We arrived at 4:30 am on Sunday morning. The transition from the airport to our apartment was quite smooth, however, the water lesson was a bit much for our traveled minds, especially when, Valleh, our new Azerbaijani friend was sure we could understand him if he waved his hands vigorously and repeated every Azeri sentence often. We did learn enough to know that it is all a bit confusing for those of us who like to turn the knob with the red or blue dot and get the type of water we desire. Cold water is the simplest to coax out of the faucet, not that it comes at will but that's what the reserve tank is for, right? If we happen to be around when the city is inclined to use there precious power to send water our way we can be found jumping with joy. I think one of the Americans we met put it well when asked about the water in his apartment, "Intermittent, at best." , and this guy has a two year old kid at home, I hope he's a clean one. For the first few days we had to boil water on the stove for our baths, the gas heater, that we must light each time we want hot water, was on the blink. One day "the master" came to fix it and that evening I took one hell of a bath; baby oil, candle, peeled orange, Yanni in the background (all Yanni all the time, you know me...) I refused to get out until the water was this side of tepid. Sadly, the next piping bath to be enjoyed was cut short when a hose disconnected from a pipe and sent water cascading down the walls of the bathroom. Back to the stove we went, I suppose when it gets colder we won't be so compelled to bath every day. I'm sure "the master" will be around the fix it any day now, along with the oven, after all, the phone was working by day four. But I digress...

The Rector of Azerbaijan University came by on Sunday afternoon for a meet and greet. We hadn't been expecting them (the rector and his posse) but were happy to accept their lunch invitation. They drove us to the Old City where we ate an authentic Azerbaijani meal in a building from the 14th Century. We dined in a private little alcove away from the court yard where our camels would have been resting had it been the 14th Century. We had breakfast first (they knew we hadn't eaten breakfast yet so it was served immediately preceding lunch) and lunch was served, beginning with our new favorite soup, dushbara. The food was excellent, we were drunk with cherry juice and kababs by 3 o'clock. After the very elaborate meal we went to the Promenade for tea. The Promenade borders the Caspian Sea, ahhh the smell of oil not mixing with water. It was a great introduction to the city, if a bit like a Mafia outing at the corner Italian joint. (ps. let's keep the Mafia comment in the family, if you know what I mean.)

The days following were filled with more "excursions" through the city and various meetings. We've already met many Americans who are currently working in Baku. No oil people, mostly do-gooders and Embassy brass.

Jack and I get quite a bit of attention when we walk down the street. I have the, apparently, unfavorable tendency to wear comfortable shoes which I believe is the cause for much of the attention I get, that and the fact that I'm a pale, corn-fed girl from Ohio who couldn't look Azeri if I sold fruit in the Bazaar. Jack, we've been told, looks a bit like a Turk and even sounds like one when he speaks the language. His most obvious error in fashion is wearing shorts. It's been in the 90's all week and yet he's the only man or woman in the entire city wearing shorts. I believe he gets a mixture of giggles and envious looks. It's a GAP world in Azerbaijan, "Everyone in Pants" and "Everyone in Uncomfortable, High-heeled, Strappy Shoes." My only wish is to follow a vacationing family of four through the streets of Baku, unfortunately the tourist industry here is nonexistent. It was obvious from our first day that being an individual is frowned upon in this part of the world. We spoke to a local professor yesterday who has done a study of Azervaijan people and tradition, the results are that most feel it is bad to do something different than the masses because then they will all be forced to change their ways to conform to your way. I don't exactly understand it, talk to me in ten months.

We both start teaching next week. I'll be teaching one class to 4th year college students and three other classes to students in 7th, 8th and 9th grade. Jack has one Undergraduate class and two Masters program classes. We will undoubtedly have more tales to tell next week. All in all we are doing good. The food is excellent, the weather will eventually cool off and the people are good to us. Until next time, salam.

-Shanon

It was very dark, so we couldn't observe much on this first trip through town (actually into town from the far northwest outskirts), but we did see many gas stations (a quick manat/dollar and liter/gallon conversion yields approximate prices of $1.35/gallon) and, oddly, an overabundance of streetside merchants vending trunkloads of fat watermelons - which is apparently a ubiquitous and 24-hour feature of the city and can be explained - so we learned later from the guidebook - by the brief anti-alcohol campaign launched by Gorbachev, who had local vineyards razed and replanted with watermelons.

