since the last time...

So! The first few weeks here I have experienced a mixture of emotions ranging from excitement to frustration, confusion to enlightenment, and boredom to busy, busy, busy. Every day isn't completely different, but it's crazy when two weeks feel like a month or more.

Some days I have a hard time with self-motivation, and if you fully understood my living conditions you might just get why. Things are not terrible here, I'm certainly not in a hut in the middle of a desert without food. Actually, the food is always good and the people are really nice and supportive of my being here, especially my family which I ranted on a bit about in my last post. The hardest adjustments for me have been the lack of water in my city, not understanding the language very well, and living on the top of a hill on the small top floor of an apartment building.

I know when I found out where the Peace Corps wanted to send me, I looked around the internet for blogs about people's experiences here to find out more. If someone happens to read this blog in the future for information, I will tell you now so far everyone is experiencing different hardships. This country is diverse, like New York State. While I am having a hard time with water- our family hasn't gotten water out of the faucet in almost 2 weeks- others are having a hard time with work situations, climate, language (especially re-learning the language to accustom to local 'bar-bar'), or isolation. Some people must travel a long ways to a store or their workplace, while I am a very close in a small city. I have a married couple from the Peace Corps, the Lindens, living in the building next to mine and a volunteer that has been here for a year already, David, so I am very lucky to have other volunteers close. While some of my group seem to be living very posh, others are in drastic or dirty conditions.

The winter weather is supposed be be mild here, quite different than other parts of the country but I dread walking down the hill I already trip down as it is to get to work. The part of the summer I experienced was humid and very hot, the humidness a special characteristic of this region. The weather changed from summer to fall in literally one day, the sky turned darker and it hasn't been bright since. It looks like it is going to rain- which I hope for with all my heart because we maybe have 1 gallon of water in our apartment and that is about enough to "bucket flush" the toilet once or twice, depending on...

I have a dual assignment, one at a kindergarten teaching health-related lessons and physical exercise, and one at the Bridge of Hope, an excellent NGO which helps children with disabilities, but also many of the local children come to participate in classes or use the computers or art room. I started at the Bridge of Hope last week, only going in about 2 hours a day to help with arts and crafts and prepare for the 5 year anniversary of the office which was yesterday. The video above, is one I took at the ceremony yesterday they had at the cultural center. The event was great, despite a couple flaws here and there I hope I am not responsible for. It takes a while to post a video, and I can't watch it online to make sure it works, so please tell me if it doesn't! Later I will post a couple more, they are really adorable and the children did a great job!

Tomorrow I will go into the kindergarten for the second time since I have been at site. Next week school starts so my next post will probably have quite a bit about that!

first full day at site:)

so, it's been a while since i have written!. to tell the truth, i ran out of positive things to say about my first host family, we did not get along to say the least. i guess i was trying too hard to be positive, but leaving out the bad... from now on, maybe i should just say it like it is! i probably should have wrote about the awesome times i had with my fellow trainees/volunteers, but i was a bit busy and lazy about it. i'll stop apologizing now and just write a damn blog entry, haha.
so, today was my first real day as a Peace Corps volunteer! i am finished with training although man, i still have quite a few questions. Swearing in was such a blast, i helped sing a song in Armenian and a song in English, "Hayastan im chicknah" and "Imagine" (cheesy but true). We had ourselves a nice little celebration afterwards followed by intensely packing everything we own to move the next day. What a fun 24 hours. I already miss my Fantanites & my teachers, my auk-berrrrs. AUKBEARR..!
So... I've been here a day and a half and i have slept quite a bit, ate an unbelievable amount of delicious and very salty food, talked about heaven, hell, Jesus, fate, psychic vampires, energy, positivity, Azerbaijan, gender roles, and what a woman must do to make sure her watermelon is tasty when she cuts it (it means you must stay a virgin) all in Armenian by the way. It's strange, when my host mother talks if i look her in the eyes I can understand exactly what she is saying. I still can't talk very well though, it requires too much fast thinking, or maybe no thinking is involved I can't tell.
My family makes me feel a bit clostrophobic, but the funny part about it is that I kind of like it from them. Maybe its all because my first host family was so miserable i would love anyone who shows interest and treats me like a part of the family, this i don't know. But I do know my host mother and I watched City of Angels in Russian and we both cried the same way, then she turned on a BBC tape of monkeys stealing food from humans... then we laughed the same way... that is always something that would cheer me up. she drew a diagram that i swear my mother would have drawn about the energy a person has, with positive and negative signs. it's so freaky, i normally don't believe in fate, but it's an intensely complicated process how i ended up here- where i feel like i actually fit in more than anywhere i've ever lived except my moms home in small old htown, NY.
not only did i have that connection, but i got in some awesome father and brother bonding time. my military man father cut and blow dried my hair today, turns out he used to be a barber in Yerevan... for men, of course.... don't worry it actually turned out quite awesome, no huge mullet involved. (like Michael's). then we had an english lesson, which during site visit and now has always been interesting. :) i learned a bit of russian, but i have already forgotten. i let them listen to the grateful dead on my ipod, because it's very important for them to know about the best music from the US.
but... i've come to the conclusion that i am living amongst Armenian equivalent of the coolest hippies ever. :) :) YEAAAHHHH! not only that but i've got the Lindens next door and David just a hill away, the best site assignment ever, and 3g internet. so.....who needs running water????