Finding Rhythm

I love the fall; I think it is probably my favorite season. I like the crisp feeling in the air, the vibrant color of the trees, and the foods that are ripe for harvest. Fall is here in Armenia. In fact, a few nights ago, we almost skipped fall and went straight on to winter. After the sun went down, it rained for hours. It was one of those rains that sends a coldness straight to your bones, a coldness that you just can’t shake even with the warmest blanket. When we woke up in the morning, the surrounding mountains were covered in snow. It continued to rain the next day and the streets became a mess of mud and lake-sized ponds. I have a feeling it was a prelude of what’s to come.

Things are going fairly well so far. For me, school has been quite slow until just recently. As I think I’ve mentioned before, neither of my teaching counterparts speak much English, so it has been difficult to communicate, let alone plan lessons together. However, slowly but surely, I am nudging my way into the classroom. I now have scheduled planning hours with both my counterparts and I have begun to lead a few activities with the children. Fortunately, both my counterparts seem to be open to the idea of team teaching with me. I am not an experienced teacher, so I fear that I will make many mistakes. But, I’m trying to be an optimist and consider the whole process a kind of on-the-job training opportunity. The fact that neither of my counterparts speaks English very well also makes me feel like maybe I am really needed there too.

Nicole’s counterpart speaks very well, so she has been active in the classroom since the second or third week. The challenges that she faces have not had so much to do with communication, but instead with classroom behavior. The Armenian school system is much different than the American school system and I think some of these differences contribute to the misbehavior of the students. There’s a lot I could say about that, but it’s probably best not to elaborate. Besides, American schools have their share of behavioral problems and I think part of Nicole’s difficulties in dealing with them may come from her familiarity with early education, where social standing and peer pressure are in their infancy.

We both have plans to start extracurricular English clubs at our schools. We’ve decided the ideal situation is that we run the clubs together. There are some logistical issues with this idea, but I think we can make it work. We’re planning on getting started soon, probably sometime this month.

Hmmm…what else is there to report? The language is still a cause for much frustration. I feel like my speaking abilities are improving, but I just cannot hear. Armenian word order is so different from English. Here’s an example…if I want to say “I am from Syracuse, fall is very beautiful there”, I would say “I Syracuse from am, there fall very beautiful is”. To make matters worse, there are many sentence structures that really have no definite rules, so people can say the words in whatever order they want. Many of the people I speak to are not used to communicating with foreigners, so they don’t really know how to speak to me, they don’t know how to use simple words and speak slowly. But, like everything else, it is coming along.

There’s much more to tell about, especially because I haven’t written in a while, but I don’t want this post to get too long. I’ll just say that things have been interesting. We’ve had many different experiences at school, at home, at the market, and in the various other places we’ve been spending our time.

Here are some pictures to go along with the update. As always, thank you all so much for supporting us and keeping us in your thoughts. Shout out to Mimi and RJ…good luck guys, we can’t wait to see Mason…thanks for getting hooked up on Skype.

Here is Nicole returning home from school a couple weeks ago. I’d say there were probably a hundred bees flying around the flowers and bushes next to the stairs before the weather got cold.

Since the cold set in a little sooner than expected, Nicole has been worried that her winter gear won’t arrive from the U.S. in time. So, she has been crocheting a hat for herself.

This was probably one of the highlights of the month. Josh and Christen sent us a package with peanut butter and chicko-sticks in it...well, there were other things too…it wasn’t just chicko-sticks and peanut butter. The first picture captures my uncontrollable excitement over being reunited with peanut butter, and the second captures the after-math of our chicko-stick binge…they were all gone in a matter of days. A special thanks to Josh and Christen, we can’t tell you how happy that made us…good stuff.

Nicole and I went back to the village where we lived for our first 3 months in the country just last weekend to see our first host family. The marshutni (like a bus) doesn’t stop in the village, so we hopped off on the highway, walked some of the way there, and then took a taxi to the village from another town…the first picture is of me walking into town. Once we got there, we did some apple picking in my family’s backyard…that’s the second picture.

The next two pictures are from earlier this week. The town where we are living sits in a valley and these are pictures of the mountains that surround us. They were taken on the day that I described at the beginning of this post.

Finally, here is Nicole making apple sauce. When we went to visit our host family last weekend, they gave us a ton of apples. We’re still trying to figure out what to do with them before they go bad.