Peace Corps Journals

Ծիրան եւ семечки or The Owl Sings at Night, Only There, Only There...

281 days ago

Ծիրան եւ семечки: Living and Teaching in Armenia

Unbound Project by

Jonathan Maiullo

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of Masters of Art

Humboldt State University

Arcata, California

2011

Submitted May 3, 2011

For Paige and Elliot

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction -----------------------------------------------------------------2

2. Pre-Peace Corps Service (Staging)---------------------------------------9

3. Arrival-----------------------------------------------------------------------13

4. Pre-Service Training (PST)----------------------------------------------15

5. A Host Family-------------------------------------------------------------19

6. Language Classes--------------------------------------------------------23

7. Meeting the Other Volunteers------------------------------------------26

8. The Armenian Education System--------------------------------------28

-a. School Number1 Malishka: A Physical Reconstruction----------31

-b. A Typical Day in the Armenian Classroom------------------------32

-c. Adapting to the Armenian Classroom------------------------------39 9. The Need for an Informed Grammar Translation Approach

to Language Learning in Post-Soviet Republics----------------------46

10. Overcoming Isolation and Integrating into Armenian Life----56

11. Amot: A Concept of Status Quo-----------------------------------62

12. Conclusion: Where I Found my Armenia-----------------------66

Endnotes----------------------------------------------------------------78

Works Cited------------------------------------------------------------79

“You know,” he said, “when you go back to your America it won’t be like it is here.”

Peter Hessler River Town

“Leave the Caucasus,” I said, mock incredulous. “I’ll never leave the Caucasus.

Wendell Steavenson Stories I Stole

Introduction

The railroad ties are unevenly spaced and I have to adjust my gait to them. Each right step is slightly extended, each left is restrained, one large, leaping step, one mincing skip. The early afternoon is bright. It’s not late enough in the year to see lizards, but I can imagine where they’d be along the ties, warming themselves on the steel tracks, throats lifted to the sky if only it were a month later and the air warmer. The grass is a heavy green where it lifts through the ashen rock bed. It reflects the dark and bulky clouds moving in from the west. It is about to storm but the sun is shining brightly overhead. It will shine through most of the rain as well. In Armenia I have almost never seen the rain without the sun somewhere off in the periphery, if not in the very center of the sky, glancing off every drop. Like everything else here, it is a picture of life. The sun and rain are not independent. They occur simultaneously, readied for the apricot orchards, for the wheat and the grey independent streets. It is a place where everything was meant to happen at once.

I pass the first station on the edge of Solak, a village of about 300 people just outside the regional capital of Hrazdan. Years ago, it was the first thing I really saw of Armenia, a village perched on a ledge, above a river valley, beneath the pastures. Solak had the most natural look to it. As a village it looked like something that had sprung from the ground along with the trees. It did not look intentional, but rather like something that had always been there. The people had this in their mien as well, something timeless.

One must view Armenia with the eyes of a poet, because Armenia is as vast and deep as the sea, because she has been carved under the blows of gales and winds, and because she is master of countless invisible currents and tides which one cannot recognize without the loftiest intuitions of spirit (Zarian 24).

In the past there has always been a dog waiting at this station. I don’t know if he lives here or if he was the watchman’s dog. It is not directly in town so few people other than shepherds pass by. If I had a herd of sheep or a few heads of cattle with me there would be no problem, but alone I look suspicious to the sheep dogs, as well as to people. But no one is ever alone here. You may think you’re alone and even feel alone, but there is always someone bumping around just on the other side of the wall, yelling at you to come in for a cup of coffee. There is always someone sitting in that empty looking car giving you a curious glance. There are always some young men just down the street eating sunflower seeds, trying to emulate their fathers who are doing the same thing but with more poise and gentleness. There are grandmothers getting up before dawn, laying plastic beneath mulberry trees, and with them a little boy who eagerly climbs into the tree to shake the branches madly, scattering bugs and the pale, overripe fruit in all directions. Well before dawn the hars has also been awake, preparing the house for the throngs of family, neighbors and friends that will swarm through it over the course of the day. “My house is not mine, it belongs to the one who opens my door—the Armenian version of mi casa su casa” (Petrosian & Underwood 196).

The dog doesn’t like to see anyone alone. The old station has long been stripped of anything valuable, but the dog will protect it anyway, much like the watchman who occasionally shares the porch with him. The dog and the watchman are half-asleep and startled by the sound of crunching rocks that marks my approach. The dog starts up quickly, but the watchman just opens his eyes, and without even adjusting his posture, stares straight into me as if I were a puzzle, a game of blot , that had to be sharply concentrated on. He has almost no expression. His face is neither friendly nor sullen. He doesn’t look angry but he doesn’t look the slightest bit amused. The dog begins to bark and makes to get down from the remains of the old platform where they are sitting. For a moment it seems a very hostile picture.

“Bari luys, axper ,” I greet the watchman by calling him brother. Though he does not smile in reaction his look mellows; his eyes have given up their intense search. He doesn’t say anything but makes a gesture by holding his arm up and shaking his open palm back and forth. He has asked me where I’m going in this gesture, although, in a different context he may have been asking me what I was doing, or perhaps more confusingly, where I was coming from with the same gesture. I tell him which village I’m going to.

“Inchu ?” he asks and I tell him I have to teach a class there today. He begins to wave me over, which he does with his palm down. He wants to ask me questions. If he has some coffee or oghi he will offer it to me. “Tti oghi, mulberry vodka, is the preferred drink of Armenian men to play up their machismo…One serious vodka connoisseur explained, ‘It does not make you drunk, it fills you up’” (Petrosian & Underwood 157). We will drink together while he asks me, roughly in this order:

1. If I am Armenian.

2. If I am married.

3. Why I am not married.

4. Why I have a beard.

5. Why I am not married.

Beyond this nothing is really certain, but if I go over and talk with him he will ask me those five questions. Over the last two years I have come up with some pretty clever answers to them. I use my moments to express levity whenever I can. In a different language and cultural setting it is difficult to joke. When I have a long way to go I usually tell people that I am in a hurry and continue on, telling them to have a good day. Today, I should hurry; I have to be down in the village of Qaritak by four and it’s already two. It’s going to rain soon and I’m not really too sure how far I still have to go.

