Thanksgiving in Seattle and another semester at SPP comes to a close.

I am finishing up the semester here at SPP with my final class of the term being this afternoon.  Hooray! 

I have projects, papers and finals due next week and haven’t slowed down to take care of that.  I have organized a series of charity events this week–with Military Missions (sends packages to soldiers serving overseas who don’t have families back home) and Teddy Bear Hugs (donates teddy bears to kids who have to testify in court most often for domestic or sexual abuse cases)– and had to do a video interview with the Pepperdine communications department to be included in the annual report.  I find video cameras terrifying in these sorts of situations because I always feel like I sould be doing something extreme in front of them and am pretty sure I got a massive case of red face….  I’ll do my best to post the embarrassing video when I get a copy!

Other than school, I just got back from a fabulous Thanksgiving holiday in Seattle!  I spent Wednesday night cheering on my brother Michael’s company soccer team as they beat the other team 8-3.  I feel as though I may have embarrassed some of them because I was very loud and they aren’t used to having a cheering section quite so vocal.

Photo: Me with Eileen and Rekko’s beautiful turkey!

Then we baked pies and did prep work at Michael’s house  and had a pretty serious tournament of our favorite card game Nertz.  Thursday, I spent the day with the my girlfriends, the Fab 5, at my friends Eileen and Rekko’s apartment in South Lake Union.  It was most of our’s first Thanksgiving cooking all by ourselves and I am happy to report that the turkey turned out fabulous!  So did the mashed potatoes and the pecan pie if I may say so myself… After that, Christmas music and movies were fair game: Charlie Brown, The Holiday, Miracle on 34th Street and N’SYNC Christmas.  Awesome.

Friday, we did vegetarian Thanksgiving at my friends Danielle and David’s apartment in Capitol Hill.  Michael and his girlfriend Maire came out from Bellevue to join us and I have to say my highlights were the awesome food (not any healthier just because it was vegetables by the way!), the EPIC Jenga game, the Super Mario Brothers on the original Nintendo, and the fact that there was more dessert than dinner. 

Photo: 4 of the Fab 5 on the Sound

I came back down to L.A. and used the public transportation to get home for the first time and am now sold on the virtues of Santa Monica Public Buses!  75 cents to get to the airport or home and no traffic stress. Fantastic.

Perhaps its the end of the semester or the holiday spirit getting to me but my outlook on everything seems to be quite favorable at the moment.  Hopefully it translates to my finals…

The Mo Report

Life progresses so fast sometimes I hardly think I will have time to blink before my twenties are over.  And I’m only 23.  I guess I’ve got big plans on the way. 

I submitted my completed Fulbright Scholarship application last month.  An abstract of my Fulbright proposal:

Kemalism, with its distinctive constellation of democratic concepts, stands to influence yet another generation of Turkish policy-makers. First-hand observation of the world of Turkish policy and decision-making as well as the role of public choice is key to enabling a broad understanding of the vital dynamic of Kemalism and democratic development in Turkey.

I’ve also been selected to present my paper entitled “Displacement and Civil Unrest in Colombia: Public Policy and Conflict-Induced Displacement” at the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies.  The press release from Pepperdine is detailed in the “My School in California” page.  An abstract of my paper:

Internally displaced populations are one of the most politically and economically complex issues in the post-modern international order, particularly in the discussion of developing countries. This paper examines the phenomenon of conflict-induced displacement in the state of Colombia.  Included is a description and review of the conflict and the political and economic ramifications of civil unrest in the Colombian countryside.  With over 2 million Colombians displaced as a result of the current conflict between the Colombian government and the FARC, the development of Colombia in relation to the rest of Latin America is regressing.  The policy response of the Colombian government, both nationally and municipally, is analyzed and proposals for steps forward to adapt policy actions and diversification of resources to growing unstable and dependent populations of internally displaced persons (IDPs) offered. 

