Yesterday I went to school. I basically just sat around and didn’t do anything. I made my schedule for the year, went to a couple of classes and then came back home to look over my grant and do some other things. Pretty uneventful day.
Today was a bit more exciting. Actually not so much. I woke up early to get ready for FLEX testing. This was interesting because I went to the Director’s house for breakfast on Saturday morning. I was just a FLEX trainer, but all the other volunteers thought that I knew more than I did for FLEX. They would call me with such questions as “if my student missed the test in the area, can they go to another testing place?” My answer after a long pause “Um, sorry (insert name here) I was just a trainer before they left for the states, I have no idea about the testing,” which was, in fact, the truth. But it was funny that I got bombarded with all these questions, when I was just the messenger from the American Councils Director to the volunteers. The email she got me to send out, had her contact information. Even her personal cell phone. Yeah, that was great.
Ok, so anyway, I figured that I would educate myself on the whole FLEX program so I went with my students today to the testing site. That was at 9am in the local town of Martuni. We got there and went into the testing center. Apparently, my school director didn’t catch that 11th graders were not eligible for the test and after the introduction, I walked with them out of the school. My other 6 students took the first round. During that time, I walked around with my students and then I faxed the rest of my grant papers to the office. I am finished now with my part unless the committee sees some kind of discrepancy in my work. Then I have to fix it. Sweet. But my grant overseer or “champion” as they call it said that it looked “awesome” and that he was “proud of me for all the work I did under the short time frame.” This guy is also a close friend of mine so he could have just been being nice... Eh.
Afterwards, I went back to the school and found out that 5 of my students made it to the next round, so the one girl went back to the village. So while I was waiting for them to do the next round which was 2 hours long, I went over to VIncent’s house and we made Swiss melts, or basically a grilled cheese with sautéed mushrooms in it. Um, I know most of you at home would be like “so”... but remember my living conditions. This is a gourmet meal here. After lunch, we watched a show and then I went back to the school to see how everything went. The kids said they thought they did pretty well. Well, from all the participants only 9 made it to the second round and of those 9, 5 were from our school, so that was pretty cool. Now, I have something new to worry about... Getting my kids to complete the next round and then become a finalist before going to America. (More hair is going to come out...) Really excited for the kids though.
As most of you regular readers... Mom and Dad... know, I usually post a blog every week or so. Well, I had a very interesting talk with my Grandma. It was actually kind of sad. We do a lot of talking during our coffee breaks. We were talking about one thing or another and she said what a bad life she has lived. She wasn’t saying it in a way to make someone (me) feel sorry for her but she just said it very matter-of-factly. It was a little hard to swallow. I think she thinks of me as a release of some kind, because Im not from here, she trusts me not to tell other people (and honestly who would I tell), we are going our separate ways soon, and I guess we have gotten pretty close. She talks very freely now. I told her that she has experienced a lot in her life. She said “what have I experienced? I came to Armenia to live, living as a housewife.” I then asked her why she came to Armenia then. She said that she came here because an Armenian guy who was tall, good looking, who seemed like a good guy came and asked her to marry her. He told her that Armenia was a great place and told her that he lived in Yerevan, a decent sized city. She said she got here, and they went to one of the smallest villages in Armenia. So she went to a huge city, like Kiev, to one of the smallest villages in Armenia. She said that her life would have been completely different if she had married a Ukrainian or Russian. She said that her husband would just leave in Russia for months at a time and leave her with the kids in Armenia. (Remember that when Grandma came to Armenia, she didn’t know the language... at all). I just can’t imagine that. She said “I thought about leaving, but how could I leave my children behind? I didn’t know what my husband was doing in Russia, if he had another life with another family, and here I was in Armenia worrying about my kids.” She just kept saying “what do I know, I have had an uninteresting life.” That was really sad. I just can’t imagine being 18 and moving from your own country where you lived in a city and then moving to another country to a village with hardly any amenities, learning the language on your own from whoever you could.
On another note, she is really funny with the whole dating thing because she is still very old-fashioned. A long time ago I wrote about how she asked me if I wanted to get married and how she was going to start bringing eligible women over to introduce them to me, which I shot down rather quickly. She said I had about 2 years before I was in trouble about getting married. To that I just laughed. She is really funny about that stuff.
Its going to be strange when she leaves...
I guess that’s all I wanted to write about. The words that Grandma ingrained in my mind that I will remember for a long time. Just the way she said “I have lived an uninteresting life.” Again, another moment where I really appreciate where I come from and what I have been able to do... what I am free to do.
Mike is headed home for his sister’s wedding on Friday. I hope you people keep him in your thoughts as he makes the 20+ hours back home.
Until next time...
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