Field trip

Originally written 23 August

The Turkmenistan group and the new Baku teachers took a field trip out to see petroglyphs. An area about an hour outside of Baku has a collection of cave paintings and cave carvings, along with a small museum. There are thousand of these carvings and tens of thousands of stone age tools that were found in the area. Some of the carvings and tools have been dated to about 50,000 B.C. There is also a carving in Latin that was made by the army of one of the Caesars, sometime in the first few centuries A.D. We had some very good views of the Caspian Sea during the drive and from the mountain with the carvings. Our tour guide was quite funny. He spoke English fairly well. The memorized speech was clear, but when he was in conversation he seemed to struggle for words a bit. His standard line was "Do you know why...?" If anyone tried to actually answer the question he would say "No, you don't know. I know and I have not told you yet." After about the fifth time, we got the picture that we weren't supposed to answer.

Once we got back from the field trip, we headed off for downtown Baku. We met the school director, the director of instruction and their families at the Old City. This is a section of downtown Baku that has walls and other buildings that are nearly a thousand years old. We ate in one such building, an old Kavanassary, where the caravans on the Silk Road from China used to stop. We had an authentic traditional Azeri meal.

When we arrived, there were already the starters on the tables. A selection of various meats, a plate of spices, herbs and vegetables, a stewed eggplant dish, and bread. While I enjoyed the beef tongue quite a bit, there was one piece of meat on the dish that was probably the worst thing I've ever tasted. It was chewy like a piece of carmel, sticking to my teeth and it had a salty, bitter taste. None of the people I asked seemed to know what it actually was.

The main course was kebabs or sashlik. Azerbaijan is known for its grilled meats. The beef and chicken were both excellent. The chicken was similar to Indian tandori chicken. Later they brought out some grilled sturgeon, too, which was very good. The sturgeon came with a pomegranate sauce that was very thick and sweet, like syrup. All in all, quite tasty.

Throughout the meal, they had Azeri singers doing some ancient road songs. Lots of wailing and discordant sounds. Jonathon especially did not enjoy that. A bit later, the belly dancer came out. After she had danced for a while, the school director leaned over to me and said, "This is about the time that she picks out someone to embarass." Of course, without fail, about 30 seconds later she locked eyes on me, came over, draped a veil across my face and pulled me on stage with her. I wasn't quite able to match her moves, especially as she made parts of her anatomy shimmy. She'd point at her chest, move around a bit, then point at mine and want me to do the same. It wasn't happening. I was able to shimmy my stomach a bit like hers, though. I just took the sides of my gut in both hands and shook it all around. It worked quite well.

She finally let me sit down, then embarassed two of the male teachers from Turkmenistan and then, much to my joy and relief, picked Scott, the Baku school director. So, he joined her on stage and plenty of pictures were taken by my colleagues. In Baku for one week and we already saw our boss belly dancing!