There is a lot to catch up on since my last post. At the end of May, I was officially sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer and moved to my new site where I will spend the next two years. My first couple of weeks have been fairly busy, which I am appreciative of because it has forced to me explore the town and familiarize myself with the community. On my second day here, I accompanied my counterpart to a parade at the school in honor of Armenia’s first independence day. Republic Day celebrates when Armenia first became an independent Republic, the First Armenian Republic, in 1918. This ended up being a short-lived endeavor as the Red Army invaded a few years later and Armenia became part of the Soviet Union until its second independence in 1991. Many historians argue that the brief existence of the First Armenian Republic paved the way for modern Armenia and protected the small country from being absorbed by larger states during the collapse of the Soviet Union. I spent the parade walking with the students as they waved Armenian flags and sang national songs. We made our way up to the cemetery in the town and laid flowers on the graves of soldiers who served in the 2020 war. One of the teenage girls that I had been chatting with wanted to find the grave of the son of her piano teacher. She walked between the headstones for a bit but was unsure about where he was in the sprawling cemetery. “That’s ok,” she said as she laid her flowers for another young soldier “They’re all ours.”
Later that day my counterpart brought me to the neighboring village to meet her family. Her mother showed me around their impressive garden and I watched the women in the family make dolma. During our meal, I observed one of my favorite Armenian traditions. When some members of the family aren’t drinking but are still being included in the toast, the lead toaster will take their glass and gently press it against the nose of the other person instead of their glass. After we ate, we drove up into the hills so that I could see a small chapel tucked into the base of the largest hill. As soon as we exited the car, it began to rain. We rushed to buy candles and find refuge in the church. I hit my head as I entered because I neglected to bow. I’ve tried not to read too much of the symbolism of that.
The next day, I accompanied some of the 2nd graders from our school on a field trip to Yerevan. Our first stop was the National Academic Theater of Armenia where I did my best to understand the dialogue in a children’s musical about a wolf, a wizard, 7 baby goats, and a hedgehog. Following the theater, we made our way to the Yerevan Zoo. As we attempted to round up the children to distribute tickets, I taught my counterpart the English phrase “it’s like herding cats” which I think will be very relevant in our upcoming work together. I sat with the moms and other teachers to have coffee and ice cream while the kids ran from exhibit to exhibit shouting the names of the animals as they went.
That weekend, I tagged along with an RPCV friend, who has been showing me around, to her English classes at a local church. While I was watching the 1st and 2nd graders on the playground, one of them found the switch to turn on the bouncy castle that had been going earlier in the day. I don’t know if any of you have tried to convince a group of 6 and 7-year-olds who don’t speak the same language as you that they should play duck duck goose instead of trying to jump on a bouncy castle before it’s fully blown up, but it’s pretty much impossible. Eventually, we gave in and accepted that there is no way to hold kids’ attention while bouncy excitement is in their eye line.
Earlier this week, I held my first English club at the school. The theme of my club is English music. This is both for the practical reason of teaching them the language through an entertaining medium and also because watching a group of students listen to The Cure for the first time brings me immense joy. At the end of our first session, a boy asked me to autograph his worksheet, and a few other students took selfies with me as they were leaving. This is probably as close to being a celebrity as I am going to get, so I’m reveling in it. The 9th graders at our school have their exams this month so I met with a small group of them to help prepare for the speaking section of their English exam. As we were practicing, one of them forgot the English words for what she was trying to say and said it in Armenian. She looked around at her friends for a translation and to everyone’s utter shock and amusement it was me who provided it. I reminded them that I might not be very good at it yet but I AM studying Armenian. Their new mission is now not only to learn English from me but also to teach me their favorite Armenian words.
This past Friday, my counterpart and I attended a conference in Yerevan about Youth Voices and Human Rights. We both hoped to learn some things that we could try and incorporate into our classes to help our students become good global citizens, but we were also just excited to hear more about the topic. We met a German woman who had traveled to the conference to present her research on Georgian Youth Social Movements and through her, we met a Georgian woman who had come to do the same. The four of us, an American, a German, an Armenian, and a Georgian sat together at lunch and discussed such wide-ranging topics as; the impending question of AI in education, the difference between the university systems in our countries, and of course the neighborly culinary rivalry between Armenia and Georgia.
While waiting for the bus home, I reflected on these first two weeks of my real Peace Corps service. But I didn’t have long to muse because soon I had to figure out how to contort myself to fit onto the incredibly packed rush hour bus. The good thing about the buses being packed like sardines is that you don’t have to try as hard to keep your balance when you’re standing. Instead of having to focus on shifting your weight from leg to leg at each lurch or turn, you can kind of relax as the pressure of everyone else’s bodies keeps you relatively upright. When I got home, I walked into my host family’s apartment to find an assortment of relatives sitting around in our living room. Of course, I was immediately instructed to sit down and eat and make toasts with them. My host mom’s uncle told me that he had a son who lived in France and when I informed him that I actually speak some French, he endearingly spent the rest of the evening referring to me as “Madame.”
I’ve found the pace of service so far to be either a rapid onslaught of obligations and activities or a slow and open expanse of free time. I’m still getting used to this and trying my best to structure my life with some kind of routine, but I know that is going to take some time. For now, I’m enjoying the newness of everything and trying my best to say yes to as many things as I can.
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