Next Post is Positive, I Promise

February is generally acknowledged among the Peace Corps Volunteers here as the worst month. You're past the newness of site an job and wallowing around in the thick of it, with every problem abjectly staring you in the face. Its also the worst month of winter and the month with the least amount of available fruits and veggies. Plus, you've been living with a host family for 6 months at that point.

This past week seemed a reprise of February and it hit me like a ton of bricks. it came out of nowhere and I'm still figuring out what happened in hopes of effectively dealing with it. Everything should be good now. I'm in my own place (with fully functional plumbing), I'm starting to get a bit more familiar with the Azeri language, summer is practically here. And yet, last week was one of the most emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausting weeks I've had. Each morning I forcibly dragged my body out of bed and for a couple days I couldn't even get that far. Nothing remotely like this ever happened in America.

At this point in the school year, school is over. The problem is that every one still goes (except for the smart students who realize that its over). It is mind-numbingly boring, nodding off in class boring, finding yourself staring out the window into nowhere boring. All the review that I've been encouraging my teachers to do throughout the year is compressed into this week. But there is no review, simply reciting multiple choice tests which have answers already circled.

Furthermore, my plans for summer are being very closely watched and tracked. There have been no 'nos' yet, but it has been a lengthy process navigating a series of obstacles that seem to spring up at each turn. Annoyingly enough this is just to get permission to use a classroom in the already open and used school for conversation clubs that students and administrators are incessantly clamoring for, while at the same time impeding.

This whole process of inaction exemplifies the paranoia and victimization that is ever present in Azerbaijan. Coming from a country worshipping the idea of 'picking yourself up by your own bootstraps' this country's pervading feeling of 'everyone is out to get me' is draining. Many times I want to shake the person and yell 'so how are you going to work to improve it?' If Azerbaijan was a person, I would probably not be its friend. In fact, I can think of people I know like this, and I'm not their friend.

Rationally, there are a lot of things I need to keep in mind. The week before summer is like the day before Christmas-the closer it gets the worse the week is. Its also true that initiating things here is always brutal, but the actual doing is usually really fun. And I've basically got a few months coming up dedicated towards traveling around the country with a visit to America thrown in.