Water Filters

The picture I put up is of my water filter after one year and the new one I just put in the other day. That water looks good right? Actually it doesn’t taste bad or anything it just doesn’t look all that refreshing but by the time it has been filtered its clear and not too bad. It can be hard to come by though. I am one of the few people I know in the whole country including the capital, Yerevan, that has twenty-four hour running water everyday. It’s a nice thing to have but the other day it was turned off for a week while the city put in new pipes. It would have been easy to store water had I known that the water would be turned off. I would have filled my bathtub and buckets but I didn’t realize it would be turned off until the tap ran dry. So instead I woke up one morning with a pile of dishes and no water to clean them with. I had to walk to the neighboring apartment building where they have a community water spicket that everybody was collecting water from. It took a lot of trips but finally I got my bathtub filled. The week the water was turned off was also a really hot week so I had all of the windows open to let the air blow through but with the pipes being dug out and reburied there was a lot of dust in the air which means I now have a apartment nicely coated in dust.
The water filter is also a reminder that I’ve been here for a year. We had our mid-service conference in Tsakadzor. It was a fun time and the hotel we stayed at was really nice by anybodies standards. It was called the Sports Complex and as the name would envision where were a lot of athletes there. So here were us scrawny Peace Corps Volunteers on one half of the cafeteria and on the other half were body builders from all over the former USSR. It was a funny contradiction to see. We played the new group of volunteers in country at kick ball and we won and I got to go swimming in a pool for the second time this year. I even had a couple of races and judging from my shortness of breath I guess I’m pretty out of shape.
I’m now back at site trying to stay busy for the next week before I leave for my vacation on Friday and trying not to get washed away by the tremendous down pour of rain we are getting everyday. Send me an email soon!

Water Day

This past Sunday was water day in Armenia which is a day marked by the Armenian Church where random strangers throw water on everybody including strangers. As I walked through the streets I found many buckets thrown in my direction even if I told them not to. I even tried to walk close to a women and her baby in hopes that this would keep me dry but it also did not work. Neither did sitting with a bunch of old men while I waited for a number of rowdy kids to pass by with their buckets. Instead three old women from the balcony above pored water down on all of us. Not cool Ladies.
Danny also visited this past week, which was fun. We went up to a nearby village with a nice view of the surrounding mountains. I tried to take him and Liz on a short cut but it ended up being the long way around an abandoned building. My water was also turned off for the last week as new pipes were put in outside. Its funny because every time someone visits it seems that the first question they ask is do you have running water which since I do have running water I say yes, but for some reason this statement seems to be a jinx’s that causes my water to be turned off without fail. So in the mornings I had clean water while in the evenings I had muddy water and during the day I had no water.
Today I met an old professor of mine from Baylor. He is an Armenian from Gyumri and never when I sat in his class could I have imagined myself living in Armenia just a few short months later but here I am. It was cool to eat dinner with a professor who I studied under but now can find common ground with.
This coming week I have a conference with Peace Corps to attend which I am looking forward to! I’ll let you know how that goes next week. And Ian is coming to visit in less then a month. Awesome Ian!

13/13

I know it’s been a while since I last wrote, but this has turned out to be a busy summer. Last month I worked a camp for 13 to 15 year olds in the small village of Yaghdan. The village was filled with people who in the last one hundred years had immigrated to Armenia from Greece. The Greek presence was obvious on a lot of the cloths the kids wore because there relatives in Greece sent them t-shirts with Greek writing and a few people even spoke Greek. The camp was a lot of fun and lasted ten days, which was a lot of time but a good way to start off the summer.
During the time I was at camp my friend Ashley left back for the states. Ashley was a Fulbright student in Armenia who also attended Baylor at the same time I did but we had to go half a world away before meeting. She always let me stay at her apartment when I was in Yerevan and in doing so she saved me a lot of Dram, but it isn’t the free housing that I will remember her by. She will be missed but I think I’ll see her hosting 20/20 one day.
The forth of July also came and went and I spent that time at Lake Sevan with my fellow Peace Corps friends. It was a lot of fun because not only is a large body of water the place to spend the Forth of July but I also went to a water park and for the first time in over a year I got in clear clean pool water which was great. I also ate some good food and made a fruit dip that everybody liked so much they didn’t believe I made it, but that’s okay because I just won’t give them the recipe. In other happenings I will be getting a site mate for the coming year and another soon to be volunteer is moving just a short thirty-minute walk from my town. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also visited the country. I didn’t get to see her but it was exciting that she came. Also, the tittle of this blog represents that this past month I passed the half way mark. I've been here for 13 months and have only 13 more to go! Time can pass really fast. Lets just hope it doesn't slow down anytime soon.

You want me to WORK…really?

