Welcome to windy Baku!

Who knew that 2011 would be such a whirlwind?  Ed decided to take a job in Baku, Azerbaijan right around Christmas, 2010.  The terms sounded good, and the possibility of a new adventure has always been a good hook for him.  We approached the whole process with lots of big IFs, since there were many possibilities for glitches.  He passed the offshore physical on January 3 so the next step was an application for a visa.  First you need an invitation. . .then you're at the mercy of the consulate.  In order to get a visa, you have to send your passport to Washington, D.C. with a promise from the embassy that they will only keep it for 10 working days (holidays don't count).  Last fall we had signed ourselves up for a 10 day vacation in Belize at the end of January - his passport came back Friday at noon and we flew out of SeaTac that night.  Whew!  Close one there.  The week in Belize was glorious - good music from Jerry Jeff Walker and great food and fun with family and friends.  We returned to Bellingham late Sunday night, did the laundry, and Ed was on a plane to Baku Monday morning.

He arrived on February 1 and jumped right into work and finding an apartment.  One of the terms of the contract is that housing is provided and we did have some choice in the matter.  Ed ended up taking the first apartment that he saw since it has a spectacular view of the Caspian Sea and a fairly neutral decorating scheme.  And it is in a fairly modern building.  We've never lived in a high rise before, but we're on the 17th floor now.  It is a furnished apartment and we've added several things from home to help it feel more familiar.  This is the name of the street that we live on, but we don't expect to receive mail here.  E-mail and Skype are our current preferred modes of communication.

After I finished winding things up at my work in Bellingham and packing up our household goods shipment, it was time for me to apply for a visa.  I sent my application in on March 1 and it came back to me April 1.  Looks like more than 10 working days to me.  Everyone just says, "But this is Baku!"  I'm having to adjust my get things done attitudes.  The household goods arrived just fine, but I wish that I'd sent a microwave cart and a bookshelf.  Who knew that such basic items would be hard to find.

Anyway, here we are enjoying a leisurely Easter Sunday.  We're already into Easter while you all are asleep since we are 12 hours ahead of the west coast.  We've thawed out a frozen salmon fillet from Norway so we'll cook that later.  When we look outside, toward the sea, there is a very large flag that gives us an indication of how bad the wind is today.  It was really awful a couple of days ago, so they even took the flag down.  It has rained a couple of times since I got here on April 6, but we do see the sun more often than we usually do in Washington.  If we look really hard to the horizon, we think that we can see some of the drilling rigs.  Our little camera isn't good enough to get a photo of that.  Maybe we'll get some better binoculars one of these days and have a good look out there.

Ed has about a 15 minute walk to work and we can walk to several small grocery stores.  Yesterday, we took a taxi downtown and then shopped our way back, making the last stop at Life Supermarket.  It is one of the big ones, but they don't have caraway seeds.  We walked back, but that really is a pretty long trek so I hope we don't do that too often.

Our living/dining/kitchen room is quite large so we have installed the sewing corner.  The light is great with all the windows and there are good overhead lights so I'm getting a lot done on one of my scrap quilts.  Some days I've actually been sewing from sunrise until sunset and beyond.  It is very handy to have one's sewing corner right in the middle of the apartment.  I've also made a new cover for the resident ironing board and some wall pockets for one of the bathrooms.  These bathrooms have pedestal sinks and no medicine cabinets so no storage.

The bed in the second bedroom has drawers under it so that is where the bags of scraps are living.  The wardrobe in there has all of the new fabric.  Thank goodness I brought quite a bit of fabric because the stores here don't have very much in the way of quilting cottons.  They have a lot of fancy fabrics (bling is very popular here), wool suitings, and other fabrics for sewing clothes.  That bedroom is also the drying room since we don't have a clothes dryer.  Some people (those who live in official BP housing) have combo washer/dryers, but most people hang their things outside on their balconies where they can collect dust and bird droppings.  We put our wet clothes in the drying room.  They are usually dry in one day.

The expat women have been very welcoming.  There are five or so quilters among them, and they are all mostly fairly new to quilting.  I'm going to two quilting meetings each week.  I've been to one coffee and there is another one scheduled for Tuesday.  We have two taxi drivers available who can speak some English.  We will never drive here.  The traffic is AWFUL!  They use their horns freely and manufacture new lanes as needed.  This means that a roundabout which has three lanes can easily accommodate 5 small cars and one bus.  Surprisingly, we haven't seen many accidents.  This sign indicates that drivers should watch out for pedestrians dashing across the street.

At the coffee I attended, we learned how to have things sent here from the USA fairly inexpensively.  We've ordered a few things online and are waiting for them to arrive.  It looks like it takes about two weeks.  This appears to be good for smallish things.  Who knows what the shipping would be for a bookshelf.

All in all, life is good.  Ed is enjoying his work and I am enjoying quilting nearly full time.  The chores of daily living do take a little more time than at home, but maybe we'll get more efficient as time goes on.  The grocery stores here have most of the things that we need, although yesterday we saw fresh asparagus without tips for a high price.  I suspect that the tips were damaged in shipping so they just removed them and put the stalks out for sale.  Fresh broccoli is also expensive, but there are many brands of vodka at all price points!

We are happy that we've finally gotten started on our blog.  We hope to add more observations and photos on a fairly regular basis.  We also hope that our little message will inspire some of you to update us on your happenings.  Happy Easter!

Ed and Carol