We arrived at our 4th-floor walkup about a half hour later and were treated - not at our most mentally sharp moent, it should be said - to a confusing and ultimately misleading lesson on how to deal with the water situtation in the apartment. We have just now - I'm writing this on our 4th day - gotten to about a 98% understanding of the Baku Water Shuffle, and only after many misunderstandings and false theories on the uses of the three water valves located in the toilet-room (our bathroom is divided into two rooms - one with the sink and tub, the other with the toilet and what looks like a shower nozzle but is probably just a stand-in bidet).

We were finally left alone at around 4:30am - befuddled, dirty, and not at all sleepy - so we sat around for another hour, winding down and wondering what Baku was going to look like in the daylight. So far we knew that it was filled with gas stations and watermelons and was very windy. Since our apartment was very stuffy, we opened the windows and spent a good deal of the next hour figuring out how to secure them from slamming shut and shattering the not-so-secure panes of glass - an exercise not dissimilar to the Water Shuffle but one that we could at least figure out on our own (unlike the Water Shuffle, which required three partially-contradictory explanations to clear up). We did in fact figure it out by the next day, by which time the wind dropped to almost nothing (apparently it's not windy all the time - about one out of every four days), leaving us only the problem of how to deal with the aggravatingly-persistent mosquitos in our bedroom.

[We just jumped up to do the dishes because the water pressure suddenly came into existence (it does this every day somewhere between 10am and 11am, and then again around 5:30pm, for an unpredictable duration). Doing dishes is a rather simple affair - we have a big plastic bucket (about the size of an infant washing-tub) that we put the dirty dishes in with some cold water from the tap (a redundant phrase as only cold water comes from the tap) - meanwhile, we boil water and stand around hoping that the water pressure stays around long enough for us to rinse the dishes - because we can supplement the pressure with the (intermittently-working) water pump, we'll probably be able to do this (and in fact the tap rinse-water only gave out once, near the very end - this time). When the water is hot, we pour it into the infant washing-tub, and I wash while Shanon rinses. Voila! Clean dishes. Of course, we have enough plates to last two days, so we don't need to do this every day - which is good, because we also need to use our strong-water times to bathe.]

On Monday we went to a meeting at Baku State University, which was in stark contrast with the outing put on by the Azerbaijan University "family." To get to this terra ingonito, we were picked up at home by Natalie, the local CEP assistant - instead of being whisked away in chaffeur-driven cars, Natalie led us to campus by way of city bus, our first introduction to the tightly-packed (i.e. extra hot and smelly) transit systems (the metro is similarly tightly-packed and probably even hotter and smellier - the fuel smell that permeates the tunnels is disconcerting as well as obnoxious). The University District (Elmlyar Akademiyasy) is a pretty bustling place, though just about everywhere in the city has the same kind of street vendors - donner (aka gyro), perfume, shoes, cigarettes, tomatoes, the usual. At the gates of the university, I was challenged by some kind of guard, but I just pointed in front of me (at what? at the others in the group who went completely unchallenged) and kept walking, a technique that is quite useful in a country where there appear to be guards, or really hall-monitors, all over the place - badge-wearing (badges like you get at a conference or reception, not tin stars) teenagers in many instances, whose only job, as far as I can see, is to pester people who look exactly like me but not to actually stop them from, for instance, getting to my classroom or, as in this case, the Information Center, where we met our university contact, Rovshan, who speaks great English (though he did ask us to explain the phrase "Don't hassle me, I'm a local," which he'd seen in an American movie and very perceptively picked out as something he should know how to use). Rovshan then escorted us (Shanon, Natalie, myself, and Francois, one of the other CEP lecturers in town) to meet with the Dean, who naturally enough didn't speak any English - the meeting had little or no purpose that I could discern, and after much uncomfortable standing and then sitting and some hand-shaking, nothing was decided or communicated except "Here's those Westerners we promised you." More meetings were planned to decide our teaching schedule, but I ended up missing that second more important one because I developed the Traveler's Complaint and couldn't leave the apartment for one full day.

When I went back two days later to make up for my absense, I experienced my first open jeering - students gathered in the outdoor cafe on campus mocked, laughed, and pointed at me as I passed, and I honestly don't know why - my sideburns? my shoes? my bag? It's difficult to know what little thing that makes us different triggers the us-versus-them attitude that is a prevalent feature of the culture here. I met an American woman who told me the explanation given her by an Azerjaini - they're a very collective-minded people, which explains the hospitality (when you're in their home or part of their faculty, you're included in the "us") and also the dangerousness of pedestrian life (when the people in the car are "us" and you on the sidewalk or trying to cross the street are "them"). I guess it was obvious that I wasn't part of the university community (but not for long) so I got lumped into the "them" category and therefore became open game. I think we're getting used to the constant staring but the jeering is a tough one to ignore. Anyway, I never did get to make up this meeting since Rovshan and then entire Information Center staff had decided not to come in that day, and when I tried to meet with the Dean myself, recruiting the nearest English-speaking Azerbaijani I could find, I was told he wasn't in - when I later called Natalie, who had arranged my make-up meeting, to tell her this, she said, "No, that's impossible, he said he would be in from 10 to 5." Being "in" and being in are, of course, two different things all over the world. So I still don't know when or what or whom I'll be teaching at B.S.U., so I guess I'll have to go there next week and push past the hall monitors and keep trying...

- Jack

Today was the first day of our second week. We had our first language lesson - our Azerbaijan U. contact Etibar found us a tutor, and this morning at 11 he showed up with Nagis (they were actually 5 minutes early - Azeris tend to be either on time or a bit early, which goes against what we'd heard). Nagis was a bit nervous because she's never instructed Americans before - in fact, as time went by, it became clear that she'd never taught anyone to speak Azeri before, that she was an English teacher being pressed into hazard duty for the $10/90minutes we were paying her (we sent her away after only 75 minutes because we were worn the hell out). The lesson was extremely useful because instead of starting with all that 9th grade foreign language bullshit, we got her to tell us how to buy things in the market, which entailed more than just learning to count to 10 (bir, icky, uch, dort, besh, etc.) - we also got her to give us phrases to use with taxi drivers. She taught us the days of the week and the months almost by way of gesture to a "formal" language lesson and then left us with pages in our notebooks and heads slightly spinning. If you're interesting in figuring out how hard this language is to learn, just note that there are a number of sounds in Azeri that are difficult or impossible for us Americans to make with our mouths - most notably the R, the B/P, and some kind of CH which sounds like simultaneously hocking-up and swallowing down phlegm - and of course, it's also hard to figure out how to write these things down when the teacher is rattling off words as quickly as a hard-core Azeri auctioneer (this was the tip-off that she's usually not an Azeri teacher - whenever she spoke English, she did so slowly and instructively, but she zipped out the Azeri like it should be obvious to us what she meant).

After a lunch of quesedillas (cooked at home, naturally - there's not yet a Mexican restaurant near our aparment, but I think there might be one somewhere in the city), we ventured forth into the city to do some errands - one of them was to report to Natalie, the CEP assistant, that our phone was once again not working, though that was by no means the only problem to report. In addition to the oven not working and the hot-water-heater still not fixed, the water-pump in our building is now on the fritz and we still don't have any idea where to go to do our laundry (other than the bathtub, which is an answer we don't yet want to accept). On the way, we checked out the Magic Lady, a women-only health/beauty/fitness club near the Old City, where Shanon now has an appointment on Thursday to get a $10 massage. I'll be looking into the hamam (Turkish bath) later this week to see about getting my own cheap rub-down. After talking to Natalie and making a couple of phone calls, we headed off to photocopy the first two chapters of the book Shanon will be using in her Home Reading course, which starts tomorrow at 1:30. While waiting for the copies, we walked around, hoping to possibly run into an internet cafe, and just as we were both about to say, "Let's turn back, there's nothing in this direction," one reared up beneath us (literally - it was down a flight of stairs off the sidewalk. The surprises were not done - as we were sitting down at the computer, an American voice said, "Did you go to Ohio University?" (I was wearing Shanon's old OU t-shirt.) It turns out that the only other person in this very internet cafe was a recent Ohio State grad who, along with seven of his buddies, had come to Baku to teach English. As Gomer Pyle was wont to say, "Surprise, surprise." We passed off contact info and so may soon be downing pints with a few hearty Buckeyes.

After this excitement, we had to rush home so as not to miss the coming of the "master" to fix our hot-water heater, which is a gas burner affixed to the wall at the foot of the tub. He did a great job replacing all the pipes, and it looks fixed, but we can't tell because there's absolutely no water in our apartment - the water-pump won't go on (a problem somewhere else in the building), and we can't get even the slightest drip out of the faucet, which is a new low in the ever-problematic Water Situation.

