Observations Part Sem'

The evil eye: This is a custom that pertains to Islam and the surrounding regions that has manifested itself here. Everyone has evil eye pariphernelia. Which is actually a bit humorous, since it was trendy about a year ago in the states to have evil eye bracelets and whatnot. Anyways, there's tons of evil eye stuff here. Almost every single car, literally, has an evil eye doohiggy hanging from the rearview mirror. Sometimes it will simply be a glass eye, or sometimes it will be a furry ball with a little evil eye in the middle. Surprisingly, the furry ball is really popular, especially in taxicabs. A lot of times it will also be a little furry animal with the evil eye. I was looking at some of my co-workers' babies' pictures and I noticed that the babies all had little evil eyes pinned to their clothing. One of my first days here I bought an evil eye keychain for my keys, so apparently I fit in well as a Bakuvian.

Snake: I went to a club the other night for salsa dancing with the group, which was a pretty enjoyable experience. It was cool to see what these creepy clubs actually look like underground. Anyways, when I walked in, there were two huge snakes in this giant glass cage. It was probably an animal rights’ activist’s worst nightmare. When the music started pumping later, the snakes (obviously woken up) were angrily moving around. Woof.

Clubs: I realize that I haven’t spoken about these said creepy clubs. All over Baku, (about one per block) there’s a large sign that says “DISKO” with bright lights. These clubs all have totally creep-tastic names too. Like “Klub Blackbird”, “Klub Nightingale”, “Klub Marisa”, “Princess Klub”, etc. Whenever you walk past, there’s a creepy man standing outside smoking, and loud music pumping. All of these clubs are in basements as well. And the best part, is that regardless if it’s 2 pm or 2 am, the music is blasting. It’s really weird to be walking past one at 11 am and see 15 year old boys exiting from one. By the way, respectable women don’t go to these clubs. If you get my drift.

Washing cars: Just like everywhere else in the word where automobiles exist, men have an obsession with their cars. Here, they manifest that obsession in making sure that they clean their cars as often as possible. So men will pull their cars up on the sidewalks and walk into the nearest store (or random man with a bucket and sponge) and get a bunch of water and spend 30 minutes yakking away with fellow men and washing his car. Nevermind that the water is completely gray. They also take any available hose they can find on the street (which are surprisingly pretty frequent) and hose down their car. This makes walking on the already haphazard sidewalks quite the spectacle.

Dust: While Baku is known for their wind, along with the wind comes dust. I have no idea what kind of climate Baku is (even though a quick google search would tell me) but it’s super dusty. There’s a pseudo-desert in the surrounding area of the city. Essentially, wherever you walk your clothes will inevitably get covered in dust and dirt. Upon arrival at home, my black flats are a strange brown-gray color.

Shoes: I’ve already commented on men’s shoes, but I just want to reiterate the shoes thing. People here take great pride in their shoes, I think. I’ve rarely seen anyone wear flip flops or sneakers. Sometimes younger guys or girls will wear sneakers or a more casual shoe. The women all wear about 4-5 inch heels everywhere. To the store, walking around, to school, to class, to their work… I have no idea how they function in those things. Some women do wear flats though. When I’ve worn my heels out on the streets I noticed that they got torn up pretty quick, which made me wonder how women can afford to wear heels everywhere. It turns out in the metro they sell shoes for about 6-7 manat (like 7-8 dollars) and I think this is where women buy their shoes. They must buy them pretty frequently.

Coffee: I haven’t remarked on this since I’m probably one of the few people left in the Western world not addicted to coffee. I’ll indulge in the occasional coolatta or something if I’m feeling tired and need energy, but I don’t particularly like the taste of coffee. For everyone else here who survives on it, Baku is a personal form of torture. People don’t drink coffee (ever) and they drink tea instead. There are no places to simply buy coffee on the run. My roommate laments the fact that she has to use instant coffee (which I discovered means mixing powder into hot water… sounds disgusting and she says it is). There are a couple ex-pat places in Baku where you can get any kind of coffee you like, but for a price. It’s about 5 manat for a cup of coffee (and not like the grande or whatever pretentious term Starbucks uses these days), aka 6 manat. And you can’t get it ‘to go’ or anything, you sit and drink your hot coffee. There’s about six of these places in Baku, I’m guessing.

Restaurants: Per most countries in this area, going out to eat to a sit-down restaurant is a big production and a big deal. In the States we’re used to eating out at least once or twice a week, if not more. In college especially, I know my roommates and I would go out often, sometimes for both lunch and dinner. It’s not expensive in the U.S. However, here it’s completely different. People don’t go out to restaurants often and they will only go if there’s a reason to celebrate. If you go out to a restaurant, the party is likely to stay for a long time, drinking, eating, getting various different courses, and chatting. Since they do this, the bill is always pretty high, hence why they never go out to eat. Since Americans aren’t used to this style of eating, I’ll still go out to restaurants with my other ex-pat friends but it’s always a little pricey (compared to the States) and the restaurants are pretty deserted. I think it is beginning to change, but it’s definitely much more expensive to eat out than eating at home.

