*Donna News*

Welcome to the latest edition of Donna News!

Here it is, some more exciting news from Donna. Mom and I were able to talk with Donna on Sunday night, October 3, at around midnight our time. It was a very brief conversation, only about 15-30 minutes long. She is in process of figuring out the culture and had limited time to be online. We found out that if a woman is on the internet for too long, the men and other women assume that she is looking at...um...certain sites, shall we say, so it is very frowned upon to be online too long if you are of the fairer sex. Our chat was way to brief and definitely tear filled. I'm not going to lie, though I was beyond ecstatic to talk to her, it made me realize how much I depended on constant contact with her before she left. I mean I was texting that girl constantly day in and day out. But I digress, you guys want to know how she is doing, and not my sob "I miss my sister" story.

She has been with the host family for over a week and is deep in training to learn not only the language and the culture. She typed up emails to Mom and myself and sent them when she had internet access. It looks like she typed the emails during the week and then sent it when she got to the internet cafe. The cafe charges $0.70/15 minutes of internet. I am going to attach snippets of the email below that best describe how much she is enjoying the time she is there.

"At the moment, my tongue is burnt because I drank my cay a little too quickly before it had cooled down. We have half of the day off and tomorrow we have the whole day off so that I can send off my emails! YAY! I think my host family wants me to stay here tomorrow.. (3hrs later) I think they are fine with me leaving tomorrow. HAHA!

We had lunch and some more cay..now we are watching Killers with Azerbaijani spoken over the English! Insane. Everyday I’m amazed by every thing here. It’s such a different world and to know that a year ago I didn’t know about this country.

I just finished eating some grapes that me and Aida (host sister) went to get from the Magazine (little store). You would LOVE her! She loves to dress up and take pictures of herself. HAHA! I laughed so hard when I found out that this obsession transcends cultures. She loved the pictures I have on my computer of you and Afua with the tiara. She is 21.

I’ve been doing better in my language classes! I think all the beatings I get at night to study from my host mom is really helping. She just went thru my calendar for these 3 months and I told her where my language test is and she said “DON’T SLEEP JUST STUDY!” HAHA! I figure that is what she was indicating when she said yox yatmaq and the word she uses for homework. She’s a trip.

It feels like I’m living in some strange dream right now. Everyone speaks this language that I don’t know but everyday I understand a couple more words and phrases which makes it a little less lonely...OH and they let me see the rest of the house today! I guess they trust me more......So I figured out how to shut out the heckling and stares that I get when I make my 1 mile hike to school, listen to dave. HAHA! I haven’t done this throughout because I didn’t want to show everybody that I have expensive stuff with me but now I feel more comfortable with the route and my host dad is driving around sometimes because he works at the same school where I have my language classes.

I actually saw my host brother at the school when he was working out for boxing. I think he skipped practice today so that he could hang out with me and his friends. He loves the ipod touch and all the games on it. Thank goodness I put some games on it.
Tomorrow I’m going to check out the market and see what is available and if I can make any of my favorite dishes. Which I’m not sure what is my favorite dish but I will think of something. They want to taste something I’ve made. I told them I bake but that’s because I have all the supplies I need and know what to do with them. Here it’s hit or miss...I think they are getting use to my loud personality and closeness.. Let’s hope. The father is somewhat like Wayne because you never really know where you stand with him except some of those small moments when he jokes around with you.

My teacher for my language class is 21 and is really great with us. They must be stressed because they have to get us to a high level of speech for such a short period of time. Ok I’m being called.

(3 hrs later) Ok.. I was called to eat a very large dinner.. I didn’t finish it all. I don’t normally eat lunch bc breakfast and dinner is normally enough but since I was here it is inevitable. We played on the iPod touch, dominoes, drawings, and watched some tv. I lost several times in tic tac toe to host brother and I beat them at dominoes. Not a happy bunch when I kept winning. :P They drew my name all pretty and I’m gonna keep that forever! They told me that the last PCT had the dog [bark] at him everyday he was here and the dog is use to me now. I guess that’s a good sign in their eyes. :) IT is in mine. Also they asked me if I was scared to come here and I told them a little because it was unknown to me but that I was really excited. Also I told them that you guys are coming. Little Bro said “but they are not coming here.” L I was like “WHAT! I was going to bring them, is that ok?” and he got REALLY excited! Then told the family and they got excited. They want to meet my “mini-me” =mom. They keep telling me that I look like mom. :P That’s a compliment in my eyes since mom is pretty and always looks young."

Whew! That girl can type! That was all from the email she sent me. I love her stories about whats going on over there for her. It keeps her really connected to us.

Below are some different stories she gave Mom that I am going to share with you all.