Next, I’m working on developing a more comprehensive work on public policy and conflict-induced displacement to be published later this year. 

Development on continuation of being a professional student: More papers published. More fellowships applied for.  PhD applications forthcoming.  Jobs applied for…no comment.

Back in the U.S. of A.

Well, I’ve been back in the United States for about a month now. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get back to my blog, so my apologies for anyone who has been terribly worried that I disappeared. I have been incredibly busy!

The highlight of the trip home from Baku was landing at JFK International, discovering that, yes, I still had an 8 hour layover in Atlanta and I would be flying there instead of direct to Denver. Think I’m being sarcastic? No, I’m not. Because having this flight rather than one to Denver put me about 5 gates away from one of my best friends (a member of the Fab Five if you know me well enough to know what this means) of all time, Danielle, who was returning from business in Amsterdam and got bumped onto a flight out of my terminal to Seattle! We got to sit and chat and have Starbucks (glorious American coffee was my first purchase upon arrival in the U.S.) for about 20 minutes before we went our separate ways for our flights. My overwhelming emotional anxiety from the 32 hours of travel I had already endured on no sleep plus reverse culture shock of having to deal with Russians in Moscow International and then New Yorkers at JFK, was quieted from seeing Danielle and I think some god knew I needed to see a friendly face. What were the odds that flying from two different continents, to two different destinations, delayed different amounts of time, we found each other in a massive New York airport? I think it must have been super natural…

Upon my return, I stayed in Colorado for a couple days to recoup the time-change before setting out for California. However, the 60 hours of being awake apparently shocked my system enough that I readjusted right away! Only fatigue from the journey, not jet-lag seemed to be a problem. I set out for a solo trip across New Mexico and Arizona with no hindrances and many

Photo: The mesas and fields of New Mexico.

expectations. Afraid I would feel alien forever in my own country, I was comforted to know I still felt the same kinship to the deserts of the Southwest as I did before. I knew why Azerbaijan had felt like home…it looked like my own beloved deserts of the Southwest. Yellow Colorado sunflowers along the side of old Route 66 became purple-and-sage New Mexican grass and the towering peaks of the Rockies became flat-topped mesas of the Sangre de Cristos. How can people dread driving this expanse when all I felt was awe?

I stopped in Santa Fe to have a burrito and that miraculous New Mexican green chile and to go to the Georgia O’Keefe Museum. I feel I will write more about her art later, so I will leave that story for another time. Then, I longingly left Santa Fe to continue on to Gallup, New Mexico, where I stayed the night in a

Photo: The Plaza, Santa Fe.

motel just about on the Arizona border. Forgetting about the time change, I lounged around in the morning waiting to leave at a time that would put me into L.A. AFTER rush hour. However, with the change to Pacific time, I landed myself in downtown L.A. on I-10 RIGHT. AT. RUSH HOUR. Fantastic. However, I was surprisingly happy to be back despite the traffic and knew I was almost back to my sunny, beach apartment in Santa Monica.

Since getting back into the swing of things here, a lot has happened. I started up again in the Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch as a research assistant, which is where I was working before I left for the summer last year. It’s a crazy workload and both my boss and I are doing our best to find another intern who can help because there are just too many problems to fix in the world! Also, obviously the semester started back up at Pepperdine. It is my last year at the School of Public Policy and I’ve got lots of stuff to accomplish. I am submitting a Fulbright Scholarship application to do a year of research in Turkey which goes in next week (YIKES!) and I am the chapter President of Women in Public Policy (WPP)this year. WPP is doing tons of exciting things this semester and the job is turning out to be more of a time-suck than I anticipated. But it’s lots of fun! Keep tabs on everything I’m doing with them at our organization’s blog: http://pepperdinewpp.wordpress.com

I’ve also made the decision to pursue my PhD starting in the next year or two. You’ll all be able to call me Dr. Beach soon enough (lol). Pheewwwww….I’ve got so much to work on! Excuse me in advance if some of my blogging goes by the wayside, I promise I’ll stay on top of it as much as possible. Sorry it’s been so long again, and check out my “Snapshots” and “My Work in Azerbaijan” pages for a few more updates!

