Gum

Do you ever feel like your a piece of gum? You are the gum that someone chews for awhile, spits out, and saves to be used in between meals. Then, they stick you back in for awhile until it is time for another meal and you are either saved for later or disposed of. One way or another, you will be disposed of at some point, so you just have to get used to the idea of being chewed up until every last bit of flavor and elasticity has been extracted out of you and you will be disposed of and then probably stepped on by someone else who really doesn't want me stuck to their shoe. Yes, that's the way I feel today. That is a little depressing, nevertheless, the way I feel and I needed to write it down somewhere.
My next post won't be so depressing; I promise. I'm in the writing mood these days, so I have a feeling I'm actually going to jump back on here and start writing about my life that really isn't so depressing, but rather, it is quite wonderful. I'm in the place where I need to be and where I've been prepared to be for a really long time. So stay tuned if you are actually paying attention to the fact that I'm writing something again after a year-and-a-half.

What is a Mormon?

Florists vs. Forests

Not the flowers from the story below, but flowers I received from one group of students on International Women's Day, March 8th, which is the closest thing to Mother's Day here. (This is what their bouquets are like ... a bit fru-fru with all kinds of extra stuff besides the flowers. I'm so not a fru-fru person, but I love flowers! I received a bunch more red roses that day! :))

So Rocky insisted that a funny I made today become a Blog moment, but really it is for Shawna! So here it is ...
It may not seem so funny to anyone who wasn't there, but Shawna said it was one of the funniest things ever (or something like that) and couldn't stop laughing. So after church today, we were just talking about Sean's experience of trying to get Shawna flowers for Mother's Day in Baku and the biggest, most beautiful bouquet he could find late last night was a few Gerber daisies that were sadly bending over at the head like his own head as I picture it with the description of the story. Anyway, during this conversation, Rocky said he has a "24-hour florist" nearby his house, but what I heard was a "24-hour forest" and I was a little confused for a number of reasons. One, because there is certainly not a forest near his house in the middle of the city. The closest thing to a forest is the little park outside next to his building. Second, why would a forest be a "24-hour" forest? Since when do other forests close? Okay, so I tend to have blonde moments sometimes if I don't think about my quick reactions like that one, especially since, if I had taken like two seconds, I would have realized the obvious fact that the context was about flowers!!! But no! I blurted out the question! Well, hopefully, that will make someone laugh.

Pics Finally ...

I took this picture back in February, but I have wanted to add it to my Blog forever. This is near my house and to the left is a major road that I like to play Frogger on once-in-awhile. It came to me one day that pedestrians in Baku are little frogs that just hope to cross these roads without getting hit when there are no rules or if there are no one follows them, because I can't ever figure out what the rules are. So basically you take you are risking your life anytime you step onto a street, because you never know what is going to happen. The sign depicts an accurate picture. All pedestrian crossing signs in Baku are of people sprinting like World-record-holding sprinters because you sprint across and take your chances as a frog dodging in and out of cars. More to come on driving (something I don't do) and moving about in Baku, which is the craziness I call my daily life even if I live next door to work.
Oh and I'll have to find a good description of the lady unveiling herself in the statue in the background.



My apartment building is the tall one on the left. I am about half-way up in the middle apartment, but I don't think you can see mine from this picture. The building that had the fire was the tall one to the right. The shorter apartments are basically what the rest of the apartment buildings look like in my neighborhood. And the pictures stapled on the plywood at the bottom of the picture are surrounding a giant hole that was another apartment building when I got here. That hole is being worked on 24/7 and I can hear the heavy equipment pretty much all the time. It will be apartments for some fancy people associated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs directly behind me.

The fire in November

Some of you may have heard this story at the time, but it is another one of those I need to add. One Friday morning in November I woke up at about 2:30 in the morning if I remember right. I don't know why I woke up, but a minute or two later, there was pounding accompanied by yelling at the apartment next door. I had no idea what they were saying and it didn't alarm me really because I often hear people talking loudly or other things in the echoey hallway outside my apartment at late hours of the night. It probably would have been a good thing to know what they were saying as I found out the next day the likely purpose behind the yelling. I lay awake for a couple of hours for some reason, yet oblivious to anything other than the annoyance of being awake in the middle of the night. I eventually went back to sleep, but the next morning when I went into the bathroom, I realized the power was out. Then, I soon found that I didn't have water either. I wondered why the water would be out when the electricity was out, so I deliberated on what to do. I was to meet with one group of my students that morning to go on a field trip out to an oil refinery. I had about assumed that it would be a showerless day, but I didn't really know who I should call to see if it was just my apartment or the building or what. I looked out of my windows to surrounding buildings and they all seemed to have lights on. However, when I received a call from my colleague who lives in another of the three apartment buildings in the complex, I knew it wasn't just me. It was more than just having the power and water out. She told me that there was a fire in the main controls in the basement of the third apartment building. She had woken up at the same time for some reason and soon after she started to hear people running around outside. Her apartment is on the side where she could see the fire when she looked out the window. She said the flames were reflecting off of and reaching toward my building. She tried to call me, but she had the wrong phone number for me. She tried to think of how she would be able to find me because she didn't know what floor I was on and was thinking about who she could call that would have my phone number if she thought she would need to get me out. Well, she watched the whole thing from her apartment on the ninth floor and then watched them eventually get the fire under control. In the meantime, the electricity was knocked out for all three apartment buildings and the Academy, which is attached to her apartment building. The electricity has to run in order for the water to be piped up through our buildings apparently, unless buildings have water tanks on the top, which we don't. Oh and in case you didn't notice, there are obviously not items such as fire alarms; thus, the fire alarm(ers) who knocked on the apartment next to mine. I realized that morning that "fire" would be a good word to know in Azerbaijani and Russian, because apparently no one else other than my colleague would have knocked on my door? I don't know.

So, my colleague and I went on the field trip and all other staff who weren't involved stayed around and ate a cake that was for the canceled graduation of another set of my students; then, they went home as the network was down and they couldn't even access the school's network through the Internet at home. While my neighbor colleague and I were on the field trip, the Academy arranged for a hotel for us for the weekend, because it was said that it would be three days before they got everything back up. So I asked a family from church to take my food from the fridge and freezer and then I was taken to the hotel. While at the hotel at around 8 pm, I received a call from someone from work, who said they actually had it back on and asked if we wanted to go back home. We decided to stay the night because it was already paid for, but we returned home the next morning. Yet another experience to make life exciting here.

Reflecting on this now seems like the wrong timing with the Haiti earthquake; I guess I remembered it because of that. It makes me very grateful for everything that I have. This week, almost every time I have taken a drink of water or brush my teeth with the water I buy and try to keep in good supply, I've thought of how blessed I am to have this water. Yesterday, one friend told me this story:

My 4 year old just told me that people are dieing in Haiti cuz they don't have water. She asked "can't we take them some?" I told her no they live too far away, but we could send some $$. Not convinced she said "well who makes the water? Do you have their phone number?" I love the way her mind works.

I am truly blessed in so many ways!

One blessing from this past week: I have survived the first of the insane intensive program I'm teaching in along with the other programs: total = 27 hours of teaching a week, let alone preparation. Which reminds me, I need to go to bed so I can be ready for another one!