Dance Dance

So the last week has been super hectic!! Not only  have I been preparing for our last 3 weeks of school, which means final tests, review games and just cherishing my final moments in the classroom, but I have also helped to organize a dance camp at the Spitak YMCA where Peace Corps volunteers taught a choreographed hip hop dance... and by helped I mean a little something like this: Hey Peace Corps dance camp volunteers you should come to the YMCA in Spitak and do the camp PCDC: oh really when?? Me: Hey YMCA we want to do a camp when should we??  YMCA: this week would be best ME: Hey PCDC come on these dates, this is how you get to spitak.... =) oh yeah and also I cheered and pointed out where people needed help and provided an encouraging smile! Also I cooked dinner for the volunteers one night, and it was pretty much amazing.

So anyways the camp was three days long and mostly kids from the YMCA attended but I also had two of my students go. 4 PCV's pretty much did everything on their own, teaching dance moves, B boy styles and a routine. Each day was about 3 hours long and on the last day the kids preformed for the YMCA.
 Please follow this link to watch this amazing video that the Spitak YMCA prepared!!! You can catch a few glimpses of me on the sidelines!! =)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhfg4NP3QRg&feature=share

Spring has sprung

I couldn't resist taking this picture of my 3rd grade boys yesterday in class! They just look so polished and grown up! It was also a sign that spring has finally begun. No more ugly winter clothes!!! The sad thing is it's my last spring in Armenia. Today I will head to my COS Conference which stands for close of service. Peace Corps is preparing us to leave the country and go back to our ordinary American lives... I can't even imagine what that will be like at this point.

I have about a month left to spend with my amazing students and then only summer remains before I come home. So one more round of Armenian Ice cream, lazy mornings, fresh amazing fruit and vegetables, a few summer camps, at least one more wedding, hopefully some last Armenian sightseeing trips and then I am out of here. Time goes by so faster that we can catch it and learn to cherish it.

Ode to Spitak

I spent most of my day yesterday driving throughout the Western most parts of Armenia with my boyfriend, traveling to a wedding in Arteni, a village so small and obscure most Armenians have never even heard of it. Over the course of 3 hours we saw many different small villages that we had never heard of before and of course we experienced Talin and Arteni first hand. I have to say, I am used to villages and small towns here but man did this experience open my eyes to how poor some parts of Armenia still are. It is very easy for me to live in Spitak which is a relatively big town and to forget what it used to be like living in Alapars where we had no running water and had to go to the stream to collect it a few buckets at a time. So anyways being in Arteni has made me appreciate my Spitak much more and I thought I'd share with you a video of my beautiful little spitak which I have grown to love and sometimes hate with love. By the way for you A-20ers, Spitak will become home to two or three of you in August!! I just hope you guys learn to love it as much as I do!!
And also I added a Sophie picture because really she is just so cute!

A happy little birthday party

One of my 3rd grade students invited me to his birthday party!! It was actually really sweet, I sat at the table with 12 9-year-olds in their mini chairs and ate cake with a mini fork... I felt a little bit awkward being the only adult sitting with the little kids, but to be honest it was really fun and all my students stared at me the whole time like woah she really came!! And when it comes down to it, I realize that I get along better with children and animals anyways so I might as well accept it and start sitting at the children's table more often!!!

Peace Corps Winters

Winter in Armenia seriously blows. No really, it’s windy! Not only is it windy but its dark and cold and snowy and miserable. I never realize just how much I have the winter blues until spring starts and all of a sudden I just feel my spirits lift for no reason. All of a sudden I don’t hate everything around me, I don’t want to walk around with my ear phones permanently glued to my ears,  and I don’t feel the need to eat everything in sight just to have something to do!!

This winter was particularly difficult for me, and to be honest I have never felt more alone in my life. For all of you Eastern European future PCV’s out there let me try to paint a picture of winter life in the Peace Corps.

