This is now the 4th country I've celebrated New Year's Eve in. It's not quite as big a deal here as it was in Russia or Kazakhstan, but it was still pretty spectacular. It certainly put any New Year I've spent in America to shame, if only because of the events at the end of the night. Intrigued? Then read on...
The local butcher shop getting ready for the holiday- seeing as I have
a long-standing fear of turkeys, this made me a bit nervous
This year was definitely different from previous years. First of all, the weather was simply gorgeous. It was warmer than it has been in weeks (in the 50's) and the sun was shining. We met a teacher from Rachael's school downtown, and after she left for some last minute shopping, the three of us walked up and down the park by the water.
Just a bit different from New Years Eve in KZ or Russia!
Have I mentioned what a beautiful city we live in?
But of course there were still New Years trees and Grandfather Frost (like Santa).
I can see our house from here! This is why we have such a phenominal
view from our apartment- we live at the end of nowhere!
The sun sets on 2012
Shortly after the sun went down we headed home to chill out for the evening. We watched a movie and then went out on our balcony at midnight. Now this is where the spactacular part comes in. If you've read any of my posts about the holiday from years past, you know that fireworks are a huge part of the celebration. Everyone and their brother buys as many as they can and then sets them off in their courtyard or off of their balconies at midnight. And they don't have any kind of laws restricting who can buy the really big ones, so it's lightyears beyond anything you've seen at home.
We figured that, considering our view, we'd be able to see most of the fireworks across the city from our balcony, and we definitely got that part right. It was pretty great. What we did not count on, however, was the view we would get of the ones going off in our own courtyard. In the past my roommates and I have always gone outside to watch the show. This time, we were on the 10th floor. Which means they were exploding right in front of us. Literally 20-30 feet away. It was spectacular and terrifying all at the same time. This is some of the video I took. You can definitely hear us flipping out in the background:
I think Rachael was right, though, in saying that the best part was probably our neighbors on the next balcony, looking at us like we were crazy! What's up with these weird American girls, shrieking and laughing and cowering in the corner of their balcony? Even the little girl was laughing at us!
Once we got back inside and let the adrenaline rush subside, we poured ourselves another glass of bubbly (well, kind of- it was a carbonated fruit juice of some kind) and paused for one last group photo.
Happy New Year!
So that's all for now. Happy New Year from Baku! I hope 2012 was wonderful and that 2013 will be even better. :)
Celebrating the holidays overseas is never quite like in America. Last year, for instance, my roommates and I found ourselves out doing some last minute shopping on Christmas morning and only opening presents that afternoon. Our dinner also included shashlik, the Kazakh version of a kebab. Not exactly Norman Rockwell-esque, but we made it work!
This year, however, has been the least Christmas-y of all my years overseas. We never seemed to have time or energy to decorate or prepare anything during the week, and the between sickness and other issues, the weekends got away from us as well. Before we knew it, it was December 21st, and we had yet to even buy a tree. We found a small one on top of Colleen's wardrobe, but we never even put it up.
Our one attempt at seasonal decorations
This long weekend was a much needed break for all three of us. We took a day to just chill out and do nothing, and then a day to do a deep-cleaning of our apartment. I cooked, which is something that sadly falls by the wayside too often when we're teaching. We hung out and watched movies. It was a wonderful time to do all those things (including just relax) that we usually don't have time for.
On the 24th we went to an American-run coffee shop to indulge in some holiday-themed coffee drinks (for Rachael and Colleen) and hot chocolate (for me). Then we wandered downtown for an hour and a half looking for a mythical Mexican restaurant we'd heard about. We finally settled for dinner at a nice place near fountain square.
Today we never even got out of our PJ's (which is why you'll see no pictures of us!) We spent the day watching Christmas movies and cooking. Rachael made cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and we had my mom's amazing pot roast + green beans and rolls for dinner.
Dinner and a movie: "Miracle on 34th Street"
It was a lovely day, but despite the themed movies and the late-night skype with my parents, it just didn't feel like Christmas.
One could assume that without all the usual trappings of the holiday in America (and don't get me wrong- I love the usual trappings!) I might have been able to focus more on the reason for it all. And that should have been the case. But unfortunately, that did not happen, at least for me. In all honesty, it was just an extra day off work.
I don't want to let this one slide. I think I'm going to take a day during our next holiday (for New Years) to celebrate Christmas again. No decorations, gifts, heartwarming movies, or special meals. Just me, Him, the Book, and the greatest story ever told. Maybe some carols. Anyway, that's the plan. Please feel free to hold me accountable on this.
Okay, I'll come straight out and say it... my main motivation in writing this particular entry is the excuse to include a bunch of pictures and show everyone how adorable our students are. Consider yourself warned. :) So, having said that, here is a typical day in the life of these two kindergarten teachers:
8:45-9:10- Students arrive at school. They put their coats away and are free to play until class starts. Since our first lesson is art, often either Colleen or I are cutting, gathering, or arranging things for whatever the day's project is. At some point a crowd of curious 5-year-olds will surround us, with a chorus of "Teacher, what is this?"
9:10-9:50- Art. Every day we have a different project planned, some more involved than others. We try to use different skills (drawing, tracing, painting, cutting, gluing, weaving) and reinforce the language they're learning. "What is this?" "What color is it?" "How many are there?" "Is it big or small?" They have made TP roll binoculars, lion masks, pasta necklaces, and picture frames, along with all the usual coloring and painting projects. Once Colleen had them make sheep out of a TP roll, paper, and some cotton balls, and it was the biggest hit! One boy wanted to carry it with him all day, and she had to bring an extra chair to the English lesson for it in order to get him to sit down!
