Four Baths in Four Weeks
As you can tell from the title things aren’t the same as they are back in the states. However, this is not a bad thing. I don’t even feel dirty and part of my mission here is to integrate. So, I bathe on a less regular schedule, and, as I believe I’ve alluded to in earlier writings, the integration process isn’t easy. Some days are rougher then others; those are the days when you feel that you can’t understand any part of the language or that your volunteer mission is somehow going in a different direction they you envisioned it. There are a number of things that can put a damper on a volunteer’s attitude, but I happen to be a believer in divine intervention, and such an intervention was what I experienced yesterday as I finished up a book entitled “A Quaker Book of Wisdom”. I had bought the book back a few years ago to carry with me on a long trip but when I started reading it the book didn’t interest me, but I still wanted to finish it so I brought it along with me to Armenia and this time the book was the perfect refuge for all of the mixed feelings that I have felt during this stage of Peace Corps service. The book featured chapters on topics like truth, service, conscience, and non violence all of which I think the Peace Corps embodies, but the book completely enlivened my excitement for why I’m doing these two years of PC service, it was in essence the perfect antidote for me!
So what else is going on? Today we met the mayor and began planning for our Forth of July celebration which we will share with the people of our village. I also had my first shopping experience, I stood on one side of the counter and pointed to things like toothpaste, shampoo etc. and the clerk pulled them from the shelf, an interesting way of shopping. And finally I would like to share some humorous faux pas and incidents I and other PCT’s have had up to this point. The other day I was talking to a neighbor kid and his grandmother and for some reason as I was talking to the grandmother who was seated to my right I began to incessantly elbow her as if that would get her to understand me. I usually playfully elbow people when I’m telling a story but they aren’t usually grandmothers! Lisa (from Florida) a fellow volunteer also had a faux pas when she tried to be the kind guest and took the one bowl of soup that contained no chicken bone in it, but that soup was made specifically for the son who was suffering from a severe tooth ache and obviously couldn’t eat a chicken bone, oops! My friend Danya (from Trinidad) stumbled upon her “host family” skinning a cow and immediately threw up on the floor, and lastly today I sat with Danny (from North Carolina), Meagan (from Montana) and David (fellow Texan) on the cold hard ground, for my Washington friends who are reading this you know what I’m about to say, especially Jill, so for some reason in Eastern Europe it is a popular belief that sitting on the ground gives you a cold and for girls it severely lessons your chances of having a kid later in life so let me just say we got plenty of kind warnings and lots of horrified stares. Well, that’s all for now but there’s plenty more to come.
Love, Michael