You wake up in the morning and no matter what time it is, it’s dark outside. Sometimes you flip on your light switch to help aid you in getting ready for work, but no light shines (a storm blew out the power). This also means that your heater most likely doesn’t work either. You get dressed in the dark, drink a cup of coffee to warm you up and go to work, in my case school. Walking is a challenge. Most of the walkways are covered in snow, which means it takes you longer to get to your destination, meaning more time in the freezing cold. If they are not covered in snow, they are covered in ice, which means you fall, over and over again you fall on your ass. Sometimes you are lucky and no one sees, but you live in a village where everyone is always watching you, meaning someone will see you. They laugh at you, hey, the first few times you laugh at yourself, it is funny after all, but after about 2 months of this, you stop laughing. You get to the bus station only to realize your bus has already left, bus drivers have no patience in the winter. So you either suck it up and walk to school in the snow, or if you happen to have extra money you take a taxi… no one has extra money in the winter, it costs too much to heat your tiny apartment that will never really seem warm at all anyways.  You get to school, none of your colleagues are in a good mood, its winter and they like you have no money. Typically there is a lot less conversation in the teacher’s lounge. People are crabby. At first snow is fun for the children and they indulge in snow fights; if you’re like me, you love the sound of the children laughing, but soon that sound turns into children coughing and blowing their nose. Everyone is sick and no one gives a damn when you too catch the cold going around. Your throat hurts your eyes and nose run pretty much for 4 months straight. Your hair is always a mess. You are not a local; you don’t have superhero powers to always stay neat and tidy. When you walk to work in the snow your hair gets wet and messy. Everyone gives you dirty looks of disapproval.  Your boots get muddy when the snow melts, once again every gives you a dirty look for having dirty boots. You ask them how they could possibly stay so clean, but they don’t share with you their secret ways; most of the time you are ashamed.  After classes you show up to your clubs with an awesome lesson plan that you spent all night creating, only to find out that everyone went home because it is too cold. After a few more of these experiences you cancel club all together and your organization labels you as a slacker.

After work you walk home. On the way home you stop at the local store to buy something to eat for dinner/ lunch. You think to yourself, tonight I am going to make something different, something delicious but as you walk around the store you realize that the produce stock hasn’t changed for months, cabbage, potatoes beets and sometimes if you’re lucky carrots. Looks like another night of borscht. You tell yourself its ok, because hey you actually kind of like borscht, and you could always make potatoes in one of the 50 different ways you’ve learned to prepare them since moving to your site.  But, after 2 months cabbage makes you gag and if you have to eat another potato you are going to cry. Not that I have ever hated potatoes but my body has learned to hate them after about the 15^th pound that I have gained since joining the Peace Corps. Finally you get home and realize that it is only 3:00, in an hour from now it will be dark. You prepare lunch, go to your favorite chair, or bed, and curl up under your blankets, as close to your heater as possible. You drink your third cup of tea for the day, begin to read a book and fall asleep. After your nap, you wake up turn on the lights as it is now pitch black, and watch an episode of some tv show that the community of PCV’s have downloaded and shared. You may not even like the show, but as soon as it’s finished you watch the next episode and the next, and the next, until it’s time to eat dinner. You warm up the soup that you made for lunch and eat as you watch another tv episode. If you are studious you decide it’s time to study for your GRE’s or to make lesson plans for the next day. If not you play around on facebook, as you watch yet another episode of some tv show that you hated but are now addicted to.  Finally at about 10 pm you decide that it is now an acceptable time to go to sleep, so you put your blankets over your heater to warm them up before crawling into bed, you get your favorite book and a night light (because once you get under those covers there is no way you are going to want to get out just to turn off the light) and you go to bed…..

Are there variations to this??? Yes of course, some volunteers would add drinking half a bottle of vodka at night to keep warm. Some have site mates and watch movies with a site mate. Also some nights you skype before going to bed. But mostly this is my experience of an Eastern European winter. So as you can see it is very easy to think that you hate everything, including Peace Corps, your town, your host country, and even your dog really. It’s been a looooong hard winter, and I know that in actuality it is not quite over yet, but I am so thankful for these past three spring days we have had in spitak. I can’t wait for the summer! Soon I will never have to live through another winter again! 

Things you see while walking the streets of spitak 2

So a few weeks ago I published a picture blog of all the strange things I see while walking around town... here
This is basically a continuation of that blog as I have had a week of spring break and not too much to do, I have been taking mini one to two hour hiking trips with Sophie, just going places we have never gone before... Here are some pictures from today's trip which was mostly warm weather and tons of mud. At one point I was ankle deep in the stuff!!! I was so ashamed walking back into the city center covered in mud, everyone staring at me... oh wait, they always stare at me no matter what!!! Point in case, yesterday I was walking with Sophie and off to the side were three little old me. I hear one of them say, this girl speaks Armenian. and the other says che ha?! (No yes?) the third says no she doesn't, she doesn't speak it at all. The first one raises his voice now and says Yes she does. She speaks very clean and proper Yerevan Armenian, and she even knows Spitak slang.... I am walking with my head down trying not to let on that I understand but trying to hold back from laughing at the same time. I don't know why I don't just interject and say well actually I do speak Armenian, I guess part of me likes that people don't think I understand them and talk about me as if I am not around. The other part is once people find out I speak Armenian we have a good solid ten minute conversation before they say something I don't understand, and then they are disappointed in me. It is just funny to me that after all this time, people in the streets are still so curious about me.

