APRIL
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MARCH
Armenia celebrates April Fool’s Day! I never really enjoyed
this holiday back in America but for some reason I was all hyped-up to play
tricks with my host brother and sister, and also see how they might do this day
differently than from back at home. Well, do they??? NOPE! I guess people all
around the world like to play similar types of tricks on each other HAHAHA I
have no idea why I thought it’d be any different!
TRICKS PLAYED ON ME =
- My host grandfather comes into the kitchen while I’m eating breakfast and tells me someone’s waiting for me outside. I quickly put my food down and walk out the front door… no one’s there, but I keep looking, went to the backyard, opened the garage, EVERYWHERE! Confused, I walk back inside and there’s my host grandfather sitting on the couch just laughing at me! I HAD NO IDEA! He says “I got you,” in Armenian and I honestly was confused for a good minute there. Mind you, this is early in the morning, I hadn’t realized it was April Fool’s Day yet, and on top of all of that… this is my host GRANDFATHER! Who would’ve thought he’d be playing a trick on me?!?! HAHA.
- My host sister and I were sitting at the table; she was doing her homework while I was working on lesson plans. She sees my weekly schedule I had neatly written and organized, asks me if she can see it, and of course I say “ha” without even looking up... a minute later I notice her studying it really hard so I look up and as soon as she catches my eye, she rips the paper in one swift motion right in half! My eyes and jaw drop while she’s sitting there laughing ridiculously! Little did I realize she switched papers and my schedule was sitting neatly right on the table. I admit… SHE GOT ME GOOD!
TRICKS I PLAYED ON OTHERS =
- When the whole family was in the living room watching TV like we do every night, I took a red pen and put a little color on my left hand as if I were bleeding. Sitting there calmly I would touch it and pretend as if it were sore and hurting. I knew someone would notice and say something without me making a big deal out of it. As I predicted, a minute later my host mother asks what’s wrong and notices the “blood.” I tell her while I was playing with the puppy outside, we got a little rough and he accidentally bit a little too hard. The whole family turns to me and tells me to go wash my hand, my host grandfather tells me that he told me to be careful, and my host sister runs to the cabin to find a band-aid… I stood up all happy and big-smile-faced and said “GOT YOU ALL!”
- Unfortunately that was the only trick I did all day. It wasn’t the only one I attempted though! Haha. I’m pretty terrible at tricking others and I can’t ever lie with a straight face. So yes, that was the only successful trick I pulled all day haha.
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My-New-Friend-Mary
Story!
A two-hour bus ride early in the morning on an unpaved road
is never really fun and I always look forward to listening to my music and
reading a good book for those two hours cause it always seems like the perfect
time to do so. So when the girl sitting next to me takes out her English book
and it’s pretty apparent that she wants to speak with me, you can imagine the
battle that was going on in my head… to say hi or not to say hi. After a good
five-minutes, I come to the conclusion that I can’t disappoint this girl next
to me, that maybe something cool will come from this, and that I have to get
out of my comfort zone and do what I came to do here:
“HELLO, are you
studying English?”
We ended up talking for an hour in fluent English, exchanged
phone numbers, and promised to meet up for coffee next week! She even paid for
my bus ride and said that I couldn’t refuse because she’s been waiting to meet
me for the past 10 months and was just so happy to have finally met me. These…
THESE are the kinds of things that make my service here so worth it. Can you
imagine how I felt?!?! ONE, like a celebrity haha! TWO, like a dufus for even
thinking that for a second I didn’t want to put my headphones and book down to
talk with her. THREE, like WOW, I can’t believe this just happened and I can’t
wait to become good friends with her. She’s a few years older than me, is an
English tutor in my village, speaks fluent English, and is just the sweetest
most calm and understanding person I’ve met here so far. YAY ME! I HAVE A NEW GIRLFRIEND! SO EXCITING!!!
