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10.2.00 Good tea is good, Baku is teaming with good, cheap tea - the kind that expands when you put it in water and doesn't have a bunch of twigs and other crap in it, just dried tea leaves that wait patiently for their day in the boiling water. We have taken to afternoon tea, we know it's very British of us and we don't care, it is, how you say...loovlee. In a county with so much good tea why do you think Lipton would decide to invade with it's bags of bark? Capitalism is the word that comes to mind when I see a Lipton Brooke Bonde (the name they have given the new tea) tent set up where locals are giving out free samples. However, Capitalism with a capital "C" can't stop at free samples, it must also pay an innocent Azeri to wear a Brooke Bonde tea box, the size of a full grown man, around the city. I would venture to say that this was the first time the people of Azerbaijan have seen a box of tea with two legs and two arms, sheepishly standing around the well traveled pedestrian walkway and it will likely not be the last.

Today I taught another class at Western University. The 16 year old students in this class take four hours of class at Western five days a week, prior to their studies at Western each day they attend high school. These classes supposedly prepare them for tests they must take to get into college. I was told that the students in my class are there because they want to learn/get into college/make lots of money, so I shouldn't have any trouble with them. That should have been my first clue. These students are the most apathetic of all, I can't really blame them though; they have 10 hours of class every day except on Saturday when they have only six hours. Sunday is their day off, they told me they have trouble deciding if they should sleep all day or hang out with their friends. What's sad is that they could surely learn what they need to know for these tests in a quarter of the time if they had a personal tutor or even book they could review on their own time. It seems to me that these after-school classes are offered soley as a cash cow for Western, and possibly as a ploy to convince parents that if their children attend these classes it may be even more likely that they will be accepted into Western next fall. Again, this is a private university so money talks and bullshit...well, talks even louder. By 2 o'clock when these kids get to my class (knowing they have four more hours to go) it's Zombie Time. I feel like a certain character in Ferris Beuhler's Day Off - "...something d-o-o Economics...anyone...anyone...Voodoo Economics..." But as anyone who's ever seen that movie knows, I'm way more interesting than that guy.

- S



Only one thing can match the banal horror of a faculty meeting - and that's a faculty meeting conducted entirely in a foreign language. Today was my first and last faculty meeting in Azerbaijan. In attendance were: the Prorektor (i.e. Vice Pres. in charge of the Faculty of Sociology and Political Science, referred to here by the name of Politology, the sound of which I always still, in purely adolescent fashion, snicker at); the Prorektor's sour-faced assistant; a woman who looked like a cross between Monica Lewinsky and The Nanny and who didn't say a single word during the entire meeting; the extremely nice guy who I thought ran the Political Science Department but in fact might only be the make-work schedule-making dude who keeps the class times and locations a mystery to me until about 5 minutes after I'm supposed to start teaching; another guy who at one time I thought was the head of Political Science because he came into my class on the first day and introduced me to the students; a tall, balding, moustachioed, openly-bored buy with a cell phone and a hard-sided briefcase who - I could tell even without understanding a single word said - turned out to be that one extremely contentious pain-in-the-ass that some extra-terrestrial supervisor ensures is at every faculty meeting in the universe; a fat old guy in a military uniform, complete with three stars (I don't know if that makes him high- or low-ranking) and four rows of medals on his chest (leading me to believe he's at least middle-ranking), who came in ten minutes late and immediately became the main speaker for a while and who, probably because of his uniform and the way his head lolled when he succumbed to the boredom of having to listen to everyone else, reminded me of one of those half-dead Politburo members I remember seeing on the viewing platform in those great old Soviet photographs of the gargantuan military parades that they just never have in the U.S.; another guy who was even later-arriving than the military dude, who was far and away the best-dressed there, in his slick black suit, dark blue shirt, stylish tie, and expensive-looking watch (but who knows the actual price, really?), and who sat next to me and seemed to be trying to read what I was writing in my notebook, which must've been a bit mysterious to everyone since they had to know that I couldn't possibly understand a word of what was being said; and finally, Jabir, the Head of the Interpretation and Translation Department and nominally Shanon's boss, who was either half-asleep or entirely asleep throughout the meeting and as far as I could tell was only there to provide me with translation, a job that consisted of his informing me at the very end that they had these meetings once a week at this time in order to bring up problems, like students not going to class - about the only thing they seem to care a lot about is whether the students remain in class the full hour-and-twenty-minutes - and prevent crises from occuring again in the future (wishful thinking, in my opinion), the implication being that I would, of course, be coming again each week. Hah!

Actually, the meeting wasn't so bad - it turned out to be a lot like sitting in the waiting room of the doctor or dentist, minus the magazines I always read even though I know I'll be better off staring at the wall and trying to meditate. But with the buzzing of all those Azeri words - at one point I recognized the repeated phrase "on besh," which means 15 and seemed to have some kind of mantra-like significance - I couldn't quite get into the meditation mode - maybe because my butt was numb before the meeting even started (comfortable chairs are not a central part of the culture here) and I couldn't get rid of the thought that my presence was completely superfluous, if not outright ridiculous - I wasn't even introduced and made to say a few words about myself as at previous Azerbaijan U. functions. It will be interesting to see if there are any attempted repurcussions attendant upon my refusal to attend any future meetings - but let The Don put out a hit on me, I'd rather be swimming with the fishes than sitting in that room ever again.