These are problems that, however, I no longer understand; at least I don’t really consider them. Now that classes have ended for the summer and my projects have all been finished, there is nothing to do but to finally adapt to the exceedingly slow pace of life around me. The pace of life dictated by the dribbling sound of nardi dice on a board, the dull thud of broom handles connecting with dusty, autumn-colored rugs and the Ladas laden with tomatoes roiling the mid-afternoon heat. “Outside there were hundreds of cars jostling, old Ladas driven from the provinces full of tomatoes, or peaches or plums or grapes and marshutkas , small buses, honking like hell” (Steavenson 25, describing a market in Tbilisi).

I take a seat by my friend and begin to tell my jokes. He asks me where I learned to speak Armenian. I don’t answer right away. I take a sip of the gritty, sweet coffee and tell him.

“I’ve lived here for two years.”

“Did you speak Armenian before you came?” he asks.

“No,” I reply, using the informal ‘che,’ “I didn’t know a word before I came here.”

“молодец ,” he praises me in Russian, for having learned his language; he tells me to stay young, a popular idiomatic phrase for “good job.” When our conversation has dwindled down and the rain is nearly overhead I say goodbye and head back to the railroad tracks where the heavy light of the storm has burnished the tracks down to battleship grey.

“Bari janapar ,” he yells out to me.

“Apres ,” I yell back over my shoulder.

Just outside Charentsavan I realize that the village to which I am going is further away than I thought. The rain is still falling lightly through the sunlight and I have to break into a trot. I pass a sign that proclaims the village is three kilometers away and though I feel annoyed I am not really worried. So many times I have run to be on time here and have been the first one to arrive, though I am ten minutes late. Today, however, I am meeting with Americans, and if I am not on time they will be. Since this presentation is the last thing I have to do in this country I would like for it to be successful. I would like the new volunteers to hear about the Writing Olympics contest from someone who has been working on it for two years, from someone who has begged for funding from the British Council and has had to bargain with Yerevan printing companies to produce a booklet that showcases creative writing efforts from all over the Caucasus. In other words, I would like to show them something I have done for this country that has given me so much. I have about five minutes left and am still quite far from the school. The rain is coming down harder now and I am quickly becoming very wet. The village is quiet; everyone has gone in from the rain. In the late afternoon the cows are coming down from the pastures and the shopkeepers stand in the doorways of their shops to watch the rain in stoic silence. The smell of manure is especially strong and the earthy smell of wet stone and mud drifts from the gardens outside every house. From the open doors the fatty smell of lanolin and cooking onions mixes with the heavier smells of the pasture. “Behind each one there is a family, a kitchen table, a collection of beds and relationships; second wives, grandmothers, teenage sons and babies” (Steavenson 89).

A white Lada passes me then quickly pulls over. A man opens the door.

“Ari ,” he yells waving me over and I feel a surge of relief.

Without saying anything I jump in the back of the car and tell them I am going to the school. Over the years I have learned to dispense with unnecessary formalities. Here direct speech is appreciated when it is called for. When I first arrived here, like all the other volunteers, I used to use the modal, asking, “can I sit, eat, etc.,” while I felt extremely annoyed when Armenians would say things in a much more imperative voice. It took a few months to learn that this way of speaking was just much more efficient and that, by comparison, our hesitant, ever-polite English sounds uncertain and balking. Here, one simply stated, flat out, what one wanted, and if it was possible it would be done, no reason to mince words. There would always be time for that later.

So there was. The school was about 500 yards away, but the streets were muddy and potholed. The Lada, like all the others, had no suspension, so every dip and bump had to be taken extremely slowly. While I answered the usual questions about my marital status and facial hair I considered our pace and thought how it may have been faster to walk, but at least this way I was out of the rain, and honestly, no matter how many times I had explained it, I always liked telling people the reason I had a beard was that it helped me think, which I demonstrated by smoothing it over thoughtfully with my hand. It didn’t get too many laughs, but everyone always smiled. At the very least they understood it was a joke.

You can’t take a favor from someone without accepting another. In Armenia, if someone helps you with something they’re probably going to insist that you come to dinner afterward. My driver and his companion in the Lada were no exception. I declined the invitation as I was only going to be in the village for an hour or so. Still, at the very least, I had to take down some phone numbers, just in case I should come back another time.

The school had been recently remodeled, as a few of them had. It smelled of caulk and drywall inside and echoed with the emptiness of any school in July. I climbed the stairs and stopped at each floor to listen. When I reached the top floor without finding any evidence of a Peace Corps meeting I made my way back down to the first floor, yelling this time.

“Guys,” I yelled out in Armenian. “Guys, where are you?” Feeling light-hearted, I didn’t mind being so coarse as to yell while running through a school. I had spent the last two years in different school buildings all over the country. For me, Armenian schools felt like home. The posters of the alphabet (Armenian and Cyrillic) on the walls, the reliefs of Tumanyan or Baghramyan and the drawings of Ararat with rainbows and calligraphy surrounding it seemed to accommodate me. I began to feel the usual sense of purpose and excitement that I would feel before starting a new class. Even if it would only be held once, even if it was to be an informal presentation, even if I was leaving in two weeks and it was to be the last classroom I ever spoke to in Armenia, I could not stray from what two years of teaching had taught me to do to prepare: loosen up, consider how to make the content relevant, and smile when you walk in the class.

“Hey, Jon, stop yelling. We’re in here. You’re just in time. They were just going to start the Writing Olympics presentation without you.” I follow the voice to a classroom down the hall. The door is standing partially open and as I approach I can see a room full of expectant faces turned my way. I open the door.

