The Food Room

In School #4 there are two teacher's lounges. The official lounge is large, a little chilly, and doesn't see much use. The real teacher's lounge is a small storage closet just next to the official lounge, that I have taken to calling the Food Room.. In the Food Room, there is a long table, some chairs, and- most importantly- a teapot and a fire hazard. I mean a hot plate.

In between classes, teachers come to the Food Room to make themselves and each other cups of Armenian-style coffee on the hot plate (which, and I cannot stress this enough, is a fiery death just waiting to happen), and eat snacks. Everyone brings something: some fruit to be cut up and shared, or walnuts, or candies, all of which are left on the table and eaten over the course of the day. The teachers lives seem to center on this room.It is where they snack, socialize, and decompress between classes. It's also a place of commerce: many teachers bring clothing or makeup that family members in Russia or the US have mailed them to sell. Several times a week, I'll walk into the Food Room and find that it's been transformed into a little khanute (an Armenian word meaning "store" or "shop").

I like the Food Room in general- dangerous hotplates of death not withstanding- but it does pose one significant challenge in my life: because it's purpose is so social-centric, it's not a very productive space in which to work. Conversations about lesson planning are constantly side tracked by the necessary social rituals of coffee, snacking, and chatting that are so important in Armenian culture. Unfortunately, because it is warm and there are snacks, the Food Room is my counterparts' preferred space for lesson planning. Which means we get about 5 minutes of actual work-related discussion accomplished over the  course of an hour. This is difficult for a task-oriented American, but makes complete sense to a relationship-oriented Armenian.

I think that eventually, I'll want to move our lesson planning out of the Food Room and into the official teacher's lounge, but I'll participate in the social aspects of the Food Room a little while longer. If they are so important to my counterparts, I feel I should make an effort to appreciate their significance before pushing them aside in favor of my own priorities.

Besides. The official teacher's lounge will be warmer in the spring. I have a complicated, love-hate relationship with that hot plate.