July 19, 2012 (Thursday)
Went to the capital city, Yerevan, with a friend today because we finally got a day off after teaching for two days. We rode the Marshutini for 45 minutes, managed to tell the driver to stop at the correct place, and felt super proud HAHA. Tried to find a sushi restaurant and asked a girl in Armenian who started to try and give us directions in English, but quickly decided it wasn’t working and asked if we understood Armenian. We told her we did so she continued in Armenian and we knew basically everything she was saying! BUT we ended-up eating at a pizza/burger place and again, ordered everything in Armenian! Aren’t you proud?! We told ourselves we would go back to language class tomorrow morning and brag to our teacher that we did so well on our own.
Anyways, I didn’t realize that the pizza would be so big so I took a box to-go just in case I saw a homeless on the street cause I had seen some earlier. Later I saw an old grandma asking for money so I went up to her and asked if she was hungry, if she wanted chicken pizza, and told her that it was really tasty. She accepted and I went on!
We went into a few stores… they were expensive even though they were 50% off sales! We met-up with another volunteer from the 19th group and she showed us to this cheap store… Zara! Zara is real cheap here! Or at least the stuff on sale were cheap… or maybe it’s not the “real” Zara? Haha I’m not sure but I don’t care cause I got a dress on sale for 2,000 dram! Which is almost equivalent to like 6 dollars! I’m going to wear it to my next wedding THIS SUNDAY!! Haha it’s my second one! AND there’s another wedding for me to go to the Sunday after!
After our long awesome HOT day in Yerevan, we waved down a marshutini, and that was the end of our day!
July 17, 2012 (Tuesday)
So for the next two weeks I have “Practicum” for the Peace Corps where they basically have us to a “model school” and teach different leveled Armenian students with a partner for 12 classes, which is 12 hours! Ahh.
SOOO I taught my first Armenian class today and got a good review! They said I was a “natural” hehe I was “Ms. Andrea.”
Anyways, the next two weeks are going to be hell, with language classes, teaching, and preparing, and lesson planning… ahhh so much. I’ll probably be absent from blog for a while.
July 15, 2012 (Sunday)
Happy Water Day! I forget what you call it in Armenian, but basically … EVERYONE GETS WET TODAY. No matter where you are, who you are, how old you are, you get WET and it’s not rude who you get wet or where you are haha you just have to be a good sport about it and know that it’s a blessing to get wet!
So I woke up this morning and knew I had to prepare myself for this day. I put my cap on, my bathing suit on, a black shirt on top… and as soon as I was about to take my flip-flops out my sister asks me to come out to help her fill-up the water balloons… BAM! She hits me with one instead! Then of course a full bucket of water on my head. Within two seconds I was drenched head to toe. Water day had begun LOL we fought, ran around the garden, poured buckets and buckets of water on each other… oh AND grandma too! Our neighbor helped me hold my sister so I can pour a bucket on her cause she was beating me, and he ran off before we could get him wet. Then my grandma went inside and poured water out her window on my sister to help me too! HAHA we had a blast.
Afterwards we dried up, ate a quick lunch, and went on a tiny trip! We went to go see this famous church… I think it’s the biggest church in Armenia called Ejmiatsin. Then we went to this far away village to see this big alphabet letters at the church where the guy who invented the letters had studied at. Finally we went not to far from there to this mountain where someone carved out huge letters and put them on this mountain. It was gorgeous!
My papa took a picture of every letter of my name so I could do this!
It was unfortunate cause my mom couldn’t come with us. She had to stay at the store and it seems like she always has to stay at the store if we go somewhere because she can’t drive, only my dad can, and someone always has to be at the store because they don’t trust anyone else or have other workers… only time she ever gets to go out is if my brothers are home, but they’re always in Russia so it’s just really unfortunate for her. Apparently she was never even seen the letter sculptures herself even though my papa and sister have seen them like three times.
July 14, 2012 (Saturday)
Trent, and A-19 volunteer’s birthday is today so he decided to come back to his first village, which is my village, and celebrate with a bunch of us and his first family in Armenia. A bunch of volunteers from his group and a few of us from my group joined him at the restaurant in our village and we had a few beers, some BBQ, and of course a cake from his family. We just had a great time talking with one another and getting to know more about these volunteers who have already been here for a year. You can tell that just because we are Americans and are all in the same situation, we became friends AND family real quick and know that we’ll be there for each other no matter what… because we have to, you know?