“Barev, yeghahek. ”

Pre-Peace Corps Service (Staging)

Before I left for Armenia, we had what they call “staging” in Philadelphia, an opportunity to meet the other volunteers who would be going along and to make any last minute decisions in regard to whether or not to go at all, as, according to the Peace Corps Wiki the early termination rate (ET) or percentage of volunteers that leave before the formal close of service (COS) was 29.2 % in 2009. Over the next three days we future volunteers were introduced to the rigorous, mind-numbingly monotonous concept of training sessions, as defined by the Peace Corps. Most of what we did in staging can be described as team-building exercises, novel lessons that were designed to get us prepared for the kind of work we would be doing in Armenia. There was, however, no one on staff that had actually been to Armenia. I believe our primary instructor had never even served in the Peace Corps herself. In a New York Times article on professional cross cultural training, Gretchen Lang writes about the desire for specific cultural information, “While clients are happy to have some intercultural communication theory mixed in, most say they want specific information about the culture they are about to enter and that they are most pleased with that aspect of the program” (Lang).

As can be imagined, we were literally bristling with questions about the place we would be getting on a plane to in the next few days and almost all of the sessions went unheeded as they offered no consolation in the way of specific Armenia-centered instruction. We were prepared for basic cultural differences that would apply to almost any country outside the US. Concepts of time, personal space and folk-beliefs were introduced in sessions that usually concluded with the demonstration of gained knowledge in poster form.

I remember a specific activity in which half of the trainees left the room while the others stayed and were given note cards. Each card had an instruction, a code really, as to how to react to certain types of questioning and body language with unbearably incoherent actions. The point was to make those who had left the room feel alienated and awkward, much as they would when they arrived in Armenia, unable to communicate or understand social norms and mores. The half of the trainees who had left the room were given questions to ask us, without being told that we would not respond as expected. The point of the activity was to introduce all the trainees to the cultural discomfort that we would soon be encountering as a possibly beneficial thing.

To manage cultural discomfort, we must keep in mind that we will always feel some level of comfort or discomfort when interacting with someone of a different culture. The key is to not allow the discomfort to dictate our actions or reactions. Also, we must work towards turning fear into curiosity. Healthy curiosity about cultural differences can lead to cross-cultural dialogue and relationships (Wells).

The scene was not as chaotic as one might expect. When the trainees returned they approached a group of us and asked one of the questions they had been given. We responded through patterns in their questioning: for example, if the question had been a yes or no question we would all nod vigorously without saying anything. If the question had the word “the” we would all immediately frown and stare at our feet. The interrogators were all fairly nonplussed but continued asking questions, trying to understand the pattern, to find a key that would allow them to gain legitimate answers to our questions.

This activity stands out as one of the few relevant exercises that we engaged in while in staging. Mostly, this is because it brought us together. Most Peace Corps volunteers that I was to meet over the years in Armenia and elsewhere all struck me as being independent, self-assured people. Initially, it is difficult for them to mix as they are so caught up in their own ideas of assimilating to the culture they will shortly be joining. I heard trainees remark, during futile “meet and greet” exercises, that they had no need for such activities as they had no plans to spend time with other volunteers once in the country. It may sound like a rude thing to say, but given the prevalence of the idea, often most people agreed. I initially had very similar thoughts and didn’t make much of an effort to make any friends.

The activity that was meant to introduce us to feelings of cultural otherness was unproductive in that it didn’t have any connection to the kinds of difference in communication we would have to come to understand in Armenia; therefore, it had very little bearing on what we needed to know. We all knew that Armenia we going to be different and that people were going to have different cultural expectations of us. Over the course of our staging we were hit over the heads with this concept multiple times.

The cultural discomfort activity was, however, very helpful in that it introduced us to each other. Sitting around a sheet of flipchart paper discussing generic problems Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) face didn’t do much to bring us together. We made what comments we felt were necessary and moved on; all of us were inwardly groaning. The cultural discomfort activity demanded that we have meaningful interaction with each other. What we needed the most was to become a group so that a year later we would feel comfortable talking to each other, sharing ideas and asking for help.

I didn’t expect to become so close to the other volunteers, not only the ones that I began lifelong friendships with over the time that we were in Armenia, but even the ones I hardly ever saw. It was a gradual process. I didn’t come to feel solidarity with these people overnight, but gradually came to identify with everyone through my own experience. Regardless of where we had come from, we all shared a similar background, at least relatively, in contrast to the Armenian cultural milieu in which we all found ourselves after our arrival.

As the rest of the country identified us as Americans it was impossible that we shouldn’t come to think of ourselves in the same terms. It was, interestingly enough, the same feeling that I now have when I meet Armenians living in America. One of the most significant things that Peace Corps does for its volunteers is to take them through these loops of identity. Until I left for Armenia, I had always thought of myself in a static way in terms of how I related to the world at large. Now words such as Nineteen-Fifteen, apricot, Caucasia and even Eurasia produce a riot of emotional identification in me. We didn’t realize it while we were in training, but none of us were going to fulfill the assimilation goals we had set for ourselves. As these goals had been set with little to no knowledge of Armenia, after we acculturated we formed clearer, realistic goals. After all, it was very difficult to adapt to one of the most geopolitically varied regions of the world. “No definition is necessary because the South Caucasus has multiple identities. It is both European and Asian, with strong Middle Eastern influences as well” (De Waal 10).

The night before leaving we were given free rein to go out and say goodbye to the America that most of us would not see again for over two years. Some ventured off together to share drinks and expectations. I, having previously visited Philadelphia years before, decided to roam around and reflect on all that I had taken for granted about my native country and would no doubt come to miss very soon. I remember passing Benjamin Franklin’s grave at one point, which, for some reason, had pennies all over it, and thinking about the legacy of America, how it had formed and its place in the world. I was not suddenly feeling overly patriotic; it was rather a feeling of premature nostalgia. I looked at the lights of the city around me, and glanced into the faces of those passing by, knowing that it would be a long time before I could rest my eyes on such familiar sights again. I felt like I was moving automatically. It was like a scene from Sartre’s Nausea. “I was on the doorstep, I was hesitating, and then there was a sudden eddy, a shadow passed across the ceiling, and I felt myself being pushed forward. I floated along, dazed by the luminous mists which were entering me from all directions at once” (33).

On the eve of my departure I was able to see into the cultural heart of my country, but what I saw there was already just a reflection of what I had known for so long. At once it was who I was and who I had been: a careless citizen who would now, like Franklin, venture out into the world and, perhaps bring something back. Our flight left at 8pm the following night. We arrived in Armenia around one in the morning the 30th of May and began our slow, at times painful, acclimation to our new home.

