Settling

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while.  I have a pretty good routine at school now and my days are starting to run together.  I wake up, go to school, teach, have lunch with a few teachers, teach more and sometimes go to the art school for tutoring or just to hang out.  This week is Fall Break in Armenia.  Students are free and teachers are supposed to go to school.  My school uses this week to put wood heaters in every classroom. Since there is no school I will just help out at the art school and then travel to another volunteer’s house for Halloween.

Here are some highlights from the past 2 weeks:

I got together with some other volunteers in my area to have a potluck and it was great.  It’s always excited to visit a new village and see the differences and similarities. We go together again for Chinese food, we even made egg rolls from scratch!

I watched Super 8 and it was surprisingly great.

My TEFL boss came to my village to check in with me.  She spoke with my principal and counterpart and they both said great things about me.  Then we went to the other school in my village to give them an application for if they want a volunteer next year.  I hope we get more volunteers next year, there isn’t much to do in our area so we don’t have many visitors. 

I made tacos. My host mother loved them, but my host father wouldn’t even try them.

Listened to my host parents get into a fight with the census lady who came to our house at 10 pm.

Planning a Halloween party with the art school.

Finally showered after 7 days…..

Used a PowerPoint presentation in my 10^th grade class.  Most teachers don’t know how to use a computer so I think my students really enjoyed it.  They think I am the resident expert on London and all things UK since our textbooks are British.  This presentation was about London, but in November I want to have a presentation on the US in all of my classes.

What a boring blog post.  I promise I will have more to talk about next week!

I love Armenia when....

What a crazy awesome week. 

October 5^th was Teacher’s Day in Armenia. We had school for half a day and then went to a ceremony at the cultural center.  Everyone in the community was invited to celebrate Teacher’s Day which involved numerous speeches, dances and songs.  After the ceremony we went to the only restaurant in our area which is in the next town.  I was forced to dance by all of the teachers, but I actually had a lot of fun.  At the restaurant it was decided that school would be canceled the next day because the weather was ‘perfect’.  I was of course confused until I learned they canceled school so the teachers could take the students on a hike to Mshakavank.  Mshakavank is an ancient church hidden in the mountains around my village.  We all met at school and spent two hours hiking up to Mshakavank.  The weather was perfect and we spent the entire afternoon eating and playing games.  At first I was shocked that school could be canceled with no notice at all, but after that great hike I think the teachers definitely have the right idea. 

On Friday I travelled to Yerevan to watch the Armenia vs. Macedonia soccer game.  A bunch of volunteers went to the game and we cheered for Armenia along with about 15,000 other people (They won 4-1).  We spent the night in Yerevan and then traveled to Areni, about 1 ½ hours south of Yerevan.  We went to a wine festival and spent time catching up.  I’m finally back in my village after spending hours on marshutnis yesterday. My host mother told me I’m not allowed to travel anymore because when I come back I forget all of my Armenian...  

It was so nice being busy for a change.  Hopefully the next few weeks will be busy as well. Here are some pictures of the hike to Mshakavank and the soccer game:

English Clubs

I had SUCH a productive week at school. I think clubs will be my way of introducing conversational English to the students, but for now we are just focusing on the Spelling Bee.  I have one club for 9-12 grade and only four 9^th grade girls showed up.  However, my other club for 7^th and 8^th graders had fourteen students show up J I was told that a lot of students didn’t know about the clubs last week and that more will come this week.  It’s so much easier to teach to a small group so I’m hoping the class size stays manageable.  I teach the clubs by myself and somehow the kids understand or at least pretend to understand what I say in English.  They seem very excited about the Spelling Bee!

I’ve started getting more involved in some of my classes.  I created a board with paperclips to use visual aids in the classroom and it actually worked.  I had students fix scrambled sentences and change tenses.  I created a few games for the older children and even managed to work hangman into a lesson plan.  I’m still not teaching as much as I would like to… small steps right?

It is freezing here and I have gotten my first cold in country.  My host family was convinced that I got my cold because my room was chilly.  The next day my host father brought the wood heater down from the attic and spent all day installing it in our house.  My host parents are pretty awesome. So while you enjoy the perfect weather in Florida, I’ll be buried under a sheep wool comforter and three layers of clothing =)

This unnamed fruit is from Tbilisi: any ideas?