Our apartment has been a jumble of various problems, even more than we'd expect - what's exasperating is that we haven't yet had things as merely bad as everyone else around us. We should, however, be moving to a new apartment, either at the end of this month or more likely at the end of October - something in the center of the city, where the water runs more consistently, we might have a phone line that can handle the internet, and we can walk to everything instead of taking a 10-minute walk to a metro station and then a hot and smelly 10-minute ride into town. Natalie is going to find us this new place - she's a bit scandalized that the university got us an apartment so far out on the edge of town (it's something like a 45-minute walk, which as of now we've only done once, though if the weather ever cools down, we might try it again). The benefit of our current place is that we're one block from the university - but it will be much better to take the metro to school a couple of times a week rather than walking to school and taking the metro into the city. Right now, everything we want to do, like checking email or getting photocopies or exploring the various weirdnesses of Baku (like the 5-story mall in the center of town), is a major undertaking - it takes some serious psyching-up, as well as military-like planning, to get out the door for an afternoon such as the one we had today. We're definitely looking forward to being in a place where we can roll out of bed, make some coffee with water that just comes from the tap (suitably filtered and boiled, of course), and then strolling out to an internet cafe to check email, all without logistical maneuvering fitting the renovation of a small city.

- Jack

Tomorrow I have three classes, one each with 7th, 8th, and 9th graders, I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to teach them. It seems that I'm just supposed to talk about the United States. I just hope I have 15 weeks of US information in me. The school doesn't have any books for me to use or even a working copy machine so that should make things very interesting. A good test of my knowledge, which is just what I'm looking for naturally.

Things are continuing to break in our apartment. Finally the "foreman" came yesterday to fix our hot water heater, however, the "motor" (water pump) that brings water to our 4th floor abode is no longer working. It's essential to have a constant flow of water to light the gas heater and a constant flow of water can only be guaranteed with a working motor. Twice a day the water will flow on its own but not consistently (depends on who else is using water in the building). This morning we had the kitchen faucet wide open so we would know when it started to flow, as soon as we heard the first trickle we were in the water zone. (As of this morning we were nearly bone dry with only two liters of water for everything; baths, dishes, teeth brushing, coffee, vegetable washing and toilet flushing this is not a comforting situation, especially in 90 degree weather.) So the water starts flowing and we're in high gear, Jack had to shave for his 10:30 class and I had to get a water stash in order. I managed to take a hot bath, do the essential dishes and boil enough water to have 10 liters of "BF" water, that's Boiled and Filtered. Oh, did I mention that I filled the reserve tank too? Which brings me to our newest problem, the reserve will overflow slightly to let you know it's full and then you shut off the fill valve, I did this and the water kept coming. When the toilet was about to hydroplane through the bathroom I decided to shut to main water valve off as well, it finally stopped and flowed down the drain in the bathroom floor (which it is supposed to do). The main line shouldn't effect this particular pipe though, I can't imagine what the problem is now (11:00 pm - when we got home tonight the water was flowing like the friggin Nile AND the main line was off. It's good because Jack will have the luxury to bathe today but still a mystery). It's all very comical at this point. If they ever do fix these things or if we move into a new apartment we'll think that a regular life in Baku is the high life.

I was unceremoniously introduced today as Jack's wife, we were told ahead of time that it's much simpler to say we're married. In Azerbaijan men have a wife and/or a mistress and nothing in between, so they refuse to understand that there are other ways. Even in good marriages, where people actually like each other, the man has a mistress; the typical wife's only response is, "Just don't spend any money on her."

- S

By the middle of my third class today I could barely think of anything to say, I was exhausted. Not only am I talking a lot but I'm talking very slowly with a simplified vocabulary.

Tomorrow should be another interesting day. It's Magic Lady Day! featuring my $10 massage. We've been sleeping in the living room recently( it has an air conditioner). Jack on the inflatable mattress and me on the couch. The inflatable is bad for my back after a few days (hello Magic Lady). We can't sleep in the bedroom because it's too hot with the windows closed, and if the windows are left open the mosquitoes quickly find there way to our exposed parts. Getting buzzed and bitten out of REM sleep is no way to live. So it' s a little like camp for us right now.