Arrival

The beginning was a blur, studded with sharp, gleaming points of seminal experiences. In order to lessen, or rather to delay the gran mal culture shock we would soon experience, we were cloistered away in an empty campground upon our arrival in the country. Our first experience with the unpredictability of our host country occurred as we drove from the airport to our temporary lodgings. As the campground was situated, like almost everything in Armenia, mid-way up a mountain, the Uaz soviet-built trucks carrying our luggage began to gasp at the effort, packed as they were. The vans or Marshutkas carrying us made it to the campground without much trouble. We all tumbled out at once in a tired flurry and began to wait for our luggage. It was about 2:30 in the morning, and as excited as everyone was to finally have the process underway, to be, at long last, in the country we’d all been voraciously reading about for the past three months, sleep is not so easily evaded after a 13-hour flight.

It had been warmer in Philadelphia and, in the mountains of Armenia, we were all beginning to shiver. Standing there, looking at each other, barely listening to the welcome team that was comprised mainly of volunteers who had already been living in the country for a year, people who had become accustomed to speaking and listening to Armenian. They seemed to be testing us with their questions, seeking out those who would be new friends, and those with whom they could possibly work together on a grant proposal. Our questions for them were all in regard to the basics of living in Armenia; their questions for us were all personal. The conversation had begun to die out and still our luggage had not appeared. Without our luggage, and with most of us wearing light clothing, we unconsciously began to huddle together in the dark.

I wouldn’t really say that it was an inauspicious beginning to my Peace Corps career to have the truck with all our stuff break down about a mile away from our campground. Rather, it gave us on opportunity to display our ingenuity and commitment on a rather gaudy scale, like something one would see in a Boy Scouts of America commercial. Almost as soon as someone had mentioned the truck had broken down a number of us began rolling up our sleeves and slapping our palms together, thinking, “This is where it begins, from now on everything will have to be done by me; I have to take hold of the situation and forge my way to a preferred solution.” Oh, God, if only we could have realized how wrong we were then, none of us would’ve worried about the truck, we would have left it down there all night, had a drink together and then went to bed, but, we were still in our American mindsets, and, as such, we set off into the dark, eyes and teeth flashing, ready to drag up the whole damn truck if necessary, anything to demonstrate the utility of our Yankee ingenuity. What we didn’t yet realize was that “[working] as a foreigner was a matter of trying to negotiate your way through [a] political landscape,” a landscape that, when we first arrived, we knew nothing of (Hessler 41). Pre-Service Training (PST)

The Pre-Service Training (PST) portion of my Peace Corps service still looks monumental when I reflect on it. For the first three months we were in the country we were kept so busy with our adjustment we scarcely had time for much else. I remember taking short walks on Sunday afternoons and hardly being able to deal with the sheer amount of freedom; I remember it was as if I were going to float away without my tether of lesson planning materials, Armenian/English dictionary and my language and culture facilitator (LCF) there by my side.

The new volunteer is kept busy during PST for a very good reason: it’s about the only distraction from the twisting sickness in your heart after the first few weeks have passed. Initially, everyone roars into the country, unable to contain all their ideas for development and teaching practices. The enthusiasm is such that one can hardly breathe through the air of everyone’s ideas. The conversation is constant. Undergraduate courses are referenced, Durkheim is alluded to and woe be to anyone who had grant-writing experience, because everyone else is “really interested in doing something like that.” This is all fueled by a semi-professional conference air. Every time we all met we were expected to dress well. Instant coffee was available by the gallon and all the IT volunteers would be out smoking during every gap in the numerous lectures we had to sit through.

Initially, yes, it is almost exactly as you’ve imagined it for years: the Peace Corps is no longer a dream. You are in the middle of it with a group of like-minded people. Every dream, every vision that you have attached to the concept of Peace Corps whirs around your head night and day. The language classes are novel and produce results right away, considering there’s seldom opportunity to speak anything other than Armenian after class. You live with Armenians, eat with them, garden with them and fight for turns in the bathroom with them. People you only recently met become your new family very quickly.

The weekly central sessions you attend leave you feeling refreshed, and in possession of all your faculties for another week of dubious battle with an unfamiliar, but enchanting world. And you’re having a great time communicating with your new family. For the first time since you were young you’re living amongst elderly people again and you’re actually really enjoying their company, considering they are much more tolerant of your excessive language errors than the younger generation who never had to try to speak to the Russians. All this has you reeling with excitement over what the next two years are going to be like.

Then, one night, while you’re reflecting on another exceedingly productive day passed, the phrase, nay, the idea of two years sticks to something in the convolutions of your brain. You consider it. Since you’re still in training the two years hasn’t even really begun yet, in fact, won’t begin for another month and a half. I should stress here that at this point you feel pretty well-versed in this new culture. You’ve lived in the most real part of the cultural milieu for six weeks already. You feel situated in it, like you understand it. And as the plane-less night sky reels above and your last cigarette burns down, you begin to wonder how much more there could be to learn about this place. You begin to think about your friends and family back home. Suddenly, you find that someone’s birthday has passed. That somewhere there was a party without you, in which everyone that you used to live alongside had a good time without you. The places and habits of your American life suddenly come whirring out of the void, but between you and them is an abysmal two-year stretch of time.

Luckily, when you surmised that you understood this place and felt situated in it you were dead wrong, and after you get over the idea that the life you loved and left is moving along without you you’ll be able to see this very clearly; unfortunately, this realization is a long way off yet, and, meanwhile, you’re totally alone, listening to goats bleat under the glowering mountains.

The two and a half months in country are spent in Pre-Service Training, or PST. During this period which precedes the swearing-in ceremony, the recently arrived volunteer is termed a trainee and is subjected to fully-scheduled days of language and cultural trainings. Five to six days a week are spent in four-hour language class blocks. These classes are held in the villages surrounding the temporary Peace Corps training office. While the main Peace Corps office is in the capital, a regional office is set up in the provinces or marzer . The purpose of this is to introduce trainees to the level of local life that they will be living and working in for the next two years.

