My second weekend a my permanent site

Sunday, August 24, 2008

My day of rest was wonderful and much needed, but I didn’t really rest much per se. All week I have been helping an NGO prepare a grant proposal, which has to be sent into different donor organizations next week. I don’t know what the NGO would have done without me since I have been helping them for an average of 4 hours per day with translating their proposal from Armenian to English. Although there are people at the NGO who can speak English, most notably two English teachers from my town, their English skills are okay and it would have taken them weeks to type-up the information I have prepared for them this week. As noted in a previous blog I have created a line-item budget, a detailed description of that budget, a timeline of the projects duration, and various things to make the grant proposal look official.

In addition to my work load, last night I told my family that I would prepare dinner for them; this was not as a relaxing occurrence either. Even though I knew from previous experiences that cooking in Armenia is never quite as calming as it is in America, due to the constant supervision, language barrier, and uncertainty about how hot the oven really is; I still was not ready for how mentally taxing the meal would be to prepare.

First-off my host mother is a very sweet and adorable lady, but she is even more overprotective then… well let’s say a couple of my friend’s moms back home in America. Early in the morning on Saturday, before going to work I asked her to pick up some ingredients from the store and to pick a couple things from our garden for the pizza. I wanted two circular loafs of bread and Dutch cheese (Hollandicacan panir) from the store, this cheese is the closest thing you can get to mozzarella in most parts of Armenia. I should have realized because my family owns a cheese factory, which obviously doesn’t make Dutch cheese, this request was not going to happen. Upon asking for the cheese my host mom immediately became defensive asking what was wrong with the cheese they made and saying that their cheese would work just fine on the pizza. In addition, she asked me why I wanted loafs of bread when she could buy pre-made pizza crusts, which they sell at most stores here at my permanent site. I told her I liked the bread better because I knew it was freshly baked that day, whereas the pre-made pizza crusts could have been a couple of years old. Still she insisted and since she knows better in the kitchen, she won out on this ingredient. They already had tomato paste so that was one thing I didn’t have to worry about. Also, she kept questioning me about what kind of meat I wanted on the pizza I told I just wanted to make vegetarian pizza (ban-jan-aren-i pizza). Yet from her experience with other volunteers, I am assuming they always had meat on the pizzas they made, because she was absolutely convinced that all pizzas had meat on them, and that it wasn’t pizza unless it had meat on it.
After going over the two things I wanted from the ha-noot or store, it was on to things I needed from the garden. As I was telling her each ingredient I wanted on the pizza, if she liked that particular ingredient she would smile and agree, but if not she would tell me that that ingredient would not taste good on the pizza. Also, my host mom has diabetes and if she really didn’t like the ingredient she would tell me that she wouldn’t be able to eat the pizza, because that particular ingredient had too much sugar. Time after time I told her vegetables from the garden wouldn’t affect her sugar level, which she knows, but once again she was again trying to dictate exactly what ingredients to put on the pizza. I finally told I would not make the pizza if I didn’t have the ingredients I wanted and she finally agreed. To my amazement my host father also picked up some cheese from the store for, I don’t know exactly what kind of cheese it was, but it tasted pretty good. My host mom was also a great help collecting the ingredients for me, she didn’t have to go pick the ingredients, but she did nevertheless.

Now to the actual preparation of the pizza, it too was a rather exhausting affair. My host mom was trying to be super helpful in the kitchen, probably the same was true during the ingredient negotiation process, but this time she was a bit more lax on trying to push her methods of preparing the pizza. I don’t exactly know why this was, maybe because she doesn’t have too much experience making pizza, maybe because many of the men were around, or maybe she was just tired, since I didn’t start making the pizza until around 9 pm. Anyhow, if she suggested a certain way of doing something once and I disagreed then she wouldn’t push the issue any further. A lot of times she offers some really good suggestions, but every time I acquiesce to these suggestions the control I have over what I’m working on slowly erodes. I guess I was determined to make the pizza my way and I think eventually she realized that.