Those final kisses from the Caspian

As I sit here, with literally only a dozen or so hours left in Azerbaijan, the reality of the last two months is truly beginning to sink in.  Other than a few minor bouts of homesickness, I have been more than sublimely happy here.  It is easy to leave places where we find ourselves alienated and discontented but choosing to leave a place where you have been so jovial and content almost every day, this is more difficult.  I found more than just a pleasant locale to visit; I found a derivative home here.  I settled into a life more real and

Photo: My Viennese friend Tessa and I sharing a love of fantastically colored sunglasses and a goodbye kiss for Baku.

established (despite my minor social experiment in international poverty due to lack of income) in only a few weeks than my many months in Los Angeles.  Although, while I am extremely reluctant to admit it (mostly as a face saving gesture due to the harshly critical comments I espoused in the months prior to my departure), I do long a little bit for that west coast freedom and my beautiful bungalow by the beach.  I do however have a true aching sadness at the thought of leaving my dear Baku, which is only diminished by my anticipation in seeing those faces I’ve missed so much since I left.  But, there are always left-behind faces to haunt us as our only permanent proof of the fantastic adventures we’ve encountered in the past. 

So, as I leave Baku and the Azerbaijani countryside to which I have become so devotedly attached, here’s to freedom, adventure, and the ghosts of the past.

Wandering through my final days in Baku…

Yesterday I departed from work early in order to do all those touristy things you always leave until the last minutes on trips like this.  I first walked down the main road from my apartment to the Old City, where I was going to visit the Shirvanshah’s Palace.  Inside the Palace complex, there are a few different areas: the Divan Xana (which is an octagonal room surrounded by an open-air courtyard used by the old Shah’s to host guests), the Palace Apartments (exactly what they sound like, now they host a few private collections of Azerbaijani artifacts), the Palace Mosque (again, exactly what it sounds like),  a few mausoleums of royal family members and clerics, and the ruins of the Palace Hamam (bathhouse ruins excavated in the early 1900s).  There are fountains in

Photo: Minaret and flowers of the Shirvanshah Palace.

each chamber courtyard as you walk around the complex, and pile upon pile of remnant stones carved with Arabic prayers that used to surround the palace.  Each new chamber has another impossibly steep stairway that leads to nowhere (or nowhere they want you to get to) and even though you have free range of the palace, you know there’s plenty more underneath the stone floors that you will never see.  Most of the existing complex was built in the 14^th-15^th centuries, but a rebirth of tourism in Azerbaijan since the latest oil boom has lead to the refurbishing the compound into a state of grandeur.  There are spectacular vistas of bustling modern Baku from the rooftops and courtyards of the palace, but the site remains in that ghostly, ancient hush that befalls the Old City.  Few cars and people regularly tread the narrow bumpy streets of the Old City other than its residents and the few Western tourists who make it to this part of the world, and the high outer city walls seem to keep the noise and rush of modernity out. 

From the Shirvanshah’s Palace, I meandered through the walkways of the Old City, and then trailed the old city wall down towards the Baku Philharmonic and the State Art Museum.  The Baku Philharmonic is a stately, bright yellow building sitting just

Photo: The Baku Philharmonic.

outside the old city walls on a small hill looking out on the Caspian.  The symphony holds regular performances there, although in my summer months here I was not able to make it to one of the performances.  Across the cobbled street from the grand Philharmonic sits the State Art Museum.  The State Art annex is under construction just next door, and upon entering the Museum, I could tell that this portion of it was in severe disrepair as well.  Peeling paint, exposed electrical wires and broken windows were the norm in the many rooms of the museum; often times it felt as though you were wandering through the storage vaults of a museum rather than the exhibit area with chairs stacked up in the center of the rooms and furniture covers gathering dust around the interior.  The European art collection of dark Dutch oils and replicated bronze statuary was, at best, lackluster compared to their counterparts in Europe; as could be expected.  However, the Azerbaijani art section featuring prominent national artists, traditional carpets and textiles, Bronze Age metalwork and a few pieces of modern Azerbaijani art was fantastic (even if the chambers were not much improved).  I was particularly taken with one Azerbaijani artist’s ink and water color portraits of refugees from around the time of the First World War.  Google the works of Bahruz Kangarli if you are interested. 

