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