Photos # 3

Our host brother and host sister-in-law just had a baby, as in this morning at 7am! This is the sweater that Emma made for the baby boy, Ali Mustafa. Congrats to the proud parents!

This is Şamaxı from my second floor classroom window. The large buildings are apartment complexes.

This is Şamaxı in the morning. Just beautiful.

Our room from the door. Emma is in bed, wrapped from head to toe because once again we are without heat. Ha ha ha. I actually really like it. No joke. I want to relocate to Alaska. Sort of.

Our room from the other side.

A fun picture of the peç.

About two days ago both the electricity and gas went out for around ten hours. Here I am lesson planning by candlelight... (My mom is reading this and loving every word)

Same photo, for the most part, but with the flash. The outfit I am in is one that I wear to school everyday. Actually, I have worn this exact outfit to school everyday that I have taught in Şamaxı. A little over a month. It is very common for teachers to only have one school outfit. And yes, I teach in my coat and hat. I also have three layers of underwear, two thermal, one normal, under my coat, dress shirt, sweater-vest and scarf. Still kinda want to go to Alaska.

Almost everyday, I receive some type of junk food from my students at school. This happened to be a pretty good day. Most of them are little cakes and cookies. However, if you look closely you will see there is a handful of sunflower seeds wrapped in an old piece of note book paper. There were literally notes from the day before written on it. Pretty funny for sure. Still, the most comical snack food from school is a Russian item called purashki. It is fried dough with mashed potatoes inside. They seem pretty harmless, but they are served in pieces of old text book. You know to protect your hands from the grease, ha ha. I have heard stories of unfortunate children receiving an exceptionally hot purashki AND having a, let's say soviet history lesson, tattooed to their hands. Awesome.

This is a photo of Ismayıllı. A town about an hour from ours. We took a weekend trip to support two volunteers and their youth development photography project. Youth from Mingeçevir and Ismayıllı attended photography classes and then photographed their respective towns. The end result was a photo exhibition held the weekend of January 10-11th in Ismayıllı. It was great!

These carpets were on display in the same Museum as the childrens' artwork.

Emma and me in Baku on New Years Day! This tree is in a really famous area of the capital called Fountain Square. We spent the 31st - 3rd in Baku because of a crazy blizzard that hit Azerbaijan, making it almost impossible to travel for a couple of days. We were lucky because right after we took this picture we went to the Peace Corps lounge and found out we could stay there if need be. We ended up spending two nights on a couch in the lounge. It was great because we had free Internet, a TV and DVD player, as well as the company of around ten other stranded volunteers.

A McDonald's advertisement in Fountain Square. They truly are everywhere.

This was our Christmas Tree and Stockings set-up. You can see we have our gifts placed around the bottom. Emma received 3 spools of yarn, a scarf, a travel beauty kit and some chocolate. I got dominoes, cards, a new hat and a pipe.

That's about it. Hope all is well.

Love and Miss,

Mathias