My aunt and uncle's house has four floors. (There are really only two options of housing here....an apartment or a really big house (no normal size houses) that has a yard. Since they have dogs, they really had only one option- the house with the yard.) There are seven of us that live here right now, but we only really occupy 2 of the 4 floors. Of course, Thom and Brenda live here. And Todd and I stay in the bedroom next to theirs. And my uncle Thom's niece, Kim, is here as well. She is writing articles for a magazine that is published here. Unfortunately, she arrived about a week before us and is already leaving on Tuesday. :( So that's five....and the last two that live here are probably the favorites of everyone. Molly is a deaf Dalmation......perhaps one of the laziest, but cutest, Dalmations I've ever met. And Zoe is a little Jack Russell that has changed my mind about Jacks. Sure, she barks whenever she thinks there is a reason to bark, but as soon as things settle down she is right there beside you being your best friend as long as you are rubbing her tummy. We're a good family.
We got to go on an overnight trip last weekend. Kim's boss sent her for a free night to check out a "resort" in a town called Gabala about 2 1/2 hours from Baku. Well, we (me & Todd, Thom & Brenda) got to tag along. We left last Friday night, and soon came to find out that our 2 1/2 hour drive was really almost 4. We had fun though (except for the bumpy roads that kept Brenda and I carsick off and on the whole way). Once you get out of the city, the landscape changes a lot. It goes from busy streets with lots of people to open land and hills and mountains. At first, the mountains are just brown. But as we got higher and higher, they began to turn green and were really pretty to look at.
We thought we'd never get there. About the last 15 or 20 minutes of the trip, we drove down this tiny gravel road that went through some kind of little village community. Their houses were somewhat like little shacks put together. It felt like we were so far from the rest of the world, except for these houses that probably had no idea what was happening in the rest of the world. But then we kept going and finally reached our "resort".
I put "resort" in quotes because it probably wouldn't meet America's standards to be called the name. But for here, it was nice. We didn't arrive until after 9 pm, so the first thing we wanted to do was eat dinner. After figuring out which rooms we were staying in (Somewhat confusing because they did have suites big enough to fit all 5 of us, but they kept saying they were booked up so we couldn't have them. However, we are pretty sure we were their only guests at the time. Go figure.), we headed out to have dinner in one of their gazebos. They finally brought out a tray full of chicken and french fries. The chicken was rather skimpy. You could just imagine the skinny animal that probably wasn't even worth killing for the amount of meat it produced. I decided to just fill up on french fries (which were very tasty!). As we were finishing up, we saw a strobe light and heard loud Azeri music not too far from us. The Disco-Bar! We had to check it out!
A disco ball, loud & strange music, and four Azeri men dancing is what we walked up on. Azeris don't dance the same way we do. They use their hands and arms kind of stiffly and do some fancy looking foot work with their pointy-toed shoes. It was fun to watch. We finally requested some American music and as the 5 Americans went out to dance, the Azeris left the dance floor. It continued like this as they alternated between styles of music until we finally got tired and left.
The next morning, we ate breakfast at the gazebo again. Breakfast consisted of hot bread, several kinds of cheese (pretty strong cheese), honey and hot tea. We ate, packed up, and checked out. Before we left the hotel, we decided to explore a little bit. We had heard there were hiking trails, a pool, a lake and other things to do, but no one really spoke enough English to tell us exactly where everything was. You could see the lake from the hotel. It had a man-made waterfall and was pretty. We found a path and decided to see where it took us. We passed the pool first...actually 3 of them...but none of them had water in them. Hmmm. We kept walking and found this really cool stream of water surrounded by rocks. Sure, we walked through what seemed like a dumpster and past cows that were picking through the trash to get there, but we found some great places to take pictures. After our little hike, we started our long 4 hour drive back through windy roads and across bumpy terrain. Overall, it was a fun trip. :)
On another note....today is Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to both of our dads. We miss and love you!
We decided to adopt Thom and Brenda as our Eastern Hemisphere parents while we are here since they are taking such good care of us. We actually just got done splurging with a "proper" breakfast, as Brenda would call it, consisting of bacon (which you can't get here), eggs, sausage and toast. Now we are about to get ready for some people to come over tonight to have a cookout. The weather is perfect and tomorrow is a holiday here, so it seemed like a perfect time to for it.
And one more note....I've been posting the pictures I've taken on Facebook. For anyone who doesn't have Facebook and hasn't gotten the link to it, just copy and paste the links below to see the pics!
Pics of Baku- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024721&l=c911b&id=61700300
Pics in Gabala- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024690&l=0c039&id=61700300
London part 1- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024510&l=1a51d&id=61700300
London part 2- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024509&l=ef4ca&id=61700300
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