Cave dwellers and why I am smarter than Socrates...

It was another travel weekend, this time heading up to a remote village north of Goris, about 2 hours from Kapan. Something like 15 Peace Corps Volunteers agreed to meet up, from a variety of different sites in southern Armenia, for a night of 'Capture the Flag' and sleeping in ancient caves. Capture the Flag didn't actually happen, but we did get to prepare a khorovats (MEAT ON SWORDS!) dance at a site of ancient ruins thanks to Steve Jobs and Ipod technology, and sleep in caves.

These caves were occupied by families as recently as the mid-80's, before the Soviets ran people out. They aren't so much caves, per se, as they are rooms carved into stone mountainsides. The whole situation made me think of myself, and how I might have fared in ancient times. Despite my North Face jacket and my sub-zero sleeping bag, I couldn't help but wonder if I would have had the wherewithal to make it in this place 2000 years ago.

So...to that end...am I smarter than Socrates?

Well, there's no historical bias in the standard IQ test. All of the questions asked are logical in nature, such as this one:

TRUE OR FALSE: A pie can be cut into more than seven pieces by making four diameter cuts.

I went to a website to take the entire test, then I finished and it demanded ten bucks for test results. I hope the creators of that site die in a fire. Anyway, I didn't see any questions on the test that would trip up Socrates just because he grew up in ancient Greece. There was nothing like, "How many iPods would Jack have if he gave three iPods to Bobby and an Acela train left the station at…" That would make the old man's head explode.

I read some essay by Malcolm Gladwell that said that the entire population, on average, gets smarter with every generation. And I believe it, because I believe everything I read because I'm a sheep. I also like the idea that I'm super smart. So you could argue that Socrates may have been brilliant for his time, but that he was brilliant in a society filled with warring, protein starved, toga-wearing clowns. I also don't see anything that says Socrates went to college, or even a semi-elite public university, AND I TOTALLY DID. For all we know, the man couldn't even read. And I think we ALL remember how vulnerable he is to Kansas lyrics. (If you didn't watch Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, ignore that joke)

What a sucker. According to this website for kids (I get all my education from child texts):

When Socrates was in his forties or so, he began to feel an urge to think about the world around him, and try to answer some difficult questions. He asked, "What is wisdom?" and "What is beauty?" and "What is the right thing to do?" He knew that these questions were hard to answer, and he thought it would be better to have a lot of people discuss the answers together, so that they might come up with more ideas.

So he began to go around Athens asking people he met these questions, "What is wisdom?" , "What is piety?", and so forth. Then Socrates would try to teach them to think better by asking them more questions which showed them the problems in their logic. Often this made people angry. Sometimes they even tried to beat him up.

I can see why. He sounds incredibly annoying, like a walking Book of Questions. And it doesn't sound like he bothered to answer any of his own annoying inquiries. I say we're all smarter than Socrates now. I guarantee it.

In the end, the caves above Goris are awesome, khorovats are delicious, and I am probably smarter than Socrates.*

*This is not true. I live in a city of 35,000 people, with 3 other Americans, and I'm clearly the 3rd smartest. Maybe I'm funnier than Socrates, but only because I don't see the humor in Jonathan Swift

Ears, stomach, and moonshine, oh my

In my 17 weeks in country, I’ve managed to lose weight at a rate that exceeds a pound a week. 26 pounds lighter than the day I arrived, each day with the host family in Kapan is a new adventure in my effort to distance my culinary intake from any semblance of pleasure. Whether it's consecutive days of white rice and ketchup, or yesterday’s awesomeness of 2.5 meals of only cold boiled eggplant…food at the house is kinda rough with my host sisters.

The good news? Khorovats! This is meat on swords. We don't get much meat here, but when we do, it is often armenian bbq, cooked on swords. Did I mention there were swords involved? The bad news tonight was that we didn't get chicken or pork khorovats. Nope, it was organ night at the Balosyan house.

And tonight’s dinner? Let's say I longed for the days of rice and ketchup.