My host family is amazing. They are a clone of our family. They help me with my homework and overload me with more teaching. They want me to do well and have better conversations with them. At this point, it is still charades and translations by the little kids. HAHA! I have decided to stop them from translating and letting me spell it out so that maybe I’ll figure it out. My host mother is very strict with me and makes sure I do my homework over and over and over and over and over….and over and over..THEN we start our spelling test..over and over and over…then we add in new words in all of this. In class, I can tell how much it is helping me already. It’s still mind-blowing how quickly they want us to excel at this language. I will do the best I can and just work from there.

We hope to explore some on our half-days and leave our full free days to Sumgayit to shop and surf the net. Here it is assumed that if a female is on the internet that she is looking at porn.. UGH! So I have to keep my time in the internet café’s short. I already stared too much at this one Azeri guy and he keeps doing certain things to get my attention. He’s a deaf man that works or owns one of the small shops where I bought my mosquito plug in. He has beautiful blue eyes and is handsome so naturally I started staring…BAD BAD BAD! We had to keep walking by his shop.

Night 1. I got absolutely no sleep…. I have about 50 mosquito bites to prove it. I couldn’t sleep bc I was being eaten alive by them. I don’t have anything to hang my mosquito net on so I figured that if I kill enough of them I can sleep and no more will be around. I obviously did not predict this very well because either there were 30 of them in here or they were coming in from somewhere. ANYWAYS it got so bad that I had to wipe my body with a germ-x wipe bc of all the splattered blood on my arms and legs. OH it was horrid. All night… So in the morning I told my host mom and she showed me this mosquito plug in for the wall that kills agcaqanad. Now I use that and sleep peacefully thru the night. I just cant wear a skirt right now bc my legs look awful.

I should be losing weight with all the walking I’ve been doing but my host mother cooks with a lot of oil, fat, and butter, which makes for a tasty meal but fattening. So I’m going to skip lunch unless I have to get something from my room and just spend that time at the beach. I asked her if I could run in the morning and she started laughing so hard because she said I’d get skinny (which must be an awful thing) and that my walking already should be enough. So I didn’t give up and then she indicated that the host father may not approve so I have dropped the subject and if I don’t feel my walks right now are enough I am going to supplement them with yoga (with whatever small time I can find). My day is mainly class, walking, and studying.

We have a HUB day coming up so I should get my mail then. Here the postal service is not needed. People do not mail or receive mail. If they need to talk to somebody they call or go over to their place. BUT you can always send me purell, baby wipes, kool-aid (my LCF misses it from the states), pictures of you guys, books, or more germ-x wipes. I really am not prepared for all the business casual that they require but I’m finding out that I can pretty much dress not business casual and just wear black and that is fine. These women LOVE black, gray, and sequins. To me this only adds to the dreariness that is the brown landscape here but if it makes them happy then I will follow this pattern. Also they do not have street signs that are prevalent so this map I have I can’t figure out because I have no frame of reference. I know I live in New Jorat and my language school is in Jorat and my technical school is in one of the microregions but I need to figure out more so that I can point myself to the beach when I need a break. OH my host brother and sister dress in business suits when they go to school. On the way to meet my host family I saw a guy driving a dump truck in a three piece suit. They love looking sharp and to the nines, all the time. So I must look like a bum but it’s one of those things that I will keep as my own thing and just adjust my appearance slightly so that I don’t garner more attention. It’s nice though that there are Russian women here because I just look like a dirty bum BUT I could be Russian.

The girl that I shared a room with in Philly I also shared a room with in the Neopal Hotel and she is so sweet. I told her to meet up with me in Sumgayit this Sunday to catch up and share stories. We both love being social in public so she will be a great person to keep up with.

ALSO! I will NEVER complain about Houston drivers EVER again!!!! EVER! I had my first marskuka ride on our trip to sumgayit and AH! Yeah.. I can’t wait to take you guys on those things. You will probably scream “SAKLA!” after about five minutes. HAHA!"

So this post is SUPER long incorporating two VERY long emails. I am sorry if this makes it harder to read. If anyone would rather me change it to smaller blog posts, let me know and I can. I don't really know the process for this kind of posting.

On a side note, we are dealing with some unexpected mail issues. Donna has yet to have a mail call day, so we do not know if she received the packages she mailed herself the day before she left. I attempted to send a letter and it was returned to me without ever leaving Houston. If any of you have sent a letter and it has made it through, let me know your secret!! Mom and I are trying to get it all figured out and once we do, I will post and let you all know the perfect process to mail to Donna.

Well, that concludes the second edition of Donna News! Hope you enjoyed it!

Have a great evening!