Prague Is Beautiful, Here's Some Proof

St. Vitus Cathedral 

The Gang

Seeing Mom, Dad, and Grandpa this past week was absolutely outstanding; I saw the family after 7 long months, I left the country and was back in the developed world, I stuffed myself silly with bacon everyday (no exaggeration-this happened).  The joke of this trip was that I was basically a 5 year old who could drink, I had no money and no opinion-just happy to be in the company of those I love.  The fact that we got to tour around two of the most awe-inspiring old European cities was a bonus.

A very very large bonus.

Prague and Vienna are, expectedly, beautiful.  It's easy to get overwhelmed as you crane your neck from one side of the horizon to the other because you are surrounded by majestic, palatial, structures.  Kings and queens have seated themselves in these cities, people who's existence was supported by the economic activity of entire nations.  And they built churches and palaces and castles to say just that.

We saw a lot of sights and went on a lot of tours (which, actually, was really nice.  I've never been on an official tour before, but it was cool to have a guide give context to everything you see).  Prague was my favorite, so much of the city feels like a living museum and its great to see how the city stays modern while still staying true to its UNESCO World Heritage site certified roots.

In Prague, two of my favorite sites were the St. Vitus Cathedral, which is a breathtaking work of architecture who's completion spans hundreds of years, and the memorial to Prague area Jews who were killed in the holocaust, a haunting list of names, dates of birth, and death clearly written on the whitewashed walls of a former synagogue.  And, of course, beginning each morning with a warm cup of honey wine.

From Prague we took a train down to Vienna which was a pleasure, both to get the morning off from walking and to see the fairy-tale countryside.  Though not my favorite of the two, Vienna was still a great time.  The highlight was taking the elevator up the south tower of St. Stephen's Cathedral, casually you step out of the elevator only to look through the metal grate floor to you see you are standing 60 feet (at least) in the air with a view commanding the entire city.  I also recommend the Belvedere Museum, which is dedicated to artists who were based in Vienna.  The building itself is a former palace and it wonderfully showcases Vienna's rich artistic heritage.

For this vacation, I packed like an idiot.  I had absolutely forgotten how to pack for a vacation with normal people, who have normal standards of living and eating.  Numerous items ended up getting packed for an unknown (and unencountered need) whereas others (like my camera charger!) were left behind as I was still in the mental mindset of 'regular' Peace Corps Volunteer travel.  Luckily I was able to fully capture our trip to Prague, and I think there are some good ones.

Click HERE to see pictures.  More coming.

Hip-Hop From The Land Of Fire Blast From the Past: A-Team - Arzularimi Qirma

Recently I was talking about the idea of musical memory, and the difference between a casual listener and a critic's musical memory.  I'm always impressed by the ability for the critic to make comparisons and identify influences and comparisons amongst other artists.  Its a skill that I wish I had, but alas, I'll never reach the lofty height of Matthew Perpetua.

So I thought about this question a lot when trying to identify where the melody line comes from on this track.  I'm convinced they're using a track I know well; it reminds me of 'Play' era Moby or a stripped down Four Tet, two very favorable comparisons.

Then, after finishing my first draft of this post, I finally realize where it comes from, it comes from the fact that I have already posted this track on Hip-Hop From The Land Of Fire.  Talk about a lack of musical memory.  But I'm without internet at my house right now, and I basically have just one chance to write a post, so for the first time ever, we're doing: Hip-Hop From The Land Of Fire Blast From The Past.  This is off A-Team's great album Repǝnt.

A-Team - Arzularimi Qirma (which means: Don't Break My Dreams)



Previous Hip-Hop From The Land Of Fire: Uran

Hip-Hop From The Land Of Fire: Uran - Maşın Yolu

Over the last couple weeks there's been a lot of buzz on Azerbaijani Rap blogs about Uran, an affiliate of rap group Caspian Clan.  A new music video, a new mixtape; Uran is making a strong pitch for March being his moment.

Uran isn't nearly as polished as A-Team but that works to his advantage.  His voice has the frantic style of a person who's only way to save himself is with the speeded defense he puts forth.  Its a refreshing change of pace from the calm and collected bravado more frequently heard in (Azeri) rap in general.  His production is good too, its more experimental and halting than commonly heard in Azeri rap.  Maşın Yolu is a great example of this, and you can hear his effort of trying to push beyond conventions of Azeri Rap.

