Happy Thanksgiving

I didn't really celebrate Thanksgiving this year.  When living in a foreign country there is a continual push and pull upon what you choose to keep and what you take a year off from.  If you decide to celebrate, the work is on you.  You aren't able to join up with someone else's holiday because that someone else doesn't have the same holiday.  During training last year we organized a big thanksgiving where we took over a family's kitchen, made a ton of food, and watching Aladdin.  This year I decided that Thanksgiving wasn't really a holiday I wanted to recreate and took a break from the holiday that begins a month long marathon of American stress and shopping.  With that said, there are certainly things I feel quite thankful for and I figured now would be a good time to share.

I'm thankful for my family and friends back home, and for the fact that I can so easily use Skype and email to connect with them.  I'm in the Peace Corps, yet I can still casually sign on and see my family on Thanksgiving morning.  I get to see the new puppies in people's lives and virtually tour new apartments.  I'm thankful that I do not have to worry about the state of a relationship after two years on hold but can continue building upon it.  And I'm thankful that my family and friends continue to do amazing and interesting and braggable things that I talk about with my friends in Azerbaijan every day.

I'm thankful for the friends I've made here in Azerbaijan.  I'm thankful for the fact that they are so incredibly concerned for my well-being and will frequently show up to lunch or school with a bag of fruit for me.  I'm thankful that I know people who want me to succeed and are willing to personally invest themselves to help ensure my projects success.  I'm thankful for those American friends I've made here that I already look forward to visiting in their home turf once we go back home.

I'm thankful I'm American.  This is a new one for me, I've always been glad but never explicitly thankful.  But I am this year.  I've consciously observed many things I never even thought to take for granted, yet are present only because of my being raised in America.  Thinking critically, speaking my mind freely and honestly, viewing life as a set of opportunities rather than a set of liitations.  These are not the mental thoughts of the average Azeri, but they are for the average American.  I'm thankful for the fact that I come from a country that is aspirational for most other people in the world and have the luxury to go back there upon finishing service.

I'm thankful for Khachmaz.  From the traveling I do in my teacher training I've visited a substantial number of cities around Azerbaijan, more than most volunteers, and I like Khachmaz more than every one of them.  I love that people smile in Khachmaz, that there are restaurants both men and women will go to, that free wifi is becoming a more and more commonly advertised.  I love that there is public art all over and that the city continues to spend money on beautifying itself.  I love that I can buy bacon here and that shop owners smile and say hello to me when I through their doors.

I'm thankful for my Khachmaz site mates, Glendene and Lannea, and my numerous North Finger site mates.  I didn't rate having site mates as being terribly important during my site interview, but Glendene and Lannea have been the best site mates I could ask for.  More like family than friends (though we are friends), these ladies are truly in the trenches with me understanding all the backstory to every anecdote and that they are as passionate as I am in their own projects.  The North Finger is the closest to Baku but the most isolated from everyone else, but we hardly care.  We know we're the best finger ever, throw the best parties, cook the best food, and have the least amount of drama.

There are many other things I'm thankful for  and, in an homage to album liner notes, here they are: twitter, sherlock holmes, 30 rock, the ipad, azerbaijani hip-hop, traveling, the weeknd, david bowie's 'station to station', goldfish crackers, running and drinkable water, wifi internet, Mom and Dad teaching 7 year old me the envelope system for budgeting, coffee, peroshgis, yoga, the Baku Hyatt, Jenni and Sierra, olive oil, risottos, my landlady, that I have 15 awesome people in my life who unhesitatingly said yes to an incredibly boat vacation in Turkey next year, prescription sunglasses, tutku cookies, kate carraway's columns, care packages, and Azerbajan's great cross-country bus system.