GOMESH!!

Since arriving in Shahumyan, I have been hearing about this thing called a "gomesh". Literally, this translates into English as "barndonkey", but, I was repeatedly assured, gomesh are not donkeys. Nor were they pigs, sheep, or cows. Having thoroughly exhausted my limited supply of animal-words in Armenian, I pantomimed a few more farmyard creatures (resulting in the endless amusement of our host grandmother), neither were they dogs, cats, goats or horses. I would just have to see them for myself, we decided. Earlier this week,  Grampa George (our host grandfather, whose name is actually Grigor, but introduced himself to me as Georgie, and will forever be to us Grampa George) told me that if I got up on Sunday and walked down the one paved street in town at 7:30 in the morning, I would see lots of gomesh. 

It will not surprise anyone who knows Sam to discover that he had very little interest in getting out of bed at such an ungodly hour on the one day of the week we are permitted to sleep in. So this morning, I got out of bed as quietly as I could, got dressed, slipped on my sneakers and headed out of the house alone in search of Gomesh. I think this might have been the first time since our brief separation at the hands of the PCMO that Sam and I have engaged in separate activities. 

I enjoyed walking on my own, enjoying the sunrise. I would be lying if I said I enjoyed a quiet moment to myself (there are far too many roosters in Shahumyan for any part of the morning to be quiet), but there was a certain peace to the morning, and I relished the sense of calm it brought. I was walking along the street, absorbed in thoughts like these, when a soft, low, bellowing sound broke my concentration. I rounded a corner, and there they were: the gomesh!

I think that Grampa George could have saved me some considerable suspense had he just said they were similar to cows. But he didn't. Nor did their bovine similarities dampen my excitement upon their discovery. I think that water buffalo might be the best way to describe gomesh in English, but I'll let you be the judge of that.

All in all, it's been a fantastic morning. 

Bank Day in Yerevan

We went to Yerevan today to set up our bank accounts, and in doing so got our first real taste of the capitol city here in Armenia. It's definitely a world apart from the villages a short van ride away. The city is filled with parks, statues, impressive building, wide sidewalks, open air cafes (which I'm told are seasonal), and a really vibrant pedestrian street scene.  

After settling our business at the bank, we were given an hour to walk around downtown Yerevan, starting in Republic Square. The photo below shows the square, framed on one side by the absolutely fantastic natural history museum. If you're ever hanging out in Yerevan and don't know what to do with yourself, definitely check out this museum. Admission is very inexpensive (300 dram with a student ID- this is about 75 cents back in the US)- and in addition to many other cool things, you get to see the world's oldest shoe. For reals. It's 5,000 years old, and it totally still looks like a shoe. Well, maybe more like a slipper. Either way, it's worth a visit. 

Outside the museum there's a really cool fountain, and we tried to take a picture in front of it, but it turned into a selfie-fail. We need to take some lessons from Armenians, who seem to have mastered the selfie and taken it to new levels. Although, for some reason they always seem to apply the same over-exposed washed-out filter.... I wonder why that is. 

 

After visiting the museum and the disastrous selfie-attempt, we took some time to walk around the neighborhood of Republic Square- mostly we just saw shops that were too expensive for us to afford on a Peace Corps volunteer's budget- although I did splurge and buy myself some gelato from one of the Italian cafes that are scattered throughout the neighborhood. (Apparently, one of the largest contracting firms in the country is Italian, and this has given birth to a relatively intense Italian food scene in Yerevan.) We also saw this interesting nipple fountain. 

Finally, right before we got back on our van to head back to Shahumyan, I saw what I was certain was the world's smallest bird. Look carefully at the photo below. It's right in front of the red mum in the center of the image. 

Turns out it's actually a moth. I guess I'm still getting used to this country.

Our walk to school this morning.

Some days it hits you harder than others. I'm really doing this. Today was one of those days. 

Chir

One very important method of food preservation that's practiced here (and I shamefully forgot to mention in my last post) is dried fruit, called "chir". "Chir" shares a stem with the Armenian word "chor", which means "dry". All over town, you see plates of fruit left out to dry on any available surface.

