Hip-Hop From The Land of Fire: H.O.S.T. - Mǝni Gaytar

Monday my internet stopped working (until today) which gave me no opportunity to hunt up tracks on the artist that I was planning on checking out.  So, in an effort to just get a track up this week, I'm going to post one of my favorite H.O.S.T. tracks, Mǝni Gaytar.  It means 'Give myself back,' but if you take the secondary meaning of the verb you get the hilarious title 'Beat me off'.  Anyways, it doesn't mean that and the track is good.

H.O.S.T. - Mǝni Gaytar ('Give Myself Back')

 Meni Qaytar by joshehr

Finally-Nothing to Do

This month has seen two teacher trainings, two softball tournaments, and one site visit, which basically means that for all of October there hasn't been a single weekend I've had off.  The exhausting week spent teaching is never recovered from on the weekends.  And, even though all of these are things I enjoy, compressing them into the span of one month was unnecessary and destructive.

So, right now I'm sitting in my bed, where I've spent the majority of the past 24 hours, wrapped in warm pajama pants and listening to nice relaxing music.  I'm sick and have canceled everything in my life for the next 2 days and hope  it won't extend much beyond that.  For anyone wondering, having the flu in a foreign country is about as good as having it anywhere else, which is not very.

Admittedly I'm not too surprised by it, in the month of October life has been a very busy and I'm sure that this is my body's way of taking over and declaring an emergency state of rest.  I remember how I would get over particularly long stretches of work at Apple and this month has been longer than any of those.  But the main difference with this is that its easier to convince yourself that you have, in fact, been taking breaks when you've really been working all the time.

Peace Corps really is a 24/7 job and you have to fight to keep yourself from being overtaxed.  Especially with TEFL volunteers it can be easy to stretch yourself; in order to stay motivated in the classroom, I involve myself in other activities I am actually internally motivated to work on. It often happens that the work we must do (teaching in the classrooms) and the work we are passionate about (activities outside of the classrooms) end up taking up all of our time.  And while its good to keep busy, its better to stay healthy.  So I'm excited for November, which I'm looking forward to as a much more relaxed pace.

Me And My Bed Need Some Alone Time

Its been a long time (relatively) since I've actually written something here, one of my longest stretches.  Currently on my lengthy post-it note to-do list there's a line item that says 'write something (anything)'.  Simply overcoming the inertia of not writing is something worth crossing off.

In the past two weeks I've continued on at school.  There's no mistaking the fact that school is work.  Some of my classes are outstanding, some are brutal, but it is just the reason that justifies me being here.  Its the other things, like softball tournaments, teacher trainings, new volunteer site visits, etc that make life exhausting.

Luckily its not exhausting in a bad way-everything happening is good and I'm happy about what I'm doing, but its exhausting nonetheless.  I fall into bed earlier and earlier and snooze later and later.  I keep thinking the next weekend will be easier, but the next weekend is a teacher training in Goychay, or our last Softball Tournament, or Halloween Party.  But the weekend after that…I am so sleeping in.

Hip-Hop from the Land of Fire: AiD ft. Timon - Wussup

This installment of Hip-Hop from the Land of Fire features AiD, of the H.O.S.T. family and Timon, who is an Azeri rapper in France.  This was released a bit earlier this year.

AiD ft. Timon - Wussup (meaning, surprise surprise, What's up)
 AiD ft. Timon - Wussup by joshehr

Hip-Hop from the Land of Fire: Caspian Dreamers - Baku State of Mind

Alright, these aren't Azeri rappers, but they are in Azerbaijan and they are rapping.  This awesome vid was made by two current PCVs giving a rapid fire tour of Azerbaijan's capital, Baku.  Both the lyrics and their manic footage is pretty impressive and it I think you'll enjoy it.

Caspian Dreamers - Baku State of Mind