Sorry I haven't posted in so long. I'll have my own place soon, and I'll get internet access. Love and miss you all.

2/23
Gosh, I wonder what Sasha’s doing right now (That’s what I’d be thinking if I were you!)

Monday-Friday, for the most part
7:15am Wake up, roll over, snooze for five minutes, I unzip my Slumberjack, hating my body as it adjusts to cold
7:30am Sneak pee cup out of room to toilet 100 feet down stairs and into the frosty yard, wash my hands in shower room next door, grab pan for scrambled eggs or bowl and spoon for oatmeal from outside downstairs kitchen
7:36am Appreciate consolidation of places and goods in American homes
7:59am Wash boots because dirty shoes=judgment from the children, the teachers say
8am Walk to school, keeping my puppy away from students because they’ve never known a kind dog, and keeping my puppy away from sheep, cows and geese and other animals that could potentially harm him since like the children he doesn’t know any better
8:20am Pull my co-teacher away from gossip so we can teach the children
8:25am-11:30am (Seasonally shortened to 35-minute classes! Not an exclamation mark because I like it!) Teach really amazingly bright students from amazingly retarded textbooks
11:30am Walk ahead of teachers while I try to understand local gossip, avoiding mud puddles
12:30pm Eat lunch, probably a soup
2:30-3:30pm Beginner or Advanced Conversation Club, or English Writing Club (new!)
3:30pm-4:30pm Tutor overzealous 20-something trying to get a job with an oil company on Mon. and Tues., and two cute Russian-speaking eight-year-olds on Wed. and Fri.
5pm Read or think about writing
6:30pm Eat dinner, probably a soup
7pm Watch movie/work on quilt/read
10pm One last venture to toilet
11pm Slumberjack and me till I have to use pee cup at approximately 2:13 am

1/14
Parsley, basil, garlic, chili and oregano are the ultimate offense to an Azeri host mother. Eric sent me spices for my own cooking, dating two months from today when I can move into an apartment as a single gal and cook all-American food all the time. Butter, sunflower oil, Crisco, salt and sugar overcompensate for the lack of natural herbs and spices this country produces. So my host mother pretends not to stare as I avoid the bread, also a compensatory food, and sprinkle two of the McCormick Tabletop Spices onto my nothing mashed potatoes. The sweet basil and dried garlic with a little istiot, pepper, spice my life like nothing I ever appreciated in America.

12/16
A week in December dinner menu:
Scrambled eggs. Cabbage dolma. Russian oatmeal, not like Quaker’s. Bosbosch, a beef-based soup boiled with potato and rice mixed in a beef ball. Mutton soup. Scrambled eggs. Bosbosch. Chicken with rice soup. Attempted over easy, resulted scrambled eggs. Mashed potatoes. Told host mother I am tired of bosbosch: boiled potatoes and chicken. Oatmeal with cherry murraba, not so bad. Pumpkin puree, no problem there. Grape leaf dolma. Oatmeal with murraba. Spaghetti noodles lathered with oil topped with jarred tomato sauce and onions. Fried fish. Scrambled eggs at the request of my host mother who says they’re going bad. Chicken meat patties with potatoes, my favorite. Bosbosch, like she forgot about it. Oatmeal. Mashed potatoes. Cabbage dolma (we rotate). Oatmeal with brown sugar from CitiMart. Spaghetti, same but caresses my tummy like home. Mutton soup with onions.

11/1
I’ve taken to eating creamy peanut butter with my index finger, straight from the jar. In America I eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches, not fried. But bananas here are hard to come by, costly and shitty mostly. Peanut butter can be found in CitiMart in Baku and maybe large regional town centers, but not in mine. So under the covers I dip my finger, far into the stronghold of the plastic Reese’s jar. In my chilly bedroom I try not to concentrate on the cream stuck to my arm hairs or the health of matter. I hide the container when my host sister passes. On second thought, looking at the food we eat, it wouldn’t faze her. Though, half the fun is knowing I would never play like this at home. I’d add banana for potassium.
This peanut butter was sent from Eric’s mom. I opened it without permission from Eric and half way through, saliva caressed on the jar sides, he told me to finish it off.