The End of PST and moving to my Permanent Site

Sunday, August 17, 2008

The last couple days have been a whirlwind of memories and I definitely don’t remember them all. Last Tuesday on the 12th of August we had our LPI or Language Proficiency Interview. I thought the test went well and magically it did. I received an intermediate-low ranking, which is definitely considered good for only three months of language training. I can probably understand about ½ of the things that are said to me by random people and strangers, whereas I can understand about 80% of things said to me from people who are familiar to me. The problem is I probably can only effectively respond to about 20% of things said to me. Soon I’ll be getting a personal tutor and I will hopefully be approving on my score quickly. We have language tests every year to check on our progress, so I have quite a bit of time to improve my score.
Last Wednesday we had our trainee auction; this is where we were able to bid on things that were left by previous volunteers as well as a couple of prizes the Peace Corps staff threw in for good measure. The money we used was not real, but a fake Peace Corps’ Armenia currency called Lee cash. Lee Lacy is the name of our Country Director, or the head of Peace Corps in Armenia. So instead of having pictures of former presidents on our money we have a picture of our country director. Throughout PST, or Pre-Service Training, we received Lee cash if we went above and beyond what was required of us and at other times the Lee cash was rather arbitrarily handed out. Nevertheless the auction provided a fun atmosphere after the stress of preparing for the LPI.
At the auction I won a trip to Yerevan with two of my friends (we actually pooled are money together so the prize is all of ours) to watch an NCAA football game at a Peace Corps’ staff’s house. My friend and I, who also went to the University of Georgia, we outbid all other competitors. We had to win the prize and represent for the Bulldawg nation here in Armenia. We think we want to watch the October 25th game which is at LSU. It should be a big game and a big test for the Bulldogs. The LSU game is in the middle of the toughest stretch of our schedule which includes: Tennessee ( October 11th), Vanderbilt (October 18th), LSU(October 25th), Florida (November 1st), Kentucky (November 8th), Auburn(November 15th), and Georgia Tech (November 22nd). [Check later for local times and availability in your viewing area.]
Be able to my Bulldogs wasn’t something I really thought about too much before I left the states, but it will be very difficult for me to watch my Bulldogs every weekend. Although my site has wireless internet it is fairly expensive and I don’t know if I’ll spend the little money I earn on Georgia football. Even though that sounds extremely sacrilegious, even here in a country where few people if any even know what American football is and how it’s played.
Oh, yeah also at the auction I won a dinner with our country director and members of the development community throughout Yerevan. That prize is probably more important to my service here in Armenia, but right now I’m more excited about watching the Dawgs play… between the hedges or not.
Later on, on Wednesday night we prepared dinner for our LCFs (Language and Culture Facilitators) just to show them a token of appreciation for all the hard work and long hours they put in to help us prepare for our service in Armenia. We made a variety of food all of which was very delicious. Two of the volunteers in our village, Sierra and Emily, made Spaghetti, with both vegetarian and ground beef marinara. Jay and Sean made beef taquitos with Mexican spices from the states, Joe made an extremely tasty salsa for the taquitos and fried lavash chips, and I made a delicious vegetarian pizza with the freshest ingredients from my family’s garden.
Thursday was probably our biggest day in country so far, it was our swearing-in day as official Peace Corps volunteers. Currently the United States has no Ambassador in Armenia so the temporary Ambassador or attaché came to deliver our Oath of Service. We had to swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic. It might sound a bit cheesy, but I definitely got goose bumps and all of the hairs on my back stood on end. As new volunteers our group also delivered two speeches in Armenian. One speech related the story of Moses on Mount Ararat (by the way Mount Ararat is national symbol of the Armenian people, even though currently the mountain resides across the border in Turkey) to us volunteers being stuck here in Armenia, like Moses we are in a way starting are lifes anew, we have a lot of work to be done, but also like Moses we have a tremendous support staff that can help us when times get rough and things seem hopeless.
The other speech was an extended metaphor comparing us new volunteers to lavash, the national bread of Armenia. The speech pretty much followed along the lines that we volunteers are all lavash. We come to Armenia as balls of dough. During PST (Pre-Service Training) we are all shaped, molded and formed as we are being prepared to be thrown into the fire and become useful during our actually volunteer service in Armenia, just as lavash is useful as well.