- S

The master came today and removed the motor so they can fix it or replace it. The slumlord finally brought us sheets, towels and additional knives today. We were told she refused to bring us these supplies, so someone at the university must have put the squeeze on her. When The Don talks, people walk. The oven is also fixed, it's like the goddamn Hyatt around here now. Except, of course, for the fact that we can't even turn on our main water line at all. When the main line is on it sends water shooting out of some pipe or wall or something down on the first floor, even the master was a bit shocked. The woman, Lamiya, who comes with the various master incarnates to translate, was so moved she actually said shit, and she doesn't speak that much English (I guess we all learn the bad words first).

Well, it's almost 9 o'clock and the master has not returned with our fixed motor or done anything to allow us to turn on our water (Jack just checked to motor in the off chance that they snuck downstairs like little elves and fixed it without telling us...no such luck.) Even without water, Jack is whipping up what smells like the best Paella this side of Turkey. Time to dine...

- S

The Don also said that the reason women in the US started a women's movement is because it was necessary in the US, but in Azerbaijan it is not necessary because the men hold the women in such high regard that women couldn't possibly desire more in life. As far as I can tell, this "high regard" that keeps women so content entails men giving a woman their seat on the subway and REALLY appreciating the fact that they wash the entire household's laundry in the tub (when the water cooperates) and hang it out to dry, make all the meals, clean the house, take care of the kids and quite possibly work outside the home. It's true that the men are quite chivalrous on the subway, but when a woman is trying to buy a token to ride the subway or trying to cross the street or buy some bread, it's every man, women and child for themselves (one of the many paradoxes in Azerbaijan). As far as how women are treated in the privacy of their own homes I can't say at this time. I think they are overworked and under appreciated, as many mothers and wives are, but otherwise treated with respect (but don't forget about the mistress business I spoke of before).

We are hoping to move to a new apartment by the end of the month. We looked at one yesterday that is smaller than our current apartment but in a great location. Right now we have to take the hot, stinky, sweaty metro (subway) to get anywhere (Azerbaijan University found us our current apartment, which is far from the city center but near the University. They would like to believe that, for the next 10 months, our only concern will be their University - they were shocked and appalled when they found out Jack was teaching at the state university.). The new apartment has running water all the live long day, can you believe it? And it has an electric water heater that will heat the water with the flip of a switch. It's luxury, and we could be in the lap of it soon. I will miss the chandeliers that hang in our current apartment though, but both places have 12 foot ceilings which we dig the most.

- S

The thing I find most odd is that the women in Baku wear all kinds of crazy clothes - what is known accurately and perhaps even euphemistically as "European fashion" - sometimes outfits that make me feel like staring longer than appropriate. But the men all wear the "traditional" clothing that consists of dark-colored pleated pants, square-toed shoes, and short sleeve shirts that range in color from from light grey to dark grey, with the occasional stripe (also grey) or criss-cross pattern (in, you guessed it, grey). It's like the costume department got confused whether this was a dark, angst-ridden film about Communist-era conformism or a gaudy romp celebrating the new freedoms of the post-Soviet republics. The women, in my mind, are the big winners here, which seems odd because the predominantly-Muslim culture would seem to lean in the direction of female modesty over male uniformity - but what the hell do I know. Our new friend Deborah Welsh, who's been in Baku for four years, gave one possible explanation - apparently Azeri mothers completely pamper and dote on the boy children, tying their shoes and cutting their food for them until they're in their early teens sometimes, while the girls are left to fend for themselves from around four or five, a condition that fosters self-reliance and independence in the girls while rendering the boys compliant and incapable of thinking for themselves. It's as good an explanation as any, and much better than what I got from my perplexed students, who simply reiterated that the men follow the traditional way of dressing even though - my interpolation, which I shared with the students - it's foolish to dress this way in such terrible heat as we've been having since we got here. The male students just shrugged at my obvious inability to grasp the obvious, while the female students kept quiet and remained comfortable in their skimpy outfits.

On the flip side of my finger-giving experience downtown, I had yet another local-acceptance moment here in the home neighborhood, which is a pretty working-class area north of downtown (there are three or four auto-repair shops just down the street, if that's any indication of the district in which we're currently housed) - coming back to the apartment this afternoon, I waved vigorously and said "Salam" to all of the children playing in the dirt courtyard outside the building, and not only did they wave and "Salam" back - I've been doing this for days with only coy glances for response - but one of the kids, a pudgy six- or seven-year old shook my hand and asked in English what my name was. I told him and got his name - Janub - and waved again before mounting the stairs. I wonder if the parents around here have told their children to stay clear of the strange shorts-wearing foreigners or if they even care. They still mostly avoid our smiles when we pass, but the bread-ladies at the metro station and the shop-keeper of the mini-mart we frequent for juice and chicken have warmed up to us considerably. The myriad sidewalk-sitting vendors that line the street between our apartment and the metro station - selling everything from loose nails to pomegranites to ornate toilets to freshly-slain lamb - seem to have at least gotten used to us - they no longer blatantly stare as we walk past and might in fact have already absorbed us into the background scenery of their world. We still get a lot of looks downtown, where the Euro-chic women and the few adventurous, non-grey-wearing men parade day and night - just another one of the many apparent contradictions in this strange land of the East.