Language: This is a quick side note. I’m going to do a whole post on language in a bit, since there’s so many different aspects to language and learning and English that I’m discovering here, so stay tuned for that one. However, here in Azerbaijan most people can speak both Azerbaijani and Russian (which is pretty impressive, I think). I heard from one of my American friends that it’s considered cool to be able to mix the two in conversation. It’s their version of slang, who can combine the two languages in the coolest way.

Beruit: No, not the city. Since I’m a New England gal I refer to this drinking game as ‘beruit’, but others call is ‘beer pong’. Regardless of the fight over what the correct name is, some of the students here have heard of this game. Clearly, they don’t call it Beruit, as that’s a well-known city in this part of the world. Anyways, I had some students ask me how to play beer pong and had me explain the rules. I love the things that they know about American culture. Along this note, they asked me about other American drinking games, although I don’t think they get the whole idea of binge drinking that Americans engage in and how utterly different it is from here. At this point I was trying to explain college life and house parties and fraternities. Explaining the concept of fraternities to foreigners is probably one of the hardest things to do. Considering it was such a big part of my life for three years, I feel like I need to mention it when I talk about college life. But if you really think about it- why in the world would a group of guys/ girls pay to be in a club together, do charity work yet get hazed, and randomly decide that they would use the Greek alphabet to distinguish between different said clubs? They give me the weirdest looks when I attempt to describe Greek life. I think it’s a losing battle, honestly.

Azerbaijani time: I apologize to any Azerbaijani who stumbles across this blog right now- I know this is not true for everyone. But as a general rule, I’ve noticed that things here start on “Azeri time”… read: always late. You never have to be worry about being late, since everyone mozies in late anyways and whatever event starts about thirty minutes later than scheduled. In a way, it’s good, since you can pretty much depend on this to happen. I’ve also noticed that Azeris tend to get their day started a bit later than we’re used to. For example, the buses/ metro are never crowded at 8 or 9 am, but they’re always packed at 2 pm. Stores don’t open until 10/ 11 am, as with offices and some business. Personally, I love this since I despise waking up early. If I had my way, the business day would start at 10:30.

-Stan: ‘Stan’ means ‘region/ place’. So, that’s why Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, etc, all have the suffix ‘stan’ at the end. It means the place of Afghans. I never put that one together before.

-Jan: Jan means ‘body’. So the name Azerbaijan means the body of Azeris. So when they say Azerbaijan it’s like they’re saying “our body”.

Drunk: There’s a Russian symbol for saying that someone is drunk that is also used in Azerbaijan. I actually never noticed it in Russia and it took one of the other Americans here pointing it out to me and then I started noticing other people using it here. The gesture is by flicking your forefinger and thumb together (like when you flick a speck of dirt off a table or something) at the side of the bottom of your neck. So you use this symbol when talking about someone. For example if I were to talk about a neighbor (not that I have any drunk neighbors, by the way) and I started flicking my neck, it would be a kind of unsaid way of saying ‘he’s a drunk’.

Americans: I already mentioned I received a free cab ride once for being a nice American girl and speaking in Russian with my cab driver. I got my second free cab ride last night. I'm starting to realize that people here are so fascinated with Americans (even compared with foreigners in general- if I were to say I was from an EU country I doubt I would get the free ride) that they want to make a good impression. This might also have something to do with the fact that I'm young, female, and I'm not married. Regardless, it really makes you think how lucky you are just for being born in a certain country.

Anyways, in other unrelated news, our tv is no longer working and we have bugs in our bathroom. I've given up on the tv, although we're thinking of buying a DVD player. About the bugs... I have no idea what to do. It started off with a big black beetle that I assume is some sort of water bug since it only lives in the bathroom. Unfortunately, it's begun to spawn and I saw a baby bug the other night. We bought some Raid stuff but it hasn't done the trick. If anyone has any other suggestions... please help. I walk into the bathroom each day with trepidation. They only come out at night, which is the weird part.

I have loads of other stuff to update on- life, what I've been up, my job, new internship, various people I've been meeting. Life has been good though. I've really been enjoying my time here, and I love all the stuff I've been learning about life, and through hearing other people's views on the world. Since I'm an American, people love to talk to me about all sorts of things and 'enlighten' me on their views. I find this all fascinating, and they don't seem to mind me asking as many questions as I can think of. It truly validates the reason that I'm here. It makes me realize how important this experience is, and how thankful I am. I've been here a month and a half and I can only imagine what knowledge I'm going to leaving with in 8 months.

I'll update again hopefully soon... once I finish cleaning this apartment and doing various other chores.