Another stolen post

This has been one great trip!  I've been able to try even more hair styles,

view architecture from the Soviet era, (stunning, simply stunning)

and explore a fascinating part of the world with an expert guide.

This week, among lots of other things, we got to see the (actually) world-famous petroglyphs of Gobustan, of which there are more than 4,000 examples.

The art work was created by folks living in these parts even 100,000 years ago, and the little kids could hardly keep their hands off it.

The immense boulders upon which the carvings were made lay strewn among several small mountains rising from the plains at the edge of the Caspian Sea.

The area also contains an inscription by a Roman legionnaire, in the latter half of the first century, which is the furthest east of any evidence of the Romans.  Sophia found it amusing.  Something about why the gallinaceo crossed the via.

The associated museum was far less boring than expected.

We also visited Yanar Dağ ("Burning Mountain"), and although it wasn't much of a mountain, it was indeed on fire, thanks to someone carelessly igniting the naturally-leaking natural gas back in 1958.

That day, we saved the best for last; that's right, the Mud Volcanoes of Gobustan!!

These little guys are also powered by natural gas, and they bubble and blop away harmlessly, the mud being cool, temperature-wise.

There were little bubbling lakes, which of course demanded offerings of mud balls.

After scraping as much evidence of our visit off the shoes, pants, hair, etc., we loaded up.

Later in the week, we abandoned the kids and visited the Old City of Bakú, sitting on the edge of the Caspian on the Absheron Peninsula.

This really is an old, old place, with evidence of habitation for at least a couple of millennia, by successive waves of Turks, Tatars, Mongols, Russians, American diplomat families,  

and Azerbaijani carpet merchants.  Oooh!  Pretty things!  

We explored under

 and through

 and around the old city,

 which sits next to the busy harbor on the Caspian.

We had to admit that the traffic, though really awful at times, was a little more organized, with fewer potholes to dodge than where we've been living.

Meanwhile, we're stuffed with great Georgian, Azerbaijani and whatever food, and are having fun with the grandkids.  We know they have to weigh our luggage at the airport, but we hope they don't weigh us.
We hope that your mud volcanoes are friendly too!

Stolen from my parents' blog

My parents have come for a visit, so we've been having some fun.

Out of Baku!

After we had settled in for a couple of days in Baku, Ashley bought provisions and we headed out of town for a four-day trip to the mountainous countryside, kids and all.  Our first goal was Saki (pronounced "Shecky"), a popular destination for internal tourism.  

The weather was beautiful, and the countryside showed signs of early spring, with the fruit trees just starting to bloom and the fields an iridescent green.  However, the inmates get restless.

We pulled over by an old apricot tree and ate dried fruit and Azerbaijani Moon Pies.

The most important part of such stops is getting the wiggles out.  You could almost read the thoughts of the passing motorists - "Crazy Amerikans!"

Once in Saki, we immediately took advantage of the cultural heritage of the place, such as the ancient McDonald's slide at the hotel (I am not making this up - you could still see the logos),

and the rich heritage of Azerbaijani television.

However, before their little brains turned into qarğıdalı sıyıq (rough translation - "mush") the kids were whisked away into a higher village to see an ancient, and we're talking built on a 2,000+ year-old religious site, Albanian temple. 

Those achingly picturesque snow-capped mountains in the background are the Caucasus, on the other side of which is Russia.

Later in the day, after another al fresco midday meal, this one topped off with Azerbaijani juice boxes (peach, apple and banana - hold it; banana juice?!) we hiked up to a fort built by the locals in the 1700's to successfully defy the Persians as they swept through.  The rough translation of its name is "Come and see!"  An even rougher translation is "nah, nah, na-nah nah!"
Kathleen and I arrived at the top first, to find a group of young men talking.  They all insisted in having their pictures taken with the intrepid young, blonde, cute Amerikan.

Her sister missed out, arriving too late to meet the guys.

We discovered the amazingly extensive fortifications of the sheer mountainside as we climbed and slid back down.

Any exploration that ends with throwing rocks in water is considered a grand success.

