PST 4

6/25/05
Bari Yereko (Good Evening!)

Another cloudy day in the Margohovit valley—the mountains are almost completely obscured. It also happens to be my half birthday...a fact I have not shared with my host family. Although I now know the word for half (kyes) and for birthday (tnundi), I still lack enough language to sufficiently explain a half birthday…and why I would celebrate it. Better for them to just know that my birthday is December 25, which isn’t even Christmas in this country, and leave it at that. Christmas is still celebrated on January 6 in Armenia, which I am told was the original Christmas day and when the rest of the world changed to the 25th, Armenia remained the same. I am going to Vanadzor tomorrow evening with some other volunteers and we will celebrate by eating pizza…yum. And probably some ice cream (bachbarach) as well. It is the little things that make us happy.

I also plan to do some more hiking tomorrow as well, and am looking forward to it. I just wish these clouds would hurry up and spill their moisture so we have some chance of it being sunny tomorrow. It is almost July and I am still wearing my wool sweater (I stupidly only brought one, thinking I wouldn’t need many this summer) and my fleece jacket. It is warmer in Vanadzor, which is at a lower elevation, but still long-sleeve weather for the most part. I can only imagine what winter has in store for me. I won’t really have any idea until we get our permanent site assignments, which is actually coming up—two weeks from now, I think. Apparently, in this tiny country, I could find myself in Siberia or in the hot desert. As long as there are mountains near by….

My big accomplishment for the day was learning how to do some Armenian dancing. Fortunately for me it is not too difficult—you just kind of shuffle your feet and wave your hands around above your head. Okay, there is a little more to it than that, but if I can do it….
Seriously though, it was fun. My host parents and brother are at some big wedding that they decided not to take me to because it is far away and there will be a lot of people sleeping on the floor. No kidding, that’s what they said. I am actually a bit relieved—there are supposed to be 2-300 people there, which is a lot of people to stare at and feed the American. Instead, I am here with my sister, learning how to dance with her and her friends. Good company to be in the first time I make a fool out of myself. It also means that my weekend will be a bit quieter and more relaxed.

I spent some extra time with my LCF yesterday and had a nice conversation about America and Armenia, language classes and life with my host family. It was nice to have a real conversation with an Armenian, even if it was in English. I also learned the difficulty of describing the state of our country to a person who has lived in relative poverty their entire life, and yet has had enough access to the media to form stereotypes about Americans. I think I did a good job of describing some of the realties (we are not all rich, if we are poor it isn’t because we do drugs, there is a large gap between the rich and the poor, etc.) but I have to think if it was this difficult to describe to someone who is well-educated and speaks English very well, what is going to happen when I get to my site? I guess that is what continued language classes are for.
Recently (like yesterday) I arrived at the point where I can hold a short conversation (more than hello, how are you? I am good, thank you.). I can actually tell my family where I am going, when I will be back, etc. without having to act things out, draw pictures, get out the dictionary, call my LCF, and speak in crude one-word sentences. Now I can speak in crude short phrases, sometimes even complete sentences! Everything is still in present tense, but I know time descriptors enough to say things like “tomorrow I go to vanadzor” “in the morning I eat at 8” “tomorrow I walk in mountains with Americans at 10.” I also know the entire alphabet at this point and can read and write at probably a first grade level! See sam. See sam run. I don’t like hot dogs….. Its not pretty, but it is effective. And this is all about survival.

I also had my LCF come over yesterday and talked to my host mother about allowing me some more independence. Starting today, I will wake myself up, start my own shower, find the breakfast table (all by myself), pour my own tea, and serve my own breakfast. It will be a nice change from the pounding on my door minutes before my alarm goes off, and then, if I don’t open the door immediately continued pounding, or more recently, just simply walking in to my bedroom. The cultural norm here is to knock and walk in as opposed to knock and wait until someone opens the door as we might do in America. I think this will be nice change of pace for me—as most of you who know me are already aware, I am not a morning person. Imagine me trying to speak Armenian immediately after waking up to someone who is speaking rapidly and loudly and pushing me around the house showing me things like the breakfast table, the tea pot, and my lunch. I am a quick learner…I know where these things are.

I also know that she is merely being an Armenian Mother, which is why I rely on my LCF to explain things to her…and to do it nicely. She is a very busy woman, as she is also a student and so it was easy enough to say “you are very busy, I can do some of these things myself, I have been for years…” In Armenia I am still a child, especially because I am a woman. Women of my age are often still living with their families…or getting married and living with their families. It is uncommon for families to live as my host family does—with only the nuclear family in the household. The gender roles are very defined here, a fact that has taken some getting used to. The women do all of the cooking, cleaning, gardening, food preparation, and take care of the family. It is nearly unheard of for a man to cook, do laundry, or do much of anything around the home. My host sister waits on her father—brings him a glass of water and then brings it back to the kitchen, he picks his feet up in a chair and she brings him a footrest, she cleans and puts away his electric razor, etc. The men do work hard, simply elsewhere, and they perform very manly tasks. Car maintenance, farming, and earning money for the family. I think they also do all of the driving, I have yet to see a woman drive in this country. The boys are the only group that don’t seem to have many responsibilities. They play. That is about all I can figure.

These roles extend into volunteer life, although not entirely--it is accepted to some extent that we do things a bit differently as Americans. I think the married couples have the worst time with this one. For instance, it is expected that as female PCV’s that we do our own laundry, the men on the other hand are prohibited from doing their own laundry by their host mothers. This means that a fairly progressive married couple who has spent their time in the US sharing household tasks are now faced with a system where the woman does the laundry for both of them and the man sits back and watches. Of the married couple in our village, the husband actually snuck around trying to help his wife hang laundry on the line…and was caught, and reprimanded. Don’t you know? Men don’t do laundry.

What this means for me is that I am expected to help out around the house—clear the table, help prepare food, do my laundry etc. I am glad about this, I don’t want to be waited on, that would impede on my independence even more. I am, however, a bit bothered by the fact that the only reason I have these expectations is because I am a woman. It is a double edged sword. But I am getting used to it. Armenians don’t seem to see any problems with the gender roles, but I think that between pop culture (my family has satellite television and gets more channels than I ever did in the states) and watching these Americans work in their country, they will begin to see that there are other ways. There are already large culture gaps between generations, which is similarly true of the US. For instance, there is no Armenian word for boyfriend, because it is not acceptable to have boyfriends in Armenia, yet teenagers date and the younger generation has words for boyfriend/girlfriend and know all about dating, etc.

Hadjok-Madjok (bye-bye) Bari Gishes (good night)!