Last couple days at my permanent site

Friday, August 22, 2008

Hey everybody,

Yesterday was a crazy, unexpected work which I was very grateful to have. I actually was one of the first teachers at school and I had to wait on my counterpart for a little while, but once she arrived we immediately started working. In somewhat of a comical way our work is slowed, because we both have a slight cold right now. The rest of the faculty enjoys teasing us, because on more than one occasion we have both sneezed or coughed at the same time.

I have been trying to translate the geography books enough so I can understand what is going on with each lesson. My counter-part is the only geography teacher in the school and she teaches students who range in grade level from the 5th form thru the 10th form (form is the Armenia way of saying grade level). For a perspective, 5th form students are 10 years old and 10th form students are 15. In the school that I work at there are students whose age’s ranges from 5 to 17 years old, but the school is massive in size and has 400 students and 39 teachers. So, my counterpart would like me to supplement a lot of her lessons with multimedia presentations slide shows, movies, and so on. Over the last few days I have been collecting material on the internet at my schools computer lab which is fairly nice, but only has 4 computers. However, in the school there are a good number of computers, but due to the slow internet connection they only have 4 currently connected to the internet.

While I was working in the computer lab one of the English teachers started talking to me about the school newspaper. I was floored that the school had a newspaper; and she continued explaining how a former PCV in the school helped obtain the funding for the newspaper’s equipment. The newspaper’s equipment includes: a new computer with Quark and Adobe Photoshop, a scanner, a laser printer big enough to print on 11 x 17 sheets of paper, and a digital camera. The paper so far has produced four issues and this year they hope to start turning out monthly issues. By definition it is not a school paper, because it prints the news for surrounding schools as well, but it is completely produced at the school I work at. One thing I want to work on is to have a training class for students to learn Quark and become proficient at using the other equipment the newspaper has at its disposal. The teacher who runs the newspaper now is severely overworked and for the paper to be truly beneficial and sustainable for the community the students of the school should learn how to produce the newspaper from start to finish.

After visiting the newspaper I hung out with my school director for about 30 minutes. He is a funny guy, who has a hard time ever being serious, which is generally fine with me. The difficult thing for me is that he uses a completely different set of vocabulary words than currently I know or am familiar with. This would usually be fine, since it would be an opportunity to increase my own vocabulary, but the words he uses are infrequently used in common conversation. So even if I learn the words he uses they will be of little use to me.

On the way back to the computer lab, through the dreary corridors of the school, which can also be fairly confusing, I ran into the other English teacher, named Lusina. Lusina wanted me to help her out at the NGO she works at after school hours. So I told her I would meet her there at 2 p.m. I went back to the computer lab and finished my work for my counterpart the Geography teacher.

I left school and started heading down to the NGO. The directions she gave me were completely confusing even thought they were in English. Lusina finally flagged me down and I went into a very nice office set-up that was her NGO. I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I arrived, but I was ready to help. It turned out they wanted me to type up a grant proposal, a budget proposal, and a line item explanation for the entire budget. I was at Lusina’s NGO for 4.5 hours working on Excel and Word. I really have little experience using Excel; I think I remember learning how to use the program in 7th grade with Mr. Beard in an elective class. Anyways, I entered all of the data and typed the proposal and budget information in record speed. The whole time the other people at the NGO wanted me to eat food, drink coffee, or eat chocolates with them. It wasn’t the best work environment, but it worked.

I did receive a free meal out of all of the work. The NGO gave me hachapouri which is a Caucus dish with croissant like bread on the bottom, filled with grease and cheese. It is delicious even though it makes my stomach rumble every time I think of it or even look at it. Yet, when you bite into a freshly made hachapouri it is extremely scrumptious and you wonder how you could of ever doubted it’s tastiness. Sometimes we also have Georgian hachapouri which has two sunny side eggs cracked on top in addition to the grease and cheese. For lunch at the NGO, we also had fresh honey, bread, village cheese, and more coffee.

As I was leaving the NGO at 6:30 pm I heard that there was going to be a concert that night in the town center and the band was from America… seriously? Once again I was pleasantly surprised, but the concert started at 7 pm and I was completely worn out. As I was walking home I realized that I had to go to concert, when would be the next time I would have an opportunity like this. When I arrived at my house the men, my host brother and father, were preparing to go, but my host mom was going to stay home. I convinced some of the other ladies in the apartment block to come and eventually my host mother, Anaheet agreed to come as well.
Anaheet got all dressend up, put make-up on, and did-up her hair all nice and fine like she does on Sundays. Just kidding, nobody that I’ve met in Armenia goes to church, nevertheless they are extremely proud of their religious history. Finally we were off. Humorously, it was 4 older ladies from the apartments and me walking down the street together to see the band. I definitely felt a little out of place when we arrived. To my astonishment it was probably the biggest social event in my town’s history and I was escorting 4 fifty plus females to the event, call me what you may, but I was feeling pretty good about my entourage. There were hundreds of people in attendance and the band was actually a Mariachi band from Texas. The event was put on by the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan (the capital of Armenia) and there were a lot of personal from the Embassy in attendance. The Mariachi band also learned two songs in Armenian, which the crowds loved. This was probably one of the best uses of American tax dollars I had ever seen.

After the concert was over I met the band members all of whom had interesting life stories and ranged in age from 25 years old to the their mid-30s. The band had travelled to China last year and was part of a State Department initiative to display America’s cultural diversity abroad. Also, at the event was the Cultural Director from the Embassy and guess what... she’s from Iowa. She grew up in Iowa City and Muscatine and did her undergraduate work and the University of Iowa. We talked for awhile about Iowa and she said she was going to Moline in October so if I needed anything from the heartland to let her know. She is a Foreign Service officer and she was explaining all of the cool places and people she’d met throughout the world. Although I had thought about joining the Foreign Service before, she really gave it a good pitch and who knows it kind of sounds like an interesting and productive way to live out one’s life.

The night still was not over and by this point I was extremely tired. After the concert we walked to my host mom’s brother’s house which is pretty immaculate. He worked in Russia for a number of year laying tile and working in construction and is know through Moscow as one of the best in his field. When he returned he had saved up enough money to buy and remodel a house. The house has beautiful tile floors and walls in almost every room and not the drab colors that are prominent hold-overs from the Soviet era in Armenia. He used a variety of pastel colors for the bathrooms and the kitchen was done in bold primary colors that gave it a life that most Armenian kitchens are lacking.

We had ice cream, watermelon, and coffee there, a normal late night snack here at my permanent site, along with that we talked about a variety of things. I drifted in and out of attentiveness throughout the conversation, but I did manage to talk about a few things. I also got the numbers of some contacts in Yerevan that will definitely be useful. My host mother’s brother’s son lives in Yerevan and was the Junior Olympic karate or judo champion for all of Eastern Europe. He will definitely be a nice ally to have in the rough streets of Yerevan.

I hope everyone is doing well. I’ll talk to y’all later love you all. I hope everyone is ready for school. I heard that Ankur had a wonderful time in the Netherlands this summer and I hope Dane, Isaac, and Justin all have good starts to their next phase of life.

Peace Out.

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.