This would never happen in Arlington

Old impoverished women here stand silently on busy pedestrian pathways with their hands outstretched and heads bowed. Old impoverished men are more likely to have some little enterprise like selling lemons on the street or setting up a scale and charging passersby 20 kopeks to be weighed.

I went past a scale operator the other day, gave him some money and said "I'll pay you 20 kopeks NOT to weigh me." He said something back. I have no idea what he said, he had no idea what I said, but we both laughed merrily.

Yesterday morning on my way through the village I caught up with a very tall skinny guy who was also walking to school. I asked if he's the new PE teacher. He is. I asked him where he's from. "Here, Baku. " "And did you teach at another school before this? What did you do?"

"My job--I'm player on Azerbaijan National Basketball Team." Oh my God.

I sputtered "I'm American! Basketball is a very big sport there!" as if he didn't know.

Martyrs' Day

No school today because of another mystifying Azerbaijan national holiday: Martyrs' Day, though not that mystifying once I learned about it. On January 20, 1990, citizens in Baku were in the streets protesting Soviet policies and agitating for Azerbaijan autonomy. Soviet tanks rolled in, and about 180 civilians were killed. This day is commemorated as the beginning of Azerbaijan's road to independence, which finally officially took place in October 1991.

I happened to have "primary source" material for Martyrs' Day, a copy of the Washington Post dated 20 Jan. 1990, for quite another reason.

In the wee hours of Jan. 19, 1990, ex-mayor-for-life Marian Barry was finally nabbed for coke possession, the famous (among those of a certain age) "bitch set me up" arrest.

So this summer, clearing out boxes in preparation for the move to Baku, I found dozens of newspapers documenting historic events, or what I considered historic events. The Pope's 1979 visit, John Lennon's 1980 murder, the 1981 release of the hostages, 1986 Challenger crash--and 1990, Marian Barry's arrest.

Under the fold on that day--news of the Baku uprising and Soviet response. It meant nothing to me at the time. I probably didn't even read it.

I threw out the other newspapers, but kept this one.

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.