Site Assignment

On Friday I found out that I will be spending my two years here in Azerbaijan in a city of 100,000 called ZAQATALA.

I am extremely happy, it is exactly where I wanted to go. It sounds even better than I imagined. I will not be in the actual city, I will be in a village called TALA. But my village is a 20 minute walk from the center of the city, so it is more like a suburb. It is perfect because I will have the best of both worlds, the resources of a city, but the safety and familiarity of being known by everyone in the village. Zaqatala is a region in the extreme North Central part of the country, located in between Georgia and Russia. I have been told that it is the most beautiful part of the country. It has not been affected by the environmental degradation of most of the country. It is in the greater caucaus mountains and has seven rivers. It is also extremely diverse culturally. There are 30 ethnic groups there, the largest ones being Avar, Lezghin, Georgian and Azeri, in no particular order. Russian is widely used as the language of inter-ethnic communication.
My school is relatively small. There are 500 students, 80 teachers and 6 english teachers. The director is a woman, which is pretty rare here. I have heard that it is a very good school and that the director and english teachers are very enthusiastic.

My host family is comprised of a father, mother, son and daughter. The children are 11 and 13 years old but will not be there because they are at boarding school in the UK. The father is 40 years old and owns a number of nut factories. The mother is 33 years old and does not work. I have been told that they are very nice, open-minded people. The house is also apparently very large and very nice.

Tomorrow and Tuesday we will have a coordinators conference and I will meet a representative from my school. Then on Wednsday I will go to visit Zaqatala for four days. Then we come back to Sumqait for 2.5 more weeks of training before swear-in on Sept. 12.
I am extremely happy and excited!