- Jack
10.3.00 Now that we're settled in a new apartment, which has water nearly all of the time (and now those little half-hour outages seem so minor and almost laughable in a joyous way), and hot water almost as often, and a working phone, and a front door just a block from an amazing bakery (and not much farther to everything else in town), and pretty much twice as much as we ever thought we could expect from Baku, it's time to start turning from complaints to observations. Even now, when we've been here under a month, some of the features of this foreign city are starting to seem... well, if not �normal� then at least familiar, and even though it's not difficult to maintain a viewpoint that allows for many comparisons between here and the U.S., it seems to be getting easier to forget to remark upon the stuff that is probably truly weird. So I've started a list of things we see in Baku practically every day that you probably don't see in the U.S.: old women carrying colorful plastic bags with pictures of scantilly-clad women and Marlboro men on them (apparently the more practical canvas shopping bags are stigmatized by their association with Soviet-era babushkas - independence from the Russian yoke being equated with the freedom to carry your purchases in absurdly non-function advertising vehicles); statues of gigantic, menacing heads; strange brands of �American� cigarettes such as Vigor, New Freedom, Golden Gate, General, Congress, Senator, West, and my personal favorite American Dream (not to mention the local brand, Sirvan, and Russian brands in unreadable Cyrillic); hordes of stray cats - desperate, skinny, soot-faced creates - but almost o dogs of any kind except the few being walked by prosperous poseurs; trunkloads of pomegranites for implausibly-low prices; cell-phone salesmen pitchign scholarship students and underpaid professors outside the Elmler Akademyasy metro station (and just about anywhere large groups of people pass or cluster - which in Baku is pretty much everywhere); pedestrian underpasses (very helpful and in some cases probably indispensible for those of us who have to get across the streets without a protective metal encasement); unoccupied Turkish-built high-rise apartment buildings (for some reason that defies all attempts to get an explanation, people don't trust Turkish construction, yet at the same time they regularly put their lives in the hands of insane taxi drivers and the dubiously-safe subway system); non-homosexual men walking arm-in-arm and kissing each other on the cheeks for greeting (this goes on between the women too, but it seems less strange to me for some reason); empty taxis that slow down even if you only scratch your nose (good thing it's not like an auction or we'd never be able to walk anywhere); 33-cent doner sandwiches (like a gyro but with bread instead of pita - the meat spits indicating the sale of doner are separated by an average of about 20 yards, and each place is just as good or better than the last - at present, this is probably our greatest joy in Baku); outdoor pool tables in every park and on many sidewalks; legions of stylishly suit-wearing 18-year-olds (this is particularly true around the universities, which look during the between-class periods more like out-of-session stock brockerages than college campuses - if you don't take into account the crumbling Soviet-style buildings, of course); Geo Metros that look like luxury cars; pictures of Heydar Aliev, the President of Azerbaijan, everywhere - especially on public buildings, where he is depicted in bureaucratically-appropriate poses (the General Post Office, where you can make phone calls, has a Heydar-on-the-phone portrait ten feet hight, as does the Ministry of Communication - the universities have scholarly-looking Heydars - we haven't been to the TV building yet - a tall, Space Needle-looking tower looming above the western hills - but I imagine a portrait of Heydar watching the tube); children driving rented electric cars (small plastic ones, thankfully); scores of bathroom fixtures for sale everywhere - admittedly this is more true of our old neighborhood than the city center, but even in that more crowded district, you can see huge bathroom-fixture shops - I think the process of replacing the cheap Communist toilets, tubs, and sinks must be one of the main thrusts of local independence and economic growth (what I don't know is where these bathroom fixtures are installed - neither of our aparments have had them, and even the McDonald's bathroom, the bastion of need-to-go-now cleanliness, has only middle-range fixtures); people staring at me for wearing corduroy pants and a white long-sleeve T-shirt (I'm used to it by now, but I still find it amazing that people find this outfit so amazing - it's not like I'm wearing an orange monk's robe or a leather loincloth, or that they haven't seen American movies with men dressed very much like this).

Not everything is completely different, as you might imagine - a few things you do see in America that are also somewhat common here: fat banks headquartered in gleaming new skyscrapers; handicapped ramps (believe it or not, though they're not on every street corner or stairway - neither are sightings of anyone handicapped, other than the rare legless war veteran begging on the metro - it's very possible that these ramps aren't for the handicapped at all but instead to make it easier for the ubiquitous street-merchants to tow their wares around); people driving like idiots (though admittedly the idiocy is more fierce and unrelenting here); billboards for just about every unnecessary product - and for some things that clearly require a command of Azeri or Russian to comprehend (many billboards, for instance, feature pictures of babies, but I've also seen large portraits of babies in many kinds of shops, including one butcher by Azerbaijan University, which I'm sure doesn't sell baby meat - so I don't know what these babies mean - I'm reminded of the Firestone commercials with babies riding around inside tires - if you didn't know what you was being said, and you weren't familiar with the customs of American advertising, you might very well be led to believe that these were babies for sale in conveniently baby-sized, round presentation receptacles); ridiculous advertising gambits (not only the Brock Bond tea-box guy that Shanon mentioned, but a fifteen-foot-tall inflated Pepsi can in the middle of Fountain Square - I'm sure there will be more on the way); SUVs - these are not as rare as they seemed at first, and with the conditions of the roads - and in many cases the sidewalks, which distinction many drivers ignore - they definitely seem more directly functional here than in, say, Seattle or Los Angeles; ATMs - so far I haven't seen them getting much use (other than our own), but there are at least a half-dozen 24-hour bank machines in the city center, and they don't charge any fees (in LA I paid $1.50 for a withdrawal from my U.S. bank, and here I pay nothing for the same withdrawal - some things are amazing).

And some things you see in the U.S. that are almost completely absent here: the homeless; drug-dealers; men wearing shorts (except me); bus stops that give the number and desination of the routes that stop there (buses here seem to stop just about anywhere, and there are in fact not only city buses but private buses - really just large vans - that shadow many of the official routes and cost a nickel instead of 2 cents); convertibles; women in sensible shoes (except Shanon and a very few of the extremely old ladies and some of the peasant-woman street merchants who carry unbelievably large sacks of produce); black people; four-way stop-signs (more like no-way stop signs, which is what traffic lights are like); movies in English (it's hard to believe that in a city where everyone we talk to tries to get us to teach them English, you can't see anything but movies dubbed in Russian); coins; clean buildings (even the really nice banks are covered in soot and exhaust and dust - there's just nothing to be done); mowed grass (there are a lot of really nice parks, but when there's grass at all - pretty rare- it's tall and tangled); ice-cubes (and if you did see one you probably wouldn't want to have anything to do with it, because it's unlikely that whoever made that ice-cube either boiled the water first or used bottled water or tap water from someplace where tap water isn't something to be desperately feared); tattoos; NFL, NBA, NHL, or MLB insignia on shirts, hats, bags, everything - however, there is plenty of Adidas and Puma gear - not Nike, though, which is kind of nice in an odd way; street crime - we feel completely safe, even on the darkest streets at the latest hours - and apparently this is not just a false sense of security, there really aren't pickpockets or muggers or roving street gangs beating up people who dress differently (I think the only places to fear crime are government offices and businesses, where the crime, or at least the corruption, makes up for lost time).

- Jack


All Hail the Internet! We finally have internet access at home - I'm not only writing this in our great new apartment, I'm writing in on-line, and from here the virtual world is at my fingertips. I haven't been so excited about the internet since I discovered the internet movie database. Of course, now that we're hooked up, the excitement is already dying down, and I think I'll go into the other room and read my book.
10.4.00 Today was the first big shopping day in the new neighborhood. It took us almost two weeks to figure out where to buy various items in the old 'hood, but it's going on a month since we got here, so I decided to venture out and see if I couldn't locate the good places to buy things all in one brief afternoon. I met with mixed success.

The place that has much of what we want, including some things we haven't seen anywhere else, like milk and sour cream, is called a Mini-Market, but don't picture a 7-11 or Circle K - in fact, it's hard to tell the difference between an Azeri Mini-Market and one of the so-called Western Supermarkets that are all over Baku - except in price (the Mini-Markets, opposite of what we're used to, are the cheaper way to go and by the looks of them, where the locals shop). The selection is about the same mixture of meat and cheese, rice and pasta, all kids of bread, more kinds of vodka, some sweets, and a few Coke products - though in the Supermarkets you can get Pringles and Snickers and the like. Actually, the major difference between our local Mini-Market and the Supermarkets is that it runs according to the tenets of the old Communist state stores - that is, instead of "shopping" in the familiar way, by putting your items in a cart or basket and having the cashier ring you up at the checkout stand, here you are required to pick out your items by telling the person staffing the shelf or aisle (or in my case pointing and miming) what you want - you then go to the cashier (Haradadir? [Where?] Kassa, kassa, kassa! [pointing and grimacing like I'm an idiot, which is partially true in this particular case]) and tell them the price of your item(s), which can be very difficult when you don't speak the language (or in my case, when you know the numbers but speak with an accent that is apparently incomprehensible to anyone but myself and Shanon - and fingers are pretty useless when you're trying to tell someone you need to pay 15,500 manat for your chicken), though at this point, most of the aisle-staff take pity on me and tell the stentorian cashier how much to ring up - after you pay, the cashier gives you your receipt, or several of them if you happen to be foolish enough to want to purchase two or more items from different locations in the store, which you take back to the person who is patiently holding your selection - you give them the receipt, which they rip slightly and put in your bag, and you are now allowed to remove the item from the store and consider it your own.