An Armenian Engagement party

Recently I went to an Armenian engagement party. The first that I have ever been to. Manya and Gayane, teachers at my school, were throwing the party for there brother. My counterpart and I arrived a bit early to the party and played with Gayane's babies as they set up for the party. Manya's mother makes the best gata in all of Armenia, really, and kept insisting that I eat some, and I happily obliged, no wonder I have gained so much weight in this country!!!

When school was finished the rest of the teacher's from our school joined us at the house and we all sat down for a delicious and typical Armenian feast... there was just one problem, where were the bride and the groom?? No one seemed to mind that they had no showed up. We ate and drank toasts in their honor, but not once did anyone mention when they would come, or if they would come. Finally after we had been at the party for half an hour the groom came. He took a shot with us and then retired to the kitchen. We continued to eat in Armenian fashion until the bride came in. Now the bride had no relations to any of us at the party. We all in fact were only friends with the groom's sisters, but we made a seat for at the table, filled her plate with food and made toasts to her. I sat and watched her and couldn't help but to think of how strange she felt or how out of place. Here she was at her very own engagement party, without a single friend of her own. Her groom to be in the kitchen with his father, and strangers on each side of her. Her presence merely as a figure head, a sort of doll to be admired but nothing more. Soon the teachers began to dance, as the teachers at my school always do, and they demanded that she join them, and she did very timidly. As I watched, I tried to imagine what she was feeling. Was she nervous? Did she wish her groom would come and rescue her from a room full of strangers, as I most certainly would had I been her? Her face was blank and hard to read, but luckily it was explained to me that there are many engagement parties that a bride and groom go to, some will be with her relatives and friends, and some with his. I have been to 4 or 5 weddings here and I still can't get over how little the bride has to do with everything. How little attention she garners, and how much the family takes. It seems to me that Armenian weddings, are in the most part about the grooms family and have very little to do with the couple themselves. I can't help but to compare it with American weddings where attention is lavished on the bride, and everything tells a story of the couples love. There are many Armenian traditions that I love, but the more I learn about the weddings here, the sadder I feel for the bride. Just once I would like to go to an Armenian wedding where the bride smiles as if it is the best day of her life and she is truly happy. Just once I want to see her family happy and crying tears of happiness not sadness. Just once I want to feel as if the couple is so in love that they can't live without each other. I know that there are many weddings here where that is the case, I just haven't seen one yet

it

Things you see while walking the streets of Spitak

Poor little dumpster dogs!
More to follow...

