English Camp

I traveled to the western border of Armenia this weekend to help with an English camp.

I traveled to Gyumri, in order to take the train (Yay!) to my final destination in the Arragatsotn region. It was strange going on the highway to the Gyumri-Yerevan fork in the road, and instead of going towards Spitak and Yerevan, we just kept traveling straight towards Gyumri.

Gyumri is the second largest city, even larger than Vanadzor, and is located on a mostly flat plain, with some mountains in the distance (though being this far west in Armenia usually means, you're looking at Turkey).

I got in and got a very eager taxi driver wanted to take me to my destination, the train station. Only I didn't know the word for train. (I've never used it before! Give me a break!). So I call a PCV in Gyumri, get my info, then go back to the guy, and ask how much. It's still 100 dram more than what I was told to pay, but I was fine, and another guy said 300 more than the price I got.

At the train station--damn, this is why I hate not having a camera. I used the bathroom in the train station, which is downstairs, in a totally shady looking area. Probably, whenever it was built, it looked amazing and wonderful. But, it probably hasn't been repaired or renovated for several decades, and it really looked quite scary. They had a light bulb hanging from the ceiling, and flies buzzed back and forth casting eerie split-second shadows. So I started this paragraph talking about how I wish I had a camera. This wasn't what I wanted to takes pictures of really badly, though I'd bet I could get some interesting pictures.

But what I really wanted to take a picture of, I didn't even notice at first. Right when you walk into the train station, if you look up, you see this amazing structure hanging from the ceiling. I didn't notice it at first, the day was overcast, so I'm not sure what the structure would look like with sun filling it out. I keep dumbly calling it a 'structure' because I'm not really sure what I'd call it, or even if I can describe it correctly (No pictures! This blog must look so bare. And I'm sorry for that. I guess I want to try my best describe as much as I can. The word for 'describe' is նկարագրել is derived from the words for picture/painting and the verb 'to write').

So here it goes: There is a large dome in the ceiling, several stories up, and some bronze metal structure hanging down from it, for some reason I keep thinking sort of vaguely modern art. The structure doesn't look new, or even kept up, but that was part of its charm for me. It was an old cobwebby cloudy bronze skeleton, massive compared to what you'd expect to see in a train station that size, and just captivated me.

So then I wait around for me train, and it's one time, but once I get on the actual train, it takes about 40 minutes until we actually start to move. It moves faster than I thought it would, and I get there a few hours before sunset.

I got to teach kids English and play games the next few days, and see a lot of volunteers that were already here for a year, and are actually on their way out. It was nice to hear some of them wax nostalgic about Armenia, talk about their post-Armenia travel plans, and really just hang out.

We had amazing food. We had BBQ chicken with rice, burritos, and even egg rolls! These egg rolls were amazing. Apparently fried lavash is a good substitute for the fried dough.

On the last day of the camp, we're teaching some vocabulary that deals with foods. One of the fruits we taught was mulberry, and when we were using it, a kid says, huh, herahos,which means telephone. We're talking about foods, why on earth . . . have you ever heard of blackberry? Well apparently this kid has. I talked with him and confirmed my suspicions. Maybe we should be teaching kids about cell phone names!

Oh and today:

Jesus H. Christ! Cheap produce! Tomatoes were 450 dram a kilo today (about $1.25) whereas before they were 800-1000 (and even 1500, this winter). And then I saw that everything was cheap so I just bought up everything I could think of without even thinking. Sweet sweet summer is finally here.