During the swearing in ceremony there was also three musical performances all sung in Armenian, by our group of volunteers. One was an operatic number that was absolutely beautiful; there was one group performance, and another song that was also well done. Lastly there was a hilarious play put on by the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) volunteers. The Armenians in attendance loved every minute of the performances and the local news station also recorded the whole event, so that night on the news we were all celebrities, well at least in one small Armenian city.
After the event we had a group picture taken of all the A-16s (my group of Peace Corps volunteers in Armenia, since we are the 16th group of volunteers to serve her in Armenia, thus we are called A-16s), Lee Lacy the country director of Peace Corps, and the United States’ attaché to Armenia Mr. Pennington. After the group shot, we hung out with many of the other volunteers here in Armenia who came to see our swearing in ceremony. We decided to go to a local watering hole where we talked about our service, funny stories that had happened to them and to us here in Armenia, and future plans for helping out the people of Armenia.
That night, Thursday night, my family threw me a going away party, which was a lot of fun, and ended late in the morning. First, I had to pack up all of my stuff so I would be ready to ship off early the next morning, and then we had the party. We had chicken horovats(barbecue), blin-chee (a pancake like pastry rolled with meat and spices and then deep fried), kartushka (half of a fried potato filled with meat and spices), along with the usually vegetables and fruits. The night was filled with singing, dancing, and toasts wishing me good luck traveling the day (bari janapar , literally good road).Overall it was a fun night with my family, even though it ended much later than need be.
Friday morning we shipped off for our permanent sites. My host family and I packed all eight of my bags into my host father’s old Muscavitch and headed toward the center of our village. To my embarrassment the bags barely fit inside my host father’s car and we weren’t able to close the trunk. So as we rumbled down the dusty, uneven, gravel roads of my PST village, the old car kicked up so much dust that by the time we arrived at our meeting point my bags were soiled with grey dust. In defense of the number of bags I have with me, much of the stuff I have is for teaching at school and gifts for kids at my permanent site.
Finally, our village arrived at the central consolidation point for all trainees. This time I had my own taxi, which drove me up North to my permanent site. The taxi driver really didn’t know where we were going, since he was a local driver from the city where we had PST, but I helped him find his way to my permanent site. As y’all know my permanent site is very close to the Georgian border, (Georgia is called Ver-i-stan in Armenian), but nothing had visibly changed from the previous time I was at my permanent site.
We have been warned by Peace Corps that the price of many of our living essentials will probably increase dramatically, especially this winter. Trade through Georgia is crucial for the Armenian economy and currently the trade routes are disrupted, but not completely shut down. Also most of Armenia’s foreign energy supply came in the form of natural gas and oil from Russia. Although Armenia does have pretty stable trade relations with its neighbor to the south, Iran, most of this trade consists of consumer goods.
Currently Peace Corps volunteers in Armenia have no way out of Armenia by land, since originally Georgia was our only option. To the east is Azerbaijan whose border is closed with Armenia due to continued hostilities between the two nations, the disputed territory of Karabagh, and close Turkish-Azeri Relations. To the south is Iran, which we of course cannot travel to, even though I wouldn’t mind visiting Iran after my service is completed.
To the west is Turkey, a country despised by the collective memory of the Armenian people. Armenians have never forgiven Turkey for the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire, especially during and after World War I. Not only were many Armenians slaughter during this time, but also the Armenian people lost a culturally and historically important part of Armenian, Western Armenia. This was a bastion of Armenian culture for millennia with beautiful monasteries at Ani and Konya and the fertile Igdir plain currently in eastern Turkey. Most importantly for Armenia, as it relates to the Armenian national ethos, was the loss of Mount Ararat. When the borders of the Caucuses were officially redrawn by Turkey and Soviet Russia in the Treaty of Moscow in March 1921 the Armenian people were the true losers as regional powers decided the fates of smaller minority populations in the region. Although it must be noted that the Treaty of Kars, in October of 1921, between Turkey and the Transcaucasian Soviet Republics, was the more historically significant treaty, yet it was almost identical in substance to the Treaty of Moscow signed more than a half a year earlier. The European Powers later agreed with the new boundaries as they renegotiated the Treaty of Sevres in 1923. Ironically for the Armenians, Turkey was the only Central Power during World War I to increase its territorial possessions beyond its prewar claims, even though it lost the war.
