The last few days have been busy for a number of reasons. First of all on May 28th I went back to visit my family for the first time since September and it happened to be my birthday which they remembered without me telling them. They made grape leaf dolma, which is my favorite hykakon josh (Armenian meal). It’s always good to visit them because the way I see it they are my Armenian family. I don’t know if it’s because they were the first ones I met or what it is but they’re a great family and I really enjoy them. They also have a great home set on the side of a big canyon and a large hill in the backyard that is perfect for looking at the stars and Armenia has got some beautiful nights. Danny asked that I give him a special shout out for what he did so here it goes: last week I went to visit him on his birthday and ended up taking a taxi which wasn’t exactly in my budget. He had a teachers retreat planned for this weekend so he was going to miss being around for mine which I gave him a hard time about, but early that morning he called me to say that though he had just made a fool of himself he was going to come to Solak and skip the teachers retreat. That was exciting news and as a whole spending my birthday in Solak was a pretty good time. My host family gave my a stick of deodorant for my birthday which I hope isn’t them trying to give me a hint…but I’ll use it rigorously. I also made my first toast in Armenia I said “a year ago I left my home and my family in America and I came to Armenia and now y’all (my old host family) are my Armenian family”. I think they liked it because they said aprese. The next day we, the A-17 class, met the A-18 class for the first time. They had flown in early that morning and by the time we met them that afternoon they looked pretty exhausted. I couldn’t help but think of how I felt a year ago in the same situation, it was exciting, over whelming, I was clueless, and exhausted I think they felt a lot of the same things. They are starting a long summer of language learning, cultural emersion, sector training and a lot of other stuff. Someone described PST (pre-service training) to me as being like a baby taken home from the hospital for the first time. You don’t know any language so you can’t communicate and your family has to take complete care of you. I guess that is a pretty good description. Anyways they’ve got a lot of work to do but they’ll enjoy doing it. I did.
Well that’s all I can think of to say for now. Keep well.
