The weather has been rather pleasant the last couple days which, like I said before, does a number on your morale. For some reason, everything is better. For the first time since maybe last fall have I had fresh veggies. Not yet time for fruit. But do you know how good a cucumber is after 7 months of no fresh produce? The produce comes from Iran, where the weather is pretty good year round. I helped Grandma change over from Winter-ness to not-freezing-all-the-time-ness. That meant breaking down the gas heater that stayed in the middle of the living room and putting my electric heater back in its box, for it to remain there, I hope, till next winter. (It better not get cold again here until this winter of ’10).
It has been really enjoyable. There is a bench outside my door. Around 8 at night with it still being light until around 10, I take my guitar out there and play for a while. Sometimes Grandma comes out and sits next to me and listens to me play. I think she gets bored of listening to me because she will start talking. I think she knows that I can’t spare an ounce of concentration on playing the guitar if I am talking to her. We just sit out there and talk. Its really nice. She tells me about her family, growing up, the village... stuff like that. Sometimes its really interesting, sometimes not so much.
This weekend I didn’t really do much outside in the gorgeous weather. So much to do in so little time. No one ever told me that in Peace Corps you have to do work. And its not like work at home, it can be so much harder because everything is in another language and sometimes cultures clash.
For example, as most of you know, I am trying to build a bathroom at my school. For the grant I am writing I have to go to three different stores so that I can prove that I tried to find the cheapest price. Awesome. I went with my neighbor. He is a pretty funny guy, but more in a laugh-at-him kind of way. He doesn’t mind admitting he is wrong when it comes to concrete ideas such as math problems, but when it comes to ideas, if he is wrong, he will pretend that the right idea was his all along. Sometimes its really funny, but the other day it wasn’t. Its even funnier when I call him out on it. For example:
Me: You know Varton- we should probably just get a price quote on just one meter of piping.
Varton: No, we should go ahead and get 50 meters
Me: Why 50 meters
Varton: So we can write down the price
Me: We can just write down the price for one meter since we don’t know how much we need.
(pause)
Varton: what we should do is just get one meter of piping since we don’t have the exact measurement.
Me: (blank stare)
Awesome... just plain awesome.
Anyway, so far, this grant has been a complete pain in the butt.
Another funny story about Varton. Don’t get me wrong, he is a really nice guy that will do about anything for me so I don’t want to make too much fun of him but... If you have seen “little miss sunshine” you will know the part where the transmission fails and the whole family has to get out and push the car to start it. Ha ha. Well Varton’s car had the same problem, so Varton and I had to push the car before his friend in the driver’s seat popped the clutch. It wasn’t too funny in the village, but when we got into town and we had to push that car down the street, I just kept thinking of that movie and laughing to myself.
In other news, I have three more days of school. I have to go to Yerevan and start planning out lessons to teach the new volunteers when they come. Should be a good time. On my birthday, is their last day of school. I made the mistake of telling one of my teachers that. He responded by saying “oh, im going to remember” with a huge grin on his face. I don’t know how I feel about that. This is the only graduation that I will be able to see here because Armenia is extending high school from just 11 years to 12. So next year, there will be no graduation. Looking forward to it this year though, apparently its a huge deal.
Honestly, not too much else to report. One of my good friends here, Sean, got married on paper three days ago. So congratulations to him and his Armenian wife. When I say, “got married on paper,” here there is a state wedding and a family wedding. The family wedding is in August. His family from the States is going to fly out here. Exciting.
Ok, so this is kind of lame blog, but that’s really all I got. This was a short week since I came back from the south and next week not too much is going to happen. This summer should be pretty interesting though. Eh.
Anyway, Mom and Dad, I miss and love you guys. If next year goes as fast as this past year has gone, ill be back before you get that fence fixed...
Ill be sure to post some pictures on the blog when I get to Yerevan on Wednesday.
Until next time...
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