We won the coin toss, and got the girls for the sleep-over, while the parents were stuck with the boys.

On Friday, we drove to Lahic.  OK, "we drove to Lahic" doesn't do the journey justice.  

I would have taken more pictures, but I was using both hands to hang on, and my eyes were shut a lot.

Bridge-building takes many a quaint and idyllic turn here in Azerbaijan.

Lahic is older than memory, and when Main Street (only street) was built, the vehicles (horses, feet) were not very wide.

Once we had stopped and they'd pried my fingers loose, the Lahic Guest House proved to be delightful, with chickens and swings,

and shepherds with their horses and cigarettes.

We'd had great luck previously with Ancient Fort-Finding, so trusting in the guide book, we set off to explore another one.

However, this one proved more elusive, and so after an exhausting hour of climbing, 

Ashley, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, declared that the rectangle of stones on the one flat place we encountered must represent the pre-medieval fortress for which we were searching.

"Fine," we said, "and so those extra piles of stones at either end must have been the entrances, instead of just the goals of the local soccer pitch."  The kids couldn't care less, and had a great time running around the place.

Meanwhile, their grandmother looked achingly picturesque, as the Queen of the Caucasus.

After so much gamboling about, the kids loved their dinner.

The next day, after strolling through town and buying knitted slippers from a nice lady (the one on the left),

we headed back down the road.  OK, what would you have guessed this sign meant?

If your Azerbaijani is better than mine, you would have correctly said, "Look out for falling rocks!" and there was a reason.  With a loud bang, one hit a rear window.

Luckily, in packing for the trip, Brandon had felt inspired to bring a roll of West Virginia Chrome, aka duct tape, and we were able to secure the crinkling glass for the drive back to Baku.

All in all, it was a grand trip, and everyone had a glorious time, including the Princess of the Caucasus.

We hope that they have Moon Pies wherever you are also.

A Return to Sanity

A few days ago, I came inside from a walk with the children and started cooking dinner.  Kathleen and Sophia were cold from the walk so they went upstairs and started a bath for themselves.  Edwin decided the idea wasn't half bad and trailed after them.  Joseph played quietly by himself, wandering around the house pulling things from drawers and playing with them while I chopped and sautéed onions for black beans and rice.

Nobody crawled up my leg.  I didn't have any helpers standing in front of every drawer and cupboard that contained necessary ingredients.  Joseph's tired/hungry screaming didn't fight for attention over Kathleen and Edwin's squabbling.

I just cooked dinner, set the table, and then took Joseph upstairs for a bath - one thing at a time.  It was like magic.

Having multiple children engages one in a constant state of forgetting.  You go through various stages with your first child and then forget what they were like and that those stages even exist by the time you get to your second.  The same thing happens for the third, and the fourth.  It's kind of like a bad version of Groundhog Day where Bill Murray wakes up every morning with a case of amnesia.

And so every time I've forgotten about this magical phase in my life where my youngest child is old enough to amuse themselves quietly and I don't have another baby yet to play the ticking time bomb that could go off at any minute.

It's probably during this time that I fool myself into thinking that I could handle another child, no problem.  But this stage is so nice - and it just keeps getting nicer the older my oldest one gets.  The other day we went somewhere and were out during Joseph's nap time - and he didn't dissolve into a puddle of crying baby because he missed his nap.  If we are at a friend's house for dinner, I don't start frantically making kill motions to Brandon the second it's past Joseph's bed time.  And best of all, he can spend significant portions of time wandering around the house amusing himself by making messes.

As cute and squishy as little babies are (and they really are), life is just so much more live-able when they reach the magical self-propelled stage.  I can stop holding my breath waiting for the other shoe to drop and breathe normally again.  It's fantastic.

And those other stages coming up - like potty training?  I've already forgotten them again, so please don't remind me.  I'm enjoying the peace for a few precious moments.

