Goodbye Vacation High

The past month has gone by so fast that I can’t believe its January already.  I spent a fun 24 hours in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and almost a week in Istanbul (my new favorite city).  The weather in Istanbul was perfect and the food was amazing.  Even the street food was some of the best food I have had in months: chicken kebabs, fresh squeezed pomegranate juice and roasted chestnuts.  I was in a nice hotel with people who spoke English.  Then, I came back to Armenia.  Within one day I was freezing, asked 3 times if I was married and I was forced to talk with my host family’s house guest even though I was exhausted.  Honestly, it was so hard to return to Armenia.  To the land of the sunless days and foggy nights, filled with mud, ice, and snow.  I’m still having a hard time readjusting, and I can only imagine it will be worse when I come home this summer.  Yep, I decided to come home around June/July because I would go crazy waiting until Christmas.  Some volunteers go home three times throughout their service while others never go home during their two years.  Knowing that I’m going home in 6 months will definitely help me get through my first white winter. 

Since this week of school was canceled there was no reason for me to stay at my site.  I traveled to Noyemberyan to help Danelle teach her kindergarten class about hygiene. We mixed glitter with lotion and shook hands with each child so they could see how germs spread. Then I traveled to Dilijan with a few volunteers to help introduce boxing at the school.  Basically, we watched children box each other and played random games with them at the end of the day. The next day all of us volunteers went on a hike, my first hike through snow. Now I’m back in my village about to begin the second semester of school with no break until school finishes in June. A few months ago I would have said ‘bring it on,’ but at this moment I’m thinking ‘just survive until summer.’ Sigh.

Reality

Sorry, I'm too tired to write a real blog post right now. I just got back from Istanbul and learned that school has been cancelled for the next week, no one seems to know why... Here are some pictures for now and I will save my blog post for later in the week when I am bored out of my mind :)

All of the volunteers from my old village gathered for new years and travelled together to each of our families houses

After New Years, Andy and I went to my current host family's house to celebrate with my neighbors

We hiked to this new church in Noyemberyan, the town closest to my village

We traveled to another town called Dilijan to spend a few days in the mountains

The Blue Mosque in Istanbul

Spice Market

Old Tbilisi

Pedestrian Bridge

Christmas Time is Here!

I only have one more week of school and plan on turning it into a huge Christmas music dance party.  I’ve officially turned into the American Holiday girl.  During Thanksgiving I went to most classes and talked about the history of Thanksgiving and showed pictures of our Thanksgiving dinner in Armenia.  Now I’ve been recruited to teach about Christmas.  I know I’m going to have a blast teaching the children Christmas songs and ‘trying’ to translate the songs together into Armenian.  I hope that after New Year’s I can start teaching more actual English lessons because learning about American holidays won’t really help the children in the long run.  The Spelling Bee was a great success so I want my students to join in two other competitions in the coming months focused on writing and poetry. 

In other news, I finally have a visa and my passport back! I’ve been stressing out the past weeks because our visas had expired and we had to send out passports to Yerevan to get the situation fixed.  Many of us are going out of the country in the next few weeks so we were anxiously awaiting our visas.  Another volunteer is bringing back my passport today because I have no time to go there before I begin my Christmas adventures. Over the next few weeks I will be traveling to Tbilisi, Istanbul and all over Armenia with my boyfriend.  I’m looking forward to Christmas parties, New Year’s celebrations, an engagement party and a visit back to my old host family.  I probably won’t write again until January J

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving: To Give Thanks

I had a great Thanksgiving with other volunteers.  Ten of us met at a volunteer's house nearby and cooked a HUGE meal. Seriously, don't feel bad that I was spending Thanksgiving in another country, we certainly celebrated well here.  I loved all of the people I was with and consider them my family away from home. Below are some pictures of our day:

Today I was at Trent's house to visit for the weekend.  He lives about 30 minutes away so I called our normal taxi driver to come and get me.  A few minutes later his landlord came over and said we had to go to a birthday party for his wife. My taxi driver showed up with his wife during the middle of dinner.  I tried to leave, but the landlords invited (forced) my taxi driver and his wife inside to eat!

Trent and I sat through a very strange dinner before my taxi driver and I were allowed to leave.

My clubs have been amazing lately. We have done everything from watching the Lion King, translating Beatles songs and learning American slang.  I only have three more weeks of school before winter break :)



My First Armenian Wedding

This weekend I went to my first Armenian wedding.  It was quite different than any wedding I had gone to in the states.  A young girl I work with was marrying a man from a nearby village.  Our village only has one wedding hall, so the couple had one reception in our village and another reception in the other village.  Hundreds of people were at our reception if that gives you any idea of how big a combined party would have been! First, the couple married at a church, but as so many people were invited to the wedding most of us just waited at the reception hall.  I sat with a few other girls who work at school and we spent the afternoon eating, drinking and dancing.  I was yet again forced to dance, but this time I managed to get off easy with only one song.  People were constantly toasting and dancing.  There is even a special song/dance when the servers bring out the khorovats (Armenian barbeque)!  

