comm project

It's very weird for me to think that i've only been in Armenia for 3 weeks! In fact, I've been having major deja-vu since I've been here and I feel like I've known alot of the people for much longer...

Yesterday I received a package from mom and Gwen -THANKS SOO MUCH! The hand sanitizer is a valuable bartering item between volunteers, lol. We have not seen it for sale anywhere!

So, a big reason to be psyched- all the villages are working on projects to enhance our community right now- it's so important and very exciting! We are doing a sports/arts/cultural day. Of course, I will be involved in some arts and crafts, LOL. I'm having the children put their handprints on a backdrop that I'm going to paint a map of our village on. I will teach the children a couple English words like "house", "family", "school", "street" and then have them mark the area where they live with their print! I'm thinking of getting some copies made of sheets with transliteration in E. Armenian to English for these words, so they won't forget what they've learned.

Each volunteer is in charge of a different section of the day, there are a lot of sports activities to promote healthy activity and even a compass-using navigation class. Luckily we found the materials for my project in one day and they were relatively inexpensive!!

The purpose of the village map with handprints is to show a collective investment of the children in the community, among sooo many other things. It sounds like a fun activity where I can incorporate TEFL and awareness of surroundings! It also leaves a finished product which hopefully turns out nice enough to be presented as a gift to the community. What do you think?

So, a couple funny things for the people I haven't talked to yet:

My name "Danelle" translates into a verb in E. Armenian. It means "to put".

The small town gossip in Hornell, NY is NOTHING compared to gossip here. I hear when one of my volunteer friends won't eat or gets a sunburn before I even see them! (And I see them about 5 hours out of each day). I guess this is one of the big differences in culture- Americans value privacy way more than people in my village do! I've found if you stop thinking altogether the language sort of makes sense. When I clear my head of anything I actually think I know exactly what everyone is talking about... weird.

Another funny tid bit- since I've been here I've been wearing a piece of snowflake obsidian tied on a chord as a necklace. What I didn't expect is for the streets to literally be lined with obsidian, it's everywhere. That in itself is pretty awesome- to think that at one time there was lava all over the place here. So, Ryan says my wearing the obsidian is the equivalent of someone back home wearing a pebble necklace. I bet it's just one more strange thing to them:)

Anyway, my trip to Yerevan was great. I went with two other volunteers from my village and one of my LCST's. We were very short on time, but from what I saw I can't wait to see some more next weekend! (The picture is of me at the Square in Yerevan:)