Thinking.is.the.function.Living.is.the.Functionary

Hello friends and relations,

I have officially been in Ganja for a month and am happy to report that life is slowly but surely beginning to come together. I have had the good fortune of “coming home” to a resilient and supportive group of site mates, colleagues, and kindred spirits. Ultimately if there is one thing that I take away from the Peace Corps it would be that you can almost always start all over again—and surprisingly, it will not kill you. It’s amazing how much can change in the short span of a month.

Needless to say that most of my time has been spent learning the places and people that will (Insha Allah) surround me for the next year and a half.—the parks, the businesses, the organizations, the Gaia-friendly restaurant…The benefit of living in one of the large cities is the large number of organizations and projects with which to occupy one’s time. Like Salyan, my primary assignment is at the USA Embassy-sponsored American Center in the local library. However, my first month has actually passed at Soros, an education center that specializes in any number of interesting classes and clubs from cooking to HIV/AIDs awareness to Spanish language to American government and Human Rights. Having substantial experience with Peace Corps, Soros seems to be one of the professional hubs of PCVs in this area. I have had the good fortune of getting to dive right in, starting with a world cultures club on “Islamic and Judaic Traditions,” a Chinese language and culture club, a film and discussion group on “Borders, Discrimination and Conflict” and a FLEX prep course. Also, last winter, my friend Kathy began a knitting group with women working at the local “Children’s Village,” a center that functions as an orphanage as well as a family preservation assistance establishment. Children who live in the village are assigned to “moms” who live in the village’s houses, supervising and taking care of a small cluster. The knitting group began as a way for the “moms” to pass the time while their charges were receiving English language lessons from visiting teachers. The group for the summer and is getting ready to start up again and another prospective project will involve conversation clubs for the kiddies with yours truly while the “moms” begin work with a knitting project that will hopefully go on sale at one of the craft fairs in Baku later this year. In addition, word on the street is that there is interest in yoga….Needless to say that life promises to be wonderfully and fantastically busy as the fall rolls around.

In other news, I have just returned from Tbilisi, Georgia and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in a fun, interesting, and beautiful city. Located in what is commonly thought of as the “northern caucuses,” The Georgian border is about three hours from my site in Ganja. In all my travels, I have never actually walked across a border—the confirmation that I had entered a place distinct from the one in which I had departed had always been confirmed by the merchandise in the “Duty Free” airport shops, the varying levels of incomprehensiveness characterizing the directions to the exit, and the security guards who would examine my passport and pensively state, “welcome to [insert country name here]. Crossing into Georgia was not so dramatic and, as I walked from one seemingly underage security guard to the next, viewing an international affinity for Fanta and high top military shoes, I was struck by the practical absurdity of political borders. After wandering the wrong way into a road clearly designated for vehicles rather than people, we managed to find our way onto a marshutka making the thirty minute drive into the capital city. I am sorry to report that I was unable to offer you pictures of this trip as my camera is currently residing with the rest of my belongings in Salyan, waiting for pick-up. I wish I could, however, given the fact that the city itself is really impressive. We stayed in a section of the city called “Old Tbilisi,” not far from the popular Rustavleli Street—also known as the center of action for tourists, art enthusiasts, and those looking for a good ice cream or St. George icon. Many of the streets of Old Tbilisi are cobblestone and, within a mile, one may visit a series of churches, a mosque, and a synagogue. Georgian Christian patriarch shops and cafes dot the streets and statues of various shapes and sizes greet visitors to a city that seems to retain a great deal of its historical and cultural resilience. Unfortunately, there was not as much time for site seeing as we would have liked, given the fact that I was there for a slightly more dismal purpose: to take the GRE. A problem test taker by nature or conditioned habit, I had hoped that the Georgian food, surroundings, and general optimism would assuage my tendency to appear slightly less than incompetent in this capacity…I later comforted myself with the promise that should my future be devoid of graduate school, a job whose form of payment does not include the phrase “living stipend,” or a living situation independent of my parents’ address, I will be able to exist as something of a “travel sage” regaling visitors with tails of Georgian wineries and fig flavored ice cream.

I must close for now. My next few weeks will involve participation in a summer leadership camp, a probable series of Baku trips, and the existential crisis of whether to suffer the GRE again or, as Ralph Waldo Emerson advises, “accept the fate that providence has assigned”—also known as pursing my vocation as a freelance ice cream taster.