So after drinking a lot of coffee and eating a fortifying 33-cent doner, I braved the Mini-Market, where I purchased rice and a chicken - and went back a minute later to get the milk I'd forgotten. The total for the milk came to 2800 manat (about 60 cents), which I paid for with 3000 manat and received for change a stick of Wrigley's Doublemint gum in lieu of the two 100-manat notes (there are no coins in Azerbaijan) that I had coming to me - this is not, however, standard practice - in fact, this was the first time it happened to me (I can pretty confidently say in my entire life), and while it was a bit odd, I had just eaten a doner and could therefore use the breath-freshening stick of gum, which I popped into my mouth and chewed happily throughout the rest of my shopping excursion. Next, in the spirit of buy-it-when-you-see-it (a lesson it takes a while to learn - and only then after you sit around at home saying, "Where was that guy selling that exact item we need and can't find anywhere else?"), I purchased two ears of corn (for about 90 cents, which is why I didn't buy more) - this is the first time I've seen corn in Baku, so I scooped it up (and was so excited that I forgot to bargain - we don't usually bargain for food because it's generally so cheap and it seems wrong somehow, but I now feel like a chump for buying two 45-cent ears of corn when I probably could've had them for 30 cents each). My final stop on this brief but taxing outing to the marketplace was a local vegetable stand (and when I say "local," I mean located on the very block where our apartment is - there are vegetable stands on just about every block throughout the entire city), where I got a kilo of potatoes, a kilo of tomatoes, and a half-kilo of carrots, all for the low low price of one American dollar. I came home feeling like I'd accomplished quite a bit - it's amazing how simple things raise the bar of achievement when you're in a place as foreign as this - but I still have more items left on my list than I crossed off - butter, eggs, bread, paprika, jam, peppers, egglplant, and fruit, to be precise - not to mention the trip to the laundromat/dry-cleaner to see if they wash clothes by the kilogram, a transaction that I'm sure will take place in a foreign language and I just hope the people running the place understand Point-and-Mime.

- Jack


I'm so happy in our new apartment. After my classes today, I took a long hot shower, had a bit of tea and did some emailing, all in the privacy and luxury of my new home. I even put on the new slippers that I got as a "Teacher's Day" present from one of my students. I had no idea it was Teacher's Day, but two students gave me presents, saying "Here, for you, it's Teacher's Day". One gave me chocolate and the other a gift box with two towels and a pair of slippers. It was very sweet, as I've never had a "Day" before, I'm not a mother, father, grandparent, secretary, boss or any of those Day possessing people or positions. I guess by accepting these gifts I officially became a teacher.

Of course, chocolate and slippers will only get one so far, once the gift giving students commenced throwing paper wads across the room, in the middle of class, well, I soon forgot how sweet they were. Today all three of my classes were ill-behaved. Aside from the incessant talking, one class was throwing paper wads and continued to do so after I told them to stop, can you believe it? It was as if they just weren't listening to me at all, quite shocking. When I asked them if their other teachers allowed them to talk amongst themselves whenever they wished, they said, "No." One girl went on to explain why; apparently the other teachers threaten to bring the Director (Principle) in if they don't behave and, I suppose, those same teachers never let that stern, why-are-you-even-on-this-earth expression, I've seen on many already, fade. Wanting to avoid this fate, I went on to explain to these miniature hellions that I wanted them to enjoy my class, that I wanted it to be different than what they were used to and that if they preferred to have a little fun over living in fear that they should cooperate with me. And, having receiving my official you're-a-teacher-now-so-act-like-one slippers, I said the obligatory things like: "if you want to be treated like babies that's fine by me", and "I can be as mean as the next guy so if you'd like to see that side of me I'd be happy to oblige." Some of the students were nodding, indicating that they understood that this class could be different from the military-like environment of their other classes but only if they shut their cake holes, the other students didn't respond at all because they were busy tearing paper to make more paper wads. By the time I began my third class of the day I'd decided that I would just have to give each class a quiz every week over the material we'd covered in class. It seems that the only words some of them hear is "grades" or "director" (I've yet to see the director have any kind of control over them so I don't know what good it does to bring him into the picture, I do know that I don't like him much, he always looks as though he's in complete misery). I don't think I'm expecting too much from the students, it seems quite simple to me: Zip it.

It's all a bit odd, when I hear myself it hardly seems real. In the middle of one of my tirades today I couldn't help wondering how I ended up in front of these children saying basically, "If you want me to be the bad guy, I will." I kept thinking, who decided I should be in charge here, that I had any business handling this. I'm sure we'll find a happy medium soon. I know that some of the students really enjoy having an American teacher and her damned cheerful self, and they are as annoyed by the disruption as I. It's different than anything I've done before so I'm digging that, that's why I'm here. I really just don't want to be the bad guy, it's so much more fun being the good guy.

- S
10.7.00 Life here seems to be an endless cycle of Tragedy and Triumph. The latest Tragedy is really just an on-going city-wide blockade of our laundry. We have a Russian "washing machine" in our new apartment, but it's really just a sturdy, squat cyclotron - that is, you fill it with water, add detergent and clothes, and it swirls the water around the clothes for a while and then drains. If you want to rinse, you fill it again and let it swirl and drain again - the missing element is the so-called spin-cycle, which usually succeeds in getting most of the water out of the clothes so they're easier for the dryer to dry. Of course, our dryer is a wire above the courtyard outside - or, really, since it's been raining a lot lately, a duct-tape line that Shanon rigged in the hallway. Obviously spun-mostly-dry clothes would be a great advantage under these circumstances, but alas, that's one luxury that this set-up does not afford - so the clothes must be wrung out by hand and hung for up to two or three days, depending on how much cotton they contain. We've been reduced to wishing we'd brough nothing but artificial fibers, but there's not a lot we can do about that now since there's no Target readily available.

Because of this basic hardship, we've been attempting to get someone else to do our laundry, but it's becoming more and more clear that this practice is, if not outright illegal, is definitely frowned upon. There's an alleged dry-cleaner/laundry place right around the corner, but they don't wash items by weight, and when we finally established communication, it turns out that to "dry-clean" (but the machines they were using looked suspiciously wet, like a standard heavy-duty washer) a single shirt costs about $2.50 - which is absurd in itself, but particularly crazy when you consider that we can get lunch for both of us for about $3. We haven't given up yet, though Thursday was a depressing day after we found this out - but to be honest, the prospects of getting laundry done cheaply, or even for a modest-price, look dim. In addition to wishing for more polyester in our wardrobe, we've found ourselves daydreaming about spending a whole day in a coin-operated laundromat, a use of time that formerly seemed like the closest thing to Hell in modern urban life - now it seems like a little slice of Heavan, a Paradise being systematically denied to us. Fortunately, the weather is pleasantly autumnal, so our clothes don't get instantly infused with sweaty pollution-riddled scum as soon as we leave the house, but that only mitigates the Laundry Situation, it doesn't provide us with any kind of realistic solution.