International Women's Day

Last Friday was International Women's Day, so Brandon had work off.  We have a family policy of doing fun things on holidays, so we decided to go to Besh Barmag again.  Our children are very starved for entertainment (a few Saturdays ago we took the metro to a mall, walked around, bought a manat worth of candy, and went home.  Edwin's still talking about it), so we had a simple plan: drive to Besh Barmag, take a snack picnic, and fly our kite.

It worked wonderfully.  The day was sunny, clear, and in the fifties.  Despite the wind being an unsteady breeze, everyone had a fun time 'flying' the kite by running around.  We found snow from a few days earlier, a sheep skull, sheep horns, and lovely little purple irises attesting that yes, spring is definitely coming.  Hooray for holidays!

The Best Saturday Ever

Sometimes my life is really hard.  Like when I have to haul water out of the river two miles away to cook dinner for my nine children.  Okay, that never happens.  But sometimes it's rough when Brandon is deployed on a dangerous mission for a year.  Never mind, not that either.  I really have a hard time choosing between paying off my mortgage and feeding my children.  Wait, that hasn't ever happened.

Okay, so my life is never really hard.

But sometimes is it really really not hard.  In fact, sometimes it's actually quite fabulous.  Like yesterday.

Friday was International Women's Day everywhere but in the U.S.  From what I've heard from friends, the level of observance varies.  Here in Baku, Brandon informed me, it's a cross between Valentine's Day and Mother's Day.  We had the day off, so we took the children on an outing to Besh Barmag.  It wasn't very woman-celebratory, but it was a really nice day.

That morning before we got up to face the children, however, Brandon told me to give our housekeeper a call and see if she could come Saturday morning because he was going to take me out to brunch.  Happy International Women's Day, indeed.

So yesterday morning Asli came to watch the children while Brandon took me out to the Four Seasons for brunch.

Brandon always makes fun of my obsession with breakfast, but who doesn't love breakfast?  It's the only time of the day where you can eat something made of butter, flour, and chocolate and call it a meal.  And then if you add in sausage (pork sausage), bacon, hash browns, and another danish or two, it's definitely the best part of the day.

After a long hard morning of lounging with the other posh clientele of the Four Seasons, we came home and found that Asli had fed everyone lunch and put the boys down for naps while the girls went upstairs for quiet time.  So I took a nap.  Because what else follows pain au chocolat better than a nice, warm, two-and-a-half hour nap?  Digestion is a serious matter, after all.

After crawling out of bed, I wandered upstairs and called my sister.  We chatted for an hour and a half before I had to go and get ready for my next activity: celebrating the Relief Society's birthday.

Most Relief Societies have a nice dinner and a program, but since ours consists of twelve ladies and our president is pregnant, we went out to dinner instead.  Since dinner was at six, I didn't have time to feed the children their own dinner, and left Brandon trying to convince Joseph that food was probably a good idea.  

We all had a wonderful time talking about almost everything other than the Relief Society, and had such a nice time that we didn't leave until around nine.  Which meant, of course, that all was quiet when I got home and flopped into bed, exhausted from a long, self-indulgent day.

So in review: brunch at the Four Seasons, followed by a nap, after which I talked to my sister for an hour and half, and ate dinner out with my friends.  It's a rough life, but somebody's got to live it, right?

It's never a good sign

when two of the three places you're considering living in for the next three years are mentioned in National Geographic articles.  Perhaps if the articles were about Paris it wouldn't be so bad, but this being National Geographic, instead they are about venomous animals that will kill you in five seconds and herders living in incredibly remote cold places.

This cycle is Brandon's first non 'directed' which means that he gets to peruse the list of glamorous options and then try and convince people in those places that he would be the guy for the job.  Since we arrived at post in December, Brandon is a winter cycle bidder.  Most people in State move around in the summer, which means that the winter bid list contains irresistibly lovely jewels like Cotonou and Brassaville.

Brandon hasn't been very thrilled about lobbying because, after all, why squabble over armpit-of-the-world posts when you can just sit back and have someone assign one to you without any work on your part?  Some armpits, however, are less stinky than others, so he's talked to a few places and put in some bids.

The list is due Monday, and after that waiting to find out.  Wish us luck!