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i heart alt teachrz

One of the unnecessary items I granted myself permission to bring to Azerbaijan was a graduate semester's worth of teaching textbooks to dive into while serving here. I knew I was going into a program that had a 'train the trainer' element and I wanted to take opportunity of isolation to further research alternative knowledge transference methods. Little did I know that I would be getting a second semester worth of textbooks upon arriving. Some of them are pretty badass.

If you teach or facilitate any sort of training you may want to check these two resource out. Though primarily aimed at teachers of a foreign language I can see immediate use in other avenues for each, especially in helping you reach multiple learning styles (such as kinesthetic and auditory, rather than just visual).

Chalk Talks by Nomra Shapiro and Carol Genser. Chalk Talks showcases effective symbol use (very simple chalk drawings) to compliment foreign language learning. Its divided into three main parts. The first gives an excellent explanation of the premise of relying on symbols rather than translation. The second part provides over 30 sample lessons doing just this. And the third part is a dictionary of over 500 easy to copy symbols to incorporate into your lessons. I immediately loved this book and plan on purchasing my own copy once I am forced to return it. Heavily relying on chalk-drawings (and charades) I have been able to almost completely eliminate my need for Azeri translation in vocabulary.

Five-Minute Activities by Penny Ur and Andrew Wright. 5MA is a resource book for quick review activities or motivating starters to get a classroom actively engaged with material as opposed to simple recitation. They require very little setup, time commitment, and presumed knowledge and can be adopted for a variety of levels. Simply knowing a few off hand is an instant lesson plan and a big confidence booster. Again, this book is aimed at foreign language leaning, but most activities can be easily adopted for other subject usage. I find myself flipping through it before I begin lesson planning as they are great (and fun) ways to begin class, and thus begin presenting material.

Josh Ehrenreich, the Azeri

Just got my first haircut in Azerbaijan. There seems to be pretty much only one hairstyle, certainly at this point in my language skills. If you're curious what Azeri men look like, its basically this with less cool specs (also I'm smiling).

Glimpses of adulthood

Its gone around that Azerbaijan is part of the Posh Corps. We're not sleeping outside in mosquito nets or having to dig our own latrines, but instead get to sleep inside on beds where our feet can hang off and squat over holes. For some reason, some volunteers in struggle with this feeling they're not getting the full Peace Corps experience. I have none of these concerns and feel more than blessed to have running water and electricity. One gets a pretty legit experience simply from living in a developing country, speed learning a language, and trying to work with youth and adults who speak little to no English.

Instead of having to adapt to a completely different way to exist within the natural world, the biggest adaptation required has been back to a lack of independence. We have been, accurately, described to the families that host us as incapable of doing what they might think are the most basic tasks. Cooking our own food, washing our own clothes, etc. Now this is only partly true. It is not that we are incapable of accomplishing these items, only that we are not versed in the Azerbaijani style of doing it. Thus we trainees recess to the capability of a child in this environment remembering with nostalgia and angst our time in the US, as an adult.

The food has been a mixed blessing. Azerbaijan natively grows a massive variety of foods, yet the day-to-day cuisine is startlingly limited and swimming in oil. However, this past week offered a glimpse of future salvation. On Monday we all left for Site Visits and I got to stay with a Volunteer who lived on her own, transforming into an independent adult again. The site visit was awesome in every way, but most exceptional was the ability to cook again. The three of us (myself, the volunteer, and another trainee) were all cooks and eaters. The following is what we ate. All the ingredients were fresh and local. Prepare to drool.

Monday lunch: Eggplant and tomato pasta

Monday dinner: Deep dish pizza with homemade tomato sauce, gouda, peppers, eggplant, and onion

Tuesday breakfast: homemade granola and milk

Tuesday dinner: leftover pasta and pizza, zucchini fritters, gouda apple flatbread sandwiches

Wednesday breakfast: homemade granola and milk

Wednesday lunch: chocolate pomegranate pancakes

Wednesday dinner: fried green tomatoes, twice baked potatoes, beans, homemade salsa, homemade pita chips

Total cost: 28 manat (about 35 bucks), cost per person: about 9 manatee.

When in doubt, add a -dir

The Azerbaijani language is a language of suffixes. When you conjugate a verb, you add a suffix; when you demonstrate location, you add a suffix; when you make something plural, or possessive, or negative, you add a suffix. This can lead to some unwieldy word creation for the novice speaker and a scrabble player's wet dream. For example, the root word for behind is 'arxa' but if you were to use this word in the sentence 'the chair is behind the desk' the word becomes 'arxasindadir' which is a full 3x, or eight letters, longer than the original. Sweet.

This is a pain when writing, but especially annoying when you're speaking, and forced to create this new word on the spot. As a mnemonic device, my language group has come up with the rule 'when in doubt add -dir' which works with surprising accuracy. -Dir is the suffix you add to a word with an i, e, or upside down e to give the statement an 'is' in the third person (he is going to the store). When we've made a statement and our teacher is waiting on us as if we didn't make a statement (because we didn't..) we've found that adding a -dir to what we said gets it right about 100% of the time.

