Coming back from the trip was hard. A lot harder than I thought it was going to be. We lost another volunteer this week. She was in the southern part of Armenia and decided that it wasn’t the place for her to be at this time in her life. Mike has been going through some hard times too and has thought about going home. I don’t think I have gotten to that point but the first couple days here, I was just thinking “what the hell am I doing here”. It may be hard to grasp, but when you spend two weeks on vacation and then spend your last two days in a city like Dubai which is ultra-modern, warm, and which has McDonald’s, and then come back to a not-so-modern, blisteringly cold environment with no McDonald’s it makes you think about things again... At the very least, it makes your again appreciate what you had... or at least what I had.
With that said, I was a bit apprehensive about going back to school. I didn’t know what it would be like since I was on vacation while school was going on for two weeks. They cut the winter vacation short because the cancellation of schools due to the flu during early December let the kids out a bit earlier. I walked into school and all the teachers were bright eyed and gave me a very warm welcome. The children did the same thing and wondered about my trip. It was great. Lots of very warm welcomes. At that time, I remembered why I was here.
This week went by pretty quickly. Half because we didn’t have school on Thursday because it was Army day here. We had a little party at school after classes were over. Those are always fun because I get to hang out with the teachers in a non-classroom setting. I can see them as people rather than professionals.
Funny story about school though and this will attest to how fast rumors and stuff can spread in the village. My parents sent me this really large jacket. One of those that people use in Canada and Alaska. It has a fur rim... I look a little strange but in this barren land of cold, I don’t really care what I look like. Anyway, I wore the jacket for the first time to my school and the maintenance man came up and joked and said “are you going to climb Aghmaghan (the large mountain behind my village) today?” I said no. Then as the class periods went on, teachers came up to me in the hallway asking if I was really going to climb the mountain. The right before I left, one of the teachers sat me down and gave me a lecture how it wasn’t a good idea for me to climb up the mountain because of all the snow... I wish someone took a picture of my facial expression when the guy started giving me a lecture, because I remember trying to figure out when I mentioned to anyone that I was going to leave the village, let alone climb a mountain...
The Martuni crowd got together yesterday just to hang out. It was a little funny and a little sad because Hector wasn’t able to get out of his village. They closed the roads so there were no cars coming out of the village. We tried to convince him to come but he just couldn’t make it out of this village. Its alright because I will see him tomorrow.
This week we have another conference called PDM where we learn how to write grants and what organizations are willing to help us out. You may be wondering, “why don’t they teach you that before you get to your permanent site?” Well the idea is that we have to get to our sites first and assess what the community needs. In that way, we can talk to people, walk around, ask questions, meet with the major so we have a better idea of how to better spend the money. It will be pretty intense as it is 5 days away from my site and each day is about 9 hours of “classes.” Really excited... I just hope I don’t get sick like I was last time.
Well, not too much to report. Just laying low. I did my laundry the other day and after 5 minutes after putting them on the line, they froze. Not only did they freeze, the wind was blowing, and they froze together... I just looked out my window and laughed... eh.
Until next time...
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