By the time people read this, I will have started my first day of school. Exciting. To kick off the first day of school, I went to a small gathering, a party if you will. This is Sunday and Sunday is the day when the Shuka, or the market is open. My host mom insists that I need some house slippers so I went with them to the market. Also my host brother needed some new clothes to wear to school. Back to school shopping. I had forgotten all about that until now. Anyway, the market was crazy. I say this in about the most literal way I can. There were so many people there. It was pretty fun though, but exhausting. I found some shoes to wear. They actually fit me. This was a major problem for me in Korea. I wanted to buy some shoes there but they were all too small for me. So, I was pretty happy they had some house slippers in my size. They weren’t pink, uncomfortable, or have some kind of weird design on it. So, we came back. The bus was so crowded. Going there and coming back but it was an experience. To be honest, I think Im going to leave it at that one experience.
As I was on my way back, I called Hector who is in the next village and told him to start making his one hour journey to my house. By the time we got from the shuka (this is “market” Amanda) Hector had arrived. I also found a shortcut from Terri’s house to mine. My village is shaped like a “U”. Terri lives at one end of the “U” and I live at the other. Mine just happens to be a dead end. So instead of it taking 15-20 minutes to walk that distance, it now only takes about 5. That was great. Anyway, Hector came over to my house, he had lunch at my house and then Hector and I walked to the nearest city. About an hour walk. The buses don’t run on Sunday’s as my host mom pointed out so we just walked. About a mile into our walk, it started raining. Not until we were both pretty soaked with water did Hector realize he had a rain jacket, and at the same time, I realized that I had an umbrella. Funny how that happens. Anyway, we kept walking. My socks were soaked and they were pretty old so I went to a local store and bought some socks. They are the most comfortable socks I think I have ever worn (I even bought another pair the next day). They were 90% wool and 10% something else. Whoa. Anyway, we got to the city and hung out. It was pretty fun.
The best part was when we were at a cafe and we spotted some Americans. Actually I thought they were Australian. They turned out to be French. Because the waitress saw that they weren’t Armenian she just assumed that the Frenchies were with us. So the waitress led them to our room. It was pretty funny looking at their faces because they had no idea what was going on. Frankly, we didn’t know either. The best part was that there were six chairs and for some reason when the four of us (the volunteers) sat down, we left the middle chairs empty. Don’t know why, we just did. So when the Frenchies came in, they sat in the middle of both rows. That make things interesting. They were just visiting. Their names were Jacque and Claude. (Actually Im pretty sure that wasn’t their names but I didn’t understand really what they were saying with their thick accent and the aforementioned names are pretty good stereotypical French names. Anyway, we sat and talked with them for a while. They were just traveling though. It was a really interesting conversation. I felt bad for them because we weren’t very lively because we were really tired. But, it happens. To clear up the title of the blog, the Frenchies kept saying "maybe we will meet some more Peace Corps people... we are in the Peace Corps." It would be funnier if you could picture all this with an outrageously thick French accent.
Im really tired so I don’t know if this post is making much sense but things have been going really well. I think I have finally started to win over my host mom. She is a single mom and is having some problems with a single 24-year-old staying in her house. At first I just don’t think she knew what to do with me but things now are going well. I try to help her and try not to be a doofus as best I can. Language class is going well. The daughter of my teacher who helped me out a lot in the classes went back to Yerevan to study so it will now be myself, the teacher and the three high school girls who always laugh at me because I can’t pronounce all the words. Interesting. Things are going really well. One of the volunteers who finished up his service left a bunch of stuff and I got some of it. Im getting ready for the winter. It has been pretty chilly and rainy. I, as well as many of the others, believe it will be a very long and hard winter. Im excited.
Oh, I finally splurged and bought one of those USB internet card things so I have enough internet to read and send emails and upload my blog so please send emails if you are at work and feeling unproductive. Thank you. I will probably check the internet about every third day.
Until next time.
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