Swearing-In and the Big Move

Wow, what a past few days.  I am now an official Peace Corps volunteer!  The ceremony was great and all of our families and current volunteers came.  Later that night my family invited about 20 people over and had a goodbye khorovats for me.  I stayed up past midnight just hanging out with my family for the last time. On Thursday we left early in the morning to gather in Nor Hajn to move to our new sites.  The families started crying first, closely followed by the volunteers and language teachers.  I held it together for a while, but there was no stopping the tears once they started.

 I rode on a marshrutni with 3 other volunteers to the north.  I had to tell the driver where my house was and thank goodness I remembered.   My host mother was waiting for me and we moved in my many, many bags.  Last time I was here I told her that I would speak much better Armenian in August.  Well, she called me out on that statement because she says I still don’t understand anything she says.  After a 15 minute talk I realized that she wanted me to pack a bag and spend the night at her mother’s house.  I called PC because I didn’t know if that was allowed or not.  They said the village she wanted to take me to was too close to the Azerbaijan border so I couldn’t go. Ever. Oh well.  I took a long nap and then ate dinner outside with my new host family.  Afterwards I stayed out talking with my host mother and eating sunflower seeds off of an actual sunflower. 

My room is nice, though I can hear the chickens and roosters 24/7 (whoever said they only make noise at dawn lied).  The light to my outhouse is in my parent’s bedroom so that will be interesting if I have to go in the middle of the night.  I have yet to conquer the bucket bath. Options: Ask my already busy mother to show me how to light the intimidating fire, wait a few more days until she asks me if I want a bath, or just forgo bathing altogether.  Yesterday I did absolutely nothing and I know I will be bored until school starts.  My schedule seems to be sleep in, read a book, take a nap, and watch a movie on my computer.  Today my family is going to a wedding and leaving me behind L On Saturday I get to go into a bigger town and have dinner with a few volunteers so at least I have something to look forward too….

Soo close

I passed my language interview! I honestly thought I had failed so passing is such a relief.  It took me quite some time and sign language to remember what the verb for “to travel” was: you would think I would remember that one… Anyways, I’m almost an official volunteer now.  We are done with language classes, technical trainings and cultural sessions.  Time has flown by. I can’t believe it has been 2 ½ months already.  I’ve been hanging out with the other volunteers in my village a lot this week.  The hardest thing has been trying to divide my time between my family and friends.  I’m sure Wednesday will be an awfully sad day, but I know that I will grow to love my new village as much as I love this one.  On Tuesday the 16^th at 6:00 am east coast time will be our Swearing-In Ceremony.  Message me if you want the web address! Now back to the impossible task of packing L I’ll leave you with a list of all the new, for better or worse, experiences I have had in Armenia:

Killed 18 huge spiders in my bedroom

Used (and will continue to use) an outhouse

Gone without bathing for 4 days

Climbed to the top of Mt. Hadis, twice!

Crammed 23 people on a marshutni

Spent an entire day throwing buckets of water on people

Learned how to knit

Ate lamb, liver, gizzards, walnut shells, fish (with bones and skin!)and more oil than I ever want to see again

Slept without a door for 3 weeks

Learned basic Armenian (I can slowly read the alphabet and know enough to get by, hopefully?)

Dried my underwear outside for my whole village to see

Taught English in a classroom

Learned traditional Armenian dances in Yerevan

Made great friends with the other A-19ers!

Closing Time

In just over a week PST will end and I will move to my new site. I’m ready to start teaching, but I’m nervous about leaving my community.  I’ve had my ups and downs here, but I have definitely had more positive experiences than negative ones.   I will miss my host family and how comfortable I have become with them.  Yesterday they gave me perfume and shower gel just because they thought I would like it!  I will also definitely miss the other volunteers.  I’ve taken for granted how easy it is to walk over to another volunteer’s house just to hang out.  No volunteers live in my new village, but thankfully there are some nearby.

Last Saturday all of the volunteers went to visit Lake Sevan and Goshavank Monastery in Dilijan.  It was a great day with perfect weather. On Sunday a bunch of us went back up to Mt. Hadis.  It took over 3 hours to climb and the way down was awful because I kept slipping on rocks.  The view is beautiful and you can see as far as Yerevan.  It's hard trying to split my time between my host family and the other volunteers...

Today was my last day of model school!  I taught the little ones for my last lesson and we sang Old Mcdonald had a farm… they really liked singing, even if they didn’t understand all of the words haha.  I really do feel like model school helped prepare me for the Armenian classroom, hopefully I will be as confident at my new school.

This upcoming week is going to be crazy.  We have our final language interview, TEFL portfolio presentation, and Swearing-In Ceremony.  They are going to webcast our ceremony so I will keep you posted (get ready to wake up at 6:00 am on August 16 if you really want to see).  I will be singing an Armenian song and American compilation with half of the other volunteers. 