Today we bought our first non-chicken meat - in Azerbaijan, lamb is the other white meat. We purchased a nice 1-kilo hunk of some portion of the sheep from a meat counter near our apartment - just down the street from two forlorn-looking sheep tied up to a tree, right next to a forlorn-looking cow tied to another tree. My university contact Etibar recommended this meat-counter, which is little more than a Baskin-Robbins-looking refridgerated counter out on the sidewalk of a dusty side street, near the gates of Azerbaijan University - he told us the meat was the very freshest, pointing to the tied-up animals nearby as confirmation. We didn't see the actual slaughtering of our sheep, but it takes very little imagination to connect the piece of meat you're buying with the soon-to-be-meat parked a few yards away - even Shanon, a proven and vocal meat-lover, commented that this could be the sort of thing to make her a vegetarian. Right now I'm making a recipe from the Middle Eastern cookbook we wisely brought along - Persian lamb stew with apples and cherries - and it smells very good, so we'll see...

- Jack

Another oddity today is that it's the end of Daylight Saving Time (I know this only because my IBM computer has been programmed to adapt itself to any city in the world, even Baku) - this is the case because it's the first Sunday after Fall Equinox, which makes more sense than whenever the change takes place in the U.S. (it always surprises me), but it seems too early in the year for it begin getting dark at 6pm. It'll be especially weird when the sun returns and the temperature rises to the 80s again - it'll feel like Summer but the sun will set early like Winter. After the differences in culture and dealing with the many things that have broken in our apartment, it's a luxury to be able to be concerned with such trivial adjustments as this.

I didn't mean to imply that everything is fixed. The water motor still hasn't been replaced, though the master did succeed in doing something with the pipes that makes the motor almost unnecessary - it was unnecessary enough that last night we were able to run a hot bath (through the gas water heater in the bathroom, not by boiling water on the stove), and it seems like we'll be able to get along okay until the motor is put back. No, the newest Situation has to do with Electricity, not Water - and not even that the electricity doesn't flow more or less regularly to our apartment (we've had only a few very short outages, knock wood). The problem is that our valiant Radio Shack power converter appears to have been burned out by the coffee grinder, which, upon closer inspection, exceeds the 50-watt maximum recommended for the power converter - apparently it's not sufficient to have a power converter and a power strip, you have to watch your wattage also, a late-learned lesson that has temporarily left us without our main computer (luckily we have this small one that has a long-lasting battery) and radio - not to mention indefinite postponement of coffee-grinding capacity.

Tomorrow we'll go into the city and try to locate a replacement, which we're hoping won't cost too much - we brought the Radio Shack one along originally because one of the local university people told me by email that they were expensive in Baku. We're both secretly hoping that ours isn't really destroyed but merely resting - it has a built-in circuit-breaker and is supposed to revive after a half-hour. It has not revived after over an hour as of now, but maybe this larger jolt to its capacities will merely require waiting a half-day for recovery - if so, we'll be very happy and get to listen to the BBC news later tonight. Otherwise, we'll be stuck trying to piece together the Azeri news on TV, which is pretty easy when it comes to Olympic coverage but impossible for other reports - or more likely, we'll just read in silence and wait until tomorrow...

- Jack

I've realized that the worst thing about not having water is that nothing can be cleaned. We can't wash any dishes or clean any surfaces (the kitchen counter is one I'd like to take on). We can't even wash our clothes in the tub and hang them out to dry on the porch - not that that's my favorite thing to do, but it's the only way we've found to get laundry done around here. Now I understand why nobody wears cotton in this county, it's too hard to dry and it becomes horribly misshapen when you hang it on a clothes line. Apparently some people have washing machines and maybe even dryers - I know the big wig from the Embassy does, I saw it - but there aren't any laundromats (maybe because they don't have coins) for those without fancy the machines at home. We may have found someone who does laundry by weight though, isn't it odd that our options are doing it in tub or having it done for us.