Driving along in a marshutka

Yesterday I had a dentist appointment in Yerevan. The day started normal enough, woke up at 8 in the morning so that I could leave by 9:10 and get to the marshutka by about 9 20, in order to have one of the only two acceptable seats I find on the marshutka; the window seats on the passenger side. If I don’t have one of these seats, the 2 hour drive to Yerevan is pretty much unbearable. It means I will have to sit smashed by a stranger who will either completely ignore me, if I am lucky, or play 20 questions with me. Most of the time I can get my favorite seat because I don’t mind sitting around waiting for the bus to leave, but on the occasions that I haven’t gotten my seat, I am unavoidable forced to sit next to some old man who thinks it’s funny that I am on the bus and decides to either talk my ear off, or talk about me to all the other passengers. So really this seat is essential to my traveling comfort; not that one can be all too comfortable driving in a van made for about 9 people, occupied by 18.
I am fortunate that I was able to get my favorite seat this time, as the marshutka filled up very early and yet even as the bus was full to the brim I wasn’t even shocked when the driver pulled over for an old man to get on board. At this time we had 19 people smashed together already. Even I had someone in a stool next to my lone seat. The old man took a stool from under my chair and put it practically on my feet. He didn’t have enough room to face forward and had to ride staring at the van door. It was uncomfortable to say the least. But even this has become normal to me and I managed to sleep most of the two hour drive.
At about the half way point I really had to use the restroom, but I have never felt comfortable asking a driver to pull over for this, as I have never seen an Armenian do it. I sat; legs crossed hoping for some kind of miracle. God was in the mood to answer my prayers because the driver pulled over at a common rest stop and told us not to move he would only be 2 seconds. I saw my opportunity and made a run for it. I didn’t want to explain to anyone, as I only really know the little kid word for going pee and I already feel very silly when I speak Armenian. As I opened the door someone told me I shouldn’t leave. I just smiled and ran to the store. After about three minutes I was back and the whole marshutka was waiting for me. I squeezed back into my seat, noticing that the guy next to me took my short respite as an opportunity to spill over into my seat but at least they didn’t leave me!!
After having my teeth cleaned and checked for cavities; I had one, and having my eye glass prescription renewed, It was about 5pm, meaning I had about 30 minutes to make it to the bus station to catch my ride home. I sat outside the doctor’s office and did my best to flag down a cab, using my normal criteria that if it is not marked by a meter , I will not take it. However after about ten minutes of not being able to stop one, I had to settle for whoever would pull over. A black cab with a taxi sign on its roof but no number printed on the side finally stopped. I told him to take me to the bus station. He asked me if I was Russian and I said no. He told me I am very pretty like a Russian girl, the one sentence that really puts fear into me in this country. I didn’t respond. He asked me if he had offended me and I told him no, but I am not Russian I am an English teacher. Clearly stating that I was a professional and not there for any funny business… He asked me if I was Armenian and I said no. He asked if I lived with family and I told him my family was in the US. He asked me when I came to Armenia, if I liked it, how much money I make, how old I am. I tried to be as detached and cold as possible, giving him no reason to think I had any interest. He asked me if he could stop and get me a juice, I told him no. And then I did something I have never done here, I lied and told him I am married. He looked at me a long time in the mirror as if he didn’t believe me. He asked me if my husband was Armenian and I said yes. He asked me his name, his age, his profession, and how we met, and I answered all flawlessly. I thought I sounded pretty honest and convincing, without even the smallest hesitation. Then he asked me if I had children, and I stumbled. I paused and said no. He asked me when I got married and I said two years ago, and just by that he knew I was lying. Armenians usually have children right after they get married, though sometimes they do wait, but being 28, I am old and there was no way he was going to believe I was married and still didn’t have children. He immediately went back to flirting with me. He missed the turn in for the bus station. I told him he was wrong, and he said oh yes, I missed it I will turn around, but to me he took the longest possible way to get back to the turn. I was getting pretty nervous as he kept asking me questions and telling me how beautiful I was. I demanded that he let me out of the cab. He told me no. I told him I would call the police. He told me I misunderstood and sped up to let me out at the bus station. But even as I was getting out of his cab, my marshutka about to pull away, he asked me for my phone number!!! I couldn’t believe it!!! What nerve the guy had.
Unfortunately for me this meant my favorite seat on the marshutka was occupied. The money collector told me I’d have to sit up front with the driver. The men kind of laughed a little and I immediately put my head phones on to drowned them out, but one of my ear phones is blown out, which made it very difficult to not hear them talking about me. I don’t know why I don’t ever just tell people that I understand them and they should shut up, I guess it’s just easier for me to pretend that I don’t. No matter, after 15 minutes I was sound asleep anyways, waking up only as we were 20 minutes outside of my town, by my own little snore… Could anything be more embarrassing?? Well yes it can, my head was practically on the other passenger’s shoulder… The passenger asked if I was sick, I had been feeling sick but didn’t know why he would ask me until I reached up to touch my head, I clearly had a fever and my face was flushed and sweating!!! Ugh, just your average Peace Corps transportation story!!!

Why on Earth am I in the Peace Corps

Every time I tell someone that I am leaving for the Peace Corps, in oh 16 days, their reaction is always why in the world did you sign up for the Peace Corps?
Even though I know this is the question that is coming at me, I never quite know how to answer it. My gut reaction reply is always that I have wanted to do this since I was a little girl.

While this is true, it’s not very comprehensive, nor does it explain why I actually decided to take the plunge and go through with this now.
Another thing that people often say is wow that is incredible, that is so admirable. This always makes me feel ridicules. I didn’t join the Peace Corps to have people think that I am doing something noble. While I did join to help people, and to make a difference in the lives of a community, I also have my own really selfish reasons for joining.

The real reason that I joined the Peace Corps is a little more something like this:
Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to join the Peace Corps. I remember reading about it in Jr. High and thinking how amazing it would be. In my Jr. High mind I thought the perfect life would be to graduate college, join the Peace Corps, travel the world, go to law school and become a human rights activist. While that plan has long ago been abandoned, and seemingly all other plans have also been abandoned, the Peace Corps has often come back to my mind when my thoughts have drifted to what I want to do with my life. The selfish part of the equation is, I graduated college and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I got stuck at a job where nothing I did or said mattered, and went through a really devastating break up with Tommy. I spend a lot of my time volunteering, because I was lost in life and needed to do something that mattered. A friend who I loved and admired moved to New York to go to school and follow her dreams, and all of a sudden something changed in me. I thought what the heck am I doing here? I realized that I needed to figure out my dreams and go for it. Victoria leaving really was a huge eye opener for me. I saw that people don’t stay together just because they are friends and family and love each other. Brave people follow their dream, even though it means leaving everything they love behind. So I thought about my life and decided that besides my amazingly wonderful, perfect family, there was not a whole lot to hold me back from packing my bags and leaving the country.

So here is the truth as I know it. I joined the Peace Corps because I have an innate desire to help people, to develop a community, to learn to love a different culture and a different people. But I also joined to Peace Corps to escape a job, to travel the world, to make new friends, to get over a heart break and to figure things out.