If I hear anything in Uran's work, its creativity.  I can't tell what he's saying, but the way he's saying it and what he's saying it over, I can tell he's a smart and creative rapper who is so focused on challenging himself that he may not even see how much he is challenging Azeri Rap as a genre in general.  I look forward to seeing more of what Uran offers us.

Props to AzRap.Az for the mixtape drop.

Uran - Maşın Yolu (which mean's 'Road Machine')



Previous Hip-Hop From The Land Of Fire: PRoMete

Traveling Teacher Roadshow…Reborn!

Right now I'm enjoying a wonderful week with my parents and Grandpa in Prague.  I just arrived this Saturday and am looking forward to a great week catching up with Mom, Dad, and Grandpa in Prague and Vienna.  It will be tough adjusting to these beautiful old European cities, eating wonderful food and taking hot showers, but I think I'll manage.

"Well," you may be saying to yourself "you probably would manage a whole lot better if you didn't spend your time writing a post for me to read".  Well, my royal 'you,' you bring up a good point.   But you can rest assured that this post was typed the thursday before I left, in the presence of absolutely no family.

Most of you know of the work I've been doing regarding teacher training in this country; throughout this past year I, and another volunteer, Kelly, have been traveling around Azerbaijan delivering trainings to English teachers across the country.  This project, developed by two AZ7s (props to Jenny and Shira) and funded by Rotary Club of Baku, was a great way to teach many teachers new methods.

However, when looking to the future of a project like this, a few problems became evident.  First of all, it was a huge commitment of time on Kelly's and my part.  There were times where our total travel time for a single one hour training would be 24 hours.  And that training had 6 teachers.  Certainly it was fun to visit PCVs and see the country, but just as certainly-it was inefficient.  Secondly, this method of training was completely unsustainable.  The fact is every training required an overnight stay somewhere, something that is completely out of the question for an Azeri counterpart to do.  If we ever wanted this project to survive beyond Peace Corps Volunteers we had to ensure that an Azerbaijani woman (English teachers are generally women) could reasonably participate in it.

So, we came up with a new project.  We're still traveling in this project, but we're traveling across the country to train motivated English teachers to hold a training of their own.  We've divided the country into 5 regions and will be holding a training in each one.  These will be longer, more involved trainings; in addition to interactive teaching methods, we'll discuss presentation skills, lesson planning for a training, and steps to take when setting up a training.  Our project goal is to create a country wide network of Azerbaijani and American English teachers who are prepared to deliver trainings in their own and nearby communities on Interactive Teaching Methods.

And we have a lot of support for this.  Three AZ9 PCVs are will support Kelly and I, acting as point people for this project.  They'll follow up with workshop participants and encourage them as they experiment with this new skill.  AzETA, the Azerbaijani English Teacher's Association is helping us advertise to its already existing network in the regions and has provided permission for use of their, not a small contribution in a country obsessed with certificates.

And, perhaps best of all, the US Embassy is funding this project in whole.  All workshops are paid for, all travel for failitators and participants to the workshops is paid for, and all travel teachers may do to hold their own training is paid for.  Sustainability means we have to minimize both time and money commitments so we're excited to fully fund teacher's participation in this.  We've even received funding to hold a handoff meeting between the AZ9s and Kelly and I where we can discuss the future for this project before Kelly and I finish our service.

Our first training is Saturday, March 31st and these past two weeks have been spent writing a new workshop from scratch, creating all sorts of handouts, and talking up the event in Mingechevir and surrounding communities.  Kelly and I have been working on this project for a while, and its exciting to see it become real as a fully written, and funded, training.

I'm really excited for where this project can go.  In every aspect of this project we are working towards sustainability, the main metric of success is the number of teachers who present the information they learn and bring it to their communities.  We want to get Azerbaijani teachers to become responsible for other Azerbaijani teacher's development.  I'm excited and optimistic to share our success with you.

How To Achieve More In Less Time: Process Scheduling

Most PCVs in their second year are finding their secondary projects have become their primary projects.  For me its my teacher trainings, for my friend its teaching yoga.  Both of these are projects we are interested in and dedicated to, willingly filling up hours of our free time in order to see them succeed.

Really, most second year PCVs are freelance workers.  At this point in our service the primary placement is a part-time job providing a few consistent bucks for rent and food.  The bulk of our work happens outside the office, outside the school, on our own schedule and our own time.