- S

Finding the cheap coffee-grinder was somewhat of a coup - proof that those hard-earned shopping-around skills can and do transfer to different countries. Desperate but hardened, we first found a $26 grinder at a fancy shop in the center of town. Then we went to the Coffee and Tea shop, which is mostly a Tea and a Tiny Gesture Towards Coffee shop (locals now drink coffee, but tea still dominates) - there we discovered the first in-store grinder (even the expensive Western supermarkets here don't have the grinders featured in every American store), but at $19/pound for their coffee, it would've made sense to buy the $26 one (we did consider bringing in our beans and asking them to grind them for us, but the electricity was out in the shop so we thought it undiplomatic to ask at that point). So it was off to Tsum, where we were first directed when, a week or so ago, we were searching for a fan - every shop had at least two fans going, but when we asked (gestured is more like it) if we could buy one, we were told No; after a few futile attempts, a helpful clerk suggested Tsum. I'd spotted it on the map sometime previously, so we went there, expecting a department store of sorts - which is exactly what it is, of sorts. It's more like a combination department-store/flea-market/indoor-mall - there are four floors, roughly divided into categories like Electronics (ground floor), Perfume (first floor), Clothing (second), and Household Textiles (third), but it's no Sears or JC Penney - the floors are not parts of an integrated retail establish but simply receptacles in which small retailers similar to the ones everywhere in Baku vend their vaguely category-specific goods. There are rows stalls where just like in the outdoor bazaar, and each "shop," or partitioned area, sells things not very different from the ones on either side. In the case of fans, which were located on the ground floor in probably half the stalls, we found that the 50Hz power source available here (it's 60Hz in the U.S.) didn't drive the small fan motor fast enough to generate anything like a usable breeze, even on the highest setting, so we didn't plump down the $30 for one - but in the case of coffee grinders, we quickly located a stall that had both a $7 model and a $5 model. We had the clerk show us the difference, which also entailed having her plug them in to prove to us that they worked, a standard practice and a good habit in a land where caveat emptor rules - there is absolutely no way to return anything purchased, and we only even get receipts after asking and sometimes haggling (which we do in the cases when we need receipts to get reimbursed by CEP for things like internet time and photocopies). After the glad exchange of 25,000 Manat, we were back in the coffee-grinding business and very happy to have saved ourselves $21 (which is enough to buy about 65 pounds of the ripest, tastiest tomatoes you've ever had in your life). It was going to be rough dealing with truncated power usage if we couldn't drink coffee (which needs to be ground) as compensation, but things turned out okay, as most things here have after some time and just a bit of a struggle.

Speaking of struggle, I had my second day of class at Azerbaijan University - 10:30am every Tuesday, but don't by any means think that that means that I show up at school and waltz into the room and begin educating the youth of Azerbaijan. Oh no, the simplicity of such a thing would probably grind the whole country to an immediate halt - the thing is, there are lots of people for whom employment must be provided, and in many cases that means devising a system in which extraneous labor is made necessary. For example, in one of the stores in the center of town, a big, fancy Western-looking grocery store (there is a surprisingly large number of these around) which we popped into to buy some Sprite to cool off and get refreshed, there was a woman stationed near the cooler who retrieved the bottle for us (though of course we have much experience at handling refridgerated items), and then pointed towards the cash register, where we were required to pay. The clerk needed to be told what we were buying because we couldn't present it to her - the first woman was holding our Sprite in a plastic bag - and after we paid the money and received our receipt (check in Azeri), we got our bag - but the bag-holding woman then had to tear our receipt to indicate that we'd received our goods. This is only a small example of one job created where there is no need for one - in the university, there are many people involved in the arranging, writing, and posting of the Schedule, and the only reason that this is needed is that the classrooms for the courses change on a daily and weekly basis. Why do the classrooms change? In order to make it necessary to have the Schedule rewritten almost constantly - an obvious if somewhat circular explanation. So of course my class isn't in the same room each time, and I'm lucky that it's at the same time, in the same building, at the same university. The additional rub is that my course isn't even on the Schedule - this is because in Azerbaijan, where the Russian system is still used, university students are subjected to a high-school-like schedule, with required classes running all day - each student in a particular grade and major has a pre-determined course load (even if the room and class schedule changes constantly in order to retain full-employment for arrangers, printers, and posters, the course load remains fixed by the curriculum), and at the end of the semester, the students take exams in each of their classes, which generally means that they're required to regurgitate for the examiner what the professor has told them throughout the term (this might be unfair to say, but it's what I've been told by many people, and in any case, there are never papers or other types of assignments - it's all final exams). So naturally, since my class is given in English and it would be brutally unfair to require all of the students, many of whom don't speak English, to take an exam on material delivered in a foreign language, my course is the rare breed of Russian-system college classes that can be considered an elective, and there is no place on the posted Schedule for my elective course to be listed because it's crammed full of everything else that takes place all day in all grades. So not only do I have to scramble for a room and round up the students, but the students have no institutional motivation to take my course, which I consider positive - only the students who really want to learn what I have to teach, or who find the novelty and experience of taking a class from an American, will attend - it also means that during my time-slot of 10:30-11:50, all of the bachelor-degree students have some other class going on in which they'll be examined at the end of the semester (the master-degree students have no morning classes, but that's so that they can work outside jobs, which means that most of them don't have the ability to take my class either). Not that I don't have students - I had ten the first day, and seven today, which is impressive when you consider that they had to cut one class just to attend another class (what American student would cut a class for any reason other than doing something outside of school?). So I find the system a little bit absurd, but I love my students, who are intelligent and motivated and just really great kids, and for me that's enough - if my bristly presence can have some impact on the way things are administered at the university, which I doubt, than so much the better (though how would I deal with the guilt of putting so many people out of work if I were given carte blanche to reform the system?).

