Sports Day

As the days go by it gets harder and harder to blog because my life becomes so routine. My life is about language and teacher training right now. Every Monday through Saturday starts off with language class for about four hours a day. Language class isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I do feel behind the rest of my group. It is really difficult for me to read in Armenian. My progress is so frustratingly slow!! I feel like I am getting to the point where I understand what people say to me more and more, but when it comes to forming sentences and real thoughts, we just don’t have the ability yet. And if you think about it, we really shouldn’t, we have only been at site for two weeks! It’s just hard to be immerged in a community where everyone talks to you in Armenian and you have no idea how to say anything back to them other than shat lav and gigetem, which is very good and I don’t know. After language we have about an hour to go home and have lunch and then a teacher training session for the rest of the afternoon. It’s getting to be a little boring. Last session was 2 hours on how to be professional, a bit of an overkill. Other than that we have a community project to plan, and no ideas on where to start. We need to do something sustainable that involves the community but with no budget. Community development is my favorite aspect of the Peace Corps so I am hoping we can figure out something amazing to do for this community.
Yesterday was a really good day for me. We organized an all village sports day in my village Alapars. I wasn’t sure how many people would actually show up when I started making announcements but the turnout was awesome and it was soo good to see all the other volunteers from the other villages. We started off with a little kickball and my team, team mek lost. But it was ok because it was so much fun. The Armenians watching us must have wondered what the heck we were doing! I don’t think kickball translates in Armenian. Later we played ultimate Frisbee and Soccer, and by we I mean most of the people besides me and a few others. It is so hot here that it’s hard to run around for long periods of time, especially if you don’t want to be drenched in sweat with no option of taking a shower. So I sat on the sidelines and made friends with the village boys. There were about 6 of them and as the day progressed they scouted closer and closer to me. They were really excited to talk to me and to show off the English words they have learned. After about 20 mins of me talking to them I witnessed a bit of a war between them. They all wanted all of my attention at once and began talking so fast that I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. So I began to teach them English words. I taught them to say Alyssa, High Five, Cheese and Please =) I really had the best time just hanging out with them. They were so happy and well behaved and polite and funny at the same time. Its also really good to practice the language with the kids, it’s not so intimidating.
After the sports day a few of us took a taxi to Charentsavan to watch the world cup game and have some beers. It was a lot of fun just to hang out with people and not have to worry about the language or really anything at all. I don’t even really like soccer but It was awesome just to be surrounded by people that I haven’t really hung out with much since we separated and moved to different villages. We are all relatively near each other, however not knowing the transportation system makes it hard to visit each other. I can’t wait until the next central day when we will all see each other again. I love being in the big group of all of us.