I bought this puzzle for my family a couple days ago from Yerevan thinking that it would be a great way to kind of come together at night and not just sit and watch TV. Also I wanted my sister to do something or find a hobby instead of always being at home and just doing household chores or watching TV or worrying about her boyfriend not calling her haha. Anyways, we got to start it today and it was interesting to see how tough it was for them. Matching colors and sizes were like completely foreign almost. I always like to connected the edges of a puzzle first in order to know the size and fill-in the rest almost, but it was almost like they didn’t understand that we had to find all the “straight edges” first in order to create the “border.” Eventually after I started to really get into this puzzle, they started to understand how it was supposed to work and I think they really enjoyed it. My papa would keep saying “nayee-nayee” which means “look look” whenever he was about to get a piece correct. One thing I did notice a lot more while doing this puzzle though was how much power my papa has in this family. My mom and sister would be happily working on the puzzle and as soon as my papa came over, they would have to move over for him, and he almost had to be like “the best” otherwise it would be “no good” or something. It was just an interesting dynamic for me to watch.
I wrote my first letter in Armenian today! One full page all in Armenian! It was a homework assignment but I actually sent it to my parents after (with translation of course!).
My sister and I went with our papa to buy tiny balloons today for the Armenian “Water Day” tomorrow! I’ll explain that to you in tomorrow’s blog.
July 11, 2012 (Wednesday)
Met my first hedgehog today! My sister came in with this brown prickly looking thing in between two lettuce leaves and I don’t know what I was thinking, but I didn’t pay attention to it at all and just kept doing my own thing. She said “look look” all excitedly and you could imagine my face looked like “what the heck…” haha then she started describing that it was a living thing and that it’s hiding/sleeping right now, but I still didn’t believe her cause it didn’t look anything like an animal at all. She then took me to the bathroom with this “thing” in her hands and put it in the shower. She took the shower hose and started spraying it with water and “pop!” the hedgehog pops out like a rolly-polly and starts moving around! It was the cutest little thing! Apparently they hate water so I told her to stop spraying him and we just kind of sat there and watched. She then wanted to show me how they curl back up into a ball so she poked at it and VOILA! Right back into a round prickly brown ball looking thing.
Later on that day my sister and I decided to make banana bread cause we had a billion rotten bananas and nothing to do with them! Armenian’s don’t normally bake banana bread, but my sister knew about it because the volunteers who lived in my village last year tried to make it for their families before… but failed apparently haha my sister said that she wanted to try to make it with me, but better this time haha oops! Sorry A-19 group! Cause my banana bread was the bomb! I made it better here than I ever did at home! The funny thing is I had to substitute a lot of things like baking powder with soda (or so they call it here), honey for brown sugar, less white sugar for white sugar because the sugar here is so much sweeter than back at home, and no vanilla extract. Their oven is also in Celsius and not Degrees so that was some calculating I had to figure out. But all in all, the banana bread turned out great and was super yummy!
She also made me super yummy cream puff type of dessert. YESSSS I'm loved :)
For the winter Armenians, mainly the villages and people with gardens, have to start preparing for the winter. They make all types of jams, juices, pickled vegetables, dried fruit and herbs, and such to last them through the winter without just potatoes and bread.
Today I got to help pit cherries and cut currants off their branches to make “compote(?)” for the winter… they basically preserve fruit by making them into different juices. They boil water with sugar, put them into jars of fruit, and then air-tight seal them to basically preserve and can them until winter time when they don’t have much to eat. I felt truly Armenian squatting on a pot and pitting cherries with a bobby-pin.
July 9, 2012 (Monday)
Walked to the church in the mountains of our village with Kate today. It was only about 4 miles but it was a good darn walk. At one point there was a big dog looking at us around the corner and we got a little scared so I picked up some rocks (just in case! You never know… I don’t want those 6 Rabbi shots from the doctors!) But we were good so I didn’t have to do anything evil ><
Went to another volunteer’s house today to meet her family and kids. The kids call her “tateek” cause she’s basically their grandma, but they are just adorable and made me want to have kids even more! Haha so bad :p But I brought them ice cream and treats like a normal Armenian. The little one took a flower out of the vase and handed it to me. I think I can say he likes me...
Went to a birthday party. My Talking Carl and Angry Birds are super popular with these kids. It’s like an automatic “we like Andrea” method and it’s the easiest method!
Went to the capital city, Yerevan, with a friend today because we finally got a day off after teaching for two days. We rode the Marshutini for 45 minutes, managed to tell the driver to stop at the correct place, and felt super proud HAHA. Tried to find a sushi restaurant and asked a girl in Armenian who started to try and give us directions in English, but quickly decided it wasn’t working and asked if we understood Armenian. We told her we did so she continued in Armenian and we knew basically everything she was saying! BUT we ended-up eating at a pizza/burger place and again, ordered everything in Armenian! Aren’t you proud?! We told ourselves we would go back to language class tomorrow morning and brag to our teacher that we did so well on our own.
 |
| HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA no comment. The burger's name was "BIG BURGER" hahaha |
Anyways, I didn’t realize that the pizza would be so big so I took a box to-go just in case I saw a homeless on the street cause I had seen some earlier. Later I saw an old grandma asking for money so I went up to her and asked if she was hungry, if she wanted chicken pizza, and told her that it was really tasty. She accepted and I went on!
