Ways to Avoid Strangling A Child

I woke up on Sunday expecting one of the worst days of service.  Not worst in a my plumbing broke and landlady and neighbors beneath are yelling at me sort of way.  Or worst in a cold and dark February morning, making my 45 minute walk to school through a city wide 3" semi-frozen puddle sort of way.  No, this was the sort of worst that involves 10 teenage boys, a cramped, uncomfortable minibus with an unnecessarily loud stereo, and 9 hours of driving in one day to play three hours of baseball.

Waking up at 5am, my adrenaline started to dip right around the time we walked out the door to catch our 6am hired bus.  Normally when people wake up super early to travel there is a hope of passing out once you've settled into your seat.  Normally people aren't sitting for 5 hours on a minibus, which have been meticulously designed to avoid any sort of lower back support.

But the rewards of escape were too much to avoid.  I willed myself to ignore the cross conversation, shouted in each ear by two coaches enough concerned about carsickness to ask me to take the middle, but not enough to nurse themselves in any sort of silent discomfort.  Between the a solid world of consciousness and a liquid world of dreamland bliss, my sleep was an unfilling jello.

Azeris like their music loud, because its not worth listening to unless it causes damage to your ears.  The shouted conversations weren't just over the roar of the road, but over the piercing Turkish techno, Azeri mugam, and traditional folk songs.  Soon, cheers erupted from the children.  We learned this was due to the driver having one of their favorite songs to shout at the top of their lungs.  And we learned that it was a favorite drinking song, celebrating being blackout drunk.  Towards the end of the trip we also learned the chorus as the song was cumulatively played 10% of our travel time.  For the last the couple hours I ignored all questions directed towards me, silently fantasizing about ways to bring about an end to this that would involve flames, and crying, and broken radios.

And we finally got to Kurdimir.  And despite my best effort my mood wasn't able to stay sour standing in the luxury of full posture in the sunshine.  Friends showed the appropriate amount of incredulousness that we actually drove all the way from Khachmaz.  And our kids magically transformed from maniacs to really fun kids, simply by removing the presence of a cramped van.

And they played well.  Our catcher finally had his first out at home plate, and our pitcher's glove hand had a painful badge of honor from two insane line drives he caught.  Consistently our infield would make double plays and our outfield finally started using their cutoff man, allowing us to make more outs and give less bases due to errors.  I never thought I'd see the day where when the Khachmaz Maximum (their chosen name) would field better than hit, but they did.  We won a couple games in the tournament and for the game we did lose, we never had to invoke the mercy rule to end an inning.  I was really proud of them.

And I was a little wiser for the road.  After the first two spins of Hallana Hallana, I laid down the rule: only once an hour.  When I busted out Sonic Racing on the iPad and iPod Touch it bought us an hour of almost pure silence.  By the time we entered into Xachmaz region, we well all in a pretty good mood and shouting along to Hallana Hallana at the top of our lungs.

For good volunteers, these are the days that make service worth it.  For normal volunteers, these are the days that remind us how necessary it is for there to be a law against strangling children.  For me it was both.

Hip-Hop from the Land of Fire: Klana Plan - Yelle Yelle

Next up in my weekly Azeri Rap series is da Clan with the Plan.  No, not Wu-Tang (for that you'll have to look to H.O.S.T.), Klana Plan.

Klana Plana - Yelle Yelle (which translates roughly to an mc telling the audience 'Get Up! Get Up!')

 Klana Plan - Yelle Yelle by joshehr

Two Strategies to Always Come Out Victorious

There are two things I've always found comfort in, and they work in tandem with one another.  One is my confidence in my own capacity, whether its school, work, or, as it is, starting life in a new country.  No matter how difficult the class or job or adjustment I'm experiencing, I know I'm not going to simply fail.  I'll admit, there's a bit of hubris here, but I've never thought I couldn't do at least a C- job on something.  I may have no clue or even know what I'm doing, but I'm pretty sure I can eventually work it out.

The second thing is that the days keep moving, whether I like it or not.  Its a bit fatalist, but when I'm stressed its comforting to know that whatever thing it is I'm so dreading will eventually pass, whether I want it to or not.  And when combined with the above mentality it means that not only will I eventually find myself on the days after the stressor, but I'll also probably also have successfully navigated my way through it.

Self-confidence and knowledge that tomorrow comes, whether you like it or not.  Two really useful perspectives to view difficult times through.

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.

Hip-Hop from the Land of Fire: Nado - Dǝrsiz Mǝhǝbbǝt

Next up in the weekly Azerbaijani rap series is Nado.  This track is pretty breezy and sounds similar tracks you might here when the artist is getting a little sentimental.  Which makes sense given the tracks name.

Nado - Dǝrsiz Mǝhǝbbǝt (which means 'Love without Sorrow')

 Nado - Derdsiz Mehebbet by joshehr