It is served as a semi-solid glassy blubber that jiggles this way and that, like jello. I spooned it around in my bowl, thrusting it against eggplant and cow stomach. I think that’s cow stomach. I know the word for cow, but not beef. And I’m not sure if I know ‘stomach’ at all. Usually I just make a series of horrible gestures more befitting an American Pie sequel than an international aid volunteer.

Then I closed my eyes, prodded my soul for courage, and lifted the stew to my lips. I wish I could say that I savored this crunchy rampage of jumbled body parts, this casserole of failed Armenian tradition that fractured but would not go down. I wish I could. I wish.

To further convey enthusiasm for the meal, I tore apart a loaf of meat, released a mini battle whoooop!, lowered teeth to platter, and razed everything within scent-range like Godzilla after a bad breakup. Not everyone did that. Nope. Just me. But I did impress them with my ability to take down their feet-scented homemade vodka. I also made multiple well-received toasts towards peace in Karabakh and for the health of my host father, who still is recovering in a Yerevan hospital. I hoped it earned me some leeway with the ears and stomach stew, but frankly, I have no idea.

Times like this have also shown me Armenia’s rich, soft underbelly: the gracious friend of a friend who treats you to an unforgettable meal, displays the true meaning of hospitality, and who then can’t go home with a smile until you’ve tried some of his pig ears or cow stomach. And drunk from his Fanta bottle filled with moonshine.

My suggestion is this: next time you visit a foreign country in the hope of discovering a New World, eat local food and learn the local language—no matter how rubbery the meat, or how grueling the grammar. Next time you’re being chased by bandits in Colombia, turn around and, en espanol, offer them your wallet in return for some home-cooked potato sopa. If you lose an arm along the way, well, at least you’ve still got another. And it’ll make an awesome story for the grandkids.

Dammit. I’m gonna need grandkids now. I’m not sure how entertained Robbie and Jay will be when they hear this story for the 74th time, sometime in winter 2052.

The South Caucasus, Kevin Kolb, and justice

When you’ve lived long enough to experience the kind of grief that I have (34 in May!!), few tragedies catch you off guard. Having to settle for the third college on your list. Being saddled with semester after semester of jerk roommates. Not being blessed with the kind of pointless overrated lead singer in a shitty band voice that makes Colleen fall in love with you in clear deviance of her better interests. I’ve dealt with some of the worst that life has to offer.

Every so often, however, there sneaks a devastating cruelty past the safeguards of even your most cynical expectations. Those are the ones that really get you. The ones you can’t shake off, that make the full malevolence in the world so self-evident that it could be referenced in Satan’s founding document of Hell. I could never begin to know the full complexity of Kevin Kolb, but I bet that’s what he has to be feeling at this moment.

You see, Kolb was selected in the second round of the 2007 NFL draft. High enough to be regarded as a viable starter, but low enough to he could be allowed to whither on the bench’s vines for several years. He did so with dignity, but also with hope that eventually his day would come. He never spoke out of line and did what was expected of him. And though it took the departure of an underappreciated legend happening before its time, Kolb’s day did come. Only that day ended in disaster. He suffered a concussion, the type of injury that will be one day render him homeless and incompetent. Someone to be hauled in front of Congress as a cautionary tale of the sport.

That will come later, of course. For now, Kolb is still a football player. The concussion should have only been a minor setback. He had earned this job, after all. Only no. Fairness would make too much sense. That would be the script if we operated according to our better angels. But how often do they have a a part in how things play out?

Instead, an electrocuter of dogs has arisen to usurp the job with a few flashy plays. Here is a man capable of unspeakable evil, nevertheless able to dazzle all around him with athleticism. And now he is proclaimed leader. How can people be so blind as to the inner workings of the soul? I want to say they will pay for lack of perspective, but I know from experience that they will probably not.

I want to say the lesson of Kevin Kolb is that one must disregard the virtues of patience and simply, maybe callously, take our most heartfelt desires. To do otherwise is only to foster deception. Deception most inimical.

To that end, tomorrow will mark day 95 in a consecutive streak of cucumber, room temperature vodka, and salty cheese. Tomorrow's first toast is for you, Kevin Kolb.