Our training office was in the town of Charentsavan in the region of Kotayk, a region that abuts the capital and is, therefore, slightly more prosperous than farther flung regions such as Syunik or Vyots Dzor. In Kotayk, as in other regions close to the capital, students often commute to the capital for university classes, but, as in the rest of the country, many either leave to remain in the capital or move abroad to work. The result is that although many citizens from this region have access to quality higher education the towns and villages closely resemble those elsewhere in the country with little superficial difference. The esteemed Armenian poet (Y)eghishe Charents wrote about the effects of early industrialization in 1923. “What is to come is the industrial, the dynamic…This is what is to come, what has already entered our lives, already edged into Erevan [Yerevan] and Kumri [Gyumri]. And it will decide whether our country is to be or is not to be, and it will require a new language to define its social character, its new creative impulses” (49).

Peace Corps trainees are placed with families in villages just outside the town. Around Charentsavan we were grouped by sector, or by the field in which we would work. In Armenia there were four sectors: EE, or environmental education; CHE, or health education; TEFL, or English language education and CBD, or community business development. In my last year these programs were cut to the latter two.

Because of the high number of TEFL volunteers, we were grouped in two villages, Bjni and Solak. Bjni, the site of a local spring and, consequently the name of a national mineral water company, was divided between CBD and TEFL volunteers. My village, Solak, hosted only TEFL volunteers.

Although Solak was close to Armenia’s fifth largest city, Hrazdan, and considered to be incorporated into its greater area, the village itself was small and lacking in basic amenities. My host family’s house had some indoor plumbing, but, the water only came on for a hour or two a day. The indoor sinks were used much less often than a spout located in the garden. There was no indoor bathroom and to bathe one used a bucket of water heated up on the stove in a room that was primarily used for laundry. Despite the poverty of the area the people are quite proud and externally happy. Most of the population is unemployed and spends the warmer months between their gardens and tending to the flocks in the pasture just to the north and south of town.

A Host Family

After we had been isolated in the aforementioned campground for a few days we were soon after placed with our new families. I assumed the experience of moving in with a host family was going to be much more difficult than I found it to be. First, was a ceremony in which we all got to watch a local traditional dance troupe, after which we climbed on stage ourselves to receive the traditional welcome of bread and salt, presented to us by the dancers. “Hospitality is associated with bread and salt…Bread and salt offered to guest implies the promise that no harm will be done to them. Salt indicates the preservation of ties just as it is used for preservation of foods” (Petrosian & Underwood 42). Our new host families were waiting in the audience, listening for our names, names totally unfamiliar to them, to see who among this gaggle of foreigners would be the one joining their family.

When we came down from the stage we were introduced to our new families. It was a slow process. We all milled around for a while, many of the volunteers nervously talking together, out of sheer nervousness trying to avoid the flashing gold smiles of soviet –era dental work and soft brown eyes that took in the room under supercilious brows. There was a smaller guy named Danny in our group. He was introduced to two women that had entire golden mouths and huge smiles on their faces. I remember thinking that, as he was taken over to meet them, he had the look of a Hansel who has just seen the abnormally large pot past the threshold of the witch’s house. Danny ET’d (Early Termination) just before swearing in. I remember one of the things he said before leaving was that he was really going to miss was his host family. This is, essentially, what happened to all of us. Initially, we were overwhelmed by the otherness of our hosts. The initial reaction was to consider how these people appeared to be different from us, both in appearance and mentality. But it didn’t take long before their sense of openness overwhelmed us and we came to identify with them, perhaps more than we did with each other.

At some point I was introduced to Zhora, the policeman whom I was going to live with; his son Xachik was there with him. Within an hour I was living with them. Zhora had been a policeman, years prior, in Hrazdan, and still introduced himself as such, when we first met. At some point, a great deal later, I asked him if he thought he would ever return to this job. He didn’t sound too hopeful, but, as he had an ebullient character, he smiled as he said so. My host family consisted of seven people: Ani, Xachik and Anahit, 13,12 and 11 years old, respectively, my host mother and father, Naira and Zhora, and Zhora’s parents, mother Jenik and father Xachik Sr.. Next door to us lived Zhroa’s brother Naver, wife Anahit and their three children. Naira’s family also lived only a short walk away and her sister and brother came over almost daily.

Although my host family and I began to get along very well after my first week in Armenia, there were several instances of miscommunication. We tried very hard to understand each other, but, as we tried too much to anticipate each other, there were frequent periods of total communication breakdown that would leave both parties quite confused. An example of this can be found in the milk I was given for breakfast my first few months living in the house.

Most days were similar in PST. I woke up at eight and stumbled down the outside stairs to the kitchen below. In the late spring, the countryside was breathtaking. I had never seen so much life. Every tree bore heavy fruit, every trellis was festooned with vines and hard little green grapes, and every field was sonorous with the din of sheep, goats, horses, mules and cattle, all eating or lazing around together, depending on the time of day.

Naira was always in the kitchen when I awoke, ready with a sunny disposition and some simple questions to bring me into the day.

“Lav es knetsi ?” she would ask, slowly pronouncing every syllable.

“Shat lav ,” I would reply, wanting to ask her if she had enjoyed the same, but initially, not having enough command of the language to say much besides “yes” and “thank you.”

The first month or so she would have a large glass of warm, probably freshly squeezed, milk waiting for me on the table. I hadn’t drunk milk for about 13 years, but I gulped every glass down, not wanting to be ungrateful. As much as I disliked the milk there was always coffee to look forward to. I found out later that in almost every country where you’d expect people to drink what is commonly called “Turkish” coffee, no one does. In all the Turkic countries I would visit -- Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan -- everyone drank tea. If you wanted coffee it was going to be instant.

In Armenia, I am happy to say the abominable practice of drinking scalding hot tea from tulip shaped glasses never caught on, and everyone drinks a delightfully thick brew, in a demitasse cup. The coffee is usually mildly sugared and is served with a large dish of candy, which you will be ordered to take. “Coffee defines the life of Armenians. It is a common initiation ritual…in some offices a main chore for the receptionist is to make the rounds serving coffee all day long. A receptionist is judged on her ability to remember how sweet or bitter the boss likes his brew” (Petrosian & Underwood 162-3).

