Interesting week. This past week was pretty good. The weather got a lot better. A lot of the snow melted leaving our unpaved roads in ruins. Its like walking though a really muddy river going anywhere in the village but I don’t have to wear my super huge jacket that inevitably makes me knock over at least one thing during the day.
Last week we started the healthy living curriculum. It is a government mandated course that the 8th and 9th graders have to take. It covers things from nutrition to health education and everything in between. It has 14 lessons for each grade level. It is really interesting because we usually get in discussion about things. I usually ask them differences between American and Armenian thinking after I tell them how Americans do things. This weeks lesson: sex education. Yeah. Try talking about this to a bunch of kids in another language. I went to my tutor to get her help. She said that I had to be really open with the kids because sex education is non-existent here. This is a major problem in the village but people aren’t allowed to talk about it because it is really shameful so my tutor said that because I was a foreigner, that I needed to be really open about things and explain what the kids need to know. Ill give you an update on how awkwardly...well it goes...
In other news, I decided that I wanted to try and be the new Chair for the HIV/AIDS initiative. So you are reading the blog of the new Chair. Hopefully this will be a good year and we can get a good amount of stuff done. In a related topic, I have to give a presentation this saturday. The other week when I was supposed to do it, it got cancelled, which was fine because I got to meet with the travel agency in Yerevan which promotes tourism in the region. My village wants to try and draw more people to the area.
I am starting work on my grant to get bathrooms to my school. We’ll see how that goes. Currently the school has an outhouse which looks like it is going to fall over and it is at full capacity. Since there is no water at the school, we have to build another outhouse, but this one will be better because there is a company in Armenia that makes nice, compost outhouses. I am going to try and get one of those. Maybe if I get this done, I can be remembered here... as the bathroom guy. uh huh...
I told my family that I wanted to move out. At first it was really good. They were like do what you need to do. I think they were really lax about things because they didn’t think I would find a house. All this past week, I have been asking my teachers and the nurses if they knew of any homes. Yesterday, my host mom sat me down and told me that the whole village knew that I was looking for a house. Ha. Then the questions started coming in. Man that was awkward. Holy crap. Anyway, it got all worked out now but it is evident that they really don’t want me to leave. I bring in a good amount of cashflow... I am looking though for a house somewhere. Its interesting because you really start to miss the freedom. Its just little things but I think this will be the best decision for me. That will be one year with a family and one year by myself. I told me family that I would move out at the end of April/ beginning of May. Ill keep you posted.
This weekend, I went to Gavar to get a change of scenery. It was fun. I hung out with Bryan, Cassie and Nico. I needed to up to ask Bryan about some grant stuff but then we just hung out for a while. I did get irritated getting up there.
I told my neighbor that I wanted to go up to Gavar and he told me that I should just take the Yerevan bus and then it would stop on the way and it would be 500 dram which was fine. When I got there, the man that usually takes the money said that it was the full 1200 dram because I was taking up a seat even though that isn’t true. Anyway, I figured he was taking advantage of me since I was an American. It was stupid. Then the bus dropped me off on the highway and I walked the 2 miles to Gavar. A really nice walk. This is the part that totally sucked. I was walking on the road. Both lanes were open and there was snow on either side of the road. I was walking on the snow so I wouldn’t get hit by a car. So while Im walking, there is a car that didn’t get into the other lane, drive right through some mushy snow, which inevitably got thrown up onto me. Awesome. As I looked up, a bunch of teen-agers in the car were laughing out the rearview window. Sweet. I just cleaned myself off a bit and walked the rest of the way in. That was just a minor setback. The rest of the weekend was great.
I think I’m going to try and travel more, especially in the country.
We are starting to find out who the new volunteers are. Not too much longer until we aren’t the newbies... Wow.
Anyway, all is going well. I did my laundry yesterday and I didn’t freeze doing it. My clothes didn’t stick together. Good sign.
This is a Hello to Kelly’s class. Thanks for your questions, ill send you a response shortly.
Happy Valentines Day
Until next time...
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