Sorry. Been pretty busy in the last few weeks. In case I forgot to tell you last time, I have a SCHEDULE, that is right ladies and gentlemen, and actual schedule that has been (relatively) stable over the last 2 weeks. I am feeling more comfortable in the English classes now, kids recognize me at least, and are no longer intimidated by the fact that I am there. Got to sit in on a class today that was taking a 'test'. I put test in quotations because it would by no stretch of the imagination qualify as a test in the good ole U S of A. The teacher began by translating all of the questions for the children, then whenever they asked a question, she gave them the answer. At no point in time was the room silent, and the kids quite openly shared answers with one another. It was all basic stuff, like your name, age, address, and telephone number, but the kids had really no idea. I am for sure going to work in some practical work along with the ridiculous book the kids are expected to memorize. I have a BINGO game planned for Thursday (our next class) and am going to try to get the kids to participate in some dialogues. They do dialogues now, but they read and memorize and repeat, with very little actual understanding of what is going on. To the point that if 2 girls are reciting the dialogue, they won't even know to change the boy's names in the dialogue to their own. Sadness. But, something I have to work on.
The Sunchild things are going pretty well. I finally harassed a schedule and copy of the Ecology program from them, which is very helpful. The classes that I have taught have gone pretty well, and the kids really enjoy the games that I have brought for them. The first lesson started with a bang when I made a ghetto enviroscape for the kids to use. I used an old cardboard box, some Styrofoam, and a cut up plastic bag. The 'town' had one river and one lake, and the kids had to build (read: draw) their town on it. We talked about things that every town needed, and decided to include:
one school
one factory
houses
gardens
a dump
garbage cans
streets
a farm
They also drew in some other things, and made the town 'pretty'. Afterwards, I told them that I did not think their town was realistic. Something was missing. That is when i added fertilizers (cinnamon)to their gardens, garbage (cut up paper) to their dump and garbage bins, and industrial wastes (curry) to their factory. Then, it rained. To their dismay, although many had anticipated the outcome, all of their pollution ended up in their river and their lake. It was a sad story. We then talked about ways of cleaning it up, or preventing it in the first place. They had a great time drawing on my crazy little enviroscape, and I think the message got across.
During the last class, we talked about water consumption and played a match up game where they had to pair normal household uses of water to the average amount of water used every time. I think some of them were shocked to learn that it takes 170,000 liters of water to make just one Kg of wool. Insanity. They had fun with it though.
As far as the English classes are going, UNO on Saturday was a blast, but I now have 30 children who want to play UNO all the time. And I do mean all the time, I now use it as a reward if they sit and listen to my stammering Armenian long enough for me to get a bit of a lesson across. It was a good time though, and on some days it doesn't take much to convince me to break out the cards. Since I want to make it sort of educational, all colors and numbers have to been said in English, and if someone says a color or number in Armenian, they have to take 2 cards. Unfortunately for me, I am very used to saying things like that in Armenian now, especially when the rest of my sentence is Armenian. It has backfired a few times. The kids are crazy strict with it to, and they will resort to trying to trick people into slipping up and speaking Armenian. There are lots of laughs every game at least.
David came up last weekend, and we went for a mini-hike. I call it 'mini' because it turned into old building exploration with a little bit of hill climbing in between. It was still fantastic though. It was a pretty freezing day, I had at least 4 layers on, but it was nice to just be outside. We found, and explored, an old sanatorium..some of the pics are up on Facebook, but more will be up tomorrow. Some of the old rooms are now used to house animals, and we found old shoes, elevator shafts, and children's drawings on the walls. The light, since it was overcast, was great that day, and I got some really cool pictures which made me pretty happy. We also found a sweet horavats place up on a mountain, the new bank building site, and an old hospital. It was cool. We turned around when we reached the top of the mountain, it was very cold, and the leftover lasagna was drawing us home.
Oh yea, made lasagna, french onion soup, and an apple pie (all from scratch thank you very much) the night before. Despite the lasagna exploding and the French Onion soup boiling, it all came out really well. It was delicious. The apple pie was surprisingly fantastic, something I will definitely make again.
Snuck in a visit to Karenis, my old village, last weekend. It was great. I was traveling to Yerevan for a Green Camp meeting on Friday, which was pretty productive I think. I am going to help write grants in the next few months, and then will hopefully help out with the planning and everything at a few camps this summer. After the meeting, I bumped off to Karenis. It was great to see the family again. Everyone was doing well, and it was a really relaxing weekend. Brought UNO, played with Taron(14), Narineh(24), and Ghor(5). Monay(2) became unpleased with the fact that she couldn't participate and stole Narineh's cards, refusing for quite some time, to give them back. She would then randomly put them down on our pile, causing more laughter as Narineh attempted to see her cards and convince Monay to place the right one on the pile at the correct time. Finally, she grew bored, and we got on with it. A great time all around, and my host mum gave me 2 jars of homemade jam, a kilo of shelled walnuts, and a grocery bag of apples to take home. I was in heaven.
Well, I am pretty sleepy, I think I am going to cut it off here. I miss you all and love you tons!
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