School Daze

We are now into the fourth week of school and life is beginning to settle into a routine. Both of us have a full workload of about 20 classes a week, including Saturday classes. School here currently is six days a week, although there are rumors it may change to a five-day week in the next few years. We are teaching everything from third grade to eleventh grade. Most of the instructions to students are in Armenian, so there are daily challenges to understand what is being said. Both of us love our schools, our counterparts (the other English teachers), and especially the students.

We have encouraged the students we teach to talk to us when we are out and about in town, so everywhere we go there is usually a chorus of "hello" and "how are you". Each class begins with "good morning/afternoon children", to which the students reply "good morning/afternoon teacher. How are you?" We then say "I am fine. How are you?" The students then say "I am fine thank you." And then they sit down and class begins.

On Sunday afternoon we went with a group of Fred's 8th graders on a short hike to a small church outside of town. We were gone for 3 1/2 hours and the kids could have stayed longer. We played soccer (football), had sack races, ate some food, and even spoke a little English. The kids had a blast, and so did we. We can't say enough wonderful things about the children. They are amazing in every way and we love being around them.

This weekend we will head to a meeting with our counterparts where we will learn some techniques for team teaching. It's a pretty new idea for many teachers, and we are looking forward to getting some practical knowledge to use in our classes. It also will be nice to be away and to stay in a real hotel for two nights. And of course to see the other TEFL volunteers who are scattered around the country. Some of our fellow teachers are as much as 14 hours away from us by public transit. The closest are still two hours away, so we haven't done much visiting yet. We have a one week break at the end of October and hopefully the weather will be nice enough that we can go see some sights in the southern part of the country.

We continue with Armenian lessons three times a week and little by little we are learning how to speak, read and write. Sometimes the progress feels very slow, but at least it's progress. Okay, back to school for the last class of the day.