I finished my afternoon of tourism by going to the bookshop attached to the National Literature Museum and discovering the find of my trip:  An Azerbaijani cookbook in both Russian and English!  I will be able to cook you all glorious Azeri dishes once I return to the States, although it may take me some time to convert measurements from the metric system… 

Tourism Baku-style to recommence on Monday.

Almaniya:2, Azerbaycan:0

Now I have experienced something truly foreign to America: Real football aka SOCCER!  Indeed, I attended the Germany/Azerbaijan World Cup qualifier match yesterday right here in Baku!  I went with a bunch of assorted European (like a box of chocolates) friends, and before we went even the Azebaijanis knew that Azerbaijan would lose.  But, still a victory in their hearts:  They only lost 2 to 0 this time!!!  And the crowd had MORE than enough team spirit to make up for what they lack in teamwork.  We tried to blend in with the Azerbaijani section (quite difficult with a number of blonde German-speakers with you), drank the local brew Xirdalan, and ate ‘piroshkee’ or fried pastries filled with potato flour.  Even though Azerbaijan lost and I have no idea what constiutes a ‘good’ football game, it was a fantastic experience!

 

Favorite moments of the game:

 

The national guard stationed as an outline of the field, mounted paratroopers in full combate gear, riot police in full riot gear, city police with machine guns ready lining every possible corridor, and the eight lines of security we had to get through to get into the match.  Apparently they take their sports quite seriously here…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The colored placards the crowd held up during the national anthem to turn the stadium into a giant Azerbaijani flag. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The police asking my Austrian friend to carry the flag rather than wear it as a cape as a foreigner doing this must indicate some sort of disrespect (due to the fact that a number of Azerbaijanis walked passed us into the stadium wearing a flag-cape whilst we exchanged words with the police officers).  My friend then dropped the flag on the ground, stared down the police officer, and came close to being arrested had I not grabbed the flag as quickly as I could and ushered us inside.

That Caspian Wind (an existential quandry)

I felt the wind—spiteful, hateful, unrelenting wind—pressing on my face.  My hair, let loose and free, swirled around me enveloping me into my own world consisting of the smell of Caspian seas, Baku streets, and memories of my life so far.  I thought of the nights before this one—the local band playing classic American rock at the bar on the corner, the jazz concert where one song broke through my thoughts and spoke to my heart, the balcony overlooking the square where I sat with my headphones pressed into my ears and an open bottle of sweet red wine balanced next to me.  I thought of home—the boy I left behind, would we be the same when I came home, am I even still the same

Photo: Me on a ferry in the Caspian Sea. 

person that left 9 weeks ago, is home simply an imaginary place or a fleeting memory?  I thought of Tessa and Jens, standing next to me on this boat and our frivolous excursion into the Caspian Sea, who clearly is hiding so much more in her depths. I contemplated my past and my future, wondering if they would forever remain separated by the present or if they were instead, one enigma, wrapped up in the spectacle of my life.  Wind is the worst of all meteorological phenomenons.

