First Day of School

Sorry to everyone in Florida who has been suffering in the heat, but it has been so cold and rainy here! I had to use my sleeping bag as a comforter for a few nights.  The weather has finally gotten back to normal and is about high 70s in the afternoon.  As I walked along the river that was once the road to my house, I realized that I got lucky with my host family.  My host mother made us brave a thunderstorm on foot to go to the store so I would have oatmeal in the morning.  I’m still struggling with how much oil is in the food, but that is unlikely to change until I move out on my own. 

I finally made it to my school after a week of doing nothing at my site.  I met with my counterpart and a few other teachers.  It’s quite odd to sit in on a teacher’s meeting when you can’t understand what they are arguing about.  Turns out, the teachers were competing for the best class times and classrooms.  The class schedule wasn’t even finished until the day before school.  When I first went to my school I was told that the President of Armenia was coming.  The teacher’s didn’t know if he would really show up or not.  I went to school that day, but my counterpart said that there was no work for me to do and sent me home.  Guess who showed up at our school an hour later? That’s right, Mr. President himself.  I should have stayed... I need to work on being more direct with people.

September 1st, the first day of school, is a national holiday in Armenia.  I brought my camera to take pictures, but no one else had a camera and I didn’t want to be known as a tourist for the next 2 years.  The little boys were dressed in suits and the little girls wore adorable dresses.  Almost all students wore black and white outfits except for an older boy who defied conformity and wore an awesome pink shirt.  There are actually no classes on the first day of school.  After several speeches outside with accompanying pop/techno music and balloons, students went inside with their ‘homeroom’ teacher.   My counterpart introduced me to her class, and then sent me home for the rest of the day. Again.  I’m already a bit frustrated and classes haven’t even started yet.  It can only get better right?

The only good thing that happened on the first day of school was going blueberry picking with my host parents.  We took an ancient soviet-style dump truck up into the forest and braved the thorns for a solid 2 hours.  Great experience except that the thorns cut through clothing and now I have splinters in unusual places. I will have fun time explaining my purple hands tomorrow at school :)

I’ll give you an update next week about how English is really taught in an Armenian classroom, I’m anxious to find out!

P.S. Almost every day my host family eats sunflower seeds, right off of the sunflower itself: