Çiraq Gala

We invited our students to go on an excursion out of the city. We visited some old fortress ruins which we had to hike to get to. The bus ride was fun, talking with students and playing road trip games like 21 Questions. At the ruins I was in a small group that got lost [...]

Out with friends

After getting back from Tbilisi, I stayed home and mostly in bed for the next week. I watched a lot of DVDs and did some reading. It was kinda slow getting better, but I am again feeling normal. Now it is back to teaching classes, tutoring, doing finances and now I am [...]

Tbilisi

We have two weeks off of teaching, kind of like a spring break because of a local holiday called Novruz.  Even though I’m sick, I wanted to take advantage some time off and get out of town for a few days.  So a couple friends and I hopped on a train and headed [...]

Women’s Day

So Sunday was International Women’s Day. My Thursday morning guy students brought a cake to class to celebrate and we had a little party in class. It’s a pretty big holiday here and even the university guys get presents for the girls in their class group. The school got a rose for [...]

Painting

My roommate likes to sketch and paint.  She has worked on a couple really good ones since I’ve been here.  Anyway, she was painting tonight and asked if I wanted to paint too.  I can make jewelry and beaded flowers just fine, but freehand stuff is not my gifting.  That said I’m actually pretty impressed [...]

Rain

So, apparently it rained last night.  I got up this morning, got ready and headed out.  I got down to the entrance of our apartment building and turned around and headed back to upstairs.  When my roommate opened the door she smiled and asked what I forgot.  I told her that it was flooded outside [...]

California Trip!

After almost four months of living in Baku, Azerbaijan. I had an opportunity to visit California on a whirlwind vacation of visiting people and participating in weddings. On Thursday, June 8th I traveled the two flights of sixteen total hours in the air and arrived in San Francisco in the afternoon. [...]

Hat

A few of my students helped me shop for a hat so that I would be prepared for winter.  So, we took a nice 30-40 minute metro ride to get to one of the bazars and looked at  a number of little shops and finally I found one that I like more than the others.  [...]

Charleston

So, Monday we had parties celebrating the end of the term.  Those students who passed were given certificates and we had food and games and Charleston lessons taught by me.  We had three parties and since some of the groups were pretty big we split them and had them rotate through stuff, so I taught [...]

Snow!!!

It was raining pretty good on my way home Sunday evening, which is when I discovered that my boots leak.  But, when I woke up Monday morning I discovered that it had snowed overnight!  It wasn’t a lot of snow, but to this beach girl it doesn’t matter.  I was so excited that I took [...]