Lightning is worse than The Blob

This week in Kapan I am the only volunteer around. My two site-mates have gone to Tsakhadzor, a winter resort town in the north that is approximately 8 hours away (errr…maybe 90 miles? Gotta love the developing world.) In any case, I have the city to myself, and therefore I’m forced to spend more time with my host family than I typically would. Without my host grandparents around (43 days and counting now), their granddaughters are staying with me and the gender rules here make communication and interaction somewhat difficult.
I was going to take a shower last evening during a thunderstorm here in Kapan. There was a lot of hand wringing and panic as I approached the bathroom at 6 PM, one of three one hour windows for running water here in the city. It turns out that, in much the same way that sleeping with your window open makes you sick, or how rubbing vodka on your chest makes you well, there is HORRIFIC scientific theory on showering in a storm in Kapan. They gestured to the faucet and explained by making explosion noises and by flashing the lights that maybe, just maybe, this was something I should not do. Apparently lightning travels through the water or metal pipes during storms. Lightning is evil. It’s worse than the Blob.
Secretly, I've always wanted to be struck by lightning. Yes, I know it can kill you. But there's also the possibility that the lightning could electrify my blood and give me the power to shoot lightning out of my fingertips and power unplugged appliances simply by touching them. It's almost worth the gamble. After I can get my own apartment in Kapan I will ALWAYS shower in a thunderstorm.
On another note, I had a four-day weekend due to Armenia’s 19th Independence Day on September 21st. I got to go hiking and camping with two good friends, including an overnight stay in a 10th century church. We met with several Armenian families on picnics and we shared food and homemade vodka throughout the afternoon. We stayed up as late as we could, playing ridiculous music on an Iphone. In the morning, we badly scared a group of Belgian religious pilgrims who were at the church at dawn. When they entered our dark secondary sanctuary, my greetings to them in Armenian simply served to chase them from the church. I can’t imagine how far they’d come to get to this random spot by 7:00 AM, but I couldn’t help but be amused at their hasty retreat and failure to return. Just one of the many ways that speaking Armenian has its perks. We negotiated with the one-armed groundskeeper for permission to sleep in his 1100 year old church. The Belgians? They were so spooked by our Armenian greetings that they didn’t even get to see the cool secondary sanctuary. America – 1, Belgium – 0.

*Note – There is no actual way to know that these were Belgian pilgrims, but it’s funnier to me that way. And I do know they weren’t Armenian or Russian, so Belgian seems like the next most likely nationality for them. Don’t question my logic.

Life in Kapan, 10 days in

When the going gets strange, the strange turn pro - Hunter S. Thompson

It has been an interesting adjustment to my permanent site, to say the least. My counterpart was on holiday during my first week at work at the Teacher's House, part of the National Institute of Education. I worked all five days, trying to make sense of the random resource materials and the arbitrary schedule we will have for the year. As best I can tell, I'll be presenting two seminars every month for the 44 english teachers that work in Kapan and in the surrounding villages. We'll be doing a needs assessment survey next month to get an idea for what kinds of topics these teachers are interested in, but mostly it seems like I will have a great deal of autonomy in designing and implementing all of this. When school gets back into session in two weeks, I'll also be able to use my job as cover to go to the village schools and those in Kapan and develop relationships with teachers that will hopefully serve us both professionally. For now, it seems part of the great Peace Corps mantra of 'Hurry up and wait'. I'm not sure what my job is, but I think I like it.
My home life has been a radical adjustment to the summer I spent in the village outside of Charentsavan. Instead of living on a small farm with 10-14 relatives - depending on who was visiting from Georgia on any given day - I now live in a 9th story apartment with 2 grandparents. There is ostensibly an elevator, but it seems to operate on an A Day/B Day schedule, making this one of Southern Armenia's crappiest 9th story walk-ups. My host father hasn't left bed since I arrived on August 6th, save the odd occasion where I helped him put on his pants to receive guests. He stays in bed, and his moans (and occasional tears) are indicative of his discomfort and sickness. His illness is unspecified, and the injections seem to cause more pain than relief. Frankly, I don't know what's going on much of the time, as the mixture of Russian/Armenian/and Bar-Bar doesn't do a lot for me in medical diagnoses. All I know is this - every couple of days, my dad's friends from work come over, we sit in his tiny bedroom, and we drink in his honor, blowing smoke on his unclothed and clearly pained body while calling him ' tsuweel' (lazy). Whatever the unnamed ailment that currently befalls him, if this is laziness, then I don't want to know what my male coworkers will think of me the first time I get the flu. The good news is that in Armenia, like in the US, I don't really have any male coworkers other than the security guards. Perhaps that will save me from the ignoble exercise that is the vodka drinking/smoke blowing/trash talking at the bedside of the gravely ill.
I'll save any grand conclusions about the onset of two years of service, reflections on my decision to join the Peace Corps, etc. For now, it's interesting enough and at times, overwhelming, just to be here. I'm grateful to my Georgian friends back in the US, and my good friend who had the sense to marry a Georgian and stoke my interest in the Caucasus. For now, that's enough.

