Summer So Far

The abandoned amusement park I pass on my running route

Oops, it’s been a while! Summer so far has felt a bit like how the process of applying to the Peace Corps felt: long periods of slowness and sudden bursts of activity. I realized the other day that the end of July marks a year since I accepted my invitation to join the Peace Corps. This month got off to a rather hectic start as all of us volunteers woke up one morning to a text from our safety and security manager announcing an Emergency Action Plan drill. What we thought was just an overnight trip to our consolidation point soon turned into a surprise trip to Georgia. By surprise, I mean a real surprise as in finding out an hour before that the drill was shifting to a practice evacuation and we would be boarding a bus headed to Tbilisi. After some initial panic about explaining to our host families why we weren’t coming home that day and our lack of clean underwear for 3 more days of traveling, we all embraced the adventure. We were able to spend a day exploring Tbilisi together and overall I was grateful to have the time to be with the other volunteers whom I hadn’t seen in over a month. Tbilisi is a gorgeous, modern city and we all made plans to return in the next two years for a weekend getaway. But of course, Yerevan still has my heart.

The day after returning from Georgia was Vardavar, an Armenian holiday that is more or less a 24-hour country-wide water fight. Kids and adults alike arm themselves with squirt guns, water balloons, and good old-fashioned buckets to douse one another and cool off in the mid-summer heat. I watched from the dry safety of my bedroom window as children in the courtyard outside fully embraced the spirit of the holiday. At one point, a man was trapped in the driver’s seat of his parked car, scared to open the door to the hoard of children looming outside, poised to soak him the second he exited the vehicle. Exhausted from our trip, I opted to just observe this year. But next year I hope to venture into Yerevan where Vardavar is celebrated energetically throughout the entire city, especially around the large fountain in the middle of Republic Square.

Unfortunately, that night I came down with what was either food poisoning or some kind of stomach bug. I had been warned by RPCVs that stomach issues come with the gig and will inevitably leave you bedridden at least once during your service. I naively assumed that I would be the exception and I’m here to say that I am NOT. I spent a day in bed drinking rehydration salts and trying my best to communicate my needs to my host mom. If you think speaking a second language is hard, try doing it while you’re dehydrated, sleep deprived, and nauseous. I learned that to Armenian mothers consuming anything cold while you’re sick is a big no-no. My host mom was horrified when I requested a glass of iced water but after some explanation on my part, she graciously complied. Thankfully it only took me a couple of days to recover and pretty soon I was back to normal.

When June ended, I concluded the more formal bi-weekly English club that I had been running at the school. I felt like most of the students wanted a break from school for the summer so I’ve shifted to a more casual weekly discussion club that I have been holding outside. The students vote on each week’s discussion topic and we spend an hour speaking about it in English to keep their skills up while school is out of session. The attendance has varied a lot more since students are busy with summer camps, vacations, and other activities. This past week our topic was music. Once I ran out of questions for them, the meeting devolved into watching music videos together (all in English of course.) I made some progress in my underlying mission to turn the youth of Armenia into Swifties by showing a couple of the girls the music video for Love Story and explaining that the song alludes heavily to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. See, it’s educational!

Some other volunteers and I have signed up for a 5k in Yerevan in October so I have also spent a lot of this month training for that. I ran my first 5k back in December so I am working towards a goal of beating that time. In order to avoid giving myself heat stroke by running in the 90-degree afternoon heat, I’ve had to start slowly converting into a morning person. Each time I run, I’ve tried to leave 30 minutes earlier. I’m convinced that waking up before 8 am on a day when I don’t actually have work is even harder than learning Armenian. Sometimes on cooler days, I can get away with a run in the evening right at sunset. When I first moved here, I thought no one else in my town jogged. Now that I’ve started going earlier, I’ve realized that people DO jog here but they are far smarter than I was at first and head out in the early early morning. I’m hoping that after the 5k in October, I can start training for a longer run in the Spring.

One of my favorite hobbies that I’ve discovered to fill my free summer days is hammocking in the park near my apartment. The park is filled with perfect hammocking trees and I’ve found a pair with the ideal amount of shade. I was worried at first that people would stare at me and think I was weird sitting in my big blue cocoon-like contraption. But for the most part, people go about their business in the park and ignore me. My biggest problem has actually been the insane amount of sap that gets all over my hammock straps and subsequently everything else in my bag. If anyone has some anti-sap life hacks, I am all ears. Last week, I was in my hammock reading and listening to music when I felt someone pull on the straps. I looked around but didn’t see anyone. When it happened again, I turned my neck a little quicker and caught a glimpse of a small group of young girls hiding behind a tree. “Barev!” I said and they ran away. I thought that I had frightened them off until I looked up again and saw 5 or 6 girls crowded in front of me. They began speaking Russian to me at a rapid pace. I interrupted them and did my best to explain in Armenian that I was an American and didn’t speak any Russian. After their initial shock at me speaking Armenian, they held up a cluster of magpie feathers they had collected and announced their price of 20 drams. Coincidentally, I had found a 20 dram coin on the ground while walking to the park that afternoon so I purchased two of the feathers. The little entrepreneurs excitedly pocketed the coin and I watched as they roamed around the park looking for more customers.

I’ve been able to head into Yerevan to meet some of the other volunteers a few times this month. There are frequent and fairly timely buses from my town into the city and I’ve made really good progress on familiarizing myself with the routes. Being the closest volunteer to Yerevan I have the benefit of being able to head there to see friends anytime they have to make their way to the Peace Corps office for an appointment. I’m working on scoping out all the best spots for lunches or iced coffee in the city so that I can play tour guide when people visit. With the free time I have before the school year starts, I am hoping to check off some touristy spots on my list such as going to the National Art Museum or seeing the famous Blue Mosque. I’ve found that cinemas in Yerevan have showings of movies in English once or twice a week at pretty reasonable prices. I was able to see the Barbie movie which I had been hearing about endlessly online. It was really sweet to see all the other Barbie-goers dressed in pink outside the theater and posing for pictures with disco balls and in a fake Barbie box. I was surprised but mostly impressed that the Barbie marketing had made its way all the way to Armenia.

There have definitely been days when the slowness of this summer has made me feel bored or even somewhat useless. I am the kind of person who feels the need to pack my weeks with productivity and I get a little lost when I’m not super busy. I’ve been working on fighting against those feelings and reminding myself that it’s ok to take things slowly. Talking to a friend from home one day I voiced this struggle and she reminded me that no matter what I do during the day, I’m still living in another country, which by itself is pretty cool. If all I did in a day was go for a run, read in my hammock, and practice my Armenian then that’s still a day well spent. I’m looking forward to September when my work teaching will really kick up but I am also enjoying these slow summer days that I can fill however I want.