While I drank my milk I would keep an eye on the stove, making sure Naira was making some coffee as well. I did what I could to express my immense love of coffee to her in hopes of being offered a second cup. This never happened because it is simply not done, the whole country over. Over the two years I was in Armenia I never once was offered a second cup, despite the small size of the cups they drink from and every time I would order a second cup at a café I would be given an incredulous look.

After several mornings of the milk and coffee routine I eventually noticed that no one else in the house drank milk and often, Xachik, being the boy and the most forthright, would often stare at me while I drank it. I wasn’t sure if he was impressed with the rate at which I consumed so much liquid or if there was something else that interested him. When my language improved I was able to ask Naira why no one else had milk. Despite my poor language skills at the time, I was still able to understand that the Peace Corps, at some point, had told all the host families that Americans like to drink milk. Armenians usually don’t drink it at all. They drink tan and matsun but not milk. For the first month or so, I had been drinking milk against everyone’s better judgment.

I really enjoyed telling her that I also didn’t like to drink milk. Not only was it a funny cultural story we’d both be able to tell, but it also meant I wouldn’t have to drink any more of the stuff. Sure enough, the next day there was just a cup of coffee waiting for me. No milk.

After breakfast, which I would usually eat with Zhora and Xachik, I would grab my language book and go up the train tracks with Jay, another volunteer who lived with Naver, Zhora’s brother. I really enjoyed having Jay around; most of the time he was the only American I spoke with during PST. We would share our opinions and stories on life in our new homes. To counter my milk story, Jay would talk about how his host mother would put food in his room every day, most of it fresh fruit. Initially, he did his best to eat it all but in the end had to start giving it away and, finally, even letting it go bad in hopes that the message would be clear that he simply couldn’t eat ten apricots every day.

Language Classes

PST integrates four components: 1) Armenian language, 2) trainee health and safety awareness 3), cross-cultural adaptation and community development skills, and 4) technical orientation. The training is based on competencies (learning objectives) in each of these areas. You need to achieve a level of competence in all four components before becoming a Volunteer (http://armenia.peacecorps.gov).

Our language classes were held in the local school, a blocky soviet-looking construction. It seemed even in the smallest villages, in the furthest flung parts of the empire, the soviets had managed to build some kind of cultural center and a school. Usually, one couldn’t tell them apart, especially in the summer when both of them would be completely empty.

In class we worked initially from the book that had been compiled by host country national Peace Corps Staff. The book was called Kamurj or Bridge, and it began, as most language textbooks do with the alphabet, number, colors and greetings. The first eight chapters or so were based around three new letters from the alphabet. We had to write them over and over and identify common words in which they were the initial letter. There were matching activities, cloze sentences and a number of dialogues that we would listen to the teacher read or hear on tape. As the lessons were held six times a week, for four hours with the same small group, in our case seven students, our teachers had to do a lot of work to hold our attention. Luckily there was a lot of subject matter to cover to get us conversant in a totally new language in ten weeks, I also like to think that we were eager students, although there were certainly times when our attention waned drastically and our teachers had to resort to emergency strategies.

As I already had some teaching experience, I was able to understand a good deal about the amount of preparation that went into these lessons. In order to keep us interested our instructors had to vary their approach, and they did a great job, using different activities and games to introduce the language to us. Although most of the work we did came right out of the book, we started off every class with a homework assignment that was usually meant to make us interact with our families, using terms and constructions with which we were unfamiliar in familiar situations. One such exercise I remember was to ask at least two family members about their favorite things and other questions that we had designed ourselves. Initially, I found it an awkward exercise, as it seemed to make the conversation seem forced, as I tried to scribble down the answers to their questions. Later I realized how it was through meaningful language exercises like these that I had been able to build up a good amount of background knowledge on my family that may have never entered into our conversations. H. Douglas Brown writes of the benefit of “anchor[ing a new concept] in students’ existing knowledge and background so that it becomes associated with something they already know” (66).

We had a few lessons that incorporated elements of CLT, or Communicative Language Teaching. “[CLT] aims broadly to apply the theoretical perspective of the Communicative Approach by making communicative competence the goal of language teaching and by acknowledging the interdependence of language and communication”(emphasis added) (Larsen-Freeman 121). Since we were living in the midst of the context for our learning it behooved everyone involved for us to make use of this. In addition to the discussions we had with our families we also talked with shop keepers and tried to make a salad while giving each other directions solely in Armenian. This exposure was in turn to be useful in the formation of our own English lessons once we began teaching, as “Language teaching necessarily involves cultural contact” (Parry 665).

I studied a fair amount, but tried not to let it keep me from genuinely interacting with my family. Unfortunately, I initially took to my room to study at night, thinking, with the house quieter, that there wasn’t much conversation going on as everyone prepared for bed after a long day. Of course, in an agrarian society, this was precisely the time when everyone talked the most. During the day everyone was busy. I talked to the children, but I was denied the meaningful conversation from the adults who were all waist deep in weeding, threshing and planting at various times of the year. I later discovered, after I had moved and lived in a different part of the country that everyone got together and talked in the evening.

The language classes I had as a trainee eventually helped me build a decent amount of background knowledge up in Armenian. More importantly, they helped me to become familiar enough with the basics of the language to feel more relaxed when communicating. As I began to communicate more I became more confident in my ability to speak and, thus, became motivated to learn more. The concept of motivation has been held up, almost axiomatically, in TEFL scholarship. “The most powerful rewards are those that are intrinsically motivated within the learner. Because the behavior stems from needs, wants or desires within oneself, the behavior itself is self-rewarding; therefore, no externally administered reward is necessary” (Brown 68). The more I wanted to know the easier I found it to learn, and, more importantly, to recall. When I began teaching I used similar techniques to foster the motivation of my students. The largest difference was that my fellow trainees and I were surrounded by an Armenian context, where my students had few opportunities to use English.