Although this literal gifting of land to the Turks by the Soviets in 1921 might seem counterintuitive to Soviet ideological aims, the Soviet’s had a logical reason to deal with Turkish claims in a quick, pragmatic manner. Lenin and the new Bolshevik government still needed to consolidate its power throughout the old empire of Czar Nicolas II and losing territories in the southern Caucuses was clearly seen as a cost cutting measure. The new Soviet government wished to normalize relations with Ankara and its hawkish, nationalistic leader Mustafa Kemal. Lenin wanted to make peace quickly in a region of the Soviet Union that had proved nuisance and unwilling to adapt to the ‘advance’ intellectual theories of communism. Lenin, now a nostalgic leader for many Armenians, even chided the Armenian people when he recommended a “slower, more careful, and more systematic transition to socialism” for the peoples of the Caucus region.
Sorry for my historical antidote now more on the current situation. All of the Peace Corps volunteers who were in Georgia are safe and sound and are now waiting in Armenian to hear word if they’ll return to Georgia. Most likely operations of Peace Corps in Georgia will be suspended for the time being while the military situation is resolved. So that means all of the volunteers will be sent home or have the possibility to be reassigned in another part of the world. For me the situation hasn’t changed much, but I’ll probably have less and less money to live on as prices of commodities continues to rise and the value of the dollar continues to plummet. When I arrived here in Armenia the 1 dollar was worth about 320 dram and now it is worth less than 300 dram. Also, since I live in the extreme northern regions of Armenia, most of our goods come not from Iran, but from Georgia and Russia. This means comparably, the prices in my region will increase more than in most other regions where volunteers in Armenia are located.
This Tuesday the 19th of August I’ll start planning sessions with my counterpart at the school I’ll be working at in my permanent site. The school is rather larger with 400 students and already has several extra-curricular activities for children after school. The school director already wants me to start a basketball team, coach the soccer team, and to start an environmental/Geography club. It definitely will be a lot of work, but I am ready for it. I am also planning on doing research for USAID in a village close to mine. USAID wants to help build a landfill and they need to do research on what kind of trash is being thrown away in the town. That should occupy my time on many Saturdays and I am excited about having more work to do and being able to see other volunteers who currently live in that town.
The weather here at my permanent site is quite a bit warmer than in my PST site, it’s more like Atlanta…. without air conditioning. Although I live in an alpine climate the weather in the summers can reach the mid-90’s. During the days the people spend most of their time inside or at parks located in the nearby forest. The forest provides enough shade to offset the heat of the day so that we can have parties and other social events despite the hot weather.
Yesterday we celebrated a one year old baby girl’s birthday party in the forest with about 30 people. The baby girl was so cute and they had a Barbie birthday cake for her. The Armenians were extremely friendly to me, having me sit in the center of the table with all the important men of the party. While the women sat on either end of the massive table; where their meals are always interrupted by the needs of their husbands. Whether the men need more meat, another beer, or just a clean plate the women are always ready to serve them at a moment’s notice. The people where I’m at now also look more Russian than is Yerevan or at my PST training village. Many people have a lighter complexion and are a bit taller, even though they are still a bit shorter than I am. I still have not met a single Armenian taller than me, but in Yerevan I saw some big Russian-looking guys that were a bit taller than me. The further south I have been in Armenia the people seem to get a bit darker in skin tone, but for the most part the field hands and the peasant class are darker than the bourgeois and upper class people. Although all of these observations concerning the population of Armenia are broad, broad generalizations and I still haven’t been to the extreme southern marzes/regions.
I hope everything is going well at home, soon I will post more about my first impressions of Armenia and how fortunate I feel to be serving here.
Good luck to all the people who are about to return to school, whether they are student, teachers, and especially those first year teachers including: my mom, Dane and Lisa, Anna, Sarah, and everyone else I’m forgetting and I know there is a lot.

Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.