She even came to the National Poetry Competition with
me in Yerevan with my students and we had a blast! It was good to have her for support and she gave a lot of good advice to my students. We met one more time in the bus and talked for
another hour, again! I’ll be going to her house for coffee this weekend and
will meet her family. What a fancy little WONDERFUL friendship this will be!
So blessed.
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Regional Poetry Competition. Brought my students to their
first poetry competition and even though only two of them advanced to the
national competition, we all came back to my new apartment to celebrate! We
made pizza and oatmeal raisin cookies together. They brought me a big teddy
bear as a house-warming gift and the way they hid it from me and presented me
with it was so heart-warming. It made my day and my smile bigger than it has
ever been in a really long time. But you know what made all the hard work and
preparing worth it all?? Yes, the teddy bear was awesome and the time we spent
together in my apartment was BEYOND-WORDS-GREAT FUN, but the one thing that hit
me hard was afterwards… I was walking my students back home and right before we
parted ways, my eldest student, Lika tells me that today is a day she would
never forget for the rest of her life and she’s so grateful. I can still
picture where we were and how she told me. Now I won’t ever forget that day and
that moment for the rest of my life.
First of all, I want to say THANKS FOR ALL THE COMPLIMENTS!
I’ve been getting a lot of complaints in person, on Facebook, and in email that
I haven’t been updating my blog lately… what a compliment! I’ve been so busy
that I’ve been writing bullets and notes EVERYWHERE about things I have to
write on my blog and I guess they’ve just been adding up and I haven’t had the
time to just sit and get it all out there for you all. I promise I will be
better about it! I appreciate all the encouragement and support from everyone
here in Armenia and back home in America. I never considered myself as an
interesting writer but I really do enjoy writing this blog and it brings me so
much pleasure knowing others are reading it AND telling me to write more!
Thanks again everyone. Truly appreciate it.
SOOOO since I’ve been terrible these past few months. I will
write about ALL the highlights and update you all on all the great exciting
FANTASTIC things that have been happening!
I made trashcans for my school in January because I started
noticing all the wrappers and bottles everywhere inside and outside of the
school. Finally realized that they are really being used and I’m going to have
to make some more! COAF (Children of Armenia Foundation) donated 4 trash bins
after I notified them of my idea, then I bought some white paint and spray
cans, cut out some stencils, and made an art piece out of them! I figured that
if the trashcans were pretty and not the normal small bucket in the corner of
the room where no one notices, then the students would be more willing to use
them. Brought them to my school, explained my reasoning to all the teachers and
any of the students that asked or were curious, and waited to see how the
outcome would be. Now it is March, so about 2 months have passed and I am proud
to say THEY ARE USEFUL! The janitors clean them out every day, students know
where the big trashcans Teacher Andrea painted are located, and they’re big and
bold and hard to miss so you can’t just throw your trash around everywhere like
you please! Yay clean school. Yay happy kids!
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March is my birthday month! Happy birthday to me! I turned 24 this year and MAN! It is different from 23! I am THAT much closer to 25, which just makes me think mid-twenties… which scares me! Haha.
For my birthday, I got sweet gifts from my parents back at
home and awesome treats from my friends missing me in the States. The most
personal “hit-you-in-the-heart” gifts I got was from my friend Meghan. She
wrote me 24 things about me for my 24th birthday: compliments,
quirks, talents, skills, and gifts that she knows about me as if we’ve been
friends since Day 1 in this world. Never thought I’d be so lucky to have a
friend like her with me here to get through it all, good and bad.
Went back to my PST host family for my birthday day and they
prepared everything for me! A special cake they ordered for me from a bakery a
few days ago, all the sweets and pastries I love, home-made pizza and salads, dolma, and balloons and flowers! All
this work for ME!?!?! I was so touched to see how much work and time they put
in for my birthday… as if I really truly were their daughter. I’M SO LOVED!
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| I've seen like all of his movies (Armenian comedy films) and I was obviously so happy to meet him! Even more glad that I knew him and saw his stuff before I actually met him! Real funny (REALLY SHORT!) dude!! haha <3 |
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