2 May 2002 The pigeon

2 May 2002
The pigeon has landed. I hit the ground at about 12:45 am, and was in the hotel by 2:00am. It is now 9:30am and I’m at work. Ugh.

Okay, made it through day 1. I had to knock off early because I was just no good by the time 2:00pm rolled around. Fortunately, there’s a bunch of stuff that I could take away and read at the hotel. I sacked out for an hour and a half and then wandered central Baku for the rest of the afternoon between stints of reading AID country plans.

I’m staying at the center of the city, adjacent to a large pedestrian only area that is full of restaurants, clubs, shops and such. The World Learning office is a short 10 minute walk away. I’m about the same distance from the boardwalk along the Caspian Sea and also the old 10th century walled part of the city. I didn’t explore everything today, but I wandered quite a bit in the near parts of Baku.

Flying through the sunset was pretty cool yesterday. There were lots of deep, deep pink areas on the tops of the clouds that faded quickly (surprisingly!) to grays and then black. It was neat to see a sunset above the clouds.

I’ve had fun looking at faces here today. This really is where east meets west meets south. There are facial features that are so European mixed in with Arab and Persian. The people definitely dress European though. Almost every man wears a gray or black sportcoat, some with sweaters underneath and black pants. The women dress very stylishly. Iridescent jeans seem to be the thing these days for the women.