Happily, just about everything else in the past few days can be put squarely under the Triumph heading. Yesterday we successfully negotiated one of the large outdoor markets in central Baku, where we were treated like celebrities, sold cheap saffron and even cheaper pears, offered samples of caviar by at least a dozen different people, guided to a booth with candles by a very nice English-speaking merchant (who has to sell chickens all day because her afternoon job as a middle-school English teacher doesn't pay enough), engaged with greetings in both English and German (or maybe the Azeri words "Guten Tag" mean something like "Bring your western ass over here and buy some of this cabbage"), and in every way made to feel like we were visiting an extremely foreign place that happened to be both friendly and impossibly mysterious. Last night we secured passable martinis, found out where the local kids dance (and were physically dragged onto the dance floor to join a group celebrating a woman's 21st birthday), discovered an extremely cool underground bar decorated in catacombs-of-the-pyramids style. And today we slept late, ate an early-afternoon "breakfast" of pastries from the local bakery (a place that consistently gives us great joy), sat at a tea-garden by the sea and read for an hour or so while sipping tea and munching on slices of Snickers (we didn't order this, but it came, along with the requisite bowl of sugar cubes and a plate of dried fruit and nuts, so we dug right in), and returned home to use the internet to plan some of the details of our winter Europe trip.

- Jack
10.8.00 Don't tell anyone, but I kinda like doing the laundry in the Russian, water-swirling machine. I have the time so the process: fill it with water, carefully select the number of items to be washed (too many and the effect is more like a cyclone and less like a whirling dervish), run it twice, take each piece of clothing out and rinse it in the sink (either ring or squish dry depending on the fabric), and then go out into the courtyard to hang it on the wire, is no big deal. I am a Russian-Laundry Zen Master, "I'm filling the machine with hot water, I'm ringing out my favorite shirt, Another clothespin fell into the courtyard" and so on. Only occasionally do my thoughts drift from the task at hand, "Where in the heck am I? How did I get here? What kind of tree would I be if I were a tree?" Not only is long-division laundry Zen but it's work, and after my hands are sufficiently pruned I clock out, apply a little bag balm and sit down with my book. My work is done and it's time to dive back into War and Peace (which I can hardly tear myself away from to begin with). Hell, I probably haven't worked this hard since I was up to my elbows in cow shit, pulling teats back on the farm.

Twelve to 15 hours later, depending on the weather, when the clothes are dry I inspect each piece to determine its degree of clean-ness, remarking to Jack how this particular item of clothing is perfect because it dries fast and unwrinkled, and that this item will never be the same again.

- S
10.11.00 We've officially adopting the bus system as our preferred mode of transportation. The Metro sort of stinks, in both ways, and taking a Taxi is dangerous in a way that just doesn't appeal to me. I was on the bus yesterday, on my way to class, and I sneezed, the man beside me turned and said "Salamo." I knew this was the Azeri thing to say after a sneeze but I hadn't heard it used yet. I've never been a big fan of the Bless You or that German translation, Das Bless You so I'm very happy to adopt one Azerbaijan custom and bring it back to states.

- S
10.12.00 I did it again - I stumbled into a meeting in a foreign language, this one was some kind of embryonic academic association for, as near as I could gather, developing a journal in the philosophy of the social sciences. For this particular meeting I at least had intermittent translation from one of my students, so while it lasted longer than last week's faculty rat-session, it wasn't a complete waste of time. I got to hear old men who were trained in their professions under Soviet rule say such things as "We must move forward by preserving tradition" - this one from the medieval philosophy specialist (there were some dumbfounded, amused, or bored looks from the gray-suits across the table at this particular assertion) and "I want to build new ideas on the traditions of old ideas" - this from the same guy after he was called a conservative by a Gorbachev-look-alike. All in all it seemed like an occasion for each person to trumpet their favorite social-change-means-going-back-to-the-pre-Soviet-ways theme - I was struck by how polite and attendant everyone was. There was no interrupting, no arguing, and mostly no sleeping either. I left after two hours, when I had to go to the bathroom and realized that no one cared if I lived or died or sat there getting intermittent translation - my main cue was when my student started asking me questions like where I went to school and where I grew up. Apparently it's a cultural norm to talk amongst yourselves when someone is teaching or giving a speech or singing an aria - this is information we've picked up from a few different sources, and it does explain what had seemed like the incomprehensible systematic rudeness - it is systematic rudeness but it's part of their culture, you see. Like the fact that no one can or wants to make plans more than a day or two in advance - you could probably conquer the entire Azerbaijan nation with a few well placed day-planner-bombs and one course schedule that covered an entire semester - people would run from the city in fear and panic and Baku would be yours for the taking. My students are making an effort on my behalf - when I went to class yesterday and found someone in my room (my actual, time-table-legitimated room, if you can believe it) so that we (myself and all the students) had to find an empty room in which to hold class, I was bluntly informed, out of the blue, that we would be having class in this room always. I find that hard to believe, especially since this student seemed to make this up at the moment, but to comfort me in a time of change, I'm sure. They must think I'm pathologically-anal for wanting to have a schedule that doesn't change every week and for the constant sniping that I do in order to determine if this latest change is the last or merely one of an on-going series of changes in what seems to me an easy matter to determine steadfastly for the rest of the semester.

On another Stupid American front, I persist in wearing shorts despite the fact that the calendar tells me that it's quite obviously fall - the laughter and jeering is stronger and more self-assured these days, because it's now clear that I'm retarded - there's simply no other explanation for my continuing with this skimpy attire so late in the year. It's still hot though - or it's hot again, after a few weeks of beautiful autumnal coolness. Yesterday on the bus I was vindicated - in my own mind at least - when even the usually thin-blooded Azeris were removing their coats and waving their hands in front of their faces while we were stalled in hot late-afternoon traffic. Despite being used to the looks and the unconcealed mirth, I've moved from feeling like I'm walking around in my underwear to feeling like I'm walking around naked - I think I figured that people would get used to my hilarious look and it would all stop, but this is a city of about two million people, and I think I've had the opportunity of reaching out to only a few thousand or so by this point - if the weather holds, I might get to a few more thousand, but the pollution is so bad that I'm not about to begin a city-wide campaign of showing myself and my bare calves to as many Bakuvians as I can.

The good news is that we are actually getting paid - on Tuesday, only a week after first being promised salary, we both collected our monthly pay (but only half a month's worth because that's all we taught in September) - it came to around $150 between the two of us, which is slightly more than 600,000 manat, an amount that would seem more impressive if the bills weren't droopy, torn, and dilapidated little pieces of paper. It's hard to get used to not having coins, but it's even harder to get used to money that feels so insubstantial - one thing that is nice is that you can get just about anything on the street for between 500 and 2000 manat - from a loaf of bread to a kilo of onions or a Coke or a bag of butter-dipped cookies - which still feels like getting it free, both because the pieces of paper that I hand over are so thin and faded, hardly like money at all, and because the actual dollar-conversion is in the range of some small number of cents, which always seems like an inconsequential amount of money even when it is something like 33 cents for a Kit Kat bar, which is about what you'd pay at CVS. The psychology of daily life is tricky and surreal like that sometimes, here in a world halfway around the globe from home - but in many ways, life is beginning to feel normal, so much so that I get through many days, particularly non-school days, without being overly conscious of the surrounding foreignness. We do spend a lot of time in the apartment reading, writing, and cooking - and surfing the internet now, yay! - which minor form of isolation makes for a world less infused with the daily tragedies and triumphs that marked the first few weeks here.