Meeting the Other Volunteers

Sometimes we had language classes on Saturday but usually we had to go into Charentsavan for what were called central days. A central day was basically a day-long review of our progress as trainees, peppered with cultural sessions and work in our sectors. The building where we met, Charentsavan’s House of Culture, was just as empty as the school in Solak was in the summer. The obvious reason for this was that it was usually pretty warm in there by the time the afternoon sun hit the western windows. It was also a soporific kind of place that was ill-suited to the beautiful weather outside.

During these sessions we would be briefed on any new developments as far as our jobs were concerned, for example if the Ministry of Education had recently made some changes in the English curriculum. We would also hear from the volunteers that had arrived one to two years before us. Often they were invited in to discuss their daily lives and patterns of Peace Corps regimens to us, but most of them just stood around and talked about how horrible the winter was, when the heat was out and they had to put on all their clothes, crawl in their sleeping bags and continually quaff homemade vodka just to keep from freezing. This was a common sentiment. “In a pathetic way,” Peter Hessler, a PCV in China writes, reflecting on his experience, “drinking became the one small thing that Adam [another PCV] and I were good at, although it was difficult to take much pride in this” (80). The veteran volunteers would also talk about the existentialist dilemmas that arose during the colder months, when most schools, not having proper heating, would be closed and when there would be nothing to do except trudge through the silent, snow-covered streets of the village, question value judgments, and, indeed, the purpose of one’s entire life up that point. I know during my first winter I had a few days like that, and I have often been curious as to whether there is any kind of approximation or analogue to this experience in Peace Corps service in tropical countries. Wendell Steavenson, in her book about living in Tbilisi, the capital of Armenia’s neighboring country Georgia, writes about the difficulty of the Caucasian winter. “’You’re cold eh? Take this blanket and put it around your knees…Jeez, Wendell, I’m sorry, Tbilisi in winter is a bad place for a broken heart’”(154).

Although we met in our sectors (TEFL, EE, CHE and CBD) during the central days, we also met about once a week for an hour after our language classes were finished. In these classes we worked with a Peace Corps volunteer and a host country national. Most of the classes focused on lesson planning. We wrote lesson plans and tried them out with a model school class that we met with for a few weeks in Charenstavan, a class, that most of us later agreed, was nothing like a real Armenian class. Although I believe there was a lot to be gained from the classes, I think we would have been better prepared to experience more of what a real Armenian class would be like. Of course this really isn’t possible with volunteer groups coming for training in the summer when all students are out of school. But the disconnect between what I had been led to expect, especially as I was assigned to a university, and what I actually got was incredible.

I like to think that we were all capable volunteers. Yes, we were young and inexperienced, but most of us had some level of classroom experience. When we met in our sectors, we planned lessons together with a fair amount of enthusiasm and presented different teaching techniques to our peers. When our training ended we left with a large amount of ready-made lesson plans, ideas, resources and even tactics for working with our counterparts. When we left for our permanent sites we wouldn’t see each other again for three months. When we met again at our annual All-volunteer (All-vol) Conference, there was a feeling of apathy and unrealized ambitions in the air. When we were asked to act out some situations from our classes, most of them were negative. We were at our collective low point. During the skits we muttered under our breath. I remember one volunteer began to cry. The next time we would meet, only a few months later, everyone would be much more comfortable. I think most of this disconnect came from our training that didn’t do enough to introduce us to the typical Armenian village school classroom.

The Armenian Education System

UNICEF, after they had begun a project to “develop a rights-based, interactive and participatory educational system” in Armenia, released a statement in which they justify a life-skills curriculum, where students are responsible for their learning contra the teacher-centered structure the country has relied upon since the Soviet period. UNICEF’s statement regarding the need for educational change in Armenia reveals the instability of the present educational system, at once mired in traditional teaching methods and seeking to incorporate recent innovations.

Indeed, an independent report commissioned by UNICEF in 2001[in Armenia] assessed the project positively, supporting UNICEF's opinion that "possessing life skills is critical to young people's ability to positively adapt to and deal with the demands and challenges of life. And such an approach in a country which still faces a long and difficult transformation away from a totalitarian past is of vital importance (Krikorian).

The Armenian educational system is a nebulous thing. It is in such a state of flux that it is difficult to discuss it as static. While I was in the country, I worked through a major change in primary and secondary schools. In 2009, an extra year was added to secondary school education. Prior to this change basic schooling in Armenia went up to 10th grade. Students, roughly, went to school from 7 to 16 years of age. The addition of another year added a “flying” form for all students who were in school, in any grade, at the time of the change. These students all skipped or “flew” over a grade in order to accommodate the extra year that had been added since they had begun school. I was never entirely clear as to why this was necessary. As can be imagined, this made teaching in Armenia very confusing.

Seventeen years after the collapse of communism, Armenia was still using parts of the USSR’s system to inform its structure. The idea persisted that education, in many cases, was perfunctory. Khodzhabekian, in an article published in 2005, reflects on the educational system of Soviet period and the unique setbacks it poses for education in Armenia today, where the Soviet mentality is still extant in many civic areas. “In principle everybody was supposed to receive (often only formally) a school-leaving certificate enabling them, regardless of their level of knowledge, to demand an appropriate job” (5). In addition to this situation, schools, especially outside the capital hardly received any funding and teachers, earning very low salaries, earned most of their money tutoring more advanced students after class to pass the university entrance exams; as a result, classroom instruction was unplanned. Khodzhabekian writes of the effects of the decreasing quality of classes where teachers must tutor to augment their income. “Serious social problems are emerging because of the rising inequality of opportunities to obtain a good education” (5). Such unmotivated teachers would frequently spend the entire period reading directly from the textbook. Nicole Vartanian, a Senior Research Associate in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement and a senior international policy research chairperson for Armenia and Roben Torosyan, Associate Director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Fairfield University, both of Armenian heritage elaborate on the issue of the lack of teacher motivation:

The nation decentralized school and community governance in 1997 and shifted control of spending and appointments to local councils to attempt to address financial needs of families. But annual preprimary tuition for a single student now can cost as much as the annual salary of a teacher. Consequently, many children do not enroll in formal schools until age seven [only primary and secondary schools are free in Armenia]. Unfortunately, the teaching profession suffers too, due to decreases in training opportunities, status, salaries, and overall motivation in the post-Soviet era.