The pizza was similar to the one I made before for my LCFs (or Language and Culture Facilitators, my language teachers during Pre-Service Training). The two main differences were the frozen pizza crusts, which ended up tasting alright, but still not as good as the fresh bread crust and also I kind of made my own sauce this time. Although my host mom said we had tomato paste and I saw the jar of it earlier in the day, I didn’t realize how little was left in the jar. So I diced up a couple of tomatoes and manually pureed them into a bowl and added the tomato paste. Also I added garlic, black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne pepper to the sauce, I though it tasted fabulous. During the baking process another problem emerged , even though I knew my family didn’t have an oven, since my host mom only cooks on the stove-top, to my distress the oven I was going to use in the next apartment over wasn’t working. This meant I had to run up to my host sister’s apartment, on the fifth floor, every time I wanted to use the oven. Also, the machine I used was not really an oven, but a large toaster oven, which could only fit one pizza at a time. So first I brushed some olive oil on the crusts of the two pizzas and ran them upstairs to put in the oven, one at a time, so that they would be a bit crispy. Then I ran back downstairs to add the sauce, cheese, and the fresh ingredients from the garden which included: more garlic, onions, green peppers, eggplant, a hot pepper, and juicy tomatoes. After that I ran back upstairs to finally cook the pizzas, one at a time. My host family loved the pizza and I think the entire apartment loved the entertaining night of me running up and down the stair with the partially completed pizzas. Even though it was a pain in the rear-end to make the pizzas, after the fact I was glad I did it and would do it again anytime.

Even this morning, on Sunday, I worked a little bit more on the project’s timeline, but most of the day was spent having fun with my extended host family. About a week ago I was showing my host family some of the things I had brought with me from America, since they were a bit curious what were in the 8 bags I had when I moved in with them. Also, my host family has hosted several volunteers in the past, so they are always comparing me with them, what I brought with me compared to what other volunteers brought with them and so on. One thing they found very interesting was the telescopic fishing rod I had picked up from Bass Pro Shop before coming to Armenia (Thanks to a suggestion from my brother, thanks Andrew). They said they had only seen people fishing in movies, so they were excited to see a person go fishing live and in-person. Recently, I have also expressed an interest in going swimming. I haven’t been able to swim since I arrived in Armenia and that is one thing I enjoy doing in the summer time.
A couple of days ago my family said they were going to take me to a place where we could swim and fish; and also where we could have a big horovats (Barbecue). This morning I was unquestionably stoked about the prospects of my exciting day out in nature. After I finished my NGO work at home I was ready to go. However soon it started to get late, around noon to be exact as I watch the morning hours drift away. I began to worry that our supposed trip was just another thing lost in translation. Then, around 1 o’clock the motions that occur before a trip were set in action. My host family started to change clothing, but this time they weren’t wearing their Sunday best, which they usually wear when we have horovat’s/barbecue parties on Sunday afternoons. This time they had were wearing a more outdoorsy attire, which I didn’t notice until we were leaving. My host mom started packaging up the dishes, cups, and silverware, a necessity of every feast. My host father cut up the meat, brought the kebab skewers or shish, went to the dairy factory to get some tan for the horovats, and also to get the portable propane heater so that we could make coffee later on.

We loaded up 11 people and all of the equipment, including my fishing pole, into two small cars and headed off to our destination. It turned out to only be a couple of km outside of town, which was a relief to me since we are not supposed to leave our permanent sites right now, but I was pretty confident it wasn’t too far away. The park/campsite area was beautiful. The area was fenced in by beautiful iron work and the ground was covered by colored pebbles. There were 3 nicely built horovats/barbecue pits, 4 picnic table areas, and a gazebo that was completely surround by water and only accessible by a small foot bridge.

There was a river nearby that was more of a mountain stream with a couple of short waterfalls and fairly deep swimming holes, maybe deepest part was about 10 feet deep. At the river there were probably 20-30 boys all there to swim, but no girls were present. The boys ranged in age from 10 to about 19 years old and of course my 57 year old host father and his 31 or 32 year old son was there swimming with us. The boys there were from all over the Caucuses (well Armenia and Russia) and a bunch were also from Russia, the city of Kursk to be more exact. They were all extremely friendly and were asking me questions about what I was doing in Armenia, why I spoke Armenian, and why I wasn’t married, being the old 23 year old that I am.

Then I started to fish and they were very interested in what I was doing. The fish there were extremely small, only a couple inches in length, but I had a fun time trying to teach my host family and the random boys how to fish. Usually in the States fishing is another thing that I do to relax, not so much here. It was relaxing, but more importantly I had a fun time sharing with them something I like to do in America. Though most of the Russian kids had fished before, they had never seen a reel quite like mine and they were convinced my ultra-light rod was going to snap in half with any fish I caught. Another thing that is quite different from America is that none of the kids wore swimming trunks, they all wore their underwear. This is fairly common knowledge for those who travel to Europe or other parts of the world, but it still catches me kind of off guard when the kids just drop trou’ and jump in the river.

Well on that note I’m going to try to see if I can find the closing ceremonies of the Olympics on the TV, but I’ll write again soon. I hope everyone is doing okay back home. I can’t wait to see pictures of my niece Charlotte, just to see how much she has grown over the past couple of months. I am also happy to hear that a special someone had a good birthday party at Speakeasy and the Winery last Wednesday in Athens.

peace.shalom.salaam.

Mark

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.