A genuine lack of Oriental elegance

This weekend I attended my first (hopefully not my last!) Azerbaijani wedding!  It was quite a spectacle of dancing, feasting, dancing, small fireworks, dancing, numerous musical performances, dancing, and some more dancing.  Yes, there was dancing! Not in the same methodical way we do in the United States, but rather a real expression of the joy and pleasure of the occasion.  Which I’m aware is a clichéd statement about most weddings, but I truly felt a radiating happiness in this room filled with dancing people!  We danced between drinks and between courses and between speeches…Azeri style dancing (an inherently unflattering style for most Americans, I think, since I believe we truly lack some intrinsic

Photo: A captured moment of my capricious dance. 

Oriental grace) is lithe arm movements coupled with quick tempoed footsteps.  At one point I found myself hypnotized by the rhythmic, tapping feet, all moving in a joyous unison around the patterned crimson and gold carpet.  It was as if there were a hundred tiny toys all synchronized to music, hopping about on the floor.  And almost no hip movement.  My American readers, please try dancing without your hips sometime and feel how truly difficult this is to do without looking intensely awkward.    Ah, well, my Azerbaijani co-workers had insisted I practice before the wedding and I had been well-prepared through ridicule and YouTube instructional videos.  I began awkwardly but with practice, red wine and a little bit of self-deprecating humility, I was quite the dancer by the end of the evening!  At least I thought so… No one tell me otherwise if not!  I also believe my American counterparts here were also feeling the strain of American lack of dancing elegance. 

Photo: Some quick-footed dancing from the Azerbaijanis. 

My other notable occupation of the weekend hours was sitting on my balcony above the busy Füzuli Square, drinking strong black tea and reading a new book.  So far here, I have finished several books—yes, I’m a nerd I travel with more books than anything else—but so far my favorite has been the romantic classic Ali & Nino by Kurban Said.  It’s set at the beginning of WWI here in Baku, an area that was torn between the powers and influence of the Ottoman Turks and the Russian Empires at the beginning of the war and then overrun by Bolsheviki revolution immediately after gaining short independence of the two.  It has beautiful passages about the desert and the two main characters strikingly embody the paradoxical identity of this city.  If you want to feel your own little piece of Baku and the Orient, I recommend Ali & Nino (despite its many inflammatory passages on the identity and role of women in society).  But alas, that only took me two days to read.  I do have more books though, and I have moved on to a novel on Helen of Troy.   My affinity for historical fiction, and reading in general, remains unabated.    Of course, having roaming free time and a balcony with my view doesn’t hurt to foster a love of literature…

Are you sure that’s an ECG machine? It looks like an old Soviet torture device.

So, I went to an Azerbaijani doctor’s office yesterday. I was obliged to attend this institution to obtain a “health certificate” stating that I was free of any communicable diseases, obscure mental disorders, and American parasites in order to not be fined and kicked out of the country on an expired visa. The clinic was Russian-speaking (don’t worry, I brought someone from work with me to translate because I lack necessary medical terminology) with friendly-faced, but still threatening in that foreign-medical-personnel sort of way, staff. I was first taken in to have blood drawn, terrified of what sort of torturous environment awaited me inside the small exam room. But I was pleasantly surprised when I found the nurse far gentler than the blood bank staff at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs. Although I’m sure having a needle stuck in my arm in the former Soviet Union now permanently disqualifies me from ever being able to donate blood again. After my quick blood test, I was scooted over to the cardiology exam room. They attached me to what I am told was an ECG machine, but I’m still convinced used to be an electro-shock torture device the Bolsheviks used to interrogate suspected spies. It was a contraption of metal clamps attached to my wrists and ankles and numerous small metal circlets with tall suction-cups attached across my chest, with heavily coated copper wiring leading behind me to a machine I couldn’t see. It was like they were going to jump start me like a car battery.  After 10 minutes of uncomfortable silence with the overly-blonded nurse tip-tapping away one the computer next to me, I was sign-languagedly instructed to put my shirt back on and proceed to the x-ray examination. The “X-Ray” examination was an ultrasound tech, with a gooey ultrasound apparatus, telling me (through my translating co-worker) she could see that I had eaten this morning and if I had to pee the bathroom was across the hall. An overshare, perhaps? But I suppose that if you are looking at a patient’s full bladder on the ultrasound, it is courtesy to show them the restroom… Well, after a quick consultation with another doctor to confirm that I wasn’t hiding any unseen medical conditions (even though I’m pretty sure this is the most thorough check up I’ve received in a number of doctor’s visits) and was in good psychological health (unsure how you could confirm this is the broken English that was used by the doctor), I was given a clean health certificate for the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Poll of the day: How much weight does a health statement from a clinic in Azerbaijan hold in the United States? Would you equate it more to the weight of US Weekly’s dedication to Robert Pattinson’s love triangles or the weight of the U.S. commitment to the Kyoto Protocol?