- Jack



I have the post War and Peace doldrums. I knew it was going to happen but I couldn't stop myself from whipping through the brick-sized paperback. I put off the very end for a few days, but today it ended, the War, the Peace, all of it. However great it is to be held captive by a particular book, it is just as great of a let down at the end. All the other books in the world that I have yet to read seem uninteresting and weak, I almost pity them. Okay, so it's not really that bad, I'm sure Babar Goes to Town will be just a gripping. I guess I should be glad that I was never forced to read this book in school so that I could come to Baku really enjoy it.

The massage I got today made me feel a little better, except when the masseuse got to my shoulders and said - in a Jean "The Specialist" Reno accent - "Zis is not muscle, zis is stone." Then he asked me if I'd had "treatment" for it, I was going to say "Bourbon" but I didn't think he'd get it so I told him that only in Baku can I afford the bi-monthy massage ($10 for an hour and a half, no ups, no extras). He was trained in Russia in Chinese medicine, he can't find work as a doctor in Baku so he has been doing massage for the past three or four years.

- S
10.14.00 I did a little interior design today, that is, I tore all the pages with pictures out of my desk calendar and hung them on the wall. It took me back to my freshman year in college, where almost anything that will adhere to the wall is considered a suitable decoration. However, anything I chose was infinitely better than my roommate/mother-of-a-one-year-old's wall of cans. These pictures I taped to the wall - with duct tape, because it rules - are only 4" by 6" so they barely register on a wall that spans 15+ feet from floor to ceiling. Our other decorating option is to buy a really bad oil painting at the market. My favorite is one of a young, angelic Azeri girl with one tear painted on her cheek, the tear almost has a 3D quality to it - really gets me right there, ya know. I'm quite satisfied with our miniature pictures of the U.S. National Parks, though. They go really well with the store of knick-knacks that the owners of our apartment left for us. When we came to the apartment to sign the lease the shelves were empty but by the time we moved in there was shit everywhere. Vases, vases, vases, two sets of six sterling silver vodka shot classes and a few decorative pitchers. It's one thing to surround yourself and dust around - in theory...we don't actually dust - your own knick-knacks, but someone else's? Needless to say we put them all away for safe keeping, the lease, loosely translated, states "You break it, you buy it." We are using one vase, we call it our Chihuly as it is as ugly and senseless as your average Chihuly.

Apparently this Wednesday is a national holiday so we don't have class. Nobody told me this at school but Jack found our somewhere. It's Freedom Day, commemorating the 1991 break from the USSR. Most of the holidays celebrated in Azerbaijan are new holidays, the old holidays from the Soviet era are no longer celebrated. Like, for instance, April 28th which was the date in 1920 that their independence was crushed with the entry of Soviet troops into Baku. I'm sure Russia thought they were being extremely generous by giving them a holiday as well as a ruler.

I learned a little bit about the marriage ceremony from my college students this week. First the bride's family has a party where she and the groom sit at the front of the room and everyone eats, drinks and dances. Sometime before this party begins the rings are exchanged but there aren't any vows spoken and there isn't much of a ceremony as far as I can tell. To this party the bride wears a red dress which symbolizes a long life together. After this party the bride returns (even though she never moved out) to her father's home(not her parent's home, not her family home, not even her home). Then one week later, or one month later or whenever someone can get enough money together, there is a second party, this one is with the groom's family (as I understand it, the groom's family doesn't come to the bride's family party and visa versa). The bride wears a white dress to this party, and again there's much eating, drinking and dancing, but this time the bride is allowed to stay with her new husband or his parents, again depending on money. And finally, at this point the couple can commit the sacred act, she cooks him dinner and he belches with satisfaction...no, no, just jokes, this is when the newlyweds have sex for the first time, after which, we hope they aren't thinking, "gee, guess I shoulda taken it for a test drive before I bought the red dress..." Either way, the bride is now safely in the hands of another man who can tell her when she can and can't go out. Sadly, if a woman doesn't follow this path others will assume she is someone's mistress or a prostitute. Speaking of prostitutes, men don't exactly keep it in their pants until the big day like women do. Men feel they have a right to a prostitute since the chicks can't give it up until the wedding day.

- S
10.15.00 This morning we went out for Sunday breakfast at Fisherman's Wharf, the ultra-American-feeling restaurant half a block from our apartment - it's located in the middle of a fountain in the middle of a park and maintains a kind of nautical theme that resembles American eateries in such places as upstate New York and coastal Oregon. The menu lists prices in dollars, payable at the current manat conversion rate, and while some things are patently outrageous at our current standard-of-living (like the $9 steak), the $4.50 bacon cheeseburger and fries and the $2 omelette are quite reasonable and/or a steal - what the menu doesn't list are beverage prices, and there's a good reason for this: they're ridiculous. The two times we've eaten there, the beverage bill almost equaled the food bill - when we got burgers and chicken strips and a couple of glasses of beer and wine, this made sense, but this morning the only beverages we enjoyed (or were served, at least - enjoyed, no) were two tiny cups of "coffee" - that is, instant Nescafe (Nyetcafe. -Shanon) reconstituted with not-quite-boiling water that tastes just like you coffee aficianados out there imagine: horrible - and the total price for this roughly 10 ounces of hell was a total of $4! Two bucks apiece, and Shanon's two-egg cheese, onion, tomato and mushroom omelette with a side of fries only cost $2. It's not that a $9 breakfast for two is something to really complain about - though when we can get dinner for two local style for $4, maybe it is - but the absurdity of the beverage-to-food ratio, considering that we didn't slurp down a bunch of Bloody Mary's, was hard to swallow. But that's all just petty complaining - for our money, we got to sit outside on the patio, surrounded by the fountain and the park - children feeding the ducks and other idyllic Sunday-in-the-park types of activities - and it really felt like a regular old late-morning Sunday breakfast in upstate New York or coastal Oregon. In a word, it was nice.

This morning's breakfast was a mad continuation of the previous night's expat partying - we went out with Francois and an NGO worker named Troy, who happened to live a year in Seattle only a few blocks from where both Shanon and I lived when we met. We probably passed this guy on the street a bunch of times around two years ago, and last night we were at The Dive drinking wine together - The Dive is a brand-new local bar operated by an Azeri who lived for a few years in San Francisco and who came back to Baku last year to work in his homeland. He's a banker who speaks great English and knows how to do accounting and use computers - or so he told us - but he couldn't get a job at a bank in Baku because, as he put it, "I'm not a chick" - this, he mourned, is the state of gender equality in Azerbaijan. So after failing to secure work at a bank, he opened this bar and it looks like it's going to be a screaming success - Troy is going again tonight and depending on how the Sunday blahs work out for Shanon and I, we might join him. In any case, Troy is our new friend - and he has satellite TV and a bottle of duty-free Bombay Sapphire, so even if we don't go out tonight, we'll be mixing up the martinis with the Troyster sometime soon. Party on...

