I guess nothing new really happened during this week. I am completely over whatever I had. I am leaning toward food poisoning since I didn’t have any other symptoms than those related to food poisoning. For some reason I was hoping to have Giardia just to see what it was like. Weird huh?
Anyway, this weekend was really nice. After school on Friday I waited for Hector to walk to my village so that we could take the bus into Martuni and then to Yerevan since this past weekend was supposed to be initiatives. The bus is usually late. It takes Hector about an hour to walk from his village to mine. Well, Hector was really happy because he made it into my village for what we thought would be enough time. However, this particular day, the bus decided to be ten minutes early. I didn’t get on the bus without Hector, so I waited for him. He was five minutes late, and about ten minutes early from when the bus should have arrived. Oh well. We decided that we would just walk. Like I said before it is really cold in my village. I can see my breathe now when I breath and in the mornings there is a blanket of frost on the garden plants. That particular afternoon it was not that cold. In fact I was walking in just a t-shirt and long pants. So we got to Martuni and instead of walking all the way, Kyle persuaded the driver to just stop on the way and pick us up. Off we went...
It was a really nice drive to Yerevan. The marshutni was not overly packed and there was plenty of room to spread out. The whole backseat was just us three guys. We talked the whole way in. We got to Yerevan and walked to the Peace Corps office. There were some other people there and it was really nice to see them. It had only been a month and a half but there were so many stories to be told and new experiences to be shared. It was great. Some of the people, like Hector and Kyle, decided that they would go to their training village and see their old families. I decided to stay in Yerevan and all the volunteers from Solak stayed in one room together at the hostel. I was really surprised. The hostel was really clean, with a real shower, wireless internet, a TV with English channels, and it was well priced. It would be cheap for a tourist, moderately priced for a volunteer. I walked around with Sean and he showed me some things in the city and then we met up with one of his friends and we just talked. It was a good night. David was really loud that night so we didn’t get to bed until about 3am.
The next morning I woke up around 8, took a SHOWER and Mike and I headed to the Peace Corps office since we had our initiatives first. It is the HIV/AIDS initiative. It was a small group of people but it was all people I would like to work with and the group was small so i figured it would be efficient. I took on the task of talking to other organizations in Yerevan such as USAID or the embassies about collaborating on some ideas to spread the word of HIV/AIDS. I am really excited about this because I think this will be a good chance for me to practice relations skills. I am hoping that this will not be too hard of a task and from my understanding, other organizations are willing to support another on a similar cause.
Afterwards, I met with some of my friends for lunch near the opera. It was good, but a little pricey. I met one of my Armenian friends and we walked around the city and saw some of the sights. It was very nice. Afterwards, I met up with other volunteers and ate a pretty delicious dinner. At 8 we were going to meet with our LCFs, Anahit and Irina. It was so nice to see them. They asked us about how life was going in our villages and what we were doing. It really was a nice time. The group from Solak ate dinner with them at a Mexican restaurant. That was my second dinner but I decided that I would load up on non-potato-based-food while I had the opportunity, even if I was about to explode. No sense in wasting an opportunity. All in all, I probably gained 5 pounds that weekend. I met a Fullbright scholar who went to Mike’s University and since she had only been here for 3 weeks we walked around the city. We went to the fountains and saw the fountain show which was interesting.
Afterwards, Mike, Ashley and I walked around some more and then decided to call it a night. I had been walking around a lot so I was really tired.
Sunday came and I met with some of my other friends and a little church get together. It was nice. We met at a doughnut shop. The apple fritter I got was not as good as everyone said. I think my expectations were too high. Anyway, afterwards I went back to the office and said my goodbyes and off we went. This weekend was nice because we figured out how to do things without spending so much money. For example, we learned just to take the city bus to the bus station for 100 dram instead of getting a taxi and paying 1000 dram. Although the route is a bit more scenic, every little bit helps. Its nice figuring out how the native people live and emulating what they do. They certainly know how to live here much better than we do... After the two hour bus ride home, it was back to reality. Good thing that I really like my village. I met my host mom working outside. Her mom was flying into Yerevan that night, so at midnight, my brother and mother went in a neighbor’s car and they were to Yerevan to pick up her mother from a 5am flight. Im not exactly sure why they left so early, but they were back at 8am, when I woke up. Her mother is from Belarus. Interesting. I don’t have a clue how long she will be here but she is taking some of the other work off my host mom so I am appreciative of that. She is just way too overworked. (my host mom).
I guess that’s it for now. Things are starting to pick up now. The time is going by. I no longer have my lessons with a group trying to learn English, instead I have language class for an hour and a half every night but still with the same lady. For better or worse, I have homework now but I suspect it will expedite my language learning.
Ah its cold.
Shannon, when are you going to have your baby?
Until next time...
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