A peaceful trip to the Talysh Mountains

I was thinking about the last two days as we rolled by another unassuming house on the road from Lenkeran to Baku.  The best sleep I’ve had in weeks I had last night, at a bare pine cottage in the Talysh Mountains about 100km north of the Iranian border outside of an Azeri town called Masalla…

My friend Said had taken me to his home town, Masalla, and the nearby Lenkeran for the day and we were now sitting on the dark pebble beach, with the water washing over our feet as I drank tea and ate warmed raisins and hazelnuts, and Said and his hometown friends played Nerds (what we call Backgammon in the US) and told jokes in Azerbaijani.  I was captivated, not by the scenery (although that was also breathtaking) or their quick wit (which was perceptible even in English), but by the sound of the pebbles and tiny bleach white seashells

Photo:  My feet on the Caspian pebble-and-shell beach as a wave comes in.

tumbling over each other as each wave rushed in and out.  It was as if you had taken your finest china, smashed into thousands of tiny pieces, and it was slowly falling into a pile at your feet.  I rolled up my jeans and walked slowly and deliberately down the rough black sand strip next to the embankment of demolished cement blocks, remnants of Soviet buildings now destroyed and being overtaken by the rising Caspian tide.  I picked up tiny pieces of clear, aqua, and green glass worn dull and rounded by the water and sand and wondered at my total feeling of peace here.  After collecting a pocketful of Caspian sea-glass, I circled round and headed back to our table, to watch a train pass, finish my tea, and head back towards the forested hills of the Talysh’s to retire to our wooden, wooded cottage.  I fell asleep on my white cotton linen to a view of darkened green trees and humming frogs from the stream at the bottom of the ravine.

I woke to humming cicadas; for a fleeting moment, wondering if any place on the planet had any, even momentary, respite from the mythically plague-like creatures…  A passing thought, I emerged from my cocoon and opened my patio door onto our small deck. It was my ideal reading spot, with a couple small chairs, the smell of forest and fires, and a shaded but sunny view of the awakening wooded ravine.  I spent the morning, melting over into the early afternoon, on that deck stilted above the tree line, finishing what can

Photo: The view from our residence in the Talysh’s.

only be something like my dozenth book about the queens of Tudor England.  We left our cottage around 1pm, and drove down the road just a minute or so to eat some breakfast.  We ate bread smothered in cream & local honey and eggs cooked with fresh tomatoes & olive oil.  After finishing our food, we took one more short drive further into the Talysh’s, stopping only to take a mental picture (because my real camera’s battery was dead) of the blue and beige thistles at my feet and the escalating mountains in front of me.  Then it was time to return to Baku. 

It is a three hour drive over questionable-quality roads, and we wanted to be back by the mid-afternoon.  Said, in his Mercedes C-class, made sure I didn’t sleep or even relax on the ride home by incorporating NASCAR-like driving maneuvers and I suppose NASCAR-like speeds as well… New Azerbaijan speed record: 230 km/hr or 143mph.  Oh.  My.  God.  But again, I suppose I am safe and sound again here in Baku, no harm done.  At least this time I had a seatbelt…  It was calm and uneventful compared to my previous weekends, but exactly what I needed.  Mountains, my book, and some good food.