All or Nothing

To keep this blog running I know I should write what is going on, but the thing is… nothing. It’s very hard to live in this country when you’re used to Western type of living. You know, one day I asked a guy what do they do in their free time and he said ‘meet with friends’. Well, that is not why I wanted to become an Erasmus.
It is very different from regular Erasmus you know. Erasmus is known for its parties and zero responsibility. Here maybe I have no responsibility but definitely no parties either. It is especially hard for me as a geek that I don’t even have many things to do for school. Let me tell you why.

I do admire the western style of classes the instructors want to provide. Most of them studies in Western European countries and they want to share all they’ve seen with the students here. It is a shame they do not appreciate it. Before I came here I got in touch with one guy (author of the blog I recommend you: Życie na Marsie; all in Polish) who spent an EVS in Baku. He told me there’s a way to recognize if you’re passing a college student on the street because the only thing they carry is one 30 pages notebook…

It is true. Education here has no importance for the people. I thought it would be different In a private school but no. Nobody reads, nobody makes copies of the books, nobody’s prepared, nobody wants to speak in class. The way they study is they memorize everything they have in the book (if they have a book). The problem is for each class we only have one book to read. ONE. Please tell me how am I supposed to learn something about i.e. foreign policy of Azerbaijan if the book for this class is written by Minister of Foreign Affairs?!

That’s the academic part but wait till you need to get something done, for example immigration. For the immigration card you need to fill in a lot of documents. Luckily (or not…) the school helps us with this. The result is we need to wait for anything to get done for weeks. This is actually the third week I’m asking about student ID cards. ‘So you know when they will be ready?’, ‘No, sorry, I don’t know’

I am either about to kill somebody or become greatly patient while staying here…
About things I do except of school. It’s not gonna take long, believe me. I can’t go alone at night so I can’t go out. I don’t live in the center so there’s nowhere to go actually. I don’t dare to buy any alcohol, except of the crappy beer in KFC so the only thing I can do is ‘meet with friends’. I’m so glad for the other Erasmus girls because if we’re supposed to be bored than we’ll be bored together.

The locals are very friendly but not ‘let’s be friends!’ friendly. They will smile and say hello but they are very closed. The other thing is their English is very bad so even if somebody is nice the communication barrier stays in the way. It’s better if somebody speaks Russian but it’s hard to find such people here. Young people, I mean.
What else can I can, so far there’s hasn’t been much going on, really. I do understand though this post might be a little confusing so please, leave me a comment and I will clarify everything the best I can. Also, I will have something to do for at least 30 minutes so I will really appreciate that ;)