And, as written a million times before by those in the similar situations, this can be a blessing and a curse.  Having the luxury to do your work anywhere at anytime can easily lead to procrastination and inefficient work habits.  Aside from the times of lessons, everything in my schedule is pretty fluid, which too often can result in tasks and projects flowing into future days and weeks.

So, I've begun rigorously scheduling myself again.  When my manager at Apple decided all managers must schedule their days I resisted greatly.  I hated the idea of my day already being planned for me regardless of what I personally felt that day.  I needed flexibility, I needed choice.

But man did it work.  And it worked because my weeks and days are strikingly similar, and if they're not, I probably wanted them to be.  The idea of scheduling 365 days and 52 weeks to me is a terrifying thought, but putting a process in place that schedules a week template that simply repeats is something I can get behind.  I hate schedule, I love process.

My favorite benefit of this strategy is how much more efficient and productive I am with my time.  Instead of needing time for a specific project, I schedule numerous '90 minutes of work' segments throughout the week (inspired by this great 99% article).  Then, on Sunday, I just fill in what I'll be doing in these 90 minute segments.  I find myself not only accomplishing everything I wanted for the week, but also working on longer term, more future-oriented projects, the easiest types of projects to procrastinate.

When it comes down to it, my day-to-day life isn't that spontaneous, in fact, its actually pretty repetitive; spontaneity in my day-to-day life usually translates to 'not doing what you actually wanted to do'.  Though this type of process schedule reduces the amount of choice in my day, it also ends up increasing my sense of accomplishment for each day.  Spontaneity still has a place in my life, but process scheduling ensures that it stays as that magic, spur of the moment, type of event.

How I Did It

I use iCal for scheduling myself. I recommend a digital calendar program because of the ease in setting repeatable events, which are the essence of process scheduling.

1) Set repeating events for those items in your schedule that are necessary, that you have no control over.  For me, it was my class schedule and an already existing conversation club.

Oh school, how I wish you always started at 9:40.

2) Note, for the next few steps (steps 2-7), do not schedule repeating steps; we will edit this schedule for next week.  Schedule your lunches and (if you want) your dinners.  Azerbaijan doesn't have the eating out culture that US has, so I scheduled my dinners too.  This is important because it forces you to acknowledge your meals as important times that have every right to not be encroached upon as any other event you schedule.

Yes, I do include washing dishes.  Its amazing how much it encourages me to wash my dishes right after.

3) Schedule those items that you know can easily can lost after scheduling other things.  Often these are items for your personal well-being which we put off in order to 'do' work (read: watch tv).  For me it was yoga and exercise.  When I practice with my friend its basically a 3 hour commitment, 90 minutes + 40 minutes of walking + 50 minutes of socializing, so this is a very real time commitment.

4) Schedule various '90 minutes of work' segments throughout your week.  At this point, these are simply blank segments you will be working on a single project for 90 minutes.  Steps 1-4 serves as the template we will edit from.

Notice how some of my workouts changed based on new events plugged in.  Also, I schedule my laundry because hand-washing is a total pain.

5) Now fill in the actual work you will be doing this week in these 90 minutes of work.  I try and schedule my meetings to fit within these times as well.  Don't leave any blank; if you don't have the work, either choose a future-oriented project or delete the event and give yourself some extra free time.

Finished schedule, with plenty of room for free time.

6) Refer to this schedule multiple times a day.  And as you follow it observe where you change it.  Do you exercise earlier rather than later? Are you taking longer for lunch?  Change this week's schedule to reflect the true times you are taking.  The exception to this rule is the '90 minutes of work' event, stay at that task for 90 minutes.

7) Towards the end of the week, create next week's schedule in this described style but adjusting it to be more realistic with your past week.  A process schedule should enable you to work effectively, not force you to work in a specific way.  If you can only commit to 3 '90 minutes of work' segments in your week, accept that.  If you take 1.5 hour lunches instead of 1 hour, accept that.  Just like in the first week, monitor and adjust to reflect the actual weekly schedule.

8) As you create the third week's schedule, create repeating events.  You already have those times you cannot change, now add meals, then personal wellness, and finally '90 minutes of work'.  Set an end date for this schedule (for me it was the end of school) where you can reflect and adjust your process the new condition of your scheduled life.

9) Once a week plan your '90 minutes of work' for the upcoming week.

10) Bask in the luxury of lack of choice.