10:00-10:40- Breakfast, including time to corral the kids downstairs and wash our hands before and after. Have I mentioned that we get 2 out of 3 meals at school every day? It's a pretty sweet deal. :)
10:50-11:20- English class. This is the only part of our day that we were really trained for before we came! Each week we have a topic like food, animals, or family, which we also try to incorporate into other lessons. Three or four days out of the week we'll focus on new vocabulary (with a LOT of review the whole way) and the other day or two we teach a grammar concept (like pronouns or basic prepositions) or useful sentences.
The kids pick it up really quickly, but the amazing thing is when we hear them using words or even sentence structures we haven't taught them! They pick up so much, just from hearing us speaking all day.
11:30-12:00- P.E. This is probably the hardest lesson to control, but the kids need it after sitting still so much of the morning. We play soccer, tag, and monkey in the middle. We work on different skills, like kicking, catching, jumping, climbing, and throwing at a target. When possible, we also try to play games that reinforce whatever they learned in their English lesson. In the video below, the kids had to transfer all the noodles from one chair to the other, acting like whatever animal Colleen called out.
12:10-12:40- Math (MWF) or Science (Tue/Thur). Math right now is basically a lot of practice writing the numbers, counting, and saying them in English, although just this week they got their first color-by-numbers picture. Science is just exploring the world, and learning the words to talk about it. We've talked about the five senses, the weather, the different seasons, and different kinds of plants.
12:40-1:10- Recess! Everyone's favorite time of day, including the teachers. As long as they're not in danger of hurting themselves or each other, we get to just chill out for a while and talk.
F bossing the boys around: a pretty accurate
representation of how things go down in our class
1:10-1:50- Lunch. Though the kids mostly talk to each other in Azeri and Russian, this is a great time to work on manners- for example, saying "Teacher, can I have ketchup, please" instead of "Teacher, ketchup," and saying please and thank you.
2:00-2:30- Problem Solving lesson. This is just a fancy way to say that this is the time of day when they play with blocks, put together puzzles, and play with clay.
2:30-3:00- Music (MWF) or Skills (Tue/Thur). The skills lesson is a time to do tracing worksheets, as well as do cutting, coloring, and matching activities in their workbooks.
In the music lesson we teach them songs in English, thus far, mostly ones we grew up with, like "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" and "Rain, Rain, Go Away." This week they're learning "The Hokey Pokey"! Whenever possible, we try to find cartoons or videos of the songs to play on our laptops, which they love.
3:00-3:30- Review and Games
3:30-4:00- Snack time.
4:00- The kids go home and the grown-ups collapse in exhaustion!
You may or may not have noticed that there were often 10 minute gaps between classes. The school here has built-in breaks for the children to play between lessons.
The whole class (at least that day) chillin' on the windowsill
One thing we love to do is teach them little games or tricks. The latest is the high five thing- "Up high, down low, too slow!" They can literally do that over and over again for 10 minutes if we let them. Although they came up with a variation on it all by themselves. If the person manages to slap your hand before you pull it away, they say "Too fast!"
P teaching them "Thumb War" (after we taught it to her)
So that's it! Our super cute students. It's not always easy to teach them (in fact, it almost never is) but it's certainly entertaining!
On a school-wide field trip to a bookstore last week
PS. As if this wasn't enough, I posted a few more on the "Pictures" page, as well as some that are not of the kids... although really, what fun is that?
Soon after we got here, someone told me that the longest
word in the world is Azeri.Now, I've
done some research since then and it seems that it's not actually possible to
determine the longest word in the world because there are too many
variables.But I can tell you that if it
were possible, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that my friend was
right.
The Azeri language uses a lot of suffixes with words to
convey meaning.For example, the phrase
"with my parents" is only one word in Azeri.To make it a complete sentence- "I am
with my parents"- is only 2 words: the pronoun + the rest of the sentence.Although you could actually leave the pronoun
off if you wanted to and have an entire sentence in one word.
valideyn- parent
valideynlǝr- parents
valideynlǝrim- my parents
valideynlǝrimnǝn-
with my parents Mǝn valideynlǝrimnǝnǝm-
I am with my parents
And that's a word we've used in
a lesson before, having only been studying for a few months.I can't even imagine what a native speaker
could come up with!
Some other fun/interesting
things we've learned about the language:
The verb always goes at the end of the sentence or phrase, not matter how long it is.To use an old example from a friend who studied Kazakh: "I with my friend to Temirtau for New Years went."That one definitely throws us off when we're trying to formulate sentences!
Our teacher taught us one verb that has at least 6 different meanings: to weigh something, to take a picture, to draw a picture, to smoke a cigarette, to pull, and to spread something (like butter on a piece of bread).
To make a verb negative, you add an "m" to the middle of the word- "bilirǝm" (I know) becomes "bilmirǝm" (I don't know).It's kind of an important distinction, but I mess it up all the time. I once told someone quite emphatically (in Azeri) that I am not studying Azeri.
The verb for "to understand" literally means "to fall into your head."
The verb for "to listen" translates as "to hang something on your ear."
Ah, the joys of learning a new language. Good times.