We went into a few stores… they were expensive even though they were 50% off sales! We met-up with another volunteer from the 19th group and she showed us to this cheap store… Zara! Zara is real cheap here! Or at least the stuff on sale were cheap… or maybe it’s not the “real” Zara? Haha I’m not sure but I don’t care cause I got a dress on sale for 2,000 dram! Which is almost equivalent to like 6 dollars! I’m going to wear it to my next wedding THIS SUNDAY!! Haha it’s my second one! AND there’s another wedding for me to go to the Sunday after!
After our long awesome HOT day in Yerevan, we waved down a marshutini, and that was the end of our day!
 |
| These are the kinds of views I see almost every other day. Don't you wish you were here?! Freaking gorgeous! |
July 17, 2012 (Tuesday)
So for the next two weeks I have “Practicum” for the Peace Corps where they basically have us to a “model school” and teach different leveled Armenian students with a partner for 12 classes, which is 12 hours! Ahh.
SOOO I taught my first Armenian class today and got a good review! They said I was a “natural” hehe I was “Ms. Andrea.”
Anyways, the next two weeks are going to be hell, with language classes, teaching, and preparing, and lesson planning… ahhh so much. I’ll probably be absent from blog for a while.
 |
| Random picture of my pregnant cat! Kooka is going to be a mama! :) |
July 15, 2012 (Sunday)
Happy Water Day! I forget what you call it in Armenian, but basically … EVERYONE GETS WET TODAY. No matter where you are, who you are, how old you are, you get WET and it’s not rude who you get wet or where you are haha you just have to be a good sport about it and know that it’s a blessing to get wet!
So I woke up this morning and knew I had to prepare myself for this day. I put my cap on, my bathing suit on, a black shirt on top… and as soon as I was about to take my flip-flops out my sister asks me to come out to help her fill-up the water balloons… BAM! She hits me with one instead! Then of course a full bucket of water on my head. Within two seconds I was drenched head to toe. Water day had begun LOL we fought, ran around the garden, poured buckets and buckets of water on each other… oh AND grandma too! Our neighbor helped me hold my sister so I can pour a bucket on her cause she was beating me, and he ran off before we could get him wet. Then my grandma went inside and poured water out her window on my sister to help me too! HAHA we had a blast.
Afterwards we dried up, ate a quick lunch, and went on a tiny trip! We went to go see this famous church… I think it’s the biggest church in Armenia called Ejmiatsin. Then we went to this far away village to see this big alphabet letters at the church where the guy who invented the letters had studied at. Finally we went not to far from there to this mountain where someone carved out huge letters and put them on this mountain. It was gorgeous!
 |
| The letter "A" |
 |
| My dad told me to wave hello to Armenia.... so I did haha |
My papa took a picture of every letter of my name so I could do this!
 |
| My full name in Armenian. Nifty ya?! |
It was unfortunate cause my mom couldn’t come with us. She had to stay at the store and it seems like she always has to stay at the store if we go somewhere because she can’t drive, only my dad can, and someone always has to be at the store because they don’t trust anyone else or have other workers… only time she ever gets to go out is if my brothers are home, but they’re always in Russia so it’s just really unfortunate for her. Apparently she was never even seen the letter sculptures herself even though my papa and sister have seen them like three times.
July 14, 2012 (Saturday)
Trent, and A-19 volunteer’s birthday is today so he decided to come back to his first village, which is my village, and celebrate with a bunch of us and his first family in Armenia. A bunch of volunteers from his group and a few of us from my group joined him at the restaurant in our village and we had a few beers, some BBQ, and of course a cake from his family. We just had a great time talking with one another and getting to know more about these volunteers who have already been here for a year. You can tell that just because we are Americans and are all in the same situation, we became friends AND family real quick and know that we’ll be there for each other no matter what… because we have to, you know?
I bought this puzzle for my family a couple days ago from Yerevan thinking that it would be a great way to kind of come together at night and not just sit and watch TV. Also I wanted my sister to do something or find a hobby instead of always being at home and just doing household chores or watching TV or worrying about her boyfriend not calling her haha. Anyways, we got to start it today and it was interesting to see how tough it was for them. Matching colors and sizes were like completely foreign almost. I always like to connected the edges of a puzzle first in order to know the size and fill-in the rest almost, but it was almost like they didn’t understand that we had to find all the “straight edges” first in order to create the “border.” Eventually after I started to really get into this puzzle, they started to understand how it was supposed to work and I think they really enjoyed it. My papa would keep saying “nayee-nayee” which means “look look” whenever he was about to get a piece correct. One thing I did notice a lot more while doing this puzzle though was how much power my papa has in this family. My mom and sister would be happily working on the puzzle and as soon as my papa came over, they would have to move over for him, and he almost had to be like “the best” otherwise it would be “no good” or something. It was just an interesting dynamic for me to watch.