P.S. I know the address for my new site, so let me know if you want it J    

Water Water Everywhere

I finally have a working computer =) Thanks PCT Adam for fixing it! We have a lot to catch up on.  Model school has been going very well.  My favorite lesson so far has been one on Abraham Lincoln AND past tense verbs- the kids were really into it and we actually had a discussion about slavery at the end of class.  I have to teach four more times, and the last two times will be with the little ones who only know colors haha.  I’m enjoying teaching and model school is actually making me excited to teach in my permanent site.  After lessons all the teachers share what they taught so we can get new ideas for our own classes. 

This weekend was probably the best weekend I have had in Armenia.  On Friday it was another volunteer’s birthday so we went to her house for a khorovats.  Then we all took a marshrutni to Yerevan to dance again.  It was great because we actually remembered some of the dances.  After we wore ourselves out dancing, we went back to the volunteer’s house for her birthday party part 2.  The families here consider us part of their families so they go all out for birthdays.  I walked back to my house with another volunteer at about 11:30 at night because we were exhausted and wanted to go to bed.  Well, sometime during the birthday festivities our families had decided that we were going to Lake Sevan the next day.  Problem: We had model school until 5:00 pm.  Things got tense when they insisted on us skipping model school even though we were teaching that day.  After a long discussion, we decided to take a taxi from model school to Lake Sevan and meet them there.  The next day we had language class and our families were trying to make us leave early for model school so they could lock their houses and go to Sevan. It was quite the chaotic morning and by the time we got to model school we were plain worn out. At 5pm We rushed to change into our bathing suits and meet the taxi driver outside, but he never showed up.  Somehow miscommunication led to us going in stranger’s taxi to a place we didn’t know; the volunteer’s father told the taxi driver over the phone where to take us.

Once we got to Lake Sevan it was all worth it.  It was a beautiful day and all of our relatives were there. We ate khorovats (definitely my favorite meal) and took some great pictures that I’ll post below.  My family knows that I use to teach swim lessons so they were very excited to see me swim.  The water was a bit chilly, but we dove right in and accidentally swam past the barrier in a few strokes.  Most Armenians can’t swim so the barrier begins where the water becomes too deep to stand. Of course our families yelled for us to come back because the water was so ‘dangerous,’ but secretly I think they were proud of us for swimming the farthest.  We splashed around in the water and then had our second khorovats of the night.  We relaxed by the water and then played cards the rest of the night.  We cleaned up and played musical chairs to fit into people into cars.  I definitely lost.  I was in the back middle seat of my brother’s 2 door car, with his wife and their infant one side and a huge baby stroller on the other.  Please email me if you would like the details of my ride home, it turned into quite the adventure, but we finally made it home at midnight. 

Today is a holiday in Armenia called Vartavar.  Basically it is an excuse to pour water over people all day.  The great thing about Vartavar is that you are not allowed to get mad if you wet.  I woke up and went over to a volunteer’s house so we could join in on the water festivities.  On my way over I was ambushed by the other volunteers in my village and local kids with freezing cold water.  Some highlights of today: Surprising our language teacher with multiple buckets of water, throwing water on cars driving by with open windows, chasing a volunteer’s dad until he jumped a fence to escape and tracking mud threw a stranger’s house to throw water off the balcony.  By noon, there were at least 40 of us armed with water buckets roaming the main street.  I wish the US had a holiday like this one, it was so much fun!

My brand new door :)

Best envelope ever, thanks Mrs. Koehler!

Lake Sevan

Maybe I should have gotten a Mac after all?

Sorry I haven't posted in so long! My computer got a virus 3 weeks ago and no one has been able to fix it yet.....  Hopefully I can get it fixed before I move to my new site.  I check my internet once a week at another volunteer's house so please feel free to keep emailing me. 

I finally have a door again!! A few days ago a beautiful new door appeared in my room: it has done wonders for my sanity here.  Things are great with my family and village.  Two weeks ago each village had to create a communtiy project and ours turned out great.  We decided to have a Sports/Clean-Up day for the children.  We got the mayor to donate 2 new soccer nets, trashcans and trashbags.  We played multiple team building games with the children and then had them help us clean up the soccer field.  The field is now in great condition and there are trashcans at the scool and mayor's office. 

Today we started model school and basically taught an English summer camp.  It went well!  The students spoke great English and were eager to learn more.  I will team teach a few more times with different age groups to prepare for my new site.  As soon as my computer gets fixed I promise to post more pictures!

And my new site is......

