Knitting

For the past few weeks, all of my spare time has been dedicated to knitting. I've wanted to make a gift for each member of our host family- although I don't know how well the "hand-knit gift" translates, culturally. At home, a handmade give shows time and effort. Here, it might just be seen as cheap. I hope not. In any case:

I made Haikushik a had that I really like. I'm going to have to remain myself a hat from this same pattern at some point in time. Here I am, modeling the hat (photo credit to Sam, who also insisted on getting a view from the back):

I also made Goqor a hat. I think that it would have felt a little boring and light except that I modified the pattern to be knit in 2 colors in a fair isle style. The 2 colors give it some visual interest, and the stranded knitting gives it additional weight, making it feel warmer and more substantial. 

Zahak and Alla both got scarves. Zahak's scarf was a simple lace pattern that was complex enough to make the fabric interesting, but not so lacy as to feel feminine. It's a little short, but I was running out of yarn, so it is what it is. 

I'm really proud of Alla's scarf- it's not something I'd want for myself, but it fits her style perfectly. I'm really glad it turned out so well. Alla has been amazing to us while we've lived with her, and we owe her so much. I really wanted to give her a gift she would like, and I think the scarf will really fit the bill. 

Grampa George got a pair of fingerless mittens. I don't know if they're a particuarly well suited gift for him, but they're what I could do in the time (and with they yarn) that I had. They turned out okay, but I don't think that it will matter that they're not stunning. Grampa George isn't exactly picky about his clothes. 

The last member of the family, Mets Haikush, was also going to get a set of fingerless mittens (I liked to order of it: hats for the kids, scarves for the parents, fingerless mittens for the grandparents), but then I realized that mittens weren't a very good gift for her. Mets Haikush had a stroke sometime in the past, and as a result no longer has the use of her left arm or hand, and depends on a cane to walk. So, not only is she unable to put on a pair of mittens without help, but having a slippery knit surface between her good hand and er cane seems like a good way to invite a potentially fatal fall. So, instead I decided to make her a simple muffler. She can put it on with one hand, and it will stay on and not cause problems as she walks around the house. It is the piece I'm least proud of, but, like Grampa George's gloves, I don't think that it will make much difference to Mets Haikush. 

So, these are the gives with which we'll be leaving our Host Family when we go to Sisian. I don't know that they will really communicate how much their hospitality and kindness has meant to Sam and me, I hope they know anyway.

Walking through the Fields

We took another walk through the grape fields today. the weather has changed and the harvest has passed, making it a very different experience than last time. There were none of the lizards, for one thing. Nor were there any people working in their fields. It was nice to be along together- being alone has been a scarce commodity since coming to Armenia.

We walked through an apricot orchard, where the leaves were turning from a light gren to a bright yellow, and then sat for a while on the side of a small stream- used in summer for irrigation, but now just being picturesque. 

It was a really relaxing afternoon. I will miss this part of Shahumyan when we move.

Ice cream

Today I had my first honest-to-God legit ice cream since arriving in Armenia. I don't think that I have ever gone this long without ice cream in my life. It was amazing #ConditionsOfHardship

Winter is coming to Shahumyan

We have watched over the past several weeks as the snow line on Mount Ararat has crept steadily closer and closer to our little village. The weather has changed from unbearably hot and dry to  cold and rainy. 

Clothes which dried in a few hours on the line when we first arrived now take several days- when they can be  dried outside at all. Every available surface in our room has been transformed into a makeshift laundry-line several times at this point

This morning we woke to find a fine layer of frost coating the garden, and it felt like the rainy autumn might give way to winter at last. 

Like a crazy person,  I rushed out into the garden in my pajamas to take pictures before the frost melted. The family was horrified and are convinced that I'm going to die of cold- or worse- not be able to have children. (Apparently cold goes straight to your uterus here). 

But I did get some pretty awesome photos from the outing, so we'll call it an even trade.

Rainy Day in Shahumyan

Practicum Week

You'll remember that when we started the practicum element of our training, I was less than pleased with it. We continued to work with the same group of students every Friday until the week before we visited Sisian. This week, we taught them every day.

