Year in Review!

So we have successfully reached the end of another year. It seems like so long ago since the end of last year, and yet, the time also seemed to fly by. This year I have lived in three different countries, China, the US and Azerbaijan. Each country very different from the others. We have been caught in the middle of diplomatic wrangling and thus had to be reassigned at the last minute... twice. In the end, I'm glad we ended up in Baku, the post seems friendly, the people are also very friendly, and it is a very unique change of pace from China. I think Manilla might have been nice, but I don't think our experience would have been significantly different from our experience in China.
We celebrated our fourth year of marriage this year, and I look forward to many more years. I can honestly say that marriage is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I'm not saying it's not tough, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.
I lived at home for four months.... enough said.
My brother went to war....
My sister decided she was going to be a doctor...
I went to Turkey for Thanksgiving....
We also expanded our family this year. I now have a sweet loveable Honey sitting at my feet keeping me company during the day. After all my years of hoping and wishing, I finally have a dog, and although I sometimes get really annoyed (like after she peed on the carpet for no reason at all) I really do enjoy having her with me. I don't know what I would do without her.
Speaking of expanding families 2006 was also a staging year. My brother got engaged to a very nice young woman, and we are all looking forward to their wedding next year. I got knocked up and EVERYONE is looking forward to the arrival of our first child (my parents are beside themselves with glee).
All in all 2006 has been a good year, and I can't wait to see what's in store for 2007!

The Nutcracker

Finally! After 3 days being cooped up in the house, not being able to go anywhere we finally got out! Or rather I finally got out. My hubby had to go out despite the unsafe conditions to attend to some urgent work business, while I was still sequestered at home. Snow and ice are not friends of Baku or pregnant women.
So for our journey out, we attended the Baku performance of the Nutcracker. Now, I freely admit, I don't know very much at all about ballet. I appreciate the art, it's a beautiful thing, I just don't know enough to appreciate fine ballet, from average ballet. However, tonight's performance was not very nice at all, except that I got out of the house. At first, I thought I was just being nitpicky. I have a pet peeve against professional artists who can't get their stuff together to dance in sync. I mean if a high school band can all march in step to music they play themselves, artist, who get paid to dance together, should be able to dance together in sync. But as the performance went on I noticed that the choreography was not that sophisticated, and anything that was difficult was sloppily done. And it's bad if I noticed that it was sloppy. All the male dancers would stumble after executing any kind of jumping spin and the big move for couples dancing together was for the man to hold the woman up while she performed waist high split kicks.
But even though I'm complaining, I was happy to get out, and it was nice to see a ballet again. And I have to say the man who played Santa Clause had a very nice muscular butt, and his blue tights emphasized his cheeks nicely. he he

Snow day!

Today is a Baku snow day! It started snowing yesterday, it snowed all night, and still really hasn't stopped snowing. The thing of it is, that there really isn't that much snow on the ground. It's almost like Texas where people freak out if they see a snow flake. It's actually been pretty amusing to sit at the window and watch the craziness as people slide down the hill on our street. Even as I sit here typing I can here the spinning of wheels and gunning of engines as drivers try in vain to coax their cars up the little hill. I think a big part of the problem is that no one has plowed the street. So the snow has compacted into ice, and with people's bald tires, and old crappy cars the hill is proving to be too much of a challenge. And as usual, with traffic in Baku, there is the yelling and the horn honking accompanying the sliding cars. I don't really know what they expect to accomplish, if your car is sliding backwards, obviously there is really nothing you can do to improve the situation, other than get out and push. But who knows? Maybe the honking will somehow magically give the car traction and the driver will then be able to progress up the hill.

Fire Temple

Last week I went to the Baku Fire Temple with some friends. Supposedly ancient Bakuvians built a temple on this site because of the fire that naturally sprouted from the ground. People came from as far away as India to worship at the alter of the firegods.

December blues

WHEW! November just seemed to drag/fly by. I started taking Russian language classes, 5 days a week thank you very much, started to get out a little more. I went to several International Women's Club events, and a couple BP social club things, I even started doing some baby group events, our final shipment of crap finally arrived, and we went to Turkey for Thanksgiving. In between all that the baby got bigger and it's finally no longer possible for people not to know I'm pregnant. It's really quite obvious. I wish you could backdate posts on blogger, I'd like to cheat and write a few posts as if I was in Turkey, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. But I will update in the next day or so and write out a post on Turkey. It was loads of fun, and we took a lot of great pictures.
I'm looking forward to all the adventures to have in December!