Having tasted some of Alla's chir, I can tell you it's amazing! The best is this really fantastic lemon-flavored one where she shreds apples into a pot and then adds shredded lemon and a bunch of sugar. The whole things is boiled until it's about the consistency of oatmeal, then scooped into little hashbrown like globs, and put out to dry.

The air is so hot and dry here, that you can just leave the fruit out in the sun and it dries to the consistency of fruit leather all on it's own. If we tried to do that back in New England, all we'd get for our trouble would be a bunch of moldy fruit. Here, all you have to look out for are the bees- I think they might love chir as much as I do. 

Cooking

We had a treat today: Sam was allowed to cook a dish for lunch! I don't think our host family cared for it all that much (not enough oil or salt for Armenian tastes), but I thought it was delicious. It was really nice to be able to eat a meal that tasted like something we'd eat at home. It's not even that I dislike Armenian food- I don't- but it was just nice to eat something familiar for a change. 

Next to Sam's marvelous pasta dish, you can see what Alla was making while we (read: Sam) cooked. It's mostly celery with a little  bit of onion, and it's going to be pickled. 

People here grow most of their own food, and since Armenian winters are too cold for things to grow, that means that food must be put up for the winter. The two primary ways of doing this are by making them into pickles (called "tehtu" which translates literally as "bitter") or into a kind of lumpy jam called "murahbah".

In America, we'd usually have a strict vegetable-fruit divide between what's pickled and what's jammed, but this isn't the case in Armenia. Since our arrival, we've seen both pickled watermelon and eggplant murahabah (think giant eggplant flavored jelly beans and you'd be on the right track). I find the process of stocking up for winter fascinating. I'd love to be able to grow all my own food one day- although I think I'll skip the eggplant murahbah. 

Jirashen School Visit

Today all the TEFL trainees were able to visit an A22 volunteer, Hannah, at her site in the village of Jirashen. Jirashen is a small village, with a single school, which bravely volunteered to host all of the trainees for a day. We each observed two classes: a class taught in the traditional Armenian fashion, and a second class co-taught by Hannah and her counterpart, employing some of the techniques the Peace Corps and the Armenian Ministry of Education hope we as volunteers will help introduce into the school systems here. 

The first lesson I observed was Hannah and her counterpart co-teaching a group of 5th graders. I didn't appreciate how progressive their lesson was until I observed the second lesson of the day, taught in the traditional Armenian fashion. 

Most of the teachers in Armenia today were students during the Solviet era in Armenia- during that time, the prevailing theory of education was the "empty vessel" approach to teaching: students were expected to sit silently, hands folded on their desks, and simple soak up the knowledge that the teacher bestowed upon them. This knowledge was tested by having students recite their teachers lectures back to them. Since this is the way that many of the teachers were themselves taught when they were students, it makes sense that this is the approach that many of them bring to the classrooms as teachers today. 

The traditional lesson we observed was definitely taught in this style: students were called individually to the front of the classroom, and tasked with reciting long passages from their textbooks. If a student made an error over a single word, or even hesitated for more than a second or two, the teacher would jump in and make a correction- sometimes she didn't even wait for the student to make a mistake, when it became clear that a student was struggling, the teacher would just start reciting the text and the student would do their best to keep up. 

All of this really highlighted for us why the PC and the Armenian MOE want us to focus not only on teaching students English, but also on helping teachers to incorporate more interactive approaches within their own teaching. The problem with this is that I feel woefully under qualified for such a job. I really don't know how three months of training can take the place of something that usually takes several years of study in which to earn a degree.

But, let's set those concerns aside for now- there isn't really much I can do about them at the moment anyway. It was incredibly generous of Hannah to host us all at her school- and really brave of the teachers there to submit themselves to such scrutiny. In Armenia, it is almost unheard of to have other teachers truly observe one's class: instead, teachers have what are called "open lesson" days, where they will present a lesson that they have pre-taught the students earlier in the week and other teachers can observe everything gong well in the classroom. To be able to watch a classroom of students encounter material for the first time is a rare opportunity, and one that shouldn't be taken for granted.

A country that speaks my language.

Just a quick photo today from the gift shop at Khor Virap. It took me a few minutes to get what Sam was pointing out when he drew my attention to the sign. Learning a second alphabet is really screwing with my dyslexic mind. I was happy to see that whoever made this sign used the same method of creative spelling that I would have in their position.