After four years, we will be leaving Lebanon in June for new adventures on a new continent, at the foot of the Caucasus mountains, on the Caspian Sea: Baku, Azerbaijan.
Tom followed the trail of his contract with the International School of Azerbaijan online. Traveling by UPS it left Baku for Moscow, then Koln (Cologne), and Abu Dhabi, before reaching Beirut.
We plunged into the planning phase: scouring the web for details from Azeri language to weather, Caspian to tourism, contacting the shipping company, and ordering the Lonely Planet for Azerbaijan. Moving on to phase two has me making a brown paper cover for said Lonely Planet, as it covers not only AZ but two other Transcaucus nations: Georgia and Armenia, the latter the arch enemy of Azerbaijan. There are stories of travelers having the book confiscated. Sigh. It is so bad that even US citizens who have Armenian sounding names are not granted visas.
Exciting to go, and hard to leave. There are so many things we will miss here. The friends we have made. The crazy, delightful (well, mostly) chaos. The PEOPLE. The FOOD. The beauty of the mountains and sea. Being able to walk everywhere. Reasonable internet access. Being able to communicate--in English, massacred Arabic, stumbling French. The weather, mostly.
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No doubt there will be fascinating cultural events like the one witnessed by Tom last week from our balcony. A wedding part
y gathered on the wide stairs outside our building. A traditional band, in costume, played the drum-heavy music that has become familiar to us, and a beautiful white-gowned bride emerged from a building across from ours. The group made its way down the stiarway and on down the street. Tom caught this photo from our 7th floor balcony.
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