The finished product of the left over money of my bathroom project, which paid to renovate the cafeteria in my school. Before there were holes in the floor and holes in the walls. Holes where you could see outside. Not conducive when you are in the 1st-4th grade and you're trying to each lunch during the winter months...
The finished bathroom outside of the toilet area.
A toilet. One of four.
Where the bathrooms currently are... 7 months ago.
The outhouse... almost falling over with crap reaching the top of the hole.
Three weeks ago Vardan really wanted me to get my picture taken in the yearbook. So much so, that he called the photo man to come back on a Tuesday as pictures were taken on Thursday and Friday and my schedule didn’t sync up with those dates. I got my suit on and went to school and got my picture taken. (I think I already talked about this in a previous blog). The week of April 18th, we got our photos. It was in a yearbook. Yearbooks are not the same as they are in the States, but only have the pictures of those in your class, or those who share the same year as you. I was in the 9th grade yearbook. Don’t know why it was the 9th grade. It probably had to do with the fact that Vardan is the 9th grade “teacher.” So there I am on the teachers page with my photo and my name under it. Everyone else shows no smile and has their full name written under their photos... My photo has a picture of me smiling from ear to ear with just “Deni” written under it in Armenian. I don’t think they know my last name... Oh well, its cool to be in a yearbook.
The weather is warming up, or at least it was until I called Grandma during my conference. She said that it had snowed the night before but it had already melted. Geez. However, Yerevan has been really nice and I enjoyed walking around in sandals there. The summer has finally come. Or... the winter has finally left.
I left my site over ten days ago.
On April 22nd I left the village to go to Yerevan to get the things for the AIDS conference taken care of. Before I left, I wrote a letter and got it translated for Grandma. She can’t read Armenian but knows Russian so the letter is in Russian. I just have to find the time to hand write it out. A one page letter written in a language you are not familiar with takes longer than you may think. It was a strange feeling leaving her, almost like a trial run. We hugged longer than usual probably realizing this was going to be one of our last.
Everything for the conference was ready to go, except one thing, one of the workers at the Red Cross didn’t have all her things ready to go even though I had given her over two weeks to prepare her things. She had not finished, nor was the presentation translated into English. She said that since the presentation was for Armenians, that it didn’t need to be translated. But what about the Peace Corps Volunteers?
Friday night I stayed at Khashi’s house. He and Mohson made Persian food for me. It consisted of rice and chicken where the chicken was cooked in a pressure cooker. It was really good. You had a choice of putting pomegranate sauce, yogurt sauce, or some kind of pickled sauce on it. I think I ate way more than I should have, but Khashi assures me that it is insulting if you don’t eat a lot. In that case, I must have complimented him well... That night we just stayed up and talked a bit. Then Khashi called his girlfriend in Iran, Sepideh.
Its similar to some kind of forbidden love story. They were speaking on skype. Khashi and I were speaking to her and she was typing back. We could see each other but she couldn’t make a sound. Really interesting. It is obvious how much they miss each other. Probably because Khashi is talking to her on gchat while he is supposed to be working on his thesis for four hours every night. Khashi, if you’re reading this, don’t pretend like it isn’t true.
Saturday was a slow day but I did get to see some of my friends in Yerevan. Kyle and Mike Kim were around and I never hang out with them because they are always with their girlfriends. Always. It was nice to be able to hang out with them and Jason at the same time. Sunday, Easter, I walked around with Khashi and then hung out with Jason and Elvira at the house.
Monday, I got some last minute things finished for the conference and moved from Jason and Elvira’s to the hotel where we had our Close of Service Conference. Can you believe that, its already here.
Mike was my roommate, as usual, and we had a good assortment of people come over and hang out with us in our room. It was fun. One of our A-17 girls recently got engaged to an A-18, so the girls decided to throw her a bachelorette party. Mike, Paul, and I were the strippers. It was awesome because Megan, being from rural Montana, didn’t know how to handle three guys dancing half naked around her. Either way, she had a good time. Mike should truly look into going into that profession.
The Conference was fine. It was fun. Many of the sessions explained how to check out of the country. It was funny because, for example, the medical session was scheduled to be ninety minutes long, but the Doctors only spoke for twenty minutes. That is basically how all the sessions were. We were there to hang out. Many of us probably won’t see each other again between now and when we actually leave.
The second night we all got a coach tour bus and rode it for 15 minutes to the Ambassador’s house. Nice house, but I thought she would say something. Basically, we got to her house, she had lots of hors devours, but that was it. I figured she would make a speech or something, but it didn’t happen. However, (and mom and dad, you will be proud of what I am about to say), there were napkins there with the US Seal on it. Fancy. So, as we were saying goodbye, I asked if she would sign my napkin. She looked at me and asked “are you serious?”. Absolutely. She said that I was flattering her. She didn’t know where to write it so I turned around and told her to just write it on my back. She found a table instead and signed the napkin there. I know what many of you are thinking, but she was smiling and laughing the whole time, so we had a good time with this. And, I have a napkin with the US seal and the US Ambassador to Armenia’s signature on it. Yeah, true story. I have the napkin to prove it.
So, the COS Conference finished. Mike and I had to switch rooms because of the AIDS conference. Different budget, smaller rooms. There were five guys sleeping in one hotel room, but it was a big room and all of us had beds. It was decently comfortable. The conference went really well, but I slept about three hours each night. Half from stress, but also because of other things I had to do. On Friday night, I went out with Jason and Michael to Caree’s going away dinner. It was strange because I realized that I had met her the last weekend of January and here we are already at the beginning of May. She is gone now, traveling the area before heading back to the US for grad school to start. That was the start of many goodbyes to come. It was like a PC friend leaving. We ate dinner and went to a Karaoke Bar and sang for a while. We sang Aerosmith’s “Don’t want to miss a thing” and then she left. But honestly, the conference went really well and the evaluations were really good. I am excited about what will come of all this. Most of the work is on the Armenian’s with the PCV just giving support. In this way, in a couple years, it will be more sustainable. It was really nice to have that behind me and finished. Still work to do, but not nearly as much. Saturday night, Mike and I headed over to Jason’s to say goodbye to Elvira and Jason as they are going back to the States for a couple weeks. They are staying in Turkey for 4 days and heading to their hometown for the rest of the time. They return on my birthday.
Right now, I am down in Kapan with my friend Lizzie. She is from California. She will be the next AIDS chair so I wanted to come down and talk about the upcoming year with her. It has been a lot of fun hanging out with her. Maybe one day, she will make it up to Martuni. She is full of lies and doubt it will happen even though she assures me that it will.
I am here until Thursday and then I go to Goris for my friend Patrick’s Birthday. Then back to the village to teach for two weeks and then its all over. All my responsibilities are finished with Peace Corps. At that point, I will have to start planning for the American Councils stuff.
Mike and I are now planning for our trip after we finish here. Yes, early, but when I tried to buy our plane ticket from Istanbul to Riga, the prices jumped 50 dollars.
Ok, so that’s about it. Things are winding down, but the weather is becoming more and more awesome.
Until next time...
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