School for us in Armenia ended about two weeks ago and I thought that with the graduation ceremony we were done until September first. I guess that was a little ridicules of me since school in back in America doesn’t end for teachers until after a few days of meetings and stuff. So anyways, I went off to my old host village without asking permission from my school director to go. My director and I don’t see eye to eye on many things and he always wants me to tell him when I’m leaving the community. I feel like as an adult who lives in a foreign country on his own I don’t need to ask his permission for anything. So this past Monday I come to school to finish up a SPA application, more on that later, and find that he is pissed at me for about the one hundredth time this year. His question to me was “who told you you could go to Charantsevan” and I thought to myself nobody told me I could go because I didn’t think I needed your permission to do what I want to do. But this is one of the places where American and Armenian minds differ big time! For example in the United States if the principle walked into your classroom you would quickly act like you were diligently working on school work but here if the school director walks in everybody stands. I always get confused by the commotion that goes into this and I look around for the president or dignitary who must have just entered. But every time its only the school director and me having forgotten to stand in the first place is caught the only person still sitting in the entire classroom trying to figure out why everybody is making such a big deal out of this guy walking into the room. He is the type of guy who wants to be in charge and wants everybody in the room to know it. For example what have I done in the week since he has made me come to school? Well, I’ve caught up on my gossip, learned who is selling what vegetables at outrageous prices, inspected the hems of many skirts (the teachers I guess forget that I’m in the room because they hike up those skirts and compare linings and hems like nobodies business) and that’s been about it. A week well spent? I can think of more fun things to be doing. I did however finish my SPA project which is a way for me as a Peace Corps Volunteer to help out my school by writing a small grant that will hopefully provide a nice playground and football field for the kids. Lets hope it gets approved. My school director said he’s going to fire me if it doesn’t and while he thinks it’s a threat I secretly feel relief every time I hear him say that. If he fires me then I can go somewhere else where they don’t make you sit in the teachers lounge for three hours everyday during the summer.
On a different note this week was the 77th birthday of this lady in my town. I have been to her and her sisters house many times. Both ladies are very nice but I think a bit eccentric and senile. For example, at the birthday we are sitting at the table and one of the sisters decides to pour herself a glass of water. The entire time she is completely missing her glass and pouring the water onto a plate of tomatoes next to the glass. Another time I was over there she picked up a box of chocolates upside down and spilled them all over the field. Its funny to watch but sad at the same time because they can’t take care of themselves.
The next two weeks I will be a camp counselor and after that I’ll be teaching English in Artik. Thanks Jake and Melissa for the package. The students will be able to use that stuff for a long

Second birthday in Peace Corps, first in country and the new volunteers arrive

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.

One year and still trucking...

Its hard to believe that in little less then twenty four hours I will have been gone from my home for an entire year. I remember the night before having a hard time sleeping dreading the moments when I would have to say goodbye to my home, my town and most importantly my family. Then the early hour came and we loaded my two suitcases and two carry-ons into my dad’s truck and headed to the airport. Both my bags were over by a few pounds and the desk attendant not wanting to bend the rules made me take some stuff out. Then it was time to say goodbye. A year ago August 2011 seemed like such a long way away and in May 2010 it doesn’t exactly seem close but then neither did this day a year ago and yet now I can’t believe how fast time flew by! I got on that plane not knowing what to expect. I couldn’t speak, read or even guess what an Armenian word meant. I didn’t know a single person I was about to meet, live with, work with, travel with all I knew that I was crazy enough to keep walking towards the steps to the airplane. Now looking back on the 365 days that have since passed its remarkable that a room of 47 strangers in Philadelphia, while a little smaller now, aren’t strangers at all now. Armenian isn’t an indecipherable code of letters and sounds but a real communicate-able language; teaching no longer comes from behind the desk but in front of the classroom. Stranger’s houses where I kept a room aren’t strangers anymore but “family” whom I can share a cup of coffee and a conversation with. In a year a lot has happened. I’ve learned a lot about what I can do and myself. How I can get past adversities that seem like they’ll never get surpassed. I took a community head-on by myself and still people stare and want to know what I’m doing here but that’s okay. I’m happy to be a part of this community.
I’ve gotten to travel all over Armenia, I got to go to India and Dubai with a guy who became my best friend I think on the second day in Peace Corps. And I’m just really glad that I have the chance to do this. Peace Corps has been quite an experience. It isn’t what I expected and it hasn’t been easy, but I will always appreciate the experience and everyday I’m learning what I can do to help out my school, my community and myself.
I don’t know what the next year will hold in store or what to expect but if it goes as fast as the first then I’ll be seeing y’all in no time at all. And I’ll have a lot of stories to tell. So thanks for the support. Getting encouraging notes and the occasional package, phone call, message and what ever else has meant a lot. And it goes with out saying I love my family…and my friends too.
And for those I spent my birthday with last year Jill, Katie, and Ian and the surprise phone call from Jinsun that was awesome. I’ll be thinking of y’all this year at my birthday horavots.