I wrote my first letter in Armenian today! One full page all in Armenian! It was a homework assignment but I actually sent it to my parents after (with translation of course!).
 |
| Pretty cool, right?! Sorry the focus is off but I wrote the WHOLE thing in Armenian! Yeee |
My sister and I went with our papa to buy tiny balloons today for the Armenian “Water Day” tomorrow! I’ll explain that to you in tomorrow’s blog.
July 11, 2012 (Wednesday)
Met my first hedgehog today! My sister came in with this brown prickly looking thing in between two lettuce leaves and I don’t know what I was thinking, but I didn’t pay attention to it at all and just kept doing my own thing. She said “look look” all excitedly and you could imagine my face looked like “what the heck…” haha then she started describing that it was a living thing and that it’s hiding/sleeping right now, but I still didn’t believe her cause it didn’t look anything like an animal at all. She then took me to the bathroom with this “thing” in her hands and put it in the shower. She took the shower hose and started spraying it with water and “pop!” the hedgehog pops out like a rolly-polly and starts moving around! It was the cutest little thing! Apparently they hate water so I told her to stop spraying him and we just kind of sat there and watched. She then wanted to show me how they curl back up into a ball so she poked at it and VOILA! Right back into a round prickly brown ball looking thing.
Later on that day my sister and I decided to make banana bread cause we had a billion rotten bananas and nothing to do with them! Armenian’s don’t normally bake banana bread, but my sister knew about it because the volunteers who lived in my village last year tried to make it for their families before… but failed apparently haha my sister said that she wanted to try to make it with me, but better this time haha oops! Sorry A-19 group! Cause my banana bread was the bomb! I made it better here than I ever did at home! The funny thing is I had to substitute a lot of things like baking powder with soda (or so they call it here), honey for brown sugar, less white sugar for white sugar because the sugar here is so much sweeter than back at home, and no vanilla extract. Their oven is also in Celsius and not Degrees so that was some calculating I had to figure out. But all in all, the banana bread turned out great and was super yummy!
She also made me super yummy cream puff type of dessert. YESSSS I'm loved :)
 |
| My pretty sister with her super delicious cream puffs |
July 10, 2012 (Tuesday)
 |
| Drying apricots. Pretty cool, right?! And they're super tasty :) |
Today I got to help pit cherries and cut currants off their branches to make “compote(?)” for the winter… they basically preserve fruit by making them into different juices. They boil water with sugar, put them into jars of fruit, and then air-tight seal them to basically preserve and can them until winter time when they don’t have much to eat. I felt truly Armenian squatting on a pot and pitting cherries with a bobby-pin.
 |
| Green beans from our garden. It's always there and they grow like weeds it's ridiculous!! |
July 9, 2012 (Monday)
Walked to the church in the mountains of our village with Kate today. It was only about 4 miles but it was a good darn walk. At one point there was a big dog looking at us around the corner and we got a little scared so I picked up some rocks (just in case! You never know… I don’t want those 6 Rabbi shots from the doctors!) But we were good so I didn’t have to do anything evil ><
Went to another volunteer’s house today to meet her family and kids. The kids call her “tateek” cause she’s basically their grandma, but they are just adorable and made me want to have kids even more! Haha so bad :p But I brought them ice cream and treats like a normal Armenian. The little one took a flower out of the vase and handed it to me. I think I can say he likes me...
Went to a birthday party. My Talking Carl and Angry Birds are super popular with these kids. It’s like an automatic “we like Andrea” method and it’s the easiest method!
 |
| Baby I'm obsessed with!! His name is Bobkin Cheek. Freaking spoiled crazy ridiculous kid but SO CUTE no?! |
Hey Andrea! How have you been? Hope your learning for teaching is going well. I enjoyed reading your blog again! I was transported while reading your stories and felt like I was there with you in your journey! I feel like I'm kinda getting to know Armenia through you! I loved reading so many things about your blog this time. Like its so cool they have a water day! Sounds like fun. And props to you for the banana bread and writing a full letter in Armenian! Sounds like you've done so much over the past few weeks: seen a hedgehog!, traveled around, met up with other families and friends. So exciting! I love the pictures too! Ok, I hope to catch up with you some more through facebook or something! Until then, see you laters!
ReplyDeleteP.S. I had a dream last night because someone was asking me the other day if you were coming back during vacation time. So I dreamed that you did and you were reunited with Romeo! Lol. And that was it. Haha!
ReplyDelete