Last Sunday in Sumqayit

I kidnapped a friend's SLR and took some pics.

Check them out here

Music 'from' Azerbaijan

I don't really have the luxury of downloading, let alone learning about, new music in Azerbaijan, so most of my music listening has been based on what I already have. Since I don't really have anything interesting to blog at this moment I decided to post a text podcast of what I've been listening to.

The-Dream-F.I.L.A. - quickly becoming one my favorite song of the year.

Katy Perry-Teenage Dream - a little slice of America so far away

The Refreshments-Girly - a total throwback to '96 from a total one hit wonder band

Bowie-Black Country Rock - Every podcast, audio or no audio, has got to have a lil' bowie

Robyn ft/Snoop Dog-U Should Know Better - Robyn featuring Snoop Dog! And he kills it.

Kanye West ft/Kid Cudi, Pusha T, John Legend, etc-Christian Dior Denim Flow - I am so excited that Kanye is doing all this work with Pusha T. He's got mad talent.

HEALTH-USA Boys - Super great noise dance pop. Get their Disco 2 compilation

Caribou-Eli - and some great psychedelia to round it out.

What's good US? Tell me what I should be listening to. Even better, email/snail mail me the music.

Photos!

Hey everyone, I know that many of you have been asking for photos and here they are. Most of these were taken by me, some were taken by my very talented friend, and fellow trainee, Allison Breed (appropriately marked). All were edited by me. Either way, they're pretty rockin'-check them out here:

Photos of Sumgayat

Meeting the Host Family

There have been few weirder moments in my life than the one I enjoyed on Tuesday afternoon, when I met my host family. During orientation, the host family was a main topic of conversation, and it seemed each session that focused on it seemed to make everyone more anxious. Every person wanted to know exactly what it would be like and unsurprisingly the Volunteers and Staff weren't able to give specific answers. The learning was the easy part, the controllable, but the host family would involve the very important uncontrollables; what we ate, how we cleaned, how we went to the bathroom, whom we would interact with.

A fellow trainee, Gio, put it best when he exclaimed "I just want to get in there, fuck up, and get over it." It was the most reasonable statement I had heard regarding meeting the host family the entire orientation. Of course it was going to be awkward, and of course there would be nothing we could do, short of being born Azerbaijani, to prevent it from being so. We were going to mess up and make embarrassing mistakes. This was such a certainty that the Peace Corps actually holds orientation sessions with the Host Family to prep them for the amount of mistakes we would make and the cultural differences they would observe. And we would get over it.

The first person on our bus to meet their Host Family was a young man named Kevin. He was told by his LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator) "Kevin, this is your Host Mother and brother." Kevin exclaimed "I have a little brother!" and immediately introduced himself and asked his name. We watched his little brother beam as he obviously bragged to his friends about Kevin while he was unloading his bags. It was one of the most adorable things I've seen. Suddenly all the anxiety building during the Orientation sessions melted away. And this scene happened again and again and again as siblings came to pick up trainees.

My first introduction to my Host Mother was just like every other trainees'. Accompanied by extremely stuttered greeting statements and lots and lots of gestures. I said I was hungry even though I was completely full, I just didn't know how to say I wasn't-and its not like I had anything better to do. The Peace Corps prepped us with days of language training which basically gave me the capability to communicate in broken Azerbaijani a few phrases and the ability to say I want to eat, sleep, or wash. It shocks me how much they nailed it. I've made a ton of mistakes, but I'm also working more intensively, and progressing more rapidly, then any other point in my life.

The Division between Public and Private:

During orientation, we heard a lot about gender roles and content prepping us for a situation quite different from the US. For example, there are teahouses in Azerbaijan for men to go and drink tea, talk and gossip, and smoke. Only men can go to these, women are not invited nor allowed.

At first I assumed this was an example of patriarchy at work again, but I believe it is something different. In Azerbaijan, there is a very distinct division between the public and the private. In the US, we tend to privilege the public-restricting someone's rights to participate in the public eye is to restrict their individual freedom. The public has more acreage, therefore it is primary. In Azerbaijan, the public and private seem to be weighted equally, with women receiving privilege in the private and men receiving privilege in the public.

As a man, I cannot simply go to someone's house to study or enjoy an afternoon. Usually we have to involve an LCF to translate our request to the Host Family. However, my friend Carrie can go to any of her friends' houses with no warning. Another example was at a family member's birthday party I recently went to. The men and women stayed in separate rooms the entire time. The men's room was sparsely furnished, eating off a communal platter, on older furniture. However, as a guest I was invited to eat with the women during dinner. They were in the formal dining room, eating on fine china, on luxurious dining chairs.

I'm not sure if my assessment is completely accurate on this, but my observations so far have continued to confirm this idea. I'm also not saying that this results in equal opportunity, but it has been a very interesting and useful lens for me to view through.