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????

Hey guys!

Above are pictures from my family trip yesterday to Garnik, where there is a very awesome old monastery-like church that was carved entirely from one stone on the side of a huge mountain. There was a little stream running through the church which we all washed our hands in. My sister explained it to me as "doctor water". haha. the language barrier is still somewhat limiting.

Although the church experience was amazing, I feel like I must wait and update you all with better information later!

Things have been CRAZY! I have been very busy. below are a couple of pictures of the sports/arts/cultural day map that I made... That happened this last Saturday. I'm running out now so all I can say that it was an absolute success!

- will edit this later tonight or tomorrow with more- :)

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:)

more pics

These are a couple more pictures of my village's holy day!

On top is a picture of only a part of the feast table before it was completely set and jam-packed with food.
Next, my host sister (and language tutor, hehe) Ani making a type of hard cookie.

Then, a picture of a part of inside the church where we lit candles.

Last, my host brother, Matso, with our family's sacrifice.

our town's yearly holiday

I wish I could upload all the pictures that I would like to! It takes a very long time to do so. A very very longggg time!

So, life in Armenia. What can I say other that it's amazing here. I really love the picturesque landscape and they are keeping me very busy here... very very busy. The people are great and I have a wonderful host family. (Above) are my host parents, Ashot and Jemma. They have been very patient with my crazy Amerikatse ways. I also have a tatik (below), a sister, a brother and a bunch of cousins and uncles and aunts. They love to cook, eat, and dance!

Many of my co- "commovores" volunteers in my town, have "bucket list" goals for their time in Hayastan. I haven't really thought of many yet, but I think that it might be a great idea. I will keep you posted on some short and long term goals other than my main reasons for being here.

Let me know if you can think of anything I should add to the list:)
So much has happened in the past few weeks I wish I would have been able to keep up with this blog during those times. I wrote a bunch of letters but then when I got a phone I told everyone almost everything I had wrote. So... sorry guys! I haven't sent out any letters quite yet.

I am in a small village with 8 great volunteers, and 2 Language and Culture Trainers. I am surrounded by mountains, some of which my friends have already hiked. (Maybe this should be a goal... I need to work up to something like that....) But, when I say mountains I mean that I've seen snow capped mountains and majestic green mountains. Cows grazing on them: aplenty.
Yesterday was the yearly town holiday. The entire village drove or hiked in fairly hot and dusty weather to an extremely old church on the side of a mountain. The drive itself was somewhat... interesting. It may be that vehicles in rural Armenia have no suspension or probably anything working in their cars except tires and an engine. I say this because I remember how easy it was to hit a pothole and bust a spring, when this road was something I don't think I would have wanted to have Ryan drive an ATV on. (and he's talented)... So, I guess my clunker back home would be hott stuff on these mountainous backroads.
Anyway, when my host brother, Matso, got us to the church, we were immediately swarmed by people selling candles and small gifts. They actually opened up my hands and put candles into them, then closed my hands and wanted money. Haha, it's ok though- I wasn't the only one this happened to- there were 7 more of us at one point or another:) Someone from the family, maybe an uncle??, who is visiting from Moscow bought me some rosary beads which was very kind, but humorous at the same time. I'm not sure what to do with rosary beads but I know there are lots of pictures floating around of me wearing them around my neck because he insisted...
The candles I had bought didn't really light... they just ended up being more wax next to other lit candles. But it was interesting to see the inside of this church ablazen, and I took a couple pictures I hope to share someday I have more time to upload. When we walked out of the church, we rang a bell and walked backwards (because you never turn your back on the altar). Down a small hill is a small "lake", no bigger than a large inground swimming pool which the locals were quite fond of. I believe it is rooted in the legends and origins of the town.
An interesting aspect of this ceremony was the animal sacrifice ritual. Matso had put two tied up chickens in the trunk, and I was surprised I was unaware of that fact (I would think I would have heard them!!) until he took them and brought them near the church. We volunteers had been told that animal sacrifice was a part of the town tradition, but did not know really what to expect. My brother shallowly cut the chickens then smeared a cross of blood on his sweet little cousin's forehead. I'm not sure if this is normal, I didn't see anyone else with this blood cross, but she was happy with it. He put the chickens back in the trunk of his car, and I don't know what happened except we headed back and had really great chicken for dinner.
Actually, dinner was a feast. There were about 30-40 people who came to my "entanik", family's, house. It was a carb fest, with "horovats" which is barbequed meat, chicken, a ton of fresh vegetables, fruits, cheese (my favorite), candy, cakes, breads, (lavash is the main bread.. it's like a wrap), soda, wine, vodka, coffee, tea... After eating for what seemed like hours we did some Armenian dancing. I am a horrible dancer... but I will elaborate on that some other time:)
And so was our town's yearly celebration. It was fantastic! I will catch you up on everything else when I get a chance!