School Starts! Sorta...

After two weeks at my site I was very much looking forward to school starting. Although the constant relaxation was nice for a change of pace after PST I was starting to struggle to find new activities to do, movies dubbed in Russian I had yet to see, trails to hike and books to read. I also may have come close to exhausting the sudoku game book I have. So, Sunday evening I endured (so I thought) one last evening of rest which I spent reading and playing with my kitten, Sonya.
I awoke with some nerves but mostly excited about the new adventure that awaited me: 2 years working at the village school which houses approximately 50 students and has 18 full time teachers, a director and various other staff who clean and maintain the grounds. My counterpart had told me to be at the school at “ten, or eleven. Whenever”. Wanting to set an example of being punctual as well as wanting to see the bustle of school beginning for the teachers in Armenia I decided to arrive at 10am. It was much cooler that morning with clouds rolling over the tops of the mountain ridges down into my village, an eerie foreshadowing of the dreaded winters I would soon encounter. I did not let this deter me as I walked along the gravel road on my 3 minute walk to the school and became exceedingly anxious. I arrive, enter through the gate. I can hear voices inside. I walk up the stairs, push through the front door and walk down the hallway with the voices getting increasingly louder. Aha! In the teachers room, which is also combined with the kitchen I found one of the teachers I know, Merita, talking with another woman. I am introduced to her, and find out she is not a teacher but one of the cleaning and grounds keeper ladies. She invites me to her son’s wedding this coming Sunday, a generous invite I thought for just having met her and promise that I will try to make it. Why not?
Of course I am a bit put off by the fact that the room is not bustling with all the teachers from the school. I inquire about this and Merita assures me that the other teachers are coming in on the 10:30 bus so they will arrive right around 11. This clears up the option of arriving at 10 or 11. So we chatter back and forth as best we can with my limited language skills (that incidentally have slid down hill over the past few weeks without any classes…or much studying) awaiting the anticipated arrival of all the other teachers. We prevailed in communication, but 11 came around and a teacher showed up. And about ten minutes later 3 more teachers arrive, including the English teacher (read: savior) which makes my life drastically easier. Water is boiled for tea, coffee is made, cookies laid out and we all crowd around one table. There are plenty of other tables but they still have the chairs up on them. I ignore this and merrily go along with the women who are present but wonder where my counterpart is, the director and some of the other teachers that I had met previously during my site visit in July. The teachers have produced a piece of paper and write down the dates of this week with areas for each teacher, it appears, to sign in. Of course I am not positive what this was and or is for. Then out come the tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese, breads more chocolate and cookies. “Eat!” Despite the fact that I had just eaten my breakfast an hour earlier I obliged all in the interest of integrating into the community and being loved by all the teachers. A drastic portion of which we are still missing. Noon is approaching and all of a sudden two teachers jump up, apologize and run out the door. Late for the bus! Oh no, so is another one! But, you have only been here an hour? Why aren’t we having an open forum, talking about the summer, what conferences and workshops everyone attended, goals for the upcoming school year, how we will close the achievement gap etcetera etcetera? Oh right, not in America. So, while I am somewhat taken aback by the brevity and lack of attendance from participants who I have deemed key players to the school year and my success here as a volunteer, I follow in suit. Help clean up because I don’t have a bus to catch and make sure that the first day of “work” is in fact over. Of course! And tomorrow, when will we be meeting “At ten, or eleven. Whenever.” I make the decision to arrive a bit later tomorrow.
We had of course been warned of this, that the work days with teachers before school actually starts with the students would be somewhat of a social gathering with lots of coffee being drank, gossip and some work. I assumed this to be an exaggeration. Never had a imagined the possibility that the other volunteers who had previously gone through this last year were actually down playing the situation. We’ll see how day 2 goes.
Mostly the same. I arrived around 10:20 because I was nervous about missing something that could prove to be terribly important. Oh how naive I still am in this culture. Some weeding is taking place at first. Then we rearrange some flowers in Merita’s room and await the arrival of the other teachers. With baited breath I anticipate all the teachers showing up today. Naïve. Two of the same teachers from yesterday show up, and two of the younger teachers I had met before. The six of us crowd around the same table. Well today…today is apparently fortune telling day. First, we do a Chinese “hexogram” game to determine our futures, very similar to astrological tellings but quite the cross-cultural event to an American in Armenian hearing how the Chinese forecast my life. Next we played a card game that I would equate somewhat similar to tarot card reading and then of course the ever popular najel bajack, or reading of the coffee cup to see what lies ahead for us.
So two days down. I would definitely say that I am integrating into the community with the teachers and really do enjoy them. All very nice and encouraging ladies in my language and endeavors at the school. I did take some initiative to discuss what I would like to do in the school and how I can help some of the other teachers with their curriculum. I was encouraged by my fortune.