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Where are you from? I am from Pakistan! Oh Pakistan is our brother country we love Pakistan, take whatever you want and I will give you discount because you are from Pakistan! These lines gave me adrenaline rush when a local shop keeper who could hardly communicate in English said to me because I’m used to been looked upon suspiciously, people think I am probably wearing suicide jacket and I might blow it anytime. Expect the unexpected they say. Last year I was given an opportunity to go to Azerbaijan when I was selected among six other young people from Pakistan for cultural exchange program. Country was almost unknown to me as I only got to know about Azerbaijan when I wrote an essay on their national leader. Azerbaijan out of all the countries in the world, who could think such a small country, would surprise us all and we all will fall in love with hospitality of people, warmth of the culture and similarities of food choices with our own local cuisines. We were given first day after landing in noon to rest, but our curiosity took us to the ganjlik mall where we ate a little, shopped around for a bit and headed straight to Baku’s famous “Nizami street” which was bustling and colorful, people were walking around, eating street food, enjoying music and unwinding. We were tourists and it was pretty obvious by our physical appearance and one could easily guess that we were from India or Pakistan. We walked around whole nizami street and suddenly it was one in the morning, at that moment I decided I would make most of my trip and explore all that I will be able to in this trip. Minister of youth and sport gave us shields the next day and were taken to carpet museum where I got lost in the beautiful handicrafts, carpets and history attached to them, I have always been curious head when it comes to history of culture and I was not ready leave the museum, other girls literally had to pull my hand and take me to the bus. I was ready to move to Baku and I was already looking for potential match and other girls of group would joke around here and there about it as well. But it was last day in Baku and we had to be taken to other cities and villages for excursion, so I dropped the plan of searching for a guy. We boarded the bus early next morning left our big suitcases back in the hotel and left for Sheki city. All throughout this journey it felt like I was going to the north of Pakistan and every place looked identical that I had a déjà vu situation. We reached Sheki at night ate food and went to check local night life and I was surprised there as well as I always thought Islamic countries would have no such thing found openly, but here people were so placid and modern that I felt like I was living under the rock all this time. We visited a beautiful village next day called Lahic and I was mesmerized by the beauty of it, I tried their local dress and it looked good on me as I say so myself. We had a cultural day next day where we all dressed in national dresses, stalls with local food items from all participants were displayed and we all danced on national songs of all representing countries. Next day we came back to Baku and it was our last day, we all were sad and goodbyes were hardest for us, but had to be done. We wanted to visit local bazaar as well, I have this habit of tripping everywhere I go and while we were in lift I told my girlfriends that I haven’t tripped on this trip and that was the moment I jinxed it and slipped on the freshly moped lobby of hotel, anyway because our flight was at night so we went out to visit bazaar even after tripping and got souvenirs to bring back home. Came back to Pakistan but left my heart there forever unexpectedly.