Azerbaijan alphabet chart

I've been collecting alphabet charts ever since I started traveling. I hang them on the walls of my classroom, wherever that is at the moment, charts from Sweden, Korea, Ukraine, Germany, Spain, France, Taiwan, and now Azerbaijan.

I have an Azerbaijan chart for the Azerbaijan alphabet, then I found an Azerbaijan chart to teach kids the English alphabet. I bought it and put it up in my classroom a couple of months ago without looking at it too closely. The other day, I was idly gazing at it while my students copied their homework assignment. I noticed that a donkey was used to represent the letter "J", which in Azerbaijan sounds like "dzh" (djonkey?) but isn't a very good picture for J, I thought.

"Look at the chart!" I told my students. "Who can find the mistake for the letter J?" They all looked and agreed that donkey starts with D, not J.

Then, to my shock, I saw the picture for the letter N.

Cripes! In the US, I'd be fired for having this on the wall! Before I took it down "to burn it" as I told my friends, I showed it to a couple of them. They said 'Well, it could be "native" or "Nigerian" ' but that probably wouldn't be the automatic response here, where the N-word is casually used.

Also, my friends said the J picture was probably "jackass."

What I did on my winter vacation

Baku-London-Frankfurt CANCELLED due to snow
Baku-Istanbul
Istanbul-Frankfurt CANCELLED due to snow
Istanbul-Stuttgart-Mannheim
Mannheim-Frankfurt-Paris-Minneapolis
Minneapolis-Philadelphia
Philadelphia to Chester County in a rental car
Chester County back to Philadelphia
Philadelphia-Minneapolis
Minneapolis-Amsterdam-Moscow-Baku

The last two legs haven't taken place yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

On this odyssey, I visited my sister and her family in Germany, my mother and other sister and her family in MN, then (travelling with my mother) my aunt and uncle and cousins in Philly, and my other sister and her family in Chester County. And now I seem to be coming down with the flu. I don't usually see so many relatives in so short a time--someone gave me something.

Dumb ex-pat

The other day in a tiny little cluttered shop, I whacked something with my backpack and heard it crash to the floor, turned around, and saw I'd just destructed a statuette. I picked up the pieces, put them back on the shelf and snuck out. Then I felt horrible. Here I am a rich person in a poor country--I probably wiped out their profits for the week. So (raised Catholic) my conscience bothering me, I asked one of the admin. assistants at the school to translate a note: "I broke something on Friday. I would like to pay for it now." The translation was five times as long as the English--lots of polite terms and formal sentence structures in Azerbaijan.

Big smiles from the clerks when I handed over the note. The pieces were immediately retrieved and offered to me. Price: 60 manats, but no, not, 70% (shown on calculator). I'm sure I've been a topic of conversation for the past few days. I like this shop--now I'll be able to go back to it.

Another birthday somewhere else

I spent my 50th birthday in Kyiv, at my first overseas teaching job, and I'm so happy to spend my 54th here in Baku! I love my friends in the DC area and the traditional Dec. 4th gathering at the Four Provinces in Arlington, but it's a stimulating change to have a party (for the first time here) with people from London, Melbourne, Harare, New Mexico, Auckland, Manchester, Ottawa, Istanbul, Madrid. I love hearing their stories.

And now that I've hosted one party, I'll do it again (esp. if I hire a housecleaner, as everyone else seems to have done).

Sheep-slaughtering holiday

Today and tomorrow the school is closed for the Muslim holiday of Gurban. This school is closed for all Azerbaijan national holidays--I learn about them as they come up.

Last week I asked the eighth-graders exactly what Gurban commemorates. The local students explained that it's a day when you kill a sheep and give away pieces to your neighbors, particularly neighbors who are poorer than you. "And if you're poorer than your neighbors?" my co-teacher asked. "Then they give you pieces of their sheep," was the response.

So a day to trade around pieces of sheep; basically, a day of charity. (I looked up Gurban online, and it does have to do with Abraham and Isaac and the ram that Abraham killed instead of Isaac.)

I was wondering how I, age 13, would have explained the Feast of the Assumption to a Muslim. It would have sounded even more whacked out than Gurban.

Fall break in Deutschland

I just returned to Baku from Germany via Vienna. It was nice to be back in the west for a few days. Germany now feels almost as familiar as the US, compared to Azerbaijan. I had a good time supporting the German economy and buying stuff that's not available in Baku (peanut butter, dehydrated soup mixes, salad dressing packets..pretty much anything full of chemicals and preservatives).

Patty and Manfred and I watched parts of a documentary about two guys who go on a motorcycle trip from London to NYC via Ukraine and Kazakhstan and Mongolia and Russia--it's called "The Long Way Round" with Ewan McGregor (actor) and a friend--it's astonishingly entertaining! Get it on Netflix if you can!

The other day Patty (GOD BLESS HER) spent almost the entire day at a travel agency w/me helping to arrange flights from Baku to Frankfurt to Minneapolis for Christmas and New Year's. It involves four airlines and connections in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Chicago, and Moscow. I'm sure absolutely nothing will go wrong, no glitches, no lost luggage, no missed connections, nobody wondering if I'm a terrorist because I live in a Muslim country...

The two young women at the travel agency put a lot of work into it. We kept hearing one or the other on the phone saying something like "Baku. in Azerbaijan. I know, we never heard of it either!" (I don't speak German, but even I could understand THAT, esp. since there was a lot of laughter going on at both ends)

Kai and Mac had their school break this week as well, so it was great to spend some time with them. Kai is about ten feet tall, Mac not quite, but getting there...they're delightful nephews and I was so happy to be on the same continent w/them for a while.

Small world cliche, but fun

On int'l day I met the father of one of my German students, stilted conversation, but he warmed up on hearing I was off to Deutschland for the break, near Mannheim, where he grew up!

"My sister and her family live near Speyer."

"In Speyer?"

"No, a village near Speyer. Bohl-Iggleheim."

"Bohl-Iggelheim? My brother is in Iggelheim! a doctor! ear nose throat" (so jubilant that he forgot the words and pointed to his ears nose and throat) "It is a small world!" the dad said.

So in the next few days we'll be going for a walk along the street where this uncle lives. Manfred looked him up in the phone book and wants to knock on the door and say hello. With him, I won't look like a stalker.