magda's travels

After a year at home in San Diego I picked up and moved to Tanzania, so I thought I would dust off the old blog again so I could keep people up-dated on my life. But as always its content is not a reflection of the U.S. government, Peace Corps or anything else.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Magic Heating Hole, friend or foe!






So After the original posting of this and the previous post I added some pictures, I will add even more to the next one if I can figure out how to rotate pictures, it seems like that should be easy. But alas! Also since the posting of this, it started to snow again. I'll let you all know how that ends up working out for me. I'll tell you this though, I have started distilling a ton of water to keep in reserves. All the locals are predicting another storm to roll in in the beginning of Feb. YAY! So one of these pics is the new snow and the other is one of the wrist warmers I have crocheted in front of the carpet on the wall in my bedroom. Is it just me or does it remind anyone else of that scene in "Garden State" where his shirt and wallpaper match!







I am sitting at work, by my raging fire of the gas petch (heater) and I was thinking it was blogging time, for no real outstanding reason, just cause...

So if you are out there in blogland and have been reading any of the Blog's from the PCVs here you'll note that we are all mentioning the cold! It's true it's cold, the coldest winter in AZ since 1974. The results of which are many here are a few.
Many people are still without water ( those of us who live in apartments are mostly back and running now days, but none of my sitemates can really say that)
Street Sledding is the new national past time
I missed my friends wedding, due to fear of the roads, and thusly you are all deprived of pics with me with extensions
At least in Sheki, everything is just Beautiful
School closed for an extra week because of the roads
But at least we had snow so I think that the water supply will last for a long time this summer (finger's crossed)

Strangely, it's been a great month and I have no major complaints and all the minor ones seemed to be taking care of themselves, as they usually do!

I can't remember if I ever mentioned my magic heating hole, I believe I did. So there is a hole in my kitchen floor about the size of a soda can. Through this hole hot air flowed and heated my apartment to the degree that I didn't feel the need to light my flame thrower petch. I was VERY happy about this arangement, largely because I have a tremendous amount of fear surrounding my flame throwing petch. Well last week my landlord came over and put an end to my magic heating hole. Apparently she thought I would burn to death because of it, she said she cried because I didn't answer my phone and she thought I may be dead already. Which is sad, and I guess I am glad that the danger of me burning to death is behind us, even if I don't believe it. I
have been wrong about a lot of things, why risk it right? I mean, she could be right. There are a lot of mistakes I still make because of assumptions. For example, this week our cook is on vacation so I cooked lunch at work on Monday. I assumed that the plastic cooking oil container in the kitchen was cooking oil. See right there, another false assumption. It was however, lighter fluid! Luckily, I am not sick at present and have the ability to smell and noticed it that it was not cooking oil BEFORE lighting the stove.

So there you go, magic heating hole may or may not be your friend and cooking oil may or may not be lighter fluid, Life lessons!

I'll leave you with this happy thought, all the streets in Sheki are nearly thawed, it isn't nearly the obstacle course of an ice walk it was last week. And it's been warm enough all week that even without my magic heating hole I haven't needed to light my flame thrower petch. So I am going to go ahead and call that a Win-Win!

Saturday, January 19, 2008

THE WORST IS OVER




(hopefully) ... I am hoping, not that I think Winter's over and there won't be another cold snap/blizzard, but I got water last night for the first time in 19 days. I showered at a co-worker's this week after she realized I was going to take a 12 hour roundtrip to shower in Baku. It was really nice of her, and it was a great shower, the first of 08! Although I am glad it's over (again, hopefully) I will never forget the week of my life where I would go collect snow to melt down for water that we cold heat on a wood burning stove to drink instant coffee to stay warm.

Emily, my new sitemate has an on-going list of things she will never take for granted after Peace Corps (an excercise that would be good for anyone I think) this week water got added to the list, she still didn't have any last night, so let's keep her in our thoughts.

I think I am going to start a list too. I will say one thing I have not taken for granted since I moved into my apartment is water, especially running water on demand. I actually get jealous/awe struck when I am in someone's place with running water. You should have seen me staying at Christof's in Germany. I did the dishes everyday while he was at work, because they were so EASY to do, his response (other than gratitude) was you do known that the thing next to you is a dishwasher! I knew, but ...Running Water, wow!

Other things I have realized are great are broccoli, showering, WASHING MASCHINES, variety in cheese, sidewalks, trash cans, regular trash pickups, and insulation. I am sure I will add to the list over time.

Today is Jan 20th, which is a black holiday in Azerbaijan. It is a memorial day, so in honor of it I am going to start educating myself on the politics of the region. I think it would be great if by the time I left I was able articulately answer half the questions I am sure to get, so I suppose it's time I start devoting a significant about of time to that!

Last tidbit, The English Volunteer's in town organized an English movie day at the local movie theater, so yesterday I got to see Ice Age in English along with 66 other people in town, which is about 12 times larger than any other turn out I have seen at that theater! So it was a pretty great day. I found MUSHROOMS for sale in town. Emily came over and we chatted for about 7 hours and over 5 cups of coffee and bailey's (thanks again Steph). Then we went to dinner with Nick (her husband) and afterwards we met up with some other volunteers, all that and I got water! What a day, What a day!!!!

Monday, January 07, 2008

Baby it's cold outside

Hi Everyone out there in blogging land. So winter finally hit Sheki, we didn't have a white Christmas but we sure did have a white New Year's! It's snowed for a week straight. Today was the first sunny day, which means I woke up to the sound of 1ft + icicles falling from the rooftops. It was also the first day back to work since Dec 19th, so it was a little rough getting out of my nice warm bed, but I did it!

The roads are not just icy though, they are entirely iced over, so I had the distinct pleasure of walking to work on an uphill ice rink. I even saw where someone had slipped earlier and spilt there milk, because the milk had froozen! Which brings up a new fun game I have been playing, called funny things I see in the snow. It started on New Year's Eve, the first day of heavy snow, I was walking to Nick and Emily's and I saw an organ lying there in the snow, no kidding! I am not really sure which one it was maybe a liver? Since then I have also seen a CD frozen to the ground beneath the snow and possibly my favorite Azeri shoeprints. Azeri men's shoes are typically very pointy so the shoe prints looks live Elf prints, it's pretty darn funny!!!

So that's it from Sheki for now... and in case you are all wondering I am keeping warm by sitting in my kitchen keeping warm by the whole in my floor through which hot air blows, from...? This is largely because I am typically too scared to light my heater because it is really just a blow torch in a metal box!