Books completed this week - Gladwell's 'What The Dog Saw'
Movies watched - Mean Streets, The Man Who Wasn't There

In progress - Ghost Wars - The History of Afghanistan from 1979 to September 10, 2001

The end of Pre-Service Training.

The idea of updating a blog on the stories of the last 10 weeks, since my computer was last online, seems daunting to the point of recklessness. That being said, I'll try to do better moving forward. These are pics of my backyard in Alapars, my new host mother for the next 4 months, ancient ruins near Yerevan, and my good friend, Carl Spackler

The Road to Armenia

It's been an incredibly long and emotionally fatiguing start to the volunteer process. After flying to DC on Wednesday, we spent about 8 hours in trainings and registration stuff before finally breaking for dinner around dark. For most of the day, I felt reassured about the PC process, buoyed by the quality of folks that surrounded me. It's a good group, ranging in age from 20 to 75, totaling 58 volunteers in all.
Checking in 58 volunteers with approximately 140 pounds of luggage each was just this side of a disaster. We left for the airport at 12:30 for our 5:45 flight, and several folks made light jogs to the gate to make it on board on time. 58 to DC, 58 to Vienna though. So far so good.
Due to a 14 hour layover in Vienna we were given a day hotel to shower and rest. While some did that, a group of us powered through the fatigue and ventured to city center for churches, bratwursts, and the last good beer for quite a while. We've been repeatedly forewarned by current volunteers that Armenian wine and beer is borderline undrinkable, while the cognac and homemade (vodka), are solid. So getting a few beers in while in Vienna seemed prudent.
From here, it becomes a guessing game. I will be in Charentsavan, Armenia for the next 10 weeks, but I don't know where I'll be after that. I also haven't met my host family, who I'll start living with in 3 days. I know I'll be doing teacher training, but in an educational setting and system that I have no familiarity with. Mostly, I know that at the end of this next flight, I'll be living in a land with one of the wildest alphabets ever created, featuring about 6 'U's, 5 'J's and a question mark that looks like a small fish to me at this point. Adventures to follow

Beginnings

The Basics….

For the last eleven years, I have worked in the public schools of North Carolina, mostly as a special education preschool teacher, but also as a regular 2nd grade teacher for one brutal year. At the end of year ten, I felt a little burned out by the classroom experience, and wanted to take advantage of the world of opportunities that are out there for a 33 year old special educator, with no mortgage, kids, or other compelling reason to stay in North Carolina. Thus…the Peace Corps.
I’ve known since I was a teenager that I wanted to work in some sort of public service, leading me eventually from music education, to elementary education, to early intervention and special education with preschoolers. It’s what I do, but not necessarily ever who I AM. I’ve always felt more than a little out of place – as the first male grad from the Child Development Program at UNC, or the only male teacher at every workplace I’ve been in over the past 11 years. The lack of compelling reasons to stay in North Carolina made the Peace Corps an attractive outlet. I get to continue doing what I do - service and education - but with the adventures and experiences of living abroad to go with it.
In 15 days, I’ll be heading to Washington, DC, and from there to Yerevan, Armenia. This blog will be my best attempt to share some pics, some stories, and some tall tales with the folks I’m leaving behind. Thanks for reading.