I changed my shirt

The sunsetting over the mountains behind my village. This was taken in Martuni from the apartment I live in now.



Every year the kids spell out "FLEX". Last year, the kids did this at 7am and started yelling all the Staff people's names. This year, they did it in the midday heat, so I took my time taking this picture.



Chris's Class



My Class



My TA, Diana, and myself.

Free time seems to always elude me. I have been meaning to catch you all up (by “all” I mean probably just Mom and Dad, unless Brandon is still reading this thing) for a while now but time has not decided to let up a bit. It has been pretty busy so I’m hoping that July will relinquish some free time so I can breathe. Maybe it’s good though that there are so many things to do.

Two weekends ago, I came into Yerevan to do my final prep work with Diana on planning this year’s Pre-Departure Orientation for the FLEX high school exchange students. It was fun and by Sunday the 12th, we were finished with everything. Chris and I took some time to hang out ourselves. After planning we went with Diana to a book reading flashmob. This actually makes no sense conceptually. I mean, a flashmob, you get a group of people together and at a predetermined time you stop what you’re doing and you do some kind of collective activity. When I read, it’s when I am by myself, somewhere quiet, quite the contrary to a flashmob. I honestly think that Chris and I may have messed this thing up. I’m almost certain we were the only foreigners there. Since we didn’t really know anyone, we sat down by the large statue in the middle of everything and started to read. We noticed that everyone else started reading too. Then random people started taking pictures of Chris and myself reading. We were about fifteen to thirty minutes early. We were just bored. After a short amount of time everyone started to leave. So it’s either we messed things up, or someone spread the word around the “reading flashmob” was to begin about a half hour early.

After that, we hung out a little bit with some other PCVs in Yerevan and then we got hungry. It was about 11:30pm when we started walking back to Jason’s, so we went back to the American Councils office and got some old pizza out we had ordered for lunch a couple hours back. It was nice. We just sat there in the office talking about stuff and eating cold pizza before walking home.

I went back to Martuni on Monday and hung around Martuni for the week hanging out with Pat until some volunteers came over. They needed a place to stay. I left the following day which was Thursday, early in the morning and headed back to Yerevan. There I finished up my school applications and then met with Diana. Before we met, I went to the post office.

Same lady. This lady who helped me before is pretty funny. Somewhat in an annoying kind of way. She was really nice last time, being really patient as I weighed everything out. This time, she just wanted to argue with me. Everything I wanted to sent was 2.10 kg, so I had to take some things out. Well, she decided what she wanted taken out. I told her which things to take out. She didn’t listen, and kept saying its going to be too heavy. I asked her to humor me. It wasn’t. My item stayed in. The box weighed 1.98kg.

Then she decided that she didn’t want to send it with the box and wrap things up in paper and ship it that way. I said that I would rather her send it in a box. She asked me “what do you know about this? I have been doing this longer than you have”. My response “ longer, but probably incorrectly….” She laughed and said it will get to America… Yes, but will it get there unbroken? So Mom and Dad, expect to receive a brown wrapped thing with about a roll’s worth of clear packing tape all around it.
I’m not sending more things home…

Diana and I then met and went through our lessons. It was fun. We made more flipcharts and other necessities we needed for our lessons starting the following day. That day night we got some sleep, readying ourselves for the following day.

Friday, we woke up early and headed to the American Councils office. We were there at 9:00am getting ready for the influx of kids. It is always a really exciting time. We loaded up and headed to Lusakert. It was great. This year, only 24 kids came compared to the 37 last year due to budget cuts and the increase in credentials needed by host families in the States. I had a great time and I took it to heart too. Nostalgia started creeping in. I started thinking about last year’s PDO and the time since then and that I will soon be in the same country as these kids in a couple months.

The sessions went well, the kids were great, the barbeque was great, we had a great time. The funniest thing about the PDO was this. The last day, there is a male/female gender break-out session where we talk about sexual harassment and how to act in the States. You wouldn’t believe how many times we had to tell the kids not to fight if there was a problem. In Armenia, the kids defend “their honor” by throwing punches. In America, we had to explain that people in America solve problems in a more civilized way… you know, in court, where we will sue someone if it makes the other person feel uncomfortable. Yeah.

Ok, so the best part. So, as conservative as Armenia is, the guys are very close. They do not have an open mind to homosexuality, but sometimes if you saw two guys walking down the road, you would see their arms interlocked, or a guys head in the lap of another guy if they were watching TV. They greet each other by kissing on the cheek (just a cultural difference, Armenians believe hugging to be more intimate). Anyway, when we told the kids not to do any of those things and that Americans value their personal space, one of the boys in the front row said in Armenian “oh, we are all gay….” Smooth. Ok, guess you had to be there.

This year’s PDO was great. Hard to compare with last year because last year I had to do a lot of things myself. This year, Chris was there and he made for a great PDO. Also, since Jason and I had become friends since the last PDO, it was fun hanging out with him whenever he wasn’t sleeping.

So as soon as I got back to Martuni yesterday, I received an email asking for me to come back to Yerevan to talk to the host families about how to welcome their new volunteers, so here I am back in Yerevan. Tomorrow morning, I am going to the airport again to meet the FLEX kids arriving from the US. This will be a much larger group. Very exciting. Then I have some friends coming out to Martuni for the weekend and then Kamran will be coming to stay for a week or so. I don’t have a clue what I am going to do to keep myself entertained for the month of July and August…

I forgot, I got to see the lunar eclipse. Really cool.

Until next time…