Like I mentioned before, everyone says that your second year will fly by. Well I just looked at the last time I wrote and it was September 7th. I thought I just wrote like three days ago. I guess its time to do some catching up. Honestly, a lot has happened in that time.
Right now because Im doing my crash course for some of the girls in my school, I haven’t really been able to do much else. Everyday for 2 hours, we meet and I teach them how to write an essay and we practice speaking. Its fun, for the most part. There were about 9 or 10 people from the whole marz, or state, that made it to the second round. 4 of those students were from my school. I can’t take any credit for getting them to that stage because none of them were my students. However, we have been working really hard to get them ready for the third round.
One of the most interesting things about being here is teaching the kids. One of the main reasons is because their teaching methodology is completely different. In the schools, the teachers just lecture and the kids are expected to memorize pages of information. They are very good at that. However, if you ask a question like “Is technology good”, they will respond with “yes” even without thinking about if it is or not. The students, think, “wow, that was an easy question,” however when I ask them “why”, there are just blank stares. In my opinion one of the pitfalls of this education system is the lack of critical thinking exercises. In America, we are taught to always ask why. Not only is the answer important but sometimes more importantly, why is it the answer. This doesn’t really strike you in the States. It never did me until I got here and did a comparison.
So from this FLEX crash course, I am getting excited because I feel like I am actually teaching the kids something or use. Being able to think outside of the box, and asking questions based on their answers, or the Socratic method. At first it was really rough. The girls would just stare at me. In Armenia, if a teacher asks a question and the kid doesn’t know the answer, the teacher is immediate to answer the question for them. There is about 3 seconds of time given for the student to answer. I remember sometimes in class where the teacher would wait a minute or two before calling on someone else. I am proud to say that the kids are starting to “get it”. You can actually see the gears churning in their heads now. Their eyes aren’t just glazed over anymore and they are actually trying to think of something. The answer are still very ordinary. But they are getting better. I basically jump out of my seat if they say anything profound.
This has been going on everyday now for over a week and in that week, I have already seen great improvement. On a different note, I asked the girls if they wanted to go to America. They all immediately said yes. I waited for a while and then told them that if teachers and directors and parents weren’t involved, would you still want to leave, and two of them said no. The pressure is real here to be able to study abroad. One out of the two girls said that she really wanted to go but her father wouldn’t let her go. If this girl gets accepted, this is basically ruining a chance of a lifetime. This girl is from the village and will live in the village and do everything in the village. Its amazing what one year in America will do. Not only is this an experience for the girls, but for the future, they will have cultural experience and be able to learn English which will open up an infinite amount of doors for them. I didn’t really realize this until this year.
I don’t know if anything I said in the last page made any sense. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. Im really drugged up right now because I have a cold. More explanation to come in a bit.
Saturday it was the perfect day to do a whole lot of nothing. It was muggy, cold, and rainy. I actually don’t think I did anything. So, I won’t talk about it anymore.
The following day, at 8:30am, I got ready and walked to the bus station. There I waited for two minutes before getting on the bus to Madina, Hector’s village. I met Kyle and Nick on the bus and we got to Hector’s house around 9:20am. Hector made us coffee, I chugged a liter and a half of water and then we started our trek up the volcano. It was really cloudy and half of the mountain was covered. It didn’t take us long to get to the top. As soon as we got to the top, all the clouds cleared. It turned out to be a really nice day and better yet, we had the whole mountain to ourselves. We hung out up there for a while. I love it up there. It is a mountain much like Mt. Kilimanjaro. It just sits by itself, so there are no other ranges to mess up the view. Its really nice up there because you can see a nice 360 degree view of the area. We took pictures which I will post tomorrow when I go to Yerevan. We took in the sights and then walked down the mountain.
We got back to Hector’s house and his sister made us chicken bbq. It was perfect timing because I was starving. Pat and Vincent came and joined us for the food and then after that we walked back. I walked back to my village. It was a good day for a walk.
I got back and Grandma just laughed because I walked all the way home. She does that a lot... laugh.
This week I have been working on my grant revisions. I finally got them done. I’m glad that its almost all done, at least my part. Im looking forward to finishing it. Its funny how everyone one in the village knows about it.
So, after coming off of the mountain, I got a cold. I am sick now. My sister and nephew came to visit. I think I am comfortable around kids. At least this one. He recognizes me and knows who I am. I was holding him the other day and he decided to look at me. Then after staring at me for a good 10 seconds just sneezed right into my eyeball. That was great. He is a funny kid. He plays this game with me. Actually two. He just stares at me. Just stares at me like I have something funny growing my nose. No joke. He will just sit there and stare at me like I am the strangest thing. Another thing he will do is, now that he can walk, he will walk over to me and pretend to be giving me something. Then when my hand is out, he will pretend he is putting the object in my hand and then he will pull his hand away really fast and start baby laughing. Its actually pretty funny. I combat this by just picking him up and swinging him around, which he really likes. Another funny thing he did was, he was standing by the door. I came over to him and he slammed the door right in my face. I cracked up at this. I opened the door and picked him up and again swung him around, which again, he enjoyed... But will probably reinforce that slamming doors in people’s faces is ok.
What a funny little man. Smart little thing too. When my sister says, “take the thing to Danny” he looks right at me and then tumbles over to me. He is a sweet kid. They call me his Uncle which is pretty cool because I don’t have any sisters or brothers so I get to be this kids Uncle.
In other news, our Country Director left for a job in Afghanistan and my Program Manager was let go. The Health sector and Environmental Sector were consolidated into “youth development” so they are hiring a new PM, which is really sad because I really depended on my PM for a lot of things. Now she is gone. Im a little concerned to see how things go when Grandma leaves. Those are two of my biggest supports here in this country. This could be disastrous. Nah, I do have some pretty solid neighbors.
Tomorrow I leave for Counterpart Conference. Looking forward to it. It will be weird because this is the last official thing that I will be doing with Susanna. I guess that is that. Anyway, Ill let you know how the conference went.
Until next time...
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