Who turned out the lights?

One of the things I think I miss most about America - sorry Mom, sorry Dad, sorry Trader Joe's, sorry movie theaters - is reliable utilities.

Came back from a bomb party in the village Friday morning, to find that the entire city of Balaken was without gas. And actually, I later came to find out that they had cut gas from Agdas (a region very far south of me) so basically the entire part of Azerbaijan up my way was, effectively, left in the cold.

Now, it has been a rather mild February, the days are quite beautiful, sunny, and even a little warm. But the pipes still freeze at night...no gas, entire town, until 9:30pm. And of course, the gas guys kept saying it'd come back at 6. You know, close enough.

Also, the odd thing, was that from about 6 until 9, the electricity would go off every 15 minutes or so. Making the whole evening seem rather like the world was about to end.

Every time I lose a utility, I think I'm going to lose it forever. It is exhausting to live in this constant fear, with this constant anxiety.

To cope with this, I decided to hide out at my counterpart's house where she had stocked up some wood to burn in her pec. This turned out to be a wonderful idea, as I got to stay warm, play with her kids, meet her in-laws, and be fed and served tea all day.

On a positive note, Balaken's softball cherry has been popped (!) in the past few weeks thanks to my new sitemate Jake and I, and our experiments with local girls and guys and sports clubs. It's been awesome, for them (because they love the game, but I swear our girls are better at the game and generally less afraid of the ball than our boys are), and for me, because I used to play softball rather intensely (8 years), and I miss it like whoa. The girls have taken to it really well, and we're introducing it as a girls sport, that we are now teaching the guys. (In AZ, football [aka soccer - we're not in America anymore] is a boys sport, that sometimes the girls play. We're trying to turn this on its head...to get more girls comfortable playing, and to get girls comfortable playing the sport with guys on the teams too). What has made the whole thing even better, is that with the unusually mild weather, this means we can play outside...no restrictive outerwear necessary.

We're hoping that, as the next few weeks move ahead, we'll be able to construct a real team, that will represent our region of Balaken in an all-Azerbaijan softball league that has been created and sustained by PCVs in country. We'll travel to places like Mingechevir and Ganja, and play against teams there. It'll be the first ever team from Balaken, and fingers crossed we're able to get people to commit - both guys and girls.