- Jack
10.16.00 Today at the beginning of my class, I got to sit and watch someone else yell at at my students. This was a very strange experience for me, especially since he was bitching them out about attendence, and of the 10 students enrolled in the course (or so I'm told that's the number, but who really knows), there are always between 6 and 8 in class on any given day - I consider this a normal-to-heavy percentage, and I've been perfectly happy with the class size. I've always thought of class attendence as something best left to the responsibility of the students themselves, but here they operate on the sit-in-class-even-if-you-don't-learn-anything model of authority - I guess that the one thing the university authorities can really get from the students is this sort of surface obedience, which is also exemplified by their tendency to stand whenever someone of importance enters the room (I've broken them of this habit concerning me, but I can tell it's difficult for some of the students not to rise when I come to class, and probably the only reason they don't is that they perceive that I've ordered them not to - it must be quite a pickle for them). So there I was, sitting at the head of class not knowing what was being said to my students, and there they were, looking down at their desks - even the usually vocal and rebellious-seeming students looked sheepish, and then no one would tell me what had been going on (even though I already knew - language skills or not - what they'd been getting yelled at for). It was almost like they'd been scene by one of their friends getting scolded by their parents and they were ashamed to be revealed as so uncool - or maybe they were more ashamed for the guy yelling at them than for themselves.

If that was the case, I sympathize with them. In my opinion, the educational priorities of good old A.U. are screwed up, and while they are very successful at scaring the students into remaining in the classroom until the bell - even when I tell them to leave, scat, begone! - the same energy that is put into this Pavlovian conditioning (I always want to scatter food pellets around just before the bell) could be better directed towars teaching them, or at least getting them some books and educational materials that would help the more motivated ones learn something useful. I know I'm missing the point here - that's not what the administration wants, and I just wonder if they've yet figured out that they've made a big mistake inviting a guy like me into their school to instruct their impressionable young charges. If they haven't yet, the sight of students wandering unsupervised during the class period might clue them in. In order to get the students to leave today (I finished up 10 minutes early) I had to promise that I would take full responsibility if they were "caught" - it amuses me a bit that I have to threaten students with my own punishment in order to get them to do what they should want to do without any prompting. When I put that chalk down and say, "That's it for today," they should be leaping for the door, not loitering shyly at the back of the room, lest someone from the Department office see them near the door before the fucking bell rings! I can see that my educational goal here has been suddenly simplified very greatly - I WILL OVERCOME!

- Jack
10.21.00 I don't even know where to begin, currently we are in Georgia, in a town called Tsinandali, on a retreat for all lecturers in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. We still haven't decided if it's a retreat in the sense that one gets away from it all or a retreat in the sense that one runs away from it all. We flew to Georgia early on Thursday morning on Azerbaijan Airlines, and yes, flying on an airline named after a country you've only recently heard of is as scary as it sounds. It was a pretty small plane but at least no one had to give the propeller a solid spin before we could get off the ground. The floor of the plane was lined with the famous carpets found in Azerbaijan, while I've never seen throw rugs on the floor of an airplane before, it came off as somewhat quaint. There were no safely instructions as there were no safely devices. No floatation devices in case of a water "landing" or fancy things like that. It was a short flight and to our surprise it was catered. The lone attendant rolled a butler style tray down the isle and served us tea and little handmade chicken salad sandwiches - very civilized. Before we knew it we were in Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia. First we went to the CEP office to take care of some business, then Jack, Francois and I went to a coffee shop (note to those who have ever gone Krogering - they had a Kroger travel coffee mug on display). That's right, we were able to indulge in our much beloved pastime, real coffee in an environment specifically designed for its consumption. It was like coming home. Not only do they have baristas and real coffee in Georgia but we walked around the city and no one even noticed us. It was both strange and refreshing to walk down the street and not have to defend yourself against a sidewalk full of stares. We walked by the state university and Jack pointed out that the students looked like students and not like bankers, which is the trend for Baku students. I guess I shouldn't say "trend" as we've learned it's tradition that leads to the business-like dress.

We left Tbilisi on Friday morning and headed to Tsinandali which is a much smaller town in Georgia. It took us three hours in a cramped mini-bus but it was mostly a pleasant ride. The conversation was enlightening in the bus full of Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Americans, and one French Canadian for good measure. We are staying in an old mansion on land that belonged to a famous Georgian poet in the 19th century. I don't know what has happened to it in the past 100 or so years, the translator either couldn't understand my question or she didn't want to answer it so she pretended not to understand it (this happens often). It's in the middle of nowhere and it feels a little it like we're the only surviving earthlings after Armageddon. We do have electricity but only because the Georgian president, Eduard Shevardnadze, stays here so they have a generator for the times when the electricity goes out. I took a rainy walk around the property today and discovered buildings of every shape and size. The wine from this regions is famous in Georgia, we got to taste the wines that were recently made and are fermenting in huge cement holes in the ground. We also got to make fresh bread and eat it straight out of the oven.

In between sightseeing and meetings (which I don't have to attend since I'm the "life partner") we are served ornate and massive meals in an equally ornate and massive dining room. It's quite fantastic, more food than we could ever eat. The first night we feasted like this I tried just about everything. After I tried it and decided if I liked it or not, I asked the Armenian sitting beside me what it was. The first time he said, "Parts of Sturgeon." this was somewhat discouraging since that's exactly what it tasted like. The next time he said, "Keednee...and...uh...what your breath with?" I said, "Lungs?" And since I'd already decided, independent of my knowledge of what it was, that I didn't like it I felt it was fair to scrunch up my face in dismay.

- S
10.23.00 We just got back from a CEP "retreat" in Georgia - this is when CEP drags us off to some drafty, underheated old Soviet resort to have too many meetings and drink local wine and see all of the people teaching in the other cities in the region. It was great to see everyone else - even though we only met them once, during the orientation in July, it seemed like we were going to see old friends, and there was a sort of college-reunion atmosphere, only without all the trying-to-impress-people-you-never-liked aspects of many school reunions. There were many highlights, and after so much talking and drinking - along with not enough sleep - it's hard to remember what exactly went on or what to say now. It's easier to remember the non-highlights, one of which was definitely the trip back - to get to Georgia we flew on Azerbaijan Airlines, but because of the expense of air tickets, especially for the westerners among us (the cost is half for local citizens), we were forced to endure a 13-hour mini-bus drive to get home. While I'm sure it's easy to imagine how uncomfortable any 13-hour drive would be, especially with six other people in a mid-sized van, it's hard to convey the discomfort of the trip's other features besides length and lack of leg-room - the effect of no shock-absorbers on what might very well be the bumpiest road I've ever traveled (though apparently it was quite good by local standards) is difficult to describe - imagine any process that attempts to shorten your spine while simultaneously raising your butt into your torso, and then throw in the sound of two large bags of rocks being vigorously shaken right next to both ears, and you might have a decent picture of what it was like. Not that it wasn't fun and games - to get this across, I've included a CEP Newsletter item I wrote to commemorate the occasion:

Eastern Scholar Captures Prize

On the return trip to Azerbaijan from the CEP Caucasus October Retreat in Georgia, Eastern Scholar Etibar Najafov, a professor of Philosophy and Logic in Baku, Azerbaijan, took the cash prize of 7,000 Manat for correctly identifying the number of police stops the Baku Team's mini-bus was subjected to in the course of its 13-hour trip from Kakheti, Georgia to their home in Azerbaijan's capital. Professor Najafov won the betting pool with a surprisingly low answer of two (2). The other participants - Natalie Alakbarova (who guessed 10), Francois Depelteau (7), Shanon Emerson (7), Arzu Iskenderova (12), Michael Maurer (16), and Jack Miller (8) - were initially amused by and scornful of such a low estimate, but as the grueling trip wore on into the night and one police blockade after another was passed without incident, the passengers grew progressively happier with the prospect of such a low final tally. Although Francois - entrusted to hold onto the pool money because he's Canadian - made several late attempts to achieve a heightened police response to our passage by giving the finger out the back of the van, he later gladly turned over the pot to the pleased, even glib, winner. In the end, CEP-Azerbaijan learned a valuable lesson about tolerance and cultural understanding.