Everything was confusing in Armenian schools; both in the university and the school I worked at the schedule was constantly changing. One would arrive to teach a class at 10 a.m. only to be told that the class had been moved to 11. At 11 the classroom would be empty. The students, taking advantage of the confusion, would frequently leave en masse. A large part of the confusion was the transitional status of the educational system in Armenia. The Armenian school system was a hectic place, and I don’t know if I could say I ever came to understand it. After working within it for over two years, I did come to see what major problems enervated the rest of the system. These problems of organization, materials and teacher motivation pervaded every level of the educational system I came into contact with, from teacher trainings to classroom instruction and the fact that so many qualified professionals move. “Too many young people are unable to find their place in life and become unemployed college graduates, which is a major factor of the ‘brain drain…’ Armenia is using its own resources to train cadres or other, more wealthy countries” (Khodzhabekian 4). It seemed to me that the major problem that contributed to all the others was that the republic had yet to really create its own unique educational system. Most of what I saw outside the capital still stood in the shadow of the Soviet legacy. “All too often, diploma-holding specialists simply do not have the requisite knowledge. This is due to the quality of instruction, which is not very susceptible to control in the regions [marzer] of the Republic” (Khodzhabekian 4).

School Number 1, Malishka: A Physical Reconstruction

Three stories tall, the walls are hewn rock on the outside and painted concrete on the inside. The paint is a cheap sort of artifice. It rubs off in chalky whirls on anything that brushes against it. The bathrooms are ill-maintained. There is no toilet paper and often no running water. In each stall there is a rusty bucket that contains soiled notebook paper. There is no mirror. On the second floor there is a teacher’s lounge. In this lounge there is a television which is always on and a stereo which never is. On top of the stereo sits an old Apple computer, also never used, and probably no longer functioning. On the western wall of the lounge is a shelf that holds, among other things, files of student papers, and some classroom materials such as a globe, on which the countries are labeled in Cyrillic, and a section of a human brain in embalming fluid. Among the student papers are various reports, compiled by students, usually accompanied by traced illustrations and meticulously neat handwriting. In the middle of the room is a long table with chairs on either side. At the head of this table is a large office chair reserved for the school’s director and the person in charge of scheduling, the two most revered people in the school.

In the hallways there are student-made posters of various Armenian heroes. The first floor is entirely devoted to military subjects and features Marshal Baghramyan as well as heroes from the recent Karabakh conflict such as Monte Melkonian. There are pictures of modern Armenian soldiers working out and enjoying their leisure time together, all in full uniform with brazen looks on their faces. The posters on the second floor are of great Armenian authors such as Yeghise Charents, Hovhannes Tumanyan and the astronomer Viktor Hambardzumyan. Similar posters are found in each classroom.

The classrooms have a green chalkboard on the south wall with rows of two-person tables facing them. The tables have no room for storage, so even the primary school students must keep all their books and materials in their backpacks. Each classroom has windows on the east or west side of the room depending on which side of the hall it’s located. Down the hall from the teacher’s lounge there is a library that is usually locked. When it is open, its use is limited to faculty. Most of the books inside the library are old soviet textbooks that are no longer being used. Near the front entrance of the school is a closet that janitors use for storage and as a lounge of their own. There is very little in there beyond a few scrappy chairs, a few handmade brooms and the thin bent metal squares that are used for dustpans.

There is nothing soft in the building. There is also nothing colorful save for the few posters that have not been faded by age, chalk dust and sun, hanging from the walls.

Outside the school is a recently paved lot that serves no purpose save to cover the dust that is rampant in the village during the drier months. The lot is surrounded by a gate which is usually open. Just on the inside of the gate there is a water fountain, probably a memorial to a youth in the community, as most of them are, featuring the name of this unfortunate child and a memorial icon such as a broken flower.

A Typical Day in the Armenian Classroom

In an interview for the Caucasus CRS, an online magazine, Armenian community activist Marianna Grigorian reveals the common belief that education in the country is below the international standard.

"We should march in step with the world," said Narine Hovhannisian, head of the general education department at the country’s education and science ministry. "Our educational system does not correspond to international standards” (Grigorian)

I walk up the dirt road from the main road that leads south to Iran and north to Yerevan, the capital. There are cabbage and potato patches along the road. At nine in the morning the farmers are already out with their donkeys tied up and wheelbarrows leaning drunkenly in the furrows of the fields. Malishka is a large village with a population of about 4,900 people, according to the 2001 Armenian census (http://www.armstat.am). In all probability, this number, however, is greatly exaggerated due to unreported emigration.

Almost everyone is working out in their garden plots or cooking eggs for those that will have to walk about 7 kilometers to the plots and grazing grounds south and east of the village. The children are on their way to school. They hang back in groups or rush forward alone. At the top of the rise the school is built upon, there stands an old soviet war monument of a soldier wearing a great coat, holding what looks like a tommy gun with a slightly contemptuous look carved into his face of grey rock.

I walk past the eager children, all trying to give me high-fives. I nod politely, but am unable to reciprocate the warmth of their greetings. Even to nod to them is far beyond what the other teachers do outside of class and I don’t want to meet with any more opprobrium. One of the janitors is standing at the door. I return her warm greeting and think about how much it contrasts with the perfunctory greetings of the teachers. Before going upstairs I stop into the bathroom and hold my breath while using it. The air inside is mephitic although the window is slightly cracked.

Once upstairs I still have 15 minutes before classes begin. I enter the teacher’s lounge and say hello to the teachers assembled there. The men, on one side of the room, return my greeting, the women on the other, merely look up when I enter the room. I have tried to talk with my counterpart here in the past about the lessons of the day, but her manner demonstrated her unwillingness to do so, although she didn’t say anything. On another occasion, I planned to meet with her after classes, but again, she did not show much interest. The lessons are dictated by what’s in the book. National regulations require that the book is presented in a certain fashion, i.e., a certain section is to be completed by a certain date. I have shown her that this approach leaves much to be desired in terms of appropriate teaching by international standards, but she doesn’t see the point in how the material is communicated as long as the material itself is not incorrect. This approach is contra

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