3/27 - Out of Hibernation

To say this winter has been different than all the rest would be a gross understatement. I knew winter in Armenia would be harsher than I am used to. I thought I was mentally prepared for that. But Mother Nature and Father Winter must've had some sort of falling out, because this winter was terrible -- even on Armenian standards. Every local I spoke to said it was the worst winter in 3, 10, or even 20 years! My area of the country is relatively warm, and yet it still got a decent amount of snow. Luckily we've thawed out around here. Other parts of the country (Gyumri in the north, Goris in the south) are not so lucky. Just last week I visited/drove through these regions and they still looked like a winter wonderland. But more on that trip later.



So what did I do all winter? Not much.


My school cut back its hours drastically, making lesson planning even harder and more pointless. Even with the shortened hours, students would leave school early. Sometimes the teachers would inexplicably give them permission to do so. And I don't mean one or two students skipping a bit, I mean entire classes leaving. I was and am still baffled at this. My after school clubs went on a bit of a hiatus for a while. Even if I was able to get students to stick around, I would've felt so bad making them sit in the cold classrooms for extra time.

from inside my school, looking out

Outside of school, I still had a few things going on with Peace Corps and COAF to keep me busy. One such event was a multi-day conference held by Peace Corps my group of PCVs and their Armenian counterparts, called the Project Design & Management workshop. Overall it was pretty informative. The sessions focused on the steps required to  plan and implement projects in one's community. We worked in groups on sample projects which was...interesting. We had just a couple days (hours, really) to put together a large project proposal and present it to a panel of judges. Needless to say, it was a little stressful. Another downside of this conference was that throughout the week, a ton of us came down with a stomach flu/food poisoning/who knows what. I'll leave it to your imagination, but let's just say a lot of Pepto Bismol was swallowed that week.

To keep myself occupied during the downtime this winter, I read a bit and watched a lot of TV shows and movies. I'm not proud of the latter, but c'est la vie. I just finished the fifth and final season of The Wire. I'm obsessed. Great show. It's unfortunate that that's the most well-known depiction of Baltimore these days, but hey... Charm City is what it is. Anyway, I highly recommend watching it!

The biggest event of  this season, I guess, happened just at the beginning of March. After six months of staying with my host family, I found and moved into my own house! I actually found the house and had it approved by PC back in January/February, but since the winter winds were still a-blowin' (and because there was no electricity at the house), I waited until March to move in. It's a BIG house on the opposite side of the village from my host family's. It's not too far from school, stores, or anything else. I'm much closer to a few places of interest, like the train station and post office. The house is not attached to any others and the next door house is also vacant (potential abode for an A20? We'll see). Even though I have more space than I know what to do with, I like it. I was feeling very cramped being confined to one bedroom in my host family's house. My new house hasn't been lived in for quite some time, so it requires a lot of cleaning. And there's a lot of random things leftover from the previous occupants. Slowly, but surely, I'm getting through this process. It's been hard because the weather makes my hands so cold I can't stand to clean. So for these first few weeks I've stayed confined to the area near my heater. As the temperature increases, however, I'm getting more done. Soon it will be presentable and I'll be able to have guests. Until then, I'm sort of enjoying my personal time. It's nice to really relax again.

That, in a nutshell, wraps up my winter here in Armenia. The weather is getting warmer (knock on wood) and I can already tell I'm in a better mood. Last week we had a vacation from school ("spring" break). I traveled to the southernmost region to visit my boyfriend and other PCVs in that area. I was amazed at the drastically different scenery between their area and mine. Theirs is mountainous, mine is flat. Theirs has trees, mine has rocks. Theirs has an open border to Iran, mine has a closed border to Turkey. Y'know, little stuff like that. It was a great visit and the perfect use of my week off from school. The other PCVs in my group are wonderful and it's great how something as simple as sitting around and talking can be so refreshing.

Here are a few photos from this winter:

In the upcoming weeks and months I should have more to talk about, including:

-two weddings, including one of a PCV to an Armenian woman
-my first international "business trip"
-reconstruction beginning on my school
-new PCVs