Volume I Number 8: October 6, 2004
“Hello, What’s Your Name? Hello, What’s Your Name? Hello, What’s Your Name?”
Hey America,
“White Wedding” by Billy Idol blares from our iPod while Laura prepares lesson plans and I type this email. Our host family watches television in the other room while drinking their evening coffee. We haven’t been able to get into the routine of watching television quite yet; most of it is in Russian. The days have been quite pleasant as of late. The leaves are changing colors and the weather is cooling off a bit but there hasn’t been rain in a couple weeks. We have been finding our routine to be enjoyable though quite busy at times.
The last couple weekends we have spent outside of Alaverdi. Two weeks ago we were up in the Noyemberian area in a small town nestled in the northeast corner of the country. The country of Azerbaijan is about 6 km away and can be seen from the top of the hillsides. During the war with Azerbaijan in the 90s this town took some fire and had buildings destroyed. Today the town doesn’t show any signs of the war. We took the trip to visit our PCV married couple friends Dan and Jan (from New Jersey) along with John (from Colorado) and Scott (from somewhere in the US). We had a great vegetable quesadilla and hamburger (I opted to not go for the cow this time) dinner on Dan and Jen’s porch, socialized throughout the evening, roasted marshmallows over the BBQ and in the morning had a great hike to a nearby monastery. It was our first visit out of site since swearing-in and was much needed.
Last weekend we took a trip to Yerevan. We had many reasons for this visit. It was pay weekend and the banks to withdraw our living allowance are only located in Yerevan. Laura and I are part of a couple different committees and each one was having a meeting over the weekend. I am the chairman for the Environmental Education Resources Committee which is responsible for organizing Peace Corps environmental education books, videos and developing education curriculum. Laura is part of the VAC committee which a select number of PCVs who represent their programs and work with Peace Corps country staff to resolve volunteer issues. Besides committees and collecting money, it was great to visit with other PCVs, enjoy some cuisine from the local restaurants, shop for items that are not available at our site, visit a travel agency about plane tickets to the states, do some hiking with Dan and Jen and enjoy the European culture of Yerevan.
Our days are getting pretty busy as we our clubs are taking off. Laura’s days are much more filled than mine. Laura has a ton of clubs that preoccupies her time at school and at home with lesson planning. The children have not been dropping out of the clubs and they continue to grow with enthusiasm and interest. It’s been wonderful to see the children enjoy learning English.
My environmental club has been taking a couple of weeks longer to get going than expected. It was going to be another week because my counterpart was recovering from a foot injury but I couldn’t stand to wait. I chose to do the club without a translator and attempt to teach in Armenian. I started up last Tuesday with the first club of 4th, 5th and 6th graders and had 4 children. On Wednesday I had 10 6th, 7th and 8th graders. Both groups were well-behaved and great participants in the activities. They helped me with my language when I stumbled over my words or forget them. The lessons were about natural objects and what is natural and not natural in our world. I’m looking forward to next week when we go on our first hike together.
Last Wednesday we had our first Armenian tutoring session. The woman lives in the next building over and speaks no English. We had our friend Nellie, who speaks English and is friends with the tutor, come with us to the first session to help us get the lessons lined out and answer any questions. We are going tutor a couple of times a week and look forward to our improved language skills.
Another volunteer from our group called it quits and went back to the states. That makes our total count in Armenia 88.
Last Saturday was Teacher’s Day. This is a day to celebrate teachers by having a party only for the teacher’s at the school. It involves lots of eating, dancing, and socializing. Now, Laura and I had planned on hiking Mt. Aragats (the highest summit in Armenia) with our friends, but when we were told about this event we knew we should be there. It turned out to be a great time. We saw many of our colleagues come out of their “shells” and I know they saw the Americans come out of theirs. There were many toasts throughout the event, including one for us. It was a nice toast and we thought the spotlight was off of us when the toast ended. Nope. The band began playing “Let It Be” by the Beatles and singing the lyrics in English. We thought what a nice touch. The rest of the teacher’s thought we should be dancing in the middle of the room. They won. We did a slow dance to the song, which we think was the extended version, while everyone sat and watched. It was rather awkward having no one join us but it was a nice touch from the band to give us that moment. It’s one we will never forget.
Book Recommendation: Between A Rock and A Hard Place by Aron Ralston. Some of you may have heard about this true story and now it’s a book. In April 2004 Aron survived six days in a remote canyon of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park when his hand and wrist were pinned between a wall and boulder when a rock fell off a ledge he was climbing down. He had little food and water and was sleep deprived throughout the ordeal. In the end, he will have to amputate his own arm to survive. It’s an inspiring story about the human spirit and will to survive despite the odds against an individual.
Have you ever seen an endangered bird, caught from the wild, tied up at someone’s house? We’ve just seen our first and it really sucks. The endangered bird that we’ve seen is called the Eurasian Black Vulture. Some of the local children took us to the house a few weeks ago to see it, though at the time we couldn’t identify it. We purchased a bird book recently and were able to identify it. This bird is huge. When sitting on the ground, his head comes to our waist and has a wingspan of 8 feet. He is a magnificent looking bird that we hope can be released soon. His foot is tethered to the fence so he isn’t able to fly off. He looks very sad and just sits and stares. We were told that the family is trying to sell him for money and has had him for some time. While we understand that people have to make a living in this country we feel that this it should not be done at this birds expense. We’ve contacted a Yerevan bird organization to bring attention to this matter because Armenian laws don’t protect endangered species of any kind. We have thought about covert operations to rescue it, but, due to the fact that we are the new kids on the block, we haven’t found a local Armenian who cares about the bird, and we have been seen a few times visiting this bird, we may stand out quite easily as the culprits. We don’t even know if the bird can fly if we cut the rope so it would only be caught again. It’s very hard to see this and hope that a happy solution can be found.
The water is out again. Last time it was only 7 days without water. Currently, we are at day 4. (It’s the next day. We have water now.)
Speaking of water, it is amazing how little water we can use and get by just fine. The 5 of us in this home can get by with two full bathtubs of water every 3 or 4 days. This takes into account our dishwashing, toilet flushing (if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down), bathing (granted we bathe a couple times a week), laundry (once every week or two) and drinking and cooking uses. We’re now seeing how much water we didn’t properly use or reuse while living in the states. We would use one bathtub of water just to have one bathe and pour it down the drain instead using the water to flush a toilet or water a plant. Don’t get us wrong though, we do miss the occasional bath to relax and enjoy in. We just have a different perspective on what we can really get by with.
I think it’s really good for the water in our town to be at a minimum and the water that is used is reused before being disposed. I mention this because all of the towns in our area are not connected to a working wastewater treatment facility. All of the water is put straight into the river without any mechanical, biological, or chemical purification. A few weeks ago, we were admiring a waterfall that flowed from our town over the canyon’s edge into the river below in Alaverdi. A few days ago we found out that the waterfall is all of our town’s wastewater flowing into the river. The money is not available to fix the wastewater treatment facility that hasn’t worked in 15 years. This is the same for almost all of the wastewater treatment facilities in Armenia. Some are able to treat wastewater with mechanical treatment but the money is not available for other treatments.
We are doing are part to reuse as much as possible, especially when receiving a package from the states. The envelopes are kept for storage use, the box is used for organizing items or torn apart to make displays, the plastic bags are used again and again, the greeting cards are kept for visual aides, the packing newspaper is read and then kept for the winter for starting a fire and, of course, the actual contents you send to us are put to good use.
We hope that everyone is doing well. Thanks again for all your email and letters. We hope to see some of you when we visit in January.
Love,
Brett and Laura