May Flowers

Baku, Caspian Sea when it was still cold...


Spring comes to the Inner City (Baku)



Tulips!


Friends gathering in Ganja to celebrate Elias' birthday!


George's exhibition to the living room,,,



Oruj and Elias...bromance.



The pre-Celion Dion song-fest photo shoot at Tor's birthday party (Ganja)

All is well as spring makes itself manifest in all her colors here in Ganja. It is interesting and slightly uplifting to think that this time next year, I will be in the US of A. Of course, the events of the next six or so months make the prospect of carrying on up until then a rather daunting one. In the way of updates:
After more ridiculous hoop-jumping that has recently involved a three hour trip to the Marriage Office in Baku in which Oruj and I gave an impromptu cultural lesson on the proper and very improper connotations of certain racial categorizations and were conned out of 20 Qapik (about 35 cents) by the clerk taking the marriage fees determined to get her “sweet money” despite our best efforts. I get that times are tough but really?...The silver lining to all of this is that we finally have a date for wedding number one: mark your calendars for June 6^th, folks! As it is, we will be having two or three more wedding processes in the near future—one for each of our respective religions that will likely take place in the States. Still, it is an interesting feeling that all of this running around stressfulness has an endpoint. Oh, right—then there is the immigration process. Like I said, busy six months.As far as the GRE and graduate school goes, I am taking the test on June 23 in Georgia. Good times. Anyone who has ever spoken to me knows that I have struggled with a lifelong aversion to standardized tests. Perhaps it is an inferiority complex or an irrational phobia of compartmentalization but I have never done well on exams meant to measure my intelligence relative to my peers. I am constantly told that institutions look at way more than the GRE and I suppose I am in a better position than if I lived in Azerbaijan, where the standardized test is literally the only thing that controls one’s professional and academic future. Still, I get the feeling that people who say such things are those same people who speak fluent French and insist that it is an easy language that anyone can learn it. I never studied for the ACT as I couldn’t bring myself to do the very thing that I am doing now: realizing just how stupid I am according to the standards of the ETS (the organization that gives all standardized tests that I know of). Today, during hour two and a half of studying to the overzealously enthusiastic twang of the Carpenters and ABBA I hit a word that I didn’t know: “ravine” (I was pronouncing it “Rae-vine”). Reading the definition went something like this: “A narrow valley with steep sides…WAIT A MINUTE… DAMN IT! HOW CAN I APPLY FOR A PhD PROGRAM? I CAN’T EVEN READ THE WORDS I KNOW!” I felt like Brad Pitt in "Burn After Reading": “Osborn Cox…we have your sensitive shit. [Reading] He had a good rap-ort”—“NO YOU MORON! RAPPORT! THE “T” IS SILENT!” Apologies if the reference is not familiar but nevertheless, I think that the “pre-exam breakdowns” mentioned in the last installment have insured.

In other news, softball continues and a series of birthdays of friends here in our PCV/Fulbright community have allowed for a series of good times. In my spare time, I am enjoying little joys such as the reemergence of strawberries in the bazaar and the realization of my aspiration that Cornell West and I will one day be good friends. All in all, things are…going.