One of my 12^th grade students was at the wedding and managed to morph our class discussion into the differences between Armenian and American weddings.  They think Armenian weddings are better because there is more tradition involved.  I think American weddings have a lot of traditions too, just more superficial than Armenian ones.  For example, after the wedding the mother-in-law gives the couple honey and fruit to help their marriage become ‘sweet.’  I tried to explain different American wedding traditions, but the classroom favorite was the honeymoon. Honeymoons are not common in Armenia because the bride usually moves in with the husband’s family the night of the wedding. Sounds awful right? Chances are a couple will never get to live alone, especially in a village.

P.S. I went into the kitchen last night to get a glass of water and heard scratching.  I turned on the light and saw a poor little mouse stuck in a trap.  I called my host father to the kitchen because I didn’t know what to do.  He picked up the mouse with tongs and for a horrible moment I thought he was going to throw the mouse into the wood burning stove.  Thankfully he took it outside, but who knows what happened outside.  I think this the first of many mice to come into the house this winter and I will be living in my oblivious world where the mice go free in our garden J

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Spelling Bees and Pumpkin Pies

Phew, what a crazy 2 weeks.  Between Spelling Bees and conferences I have been busier than I have been in country so far. We had a spelling bee at our school to determine which students would continue on to the regional Noyemberyan Spelling Bee.  I had about 15 students participate from grades 7, 8 and 9.  The students had never heard of a spelling bee before so it was actually a pretty good turnout.  I gave the winners (1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place) prizes of English books and magazines so thank you to everyone who sent some things over!  The winners were thrilled, but I felt so bad for the students who did not place.  They studied so hard and were heartbroken. 

Today was the regional competition in Noyemberyan.  I learned that one of my 8^th grade students got the chicken pox and would not be allowed outside her house for 2 weeks (I think the chicken pox is a little stigmatized here, but I’ll get back to you on that).   There were tons of children from all the village schools at the Spelling Bee.  One of my 9^th grade students came in 1^st so that was a huge accomplishment for our school.  Take a look below for some pictures from my village Spelling Bee and the regional Spelling Bee in Noyemberyan. Now that the Spelling Bee is over I will hopefully be able to use my clubs to practice the student’s conversational English skills.

I spent the past week at a conference in Dilijan with all of the volunteers.  I got a hot water shower every day and a flushing toilet, I was totally living the high life for those few days.  It snowed in Dilijan and back in Noyemberyan while I was gone.  I already hate the cold and it’s not even that cold yet, though -10 degrees Celsius sounds pretty darn awful when you have to walk to school.  The conference included more language and TEFL training.  The best part was being able to see other volunteers again, some of whom I hadn’t seen since swearing in. 

With Thanksgiving approaching a lot of us volunteers have been on the lookout for pumpkins.  They don’t sell them in stores, but some villagers have pumpkin patches in their garden.  I spread the word around my school that I was looking for a pumpkin and my counterpart gave me a small pumpkin from her garden.  I made a pumpkin pie from scratch that was delicious!! There is some debate as to whether or not it was a winter squash or an actual pumpkin, but regardless it was good.  If anyone has an easy pie crust recipe to share I would love to have it!

7th Form

8th Form

9th Form

The Winners! With our awesome judges Danelle and Manik :)

Our fantastic students at the Noyemberyan Competition

PC Volunteers

Nervous Students

Last Minute Studying

No competition in Armenia is complete without a certificate :)

 

Halloween

Halloween invaded Armenia this weekend and it was great!  I was lucky enough to go to 2 parties and teach several of my classes about Halloween.

On Friday I traveled to another town to celebrate Halloween with a bunch of other volunteers.  The weather was awful, but we had still had a lot of fun.  I explored the town and stayed with another volunteer at her host family’s house. On Friday we watched Rocky Horror and Hocus Pocus on a projector and make-shift movie screen.  On Saturday we all dressed up in ridiculous costumes and had a good time.  The time changed in Armenia on Sunday morning so we gained a much needed hour of sleep.  Monday night I spent several hours at the Halloween party at my village’s art school.  The children were all wearing scary make-up and the adults even dressed up.  We did everything from carving pumpkins, toilet paper mummies to painting pumpkins only using your nose.  Of course it wouldn’t have been a real party without the musical chairs, limbo or Armenian dancing.  Take a look at the pictures below, they can explain my weekend much better than I can J

This week I have already taught 3 classes about Halloween and hopefully will teach 2 more tomorrow.  Thanks to everyone who sent Halloween items, everything from the candy corn to the stickers have been a great hit! The students really liked the idea of Halloween because nothing like that exists in Armenia.