So much has happened in the past week that I don’t even know where to begin!  Last week I found out that my placement is in the Tavush Region and my village is in the north by Georgia and Azerbaijan.  At first I was a bit bummed to be sooo far north, by after meeting my supervisor and visiting my town and I excited to move to my permanent site.  My supervisor is my new school’s principal.  He seems pretty chill and drove me and another volunteer to our new sites.  It took about 3 hours by car or taxi to get to my site, but it will take longer when I have to use a marshrutni.   We went straight to the school, which will be my workplace for the next two years.  It is an old, 3 story building in dire need of repairs.  Surprising it has a computer lab so hopefully I will be able to integrate technology into my lessons.  I also met my counterpart, a 60 year old women who has been teaching English at the school for over 30 years.  I’m intimidated, but hopefully she is excited to have me in the school.  I will be team teaching with the 4 English teachers in the school.  I hope to form several after school English clubs and tutor at a nearby art school.  My village hasn’t had a volunteer in 10 years so I am excited about the potential projects I can do!

My new host family is very nice.  My mother is a nurse, my father is an engineer and my brother just returned from the military.  They have a big house with a wraparound balcony that overlooks the entire village.  It would be perfect except for the bathroom and shower situation.  In the backyard I have an outhouse which is basically a very, very small hole in the ground.  The washroom is separate from the house and is the only room to get running water (even the kitchen doesn’t have running water…) My family pays for water to come to the house at 5 pm every day.  To shower you have to heat the water in a medieval looking wood stove and then use a bucket as a shower head.  I was never home at 5 pm and when I got home it was pitch black outside so I went without a shower for the past 4 days.  Good to know that during winter I can survive for quite a few days without a shower, but oh goodness how my hygiene standards have already decreased.  My new bedroom is similar to my current bedroom: 1 twin bed that is too short for me, 1 desk, 1 chair and 1 dresser.  We have fruit trees in our backyard that should be ripe when I come back in August.

The battery on my camera was dead so I don’t have any pictures of Tavush.  No worries though, I will have the next two years to post as many pictures as you want J My counterpart took me to a khorovats in the forest for her grandson’s birthday.  We were there for 10 hours and I actually had a great time doing absolutely nothing.  That night it was host brother’s birthday and 20 relatives had dinner at our house.  Highlight of the evening: My host brother never even showed up to his own birthday dinner! I was forced to sing happy birthday in English while my host brother turned 21 at a café (and turning 21 is not a big deal here in Armenia).  I’m excited to live with them for two months while I get to know my village, but in October I know I will be ready to move out into my own house.  The next day a few current volunteers who live in a town close by came to visit my site.  They are all so nice and I am thankful to have other volunteers who live a short taxi ride away from my village.

By the way did I mention how I haven’t had a door to my current bedroom for the past 2 weeks?  One day my host father asked to take down my door to paint it.  They said it would only take one day so I said yes.  Little did I know that they took off every door in the house and sent them to another city to have the design on the window glass replaced.  I’ve had a clear curtain hanging from my door frame for the past week.  I came back from my site visiting expecting a new door, but unfortunately even my curtain was missing.  They say I will have my door back tomorrow so we shall see.  On the upside, while I was gone they put a screen in my window! Window screens are rare in Armenia and I am so thankful they surprised me with a brand new screen.  This way when it is 90 degrees at night I can leave my window open without a thousand flies buzzing around. 

Sorry for such a long post, I will try to post more often instead!

Happy 4th of July!

Last night we celebrated with our village.  We decided to have an American style potluck for the 4^th of July with our host families.  I attempted to make brownies and banana bread.  The brownie pan was tilted so ½ of the brownies turned out good while the other super thin half refused to separate from the pan.  The banana bread almost turned out deadly.  What I thought was baking soda turned out to be medicine for cuts….. Long story short my host mom saved me from poisoning the other host families.  I accidently put salt instead of sugar into the other banana bread so not a very successful baking day. We had a potluck at our school and even sung the American national anthem for our families.  Then we went to an open field to play games with the kids.  I played soccer even though I haven’t played in years and I ended up hurting my leg.  It swelled a bit and now I walk with a limp, but we are pretty sure it’s just a bad strain at this point. Moral of the story: don’t try to pick up soccer in a country where every single person will be better at it than you. 

Today I have a language interview to gauge how much I have learned the past month.  We have been practicing for the past few days so I should do ok.  Tomorrow I find out which village I will be placed in for the next two years.  Needless to say I am freaking out a bit, but it really is out of my control.  I want to be somewhere warm, near other volunteers and with an indoor toilet.  We shall see…

I’ve decided to start a reading list on my blog.  Current volunteers say they read an insane amount of books during the winter so I thought I’d get a head start ;) So far I have read Peter Pan and the Game of Thrones.  Mom: Thanks again for the Kindle, I think it will become the most useful item I brought to Armenia!

P.S. Letters and packages take about 2 weeks to arrive to my village.  You can send anything to the following address as long as you mail it from America before August 1st:

13 Torozyan Street, High School, Nor Hajn, 2412, Armenia

Soon I will give you my new address that I will use for the next two years!