There was one minor complication, though. The Ministry of Education (called the National Institute for Education here) decided last minute to change the week of fall vacation. Apparently this happens all the time in Armenia, with school staff learning that morning by listening to the radio whether or not there will be school on a given day. It was originally supposed to be last week (during what the PC staff had scheduled as Clubs Week), but just before we left of our Sisian Visit, the vacation was delayed until this week. Why we didn't just switch clubs week and practicum week, I'll never know, but for whatever reason, we didn't. Thus, last week we were holding clubs during the middle of the school day, and this week we've been having class during the middle of vacation. 

There have been some upsides to this: for examples, I've only had 2 or 3 students show up to each class. On the other hand, there have been some down sides: I haven't had the same students attend 2 classes in a row all week. This means that the lessons I had planned- which built upon each other- weren't every useful at all and had to be reworked so that each lesson is a stand along class.

On top of that, for reasons that are entirely beyond me, we have a final lesson with the students on Monday of next week, which is the first day that all the students  come back from vacation, and Sam and I had the bad luck of having our final observation and evaluation on this day. It means that I'll be observed while teaching a group of students, some of whom have been to some lessons I've given over the past week, and some of whom haven't seen me in a month, and none of whom have a solid baseline of what to expect from me as a teacher. Great. 

Despite the screwed up nature of the schedule, and the ongoing problems I have with the general organization of the project, I am glad to have had this experience. 

For one thing, just having to do the lesson planning and watch it all fall to pieces week after week has given me a much, much greater appreciation of who much work being a teacher is. I grew up with two teachers for parents- I wonder how I never realized how difficult planning and delivering a good lesson is? A part of my mind knows they must have put effort into making sure their lessons were well organized and structured, but it's hard to believe it. They always made it look so effortless. I never saw them struggle to decide what to teach during a class or how to deliver information to the students in a way they'd understand. My parents always seemed to just get up in front of a class and they knew what to do. I don't know why I always just took this part of their job for granted. I won't do it again, that's for certain. 

Another thing that I really appreciated about the practicum week was the chance to et to know the students. This surprised me, because I honestly don't like kids. Really, I don't. I actively dislike spending time with them. They make me uncomfortable. But I did enjoy getting to know these students in a sort of sociopathic kind of way. 

The best way I  can explain it is to use an example from television. The TV show House MD feature a brilliant diagnostic physician who, unlike the doctors around him, doesn't really care about helping people. In the place of altruism, what really motivates this doctor is the process of solving the mystery of an illness. For him, helping the sick person is more of a side effect than and end goal. Similarly, (although I don't claim the skill and talent of the doctor in the TV show) while I never enjoyed the students for their company, the challenge of finding a way to engage each one of them- especially the weather ones who tended to misbehave- had held some appeal for me. Each student who struggles is like a little puzzle, and it's up to me to figure out what's not working and how to fix it. This is a far cry from actually caring about students as persons in their own right, but I gotta get behind this whole teaching gig any way I can right now, so I'll take the House MD-sociopathic route for the moment, since it appears to be the only road open to me right now. 

And to be fair, this approach did lead to some minor victories in the classroom. One kid, who in the US would be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD in a heartbeat, really excelled with I gave him an activity that involved clapping his hands as he spoke, one clap per syllable. It gave him something more active to do during class, and it improved his pronunciation: instead of "plah-uhm", he began to say "plum" with one clap. Instead of "pee-ahr", he began to say "pear", The best part was when he started to employ the clapping technique on his own, without my prompting. I would introduce a new word and he would ask how 'how many claps', or just clap as he repeated the word after me. 

I don't know if I taught him any English in our lessons, but I feel like this, at least, is a tool he can use in the future. Which, in it's own way, is as important. 

Karmir Sar

Mount Ararat may get all the attention, but Karmir Sar is no slouch. Here he is, looking glorious in the glow of sunset, with rain clouds gathering behind him.