Day of National Salvation

Yesterday was a holiday, the Day of National Salvation, commemmorating the day Heydar Aliyev, the former Preseident of Azerbiajan, came to power. After he died, his son was elected president, and is now in office. Strange that the day a preseident came to power should be termed "national salvation," huh? Well, welcome to Azerbaijan! There is a huge cult of personality around Heydar, with his picture up on billboards all over town, and with tons of streets, buildings, etc named after him. You can see him in the corner of the picture above, which is a picture I took of the TV- there is a little graffic of him on every channel, because today is a holiday!

Here you can see a big concert stage being set up at my metro station- it was LOUD! You can also see McDonald's in this pic, thought the juxtoposition if the Azeri symbols with the golden arches was interesting.


Yesterday, I finally had the pleasure of meetinf Fariz, who I've been in contact with since January! We had lunch, had a good political discussion where I tried to counterbalance some Republican stuff he's heard, and found out that all Azeris do know each other.

Then, I went to a training at the Gender Research Center at West University on Women and IT in Azerbaijan. It was aimed at NGO staff. I thought I could meet people, even though I didn't think the topic was super relevant.

Well, as usual in life, the opposite was true! I learned a lot from the presentation, and I didn't meet anyone from an NGO. I met a really bright student and some women who work for an oil company. I stuck around for the second session, but after 20 minutes of Azeri, I gave up hope that it was just an "intro" or something and left. I have to learn some Azeri!

In other news, I have a lot of mosquito bites and a rash on my stomach that is either a super scratched mosquito bite or a skin infection like I had in Moscow! Fingers crossed that it's a bite!

And, I've got an argument going on at my other blog- in the comments! Check it out!