosque in Iran, and came back to a big crowd congratulating him on his journey.

The day before he came back, I walked across the yard to my room to see a sheep tied up to a tree.  The plan was that as soon as Narman got back, he was going to sacrifice the lamb and we would all feast.  I have heard stories from other volunteers about sheep-sacrifices at their host families, and I wanted no part of it, so I got the hell out of there and went to my friends house.

Upon my return, they had killed the sheep and there were about 20 people at our house all chatting it up and eating some pretty fresh meat.  As people entered, they embraced him and said ‘May God accept your sacrifice’ (obviously, they said it in Azeri, but i can’t remember what it was). 

Anyway, this was all a few weeks ago, and things have calmed down, but everyone keeps refering to him as The Pilgram.  When I asked my host mom what time where the screwdriver was, she said, “I don’t know, ask The Pilgram.”  I wonder how long this is gonna last.

My Address

It’s November.  Hard to believe that time has gone by so quickly.  I’m about six weeks into my time as a volunteer.  Such a period of time has allowed me to actually do enough things to where I can analyze them and try to figure out if they were any good or not.  It’s somewhat worthless to say, but I’m giving my performance thus far a ‘mixed-bag’ review.  Without trying to toot my own horn, I think I’m far and away the most advanced English teacher at my school.  But this is no suprise.  I came into this school year with the idea that that would be the case.  The real challange, isn’t whether or not I can be better than the other teachers, but if I can be as good as I can be.

To remind myself of what I need to be doing, I’ve written up a workplan for November and December, and will post it on the blog so there can be an understanding of what it is that I’m doing.  I’ll do that soon.

And, as the holiday season approaches, I thought I’d include my address, as I’m sure everyone is just bursting at the seams to send me a lovely package with anything America in it.  I can’t give you the address of my actual house, but I will put that address of the local post office on here.  It’s annoying to describe the letters that you have to write, so I took a picture and have posted it here.

It takes about ten days for packages to arrive from Oregon.  Amazingly fast, really.

And in another side note, I’ll be going to my friends site this weekend to help her with America Day at her school.  I know it sounds imperialistic, but it’s all about Halloween.  I’ll be doing my best Clint Eastwood impression.