- Jack
10.25.00 I am unthrilled with Azerbaijan today. It's Wednesday and that means I had the pleasure of babysitting a few of the little children of this country. We didn't have class last week because of a national holiday so they were chomping at the bit to see the grades on their quizzes from two weeks ago. I made good on my threat to give a quiz in every class until they learned to shut their traps (which I don't think is ever going to happen, so a quiz in each only class means more work and boredom for everyone, including and especially me). Apparently some of the students went to the director and pleaded with him to stop me from giving the test, the director immediately called the CEP assistant who then called me to ask me to call the whole thing off (no one thought to contact me to find out my reasons for giving the test or if it was really was going to be too hard like the students had pleaded). Of course I proceeded as planned and with pleasure, I could hardly wait to give them the test now that they'd gone over my head. What kind of students think they can tell the teacher what to do? Rich ones! Today they were, again, very surprised that I was going to test them, they tried to tell me that there wasn't enough time and that it was the end of the term so I should give them their term grades and not waste my time testing them, I wasn't impressed with this reasoning. When I gave them the first test two weeks ago they continued to talk amongst themselves with little concern for my instructions. I told them that they could not speak once the test was in front of them or I would have to assume that they were cheating - since they are speaking in Russian or Azeri I have no idea if they are asking the answer or to borrow a pen. This week I told them that each time they spoke during the test I would put a mark on their paper and when I grade the test I will deduct one point for each mark. They were thoroughly surprised and they protested every time I made a mark, one girl stuck her tongue out at me (I think I turned around sooner that she thought). In my last class one boy started a fresh sheet of paper after I'd marked his original, so I gave him two marks the next time he spoke, by the time he turned in his test he'd made a big "I" out of the two marks. I asked him why he did that and he just grinned, boy would I've liked to wiped that grin right off his face. Needless to say at this point I'm a bit frustrated with my job as "teacher" in Azerbaijan. After all, I'm not teaching them anything, I'm just corralling them for 50 minutes one day a week. In my first class today after giving several marks for talking, they finally got it and there was silence for the first time ever in this room. I heard the clock ticking, I didn't even know the room had a clock. The kids started to giggle nervously in the silence, I don't think they've ever sat in silence before because they were clearly uncomfortable. Finally, the last bell of the day rings and I practically race the kids to the gate of the University, we all wanted out. The only difference was that their drivers were waiting for them and I hoofed it home. Even though it had been another hellish day with the little ones I wasn't feeling too bad - those last three hours would pay for a weeks worth of Donar and that was something - but as I started to walk home my brow furrowed more and more with each step. It had been so nice in Georgia where I could walk down the street without getting any attention but now I was back in Baku. It's even worse when I'm walking around by myself. I guess the men don't stare as much when Jack is with me, out of respect for him no doubt. When I'm alone I'm just another American jezebel, without morals and impure, who's there for the gawking. At least in America when men act like pigs I can tell them off or at stare them down. Here if I stare back these oafs remain quite unshaken and since I don't know any swear words in Russian there is little I can do but keep walking. The older women look at me for the same reason but their look is of disdain not of desire. I took my sweater off because I was hot and a group of four women looked at me as if I was stripping in the middle of the street. I guess it all seems worse to me today after my experience in Georgia, because now I know that it isn't the prevailing attitude in this whole region, or simply the fact that I'm American and they are curious about foreigners. It is Azerbaijan culture which clings to "tradition" which stems from male dominance and chauvinism, and untainted, overprotected women.

- S



Today is definitely a day of frustration, and in addition, wine accidents. We bought some locally-grown wine at the so-called resort we stayed at in Georgia (it would've been much nicer if it hadn't rained all weekend - one of the Georgians actually told us, as we were standing there getting wet, that it never rained in that part of the country) - this wine, it should be noted, was purchased for $1.50 and came in a resealed plastic mineral-water bottle, true home-brew stuff. Well, after the 13-hour spine-compressing ride, it got shaken up, and even though we waited two days to open it, it sprayed all over the place - and then it was too sweet and filled with little chunks of grape skin. So Shanon went out to the store to buy some French wine (we needed a drink after that, and everything else), but of course, we no longer have a wine opener since the one we bought here broke after three uses - that means pushing the cork into the bottle, which is sometimes easy and sometimes not. This time it sent another spray of wine into the kitchen, spelling out in wine-stain on the walls (in code of course), "It's that kind of day."

Much of the problem is that we're getting sick of peope being such idiots about any difference between themselves and their way of thinking - which is narrow enough to count as Damned Narrow - and the appearance and lives of others, namely us. I'm not even wearing shorts anymore, but that's only because it's genuinely fall weather now, and I would be cold. It's very hard to deal with daily life in a culture that you suspect more and more is intolerant, chauvanistic, and irresponsible, and proud of it - I don't think we're being American pigs here, either, because it's not like we're asking them to be like us. All we want is a bit of acceptance - when culture shock gets to be more like the cultural grind, it's harder to maintain the energy necessary to live in a place that's also noisy, polluted, and hurls speeding cars at you with intent to kill. Is the bad mood coming through?

Add to this the fact that's dawning on both of us - we're not doing a whole lot of good with our teaching, or at least that's how it seems. It's impossible to tell. I continue to ask my students all kinds of questions, mainly to satisfy my curiosity about what goes on in this country - today I asked about the guy who comes in and yells at them for not attending enough (this happened today, though in a shortened and not as irate form), and I was informed that he's the Dean of the Sociology faculty. When I asked them if he was also a teacher, they said, "Yes, of course." Really? What does he teach? "Traffic problems." No way! A univeristy professor - a Dean - who teaches Traffic Problems. It couldn't be - but after making sure I understood what they were saying, I believe I ascertained that this man, who wields much power over the students, presumably also earns money teaching sociology students something that is apparent to anyone with one eye and no brain: the traffic in Baku sucks! Finding this out about the Dean on a day otherwise given over to grave doubts about why we're here didn't do my frame of mind much good. The French wine - now that did a little good. I just hope that the shower I'm about to take finishes the job.

