I have seen farmers bailing hay in the states, but the way it is often done here is nothing short of amazing. Not to mention incredibly hard work. It starts with "mowing" the field, which in our village is all done by hand with scythes. Backbreaking work to put it mildly. Once that is done, the hay is moved into piles by hand using pitchforks. Also backbreaking work. The final step in the process is to lift the piles (again by hand with pitchforks) into a bailer that is pulled by a tractor. The neatly bailed hay then falls onto the field, and is picked up by hand and put onto a truck. The big truck, usually waaaaaay overloaded, then takes the hay to whatever barn or house where it is being stored. It's amazing to watch it happen.
The people--all of them--work incredibly hard here. There is no such thing as a day off for anyone. Only the male children seem to be exempt from much of the daily routine. The gender roles here are quite different from what we are used to. Like America, men do the barbeques (horovats) and take care of much of the yard stuff (watering and pruning, but generally not gardening). But the women do just about everything else. All the cooking, cleaning, washing, dishes, etc. In the house, it's interesting to watch our host brother recoil when asked to pick up a dish, much less wash one. But somehow it all works, and we have gotten quite used to life here.
We are winding down our training and have just over a week to go. We have one more week of language classes and this week have been teaching school in something called "model school". It is designed to give us a little preview into what it's like to teach in Armenian schools. The only difference is that these kids are pretty much hand-picked and really WANT to be in school, which is a far cry from what we will actually deal with when we get to our sites. So far, we have taught a small class of adorable 9-10 year olds and a very large class of 13-14 year olds. What a difference a few years makes!
We are doing something called "team teaching" where one person takes one part of the lesson, and another takes a second part. In reality, we have a very strict curriculum that we must follow, and few of the teachers have used interactive or communicative activities in their classes. So we will have lots of challenges coming up.
Among the volunteers, there is something called the Volunteer Advisory Committee (VAC) which includes representatives from each of the sectors (TEFL, Community Business Development, Community Health Education and Environmental Education). There is one rep for each sector, and each volunteer class. Our class is called A-18 because we are the 18th group to be in Armenia. The long story is that I will be serving as the VAC rep for the A-18 TEFL group. I am excited as it is an opportunity to work with other sectors and with Peace Corps staff. I will find out more at our first meeting on August 4.
Hard to believe we will be living in a new part of the country in less than two weeks. I am sad to leave our little village and the peaceful country life we have here. Even more sad to leave our host family, who has been nothing short of wonderful to us these past two months. We truly feel like part of the family, part of the neighborhood, and part of the village.
Fred writes . . .
We're now on our second week of teaching kids. The hardest part is the lesson planning: we teach in teams of two, so every night I've been getting together with another volunteer to plan our lesson for the next day. It takes us about three hours - way too much - mostly because we both think too much.
Otherwise things are going fairly well. I now have my new cell phone (+374 9889 1961). If you call (please do!) keep in mind that we're GMT +4; that's three hours ahead of Western Europe, nine hours ahead of the US East Coast, and on the opposite side of the planet from the West Coast. Evenings between 8pm and 22pm work best.
Host Family News
We just found out that our new host mom fell and broke both her legs. While the family was willing to host us, we felt it best not to add to what they will have to do over the next few weeks and months. Our new host mom is going to be bedridden for weeks, if not months. Peace Corps is going to start looking tomorrow to try and find us a new host family to live with starting on August 6. We will keep you posted.
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