How to become an expert in 4 days

For those who are especially fascinated by my posts, you may have found yourself going through inexplicable withdrawal symptoms last week.  I'll save you the trouble of pondering why: it was because I didn't write.  Sorry, it won't happen again (note: it will happen again).

The reason for this is I was welcoming the new trainees to Azerbaijan.  Peace Corps looked at my experience and realized that I would be a perfect person to hold welcome signs, teach how to work Azerbaijani air-conditioners, and give detailed presentations on the nuances of the squat toilet.  So I, and three other volunteers, headed down to Baku last weekend to help bleary eyed Americans from the airport to their temporary hotel home, before departing for their first home family.

Welcome Week is great and helping with it is highly sought after amongst volunteers.  You're the first to scope out the trainees and get to be the incredibly cool people who have magically survived a first year in this strange and scary new world.  They don't yet know that your language isn't actually that great and they certainly haven't yet heard your primal scream of frustration during your service.  You're just some happy dude who isn't jetlagged and makes good conversation.  Thus, you're the person they want to talk to most.

I remember being in awe of our Welcome Week members.  They were so casual about the fact that they were living in this country that was so foreign and dirty and loud.  It was validation that through all the bs we might be going through, it was feasible that we could one day approach normalcy.  And now, here I am giving the ins and out of alcohol etiquette and community development work as if I have all the answers.  Which to them, of course, I do.  I guess this is the true path to becoming an expert; its not about achieving a certain level of experience, rather its finding a group of people with a certain lack of experience.  In four days I was transformed from typical volunteer to super, knowledgable, volunteer-god.

But now I'm back at site and back to status as a normal moderately knowledgable volunteer.  Once school began things went a little quiet, the sound of students returning to their studies.  There was one big highlight though, we had our first Teacher Training in Khachmaz and it was a huge success.  30 teachers showed up and we used a new lesson plan that seemed to be very well received by teachers.  At the end of the training we asked what techniques they planned on using and teachers named numerous different activities we demoed.  Inshallah this will serve as a model for future trainings we'll be putting together in Khachmaz.