- Jack
10.27.00 I've taken a job editing short stories written by local writers. A professor at the Foreign Language Institute is putting together a book of short stories that he's translated into English. This man, Zeydulla - I call him "The Big Z" - is extremely nice and a pretty good writer as far as I can tell. It's hard to know exactly how good his writing is because the translation is pretty rough. I just finished editing his first story. Most of the time I knew what he is trying to say, but sometimes I was clueless. For instance, "Our love has been roughly outraged." Scorned? Ruined? I'm still not sure. I dig the job though. I'd wanted more work but I didn't want to go within ten feet of another English class. I talked to The Big Z today and he invited Jack and I to his daughters wedding next Friday. We've been hoping for an invitation to a real Azerbaijan wedding. I think this will be the red dress version, unless they aren't following tradition. One woman I spoke to is having only one party for her wedding and wearing an off white dress. She still lives with her parents so "off white" isn't a reflection on her purity. Though, she spent one high school year and one college year in the US where she could have easily been ruined by our "freedom of expression." This is the same woman who asked me if I bought organic food in the US. When I told her no, she told me about the people she stayed with in Connecticut who told her she must buy only organic. We both agreed that it's way too expensive. I told her that I prefer to ingest the toxins provided by non-organic food simply to build up my tolerance. After all, there are toxins everywhere - good thing I've been working on this for years now that I'm living in pollution central - and my body needs to be strong enough to handle them. It's a theory and I'm sticking to it.

I did more laundry today. How absurd is it to ring out individual socks? It's pretty absurd. I had to make another duct-tape clothes line to dry them. I seriously think I could survive in the wild with only duct-tape and bag balm. And maybe a dozen butter-dipped cookies. To lure the animals that I would need to capture, skin and cook...of course.

- S



Things are looking up as they only can when you hit bottom. The French wine did the trick, and we capped the effect yesterday by getting massages and heading out for dinner and then a couple of Jack Danielses - bourbon and beer in a nice dark Dive, along with relaxed muscles and a new appreciation for what we're doing, thanks to some great email advice from a number of friends and an excellent pow-wow where we explored all of our options, including getting the hell out. Staying now feels more like a decision and less like a sentence, and I think we have a good handle on what was getting us down and how we might get ourselves back up.

Of course, not all is good - today I broke down again and gave the finger to two drivers who were clearly trying to kill me (not to mention running a steady red light with a group of pedestrians in the middle of the street). I didn't feel as bad about it as I did last time - early in the day I saw an Azeri man thump on the trunk of a car that nearly ran him over because of gross negligence of attention, and I think that loosened some of my restraint. Since then, I've whacked a few trunks with rolled up papers and yelled into the open driver's window of a car backing up right at us without looking. I'm not sure who I find worse, the drivers with a criminal lack of attention, or the malicious ones looking to frighten and perhaps maim pedestrians with the foolish gall to try crossing with the green - what I do know is that I probably need to cool it with the pointless antics (the trunk-thumping clearly isn't going to change anything) and get back to the most important task, which is staying alive. Care and a bit more zen about the many things that are obnoxious here - that's the prescription.

Another prescription is taking care of ourselves physically, which I'm moving boldly onto next week. On Monday I begin my ten-day treatment with Renat, our superlative masseuse - this treatment will entail chiropractics, acupuncture, and massage, and the ultimate goal is to change my spine back from "stone," as Renat puts it, to... well, whatever spine is supposed to be like, spiney I guess. I've never had or even witnessed acupuncture, so I'm looking forward to the experience - I've also never had a "ten-day treatment" of any sort, so this will be interesting for that reason alone. I'm not sure what to expect at the other end, but I'm hoping that I'll spend more time feeling as relaxed as I did just after Renat finished with my massage yesterday - that will probably make it easier not to give the finger to people trying to kill me with their cars, which itself will probably make it easier to keep my spine from turning back to stone. Or so goes the sophistry by which I proceed into the uncertain fuure of the coming weeks.

- Jack
10.29.00 While my adventitious teaching position is by no means abysmal, I believe my aberration last week was somewhat justified. It will not leave me with an abiding dislike for those underage swindlers, even as I bite my acerbic witted tongue. I feel as though I'm at the acme of my teaching career. Just the other day I abstractedly walked these streets feeling as invisible as ever. Life in Baku may be a bit abstruse, but I'm within an ace of seeing the light. Even with the language barrier my philosophical acumen is in high gear. If I can survive Baku then, a fortiori, I can survive anything. I abjure everyone to stare into the abyss, absorb its abundance and absence, set ablaze the abominable snowman, and abolish the agglomerate of accordions that surround you. Abracadabra - and I use the term advisedly.

What we have here is a failure to communicate. No, not really, what we have here is one person with some extra time on her hands and a quest for knowledge. I've decided to read the dictionary - yes, it's come to that - starting with A, obviously. Six pages a day, every day. Just me and the dictionary and a whole lotta learnin' going on. On June 15th I'll finally know what zzz means. It's going to be a good day. I'll try not to spit out anymore paragraphs like the one above, I promise. I'll keep all the knowledge and wisdom I glean to my damned self. Do I sound like I've gone over the deep end, by any chance?

- S
10.31.00 Yesterday I began my acupuncture. I started out by lying on a bed of nails for 20 minutes - not a bed, actually, but a small pad, around 12in.x 20in., and not really nails so much as half-inch pointy metal spikes, more like large tacks than nails - so a pad of large tacks for 20 minutes. Renat calls this The Torture, though I'm pretty sure that's not a technical term, and while there was definitely some pain at first, it wasn't like torture at all - after about a minute, I began to get a warm, floating sensation, and in a little while I forgot that I was lying on a pad of large tacks and wondered why I'd never done this for back pain before. At one point, I though I felt blood dripping off my back, though I was pretty sure it wasn't really blood - and when I got up, there was in fact no blood whatsover, so what I felt was probably some kind of energy-release. The Torture was a big lesson in energy flow through the body. Next came the usual hour-and-a-half massage, though in this case a tad rougher - Renat really worked me over, and at one point I could feel a drop of sweat hit my arm, and I looked up to see that he was sweating rather profusely even though it was a bit cool in the room. After the massage, he cracked my back a few times, though he didn't get the one that he wanted - he even muttered as he pointed to the left side of my back, "I want zat vun" - and then it was time for the needles. I didn't know what to expect - what I got was these bizarre pulses of energy that felt like a combination electric-shock, pinch, and that first severe moment of a muscle cramp. Renat instructed me to let him know when this hit, which it did after a few seconds of his working the needle around. He put five or six needles in each calf and then four or five in my back, and then I got to lay there for another 20-minute stretch - I'm not sure how to describe it, but I certainly felt things happening in my body - currents or tides or maybe just mild hallucinations, I don't know. Afterwards, I felt extremely relaxed and a bit elated.

Today was the second treatment, and already I'm into the swing of things - I feel asleep for part of The Torture and most of the needles, though the pain of the massage was even more severe than yesterday and Renat was once again sweating from the exertion. Tomorrow I'm in for a Bottle Massage, whatever that is - it sounds like it's going to hurt like hell, but I'm also sure that it'll be really good for my back. The point of this whole treatment is to turn my spine from stone to human vertebrae, and if a The Torture, Bottle Massage, and a bunch of needles over a ten-day period won't do this, then my spine is probably destined to be stone and maybe that means that it's my fate to be immortalized by a marble statue depicting my sudden rise to fame in the Republic of Azerbaijan. It could happen...

- Jack


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