Hip-Hop From the Land of Fire: Elshad Xose - Genclik

You would be right if you compared Elshad Xose's upbeat feel-good track Genclik to Will Smith.  The beat and hook sound just like a track that we would hear from the Fresh Prince himself.  This is definitely a party track made for summer, even supplying a mockable English bridge ('c'mon join us cause you're young')  Check it out below.

Elshad Xose - Genclik (which means 'Youth')

 Elshad Xose - Genclik by joshehr

Previous Hip-Hop From the Land of Fire: Klan-A-Plan - AzRap.Az (OST)

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.

Landlady Update: Part 4.1

As sure as winter coming after fall, the Landlady will come back to my apartment.  This time was a bit unusual as it was on a Saturday and I was rushing off to a meeting at school that went about an hour too long.  But I was glad she came as I was able to quickly tell her two things about the room she had recently locked: 1) even if I have friends over, we never go in that room, like she originally said and 2) I have stuff in that room that I need.  I then said I could get it next time because I had to go now.

Well, as is becoming the case whenever I open my mouth about anything with my Landlady, I arrive home to find she's taken matters into her own hands.  The question is to discover what matters, as they don't always correlate to what I've said.  Coming back home I found my hallway hutch, which contains all my school supplies, toiletries, med kit, and most importantly my wireless router, had been evacuated from the hall.

Now I might not know my Landlady's motives, but I certainly know her style (abrupt), and using my keen deductive reasoning I concluded she had something to do with this.  Turns out she decided it was time that that hutch was moved into my room, which required one more couch move(!!) and a rewiring of the phone and power cable to ensure the internet still worked which, miraculously, it did.  I don't know if this was simply hutch-moving season in Azerbaijan or if this was unfinished business from the last great move but I choose to file it under the latter.  And to do nothing about it.

Hip-Hop in the Land of Fire: Klan-A-Plan - AzRap.Az (OST)

Finding Azerbaijani hip-hop in the rayons can be difficult sometimes.  There are far more Turkish pop fans than Azeri hip-hop heads and my language really isn't fluent enough for me to casually discover new music in the same way I can in America (listening to the radio, reading websites, etc).  Hell, I haven't even been able to find any websites with this type of information.

Or at least I couldn't, until a recent trip to Baku.  Catching dinner at a shwarma restaurant I noticed a poster outside branded 'Rapvision,' advertising what looked likea free concert the upcoming weekend (which I couldn't make-curses).  But on the bottom of the poster were various sponsors including a bunch of different websites.  So, just as I was beginning to run out of varied material, a half a dozen websites materialize out of nowhere.

So to celebrate this recent discovery I give to you Klan-A-Plan's posse cut in homage to AzRap.Az.  Sort of weird source of inspiration, but we all have to get it from somewhere right?

Klan-A-Plan - AzRap.Az (OST)

 Klan-A-Plan - AzRap.Az (OST) by joshehr

What Its Like To Say Goodbye

A couple days ago I said goodbye to one of my closest friends here in Azerbaijan.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I don't get too hung up on goodbyes with close friends because those are the people I am sure I will get to see again.  However, it is always sad to watch a person you love leave while you must stay.

What strikes me here is due to the structure of Peace Corps service.  You have two years here, one year as the new volunteer, one year as the old volunteer.  And though it seems to crawl at a catatonic pace, one day you look up and realize the months have flown by.  It feels like a milestone saying goodbye to this friend because I met her when she was in the exact same place I am in now.  She was in the process of saying goodbyes to her friends while entering into the seemingly endless middle of her service.

I didn't know her as a new volunteer, only as an old, combat-hardened, volunteer with a year of experience under her belt.  The ups and lows we discussed her experiencing are those same ups and lows I'm experiencing right now as a volunteer who has finally discovered what his main projects are while having a bit of cultural understanding to help him navigate and frustrate them.

In a way I wasn't expecting, my service is dramatically thrown into perspective.  In the same brief amount of time it took me to form this life-long friendship, I'll be saying goodbye to, inshallah, another life-long friendship, who will be watching me leave, feeling sad and excited and even a little jealous that I'm now about to do one of the best parts of Peace Corps service-finish it and return home.