Twas the week before Christmas, and it didn't feel like Christmas - even though there are Christmas decorations everywhere, which are used here to qəşəng* things up for New Year's, and you even overhear occasional snippets of Christmas songs and glimpse sightings of red-and-white-suited Şaxta Baba a/k/a Santa Claus / Father Christmas, who is also associated here with New Year's, not Christmas.
*See previous post.
Even though it didn't feel like it in the days and weeks leading up, by the time I had rendezvoused with a bunch of other Peace Corps Volunteers in Mingəçevir, our gracious co-hosts (both of whose initials are, coincidentally J.B.) had decorated, and we made our way to a country western themed bar (had I known, I would have worn my cowboy boots!), somehow it finally felt like the holiday season.
At the C-and-W bar, we dined (some of us with more cognitive dissonance than others) on chicken schwarma wraps, Georgian xəngəl (which is like large Asian dumplings filled with a spiced meat concoction), and exchanged White Elephant gifts (Rules: unwrap, no limit on steals, but you can steal only after winning two out of three rounds of rock-paper-scissors). There may also have been some partaking of beer by the economy-sized liter. Because it's more, um, cost-efficient to drink in bulk.
You know what's an even more cost-efficient way to drink? At home. Which is where we went after the bar. Good times were had, but from what I hear, there were fewer shenanigans than the previous Christmas.
You know what's an even more cost-efficient way to drink? At home. Which is where we went after the bar. Good times were had, but from what I hear, there were fewer shenanigans than the previous Christmas.
The next day, some of us trundled off to a village in the northern rayon (region) of Zaqatala for Christmas / Eve. After about four hours on a couple of crowded marşrutkas and a pit stop for final cooking supplies, we arrived in a picturesque village that many of us might have envisioned for our "true" Peace Corps village experience, complete with horse-drawn carts and wood-burning peç (stove). But even this imagined ideal would be met with the reality of cars alongside the carts and a wifi router not far from the peç. As in many countries that have experienced rapid economic development, Azərbaycan is a land of contrasts.
We spent the afternoon of Christmas Eve cooking in preparation for the next day, making home-made Secret Santa gifts for each other, and experimenting with an eggnog recipe, which turned out well. We watched the Santa Clause and Home Alone 2. I hadn't seen either, and since M. and I were making pumpkin pie and cinnamon rolls in the kitchen, I still haven't. Imagine my heartbreak.On Christmas day, we opened presents, ate a breakfast of cinnamon rolls and coffee cake, watched more movies (A Christmas Story, of course), played games (cards, Scattergories, and the Exquisite Corpse), and finalized prep for Christmas dinner. Our menu consisted of the following:
- Curry Pumpkin Soup
- Vegetarian Lasagna (which was ingeniously delicious, especially since we didn't have ricotta, mozarella, or lasagna noodles)
- Beet and Goat-Cheese-Substitute Salad
- Stuffing
- Mashed Potatoes
- Rolls
- Pumpkin Pie
- Appleturnover
- Pineapple Pomegranate Fruit Salad
- Apple Cider (complete with sticks of cinnamon for stirring) and more eggnog, whose recipe continued to be improved upon from the previous night
As we celebrated Christmas in Peace Corps fashion, the landlady's family went about their business, including preparations for building an addition to their house. (A comparative analysis of American and Azərbaycani building techniques would be fascinating, but it's beyond the scope of this post and my expertise. However, based on what I've seen and heard so far, I would propose that we add "DIY construction," alongside laws and sausages, to the list of things that you're better off not knowing how they're made.)
All told, an excellent Christmas, without family, but with new friends.
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