Groundhog Day

Have you ever seen the movie "Groundhog Day"? I've seen it at least 20 times. Somehow it kept me sane when I was stressed out from life in pharmaceutical management. Eventually I summed up the energy I needed to quit - a terrifying experience due to those mega-tight golden handcuffs - and my work life has been far better ever since.

People have asked me about TV shows, cars, and a few other facts of Azeri life. TV... Baku has a TV and film industry, but most of what I see is from other countries. We didn't have a television set until two weeks ago, and the one we got only gives us one station clearly enough to both see and hear a program at the same time. It shows nighttime soap operas from Japan, Italy, Spain, and India, and they are all overdubbed in Azeri. They don't turn off the sound from the original version, but they turn it way down and talk on top of it. Sometimes they turn it up again, like during a lot of laughing and other loud wordless noises, but not very often. They show a lot of movies from US and India. The last US flicks I saw were "The Departed" and a Buster Keaton movie from about 100 years ago. I see ads for movies released in the last year, but they usually start at 10pm and I’m never awake to watch them.

Cars... there are several Chevrolets running around Şamaxı and one Chrysler that I've seen. No Fords. And like most foreign cities there are many more Mercedes than you'd ever expect to see. Plus a lot of Volkswagons (nice ones) and a couple of BMWs. And a few Hyundais, Mitsubishis, and Kias.
Surprisingly, I've seen no Toyotas or Hondas at all; I thought they were everywhere (oops, I have to add this two days later while editing: I saw a Toyota Land Cruiser and my first Ford pickup). 

There is one car that way outnumbers all the others. Even if you add all the other ones together it still outnumbers them. They are - literally - everywhere. It's a little box-shaped thing made by a company called a Lada and it's made in Russia. Nearly all taxis are Ladas and most passenger cars are from Lada. It must be cheap, but it also must keep running forever because there are old ones all over this country and I never see them broken down or stuck. I've seen a few Mercedes broken down and stuck (in mud and in ice), but never the Lada.

All the cars in my field of view here are Ladas:

The weather here is unpredictable. So far we've had real winter for one week - last week. Now it's around 50 degrees during the day and above freezing at night. One thing that's really strange about the weather here year round is that usually it's colder in the afternoon than it is in the morning. For a long time the backward weather messed up what I chose to wear for the day, and I'd be freezing in the afternoon. It seems to have stopped this week, but I suspect it'll come back. What I do now is carry so many layers that it doesn't matter what I wear as long as I carry a bag to put all the extra clothing in when I don't need it.

Right now I'm sitting at work with nothing to do. For the last three weeks I was swamped, but now there's nothing. I was supposed to go out to a small village for another community training and mobilization meeting, but four other trainers and engineers plus the driver needed to go in one car, so I didn't fit. They tell me there might be another place I can go to today with a mobilizer who has a meeting alone, but I haven't gotten the final word. So I keep busy by working on my blog. I'll probably go through some Azeri/English flash cards on my computer, too. See if I can pick up a few more words.

I've forgotten more words than I can remember. If I don't use them soon and use them more than a couple of times, I don't remember them. Young folks tell me they have the same problem, so this isn't an age thing. It has more to do with the kind of memory we have. Remembering a word for more than a few days (or few minutes) has more to do with moving it from short-term memory to long-term. Most people need to do that. But learning a word at all has more to do with visual, aural, and kinesthetic memories. There's also a logical type of memory - linking something into a logical stream of information helps. 

My memory is definitely visual and kinesthetic, which use logical. Hearing a word doesn't help me. If I don't see it and write/speak it, I don't usually remember it. People with aural memories have a much easier time with languages, but very few people have that trait. There are a few PCVs who have picked up Azerbaijani easily, so they may have aural memory. Or something else that's rare. (If you know more about this, let me know - I'm all eyes!) 

I just learned that today, at noon (3am EST), I'm going to a village called Kendobar in Ağsu Rayon to watch their environment and procurement training - this is the last step in the process AzRIP takes with a community. That is, it's the last step before the project actually starts.  The mobilizer will explain to the community what they need to know about protecting the environment and how to purchase the project from the government - getting the grant is a stepwise process. They get bits of it each time they finish a step in the project, then they get full ownership. I'll be doing something that should help me learn a few useful words and maybe even remember them.

If the power stays on, my next posting will be in a few minutes and it will be pictures of my current home. The power has gone off a couple of times already this morning, so keep your fingers crossed... 

Well, you didn't cross your fingers quick enough, because it's now seven hours later. The power went out and I went to Kendobar.  During our drive (1.5 hr each way) I saw a broken down Lada, so - I was wrong - they don't run forever. 

Happy Groundhog Day!