- Jack

Yesterday, I had my second day of classes with those ankle-bitters that the university calls students. May I say now that teaching young people is only for those who are strong and can keep their energy one notch above each and every prepubescent kid. The kids that I'm teaching happed to be rich -they have drivers who bring them to and from school - and they know that it doesn't really matter what happens in class because they've seen Daddy's wallet save the day before. (...corruption junction what's your function, handin' out cash to pay for your causes...) These kids never stop talking, if I stand at the front of the class staring individually at each student who is talking they will eventually get quiet but as soon as I begin the speak again - show's over, I might as well be a bee keeper with the buzz that surrounds me. Have I mentioned that in my 8th grade class yesterday four cell phones rang? I'm pretty sure that some of them were calling each other just to see what I would do (by then I was so beaten down all I could do was ignore it). No one answered their phone, they just looked at me unapologetically and checked to see who called. Meanwhile, I'm up there giving it all I've got trying to explain to them what the word array means.

Of course they aren't all bad, in fact most of them are pretty good kids who just want to know if I like Baku or if I know about the aliens skulking around Area 51, one never knows what question they are going to ask. They call me Teacher, I've tried to get them to call me Shanon but it hasn't happened yet, I secretly wish they would could me Mr. Kotter.

- S

- Jack

ps - I just noticed that there's a tree growing through the floor and up through the ceiling here in the back room of this internet cafe. The trunk is about a foot-and-a-half thick and Vs off into two one-foot-thick forks about four feet from the ground. The tiles of the floor are pulled up around the base and there are two round holes cut in the drop-ceiling tiles to allow the tree to rise out of the room unimpeded. I've never seen anything like this before - lots of the courtyards in Baku have trees growing through holes in the cement, but that's not much different than trees planted along sidewalks, which you can see anywhere, and besides, a nice tree or two lends a pleasant atmosphere to the gray interior courtyards featured in most of the apartment buildings in central Baku - but what, I wonder, is the point of this? Perhaps there's a good explanation, but I'm really not well-fortified at this point to try getting one from anybody in here - besides, if there is a reason, it probably won't meet my expectations, which at this moment are running in the direction of wild theories about ancestor-spirits located in certain trees that cannot be cut down without risking grave bad luck (I'm almost positive this isn't it, but I want it to be something weird like that and I don't have the heart to let some pragmatic Azeri erase my fantastical notions).

The near-constant rain all week has been very surprising - all local accounts excluded any report of rain, and the Yahoo Weather section on Records and Averages indicated that September would get 0.1in. of rain and October would get 1.0in., a grand total that has already been surpassed in just five days - but it warms our Seattle hearts and has allowed us to move onto long pants and even sweaters much earlier than we felt last week that we'd be able to hope for. I don't know how Bakuvians are liking it, but the indefatigable merchants don't seem to respond negatively - their only concession has been large sheets of plastic held down by glass coke bottles, but they're quick to lift them up if you so much as glance at their tables - business as usual for the petite capitalists of the city.

- Jack