Nothing to Write About

My school

Now that school has started, I am finally back in some sort of a routine. I'm not a big fan of monotony but after having one month with nothing scheduled I am able to appreciate it.

Each day I walk to school around 8:30 for first period class. Each day I have a different set of children at a different time. During school here, each grade is assigned a classroom for the year. The teachers move between classes. The students have English class two times a week for 45 minutes. I think English is one of the more difficult classes to teach because at least half of the students are way behind where they should be and the books assigned by the Government are far too advanced for even the strongest students in most of the classes. Therefore, keeping the students attention is very difficult because they do not care what the teacher is saying. I can not say that I really blame them for not caring either, the textbooks for the most part are very bland and uninspiring. They simply do not make learning fun for the students.

I catch the bus (a ride that puts wooden roller coasters too shame...they jar your body that much) either back to my house or to the neighboring city of Yereghnadzor if I need to do some shopping, meet other volunteers, or work with my Armenian language tutor. I usually leave school around 2:30-3:30 depending on if my Armenian counterpart has time to lesson plan or wants to work on private tutoring with me. Both of my counterparts have been very active in asking questions about how to correctly work the language (although sometimes they aren't receptive to my answer. I.E. Envelope is not spelled Envilope...not in British English and definitely not in American English...).

When I return home I like to hang out with my tatik (grandma) and help her with whatever her project of the day is. She is the coolest old lady I've ever met. She likes hearing English words and trying to remember them. She says it keeps her young. Per the suggestion of a friend, I was able to successfully able to teach her the English equivalent of "baaah." She now says "blerg" just as well as Tina Fey. It's great.

Each day there is always time to spend time alone in my room reading, watching movies, talking on the phone, or just napping.

One aspect of Armenian culture that I really like is all of the meals are eaten at the table in the dining room together as a family. The television isn't on (until 9:30 rolls around...my Tatik will never miss her favorite show "Ana"). After dinner, my host mom and my host brothers usually sit around for an hour or so drinking tea and talking. I learn Armenian and they learn English. At least two or three times a week the chess board comes out and I take on various family members. It's a nice way to end the day.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/08/holder-axelrod-denounce-f_n_708766.html

In other news, some idiot at a small church in Florida declared 9.11.10 Quran Burning Day....

Pictures and Clubs

The pictures above are from my permanent site.

The first day of school in Armenia is September 1st, nationwide all school's start on the same day. With the beginning of school, I have started developing the raw skills the Peace Corps gave us during PST. More so than anything else, I realize that my language skills are going to need to improve very quickly if I hope to discipline the older boys because they refuse to speak English. At this point, if they have not learned the basics it is simply too late to help them learn English, the best I can hope for is teaching them discipline and how to behave.

I have started to think of a few different ideas for Clubs within the village.

Beginner English Club for the other Secondary School in my village. The school teaches German and Russian as foreign languages. I thought of this idea when a police officer in the neighboring city of Yereghnadzor approached me and asked if I was the new English Teacher in Malishka. He said his son went to the other school but he really wanted him to learn English because he knew his son could get a better job if he could speak English. I gave him my phone number and asked him to call me next month once I was able to assess the situation better.

A creative writing club for the advanced 9th, 10th, and 11th graders. This club will happen, probably sometime around November or December at the earliest.

An athletics club, this idea is to draw in the boys who do not want to learn in class, I would organize sports activities once a week...futbol, basketball, volleyball, maybe even a running club if there was interest.

I've also been asked my a lot of the teachers to help them practice and learn English. I thought, if the interest was serious, that in my second year I would start small tutoring groups for the teachers who really wanted to learn.

I want to work on small business development somehow as well. When I leave the Peace Corps, I want to show that I gained experience in International Business for my Masters program. I still have not found a way to tie this into my Peace Corps experience in the village. My only prospect so far is working with the local hanewts (stores)on simple business practices. For example, posting the hours their open, bringing in products that other stores do not carry (most stores carry the exact same things). It's still a work in progress.

---Chad

Miami ---> Milishka

So I have now been at my permanent site, Milishka, for a little over a day. And as fast as time flew during PST in Qarashamb (when we were surrounded my American's and our whole group of 60 got together once a week), time has gone the same speed, only in the opposite direction now that I have arrived at site. The public school system in Armenia begins September 1st, which means that I have a little more than three weeks with absolutely nothing to do.
In Milishka, I am truly living the Peace Corps experience I thought about before I came to Armenia complete with an outdoor squat toilet and shower house, and I think I am thankful for that, as the reality begins to sink in, I'll let you know if that statement turns out to be 100% true.

But for now, its time to go explore the village and see what it has to offer. I am anxious to go test out my Armenian language skills, on someone other than my host family.

Until next time,

---Chad

Model School

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on model school and how it's going so far.
Ashley and I taught the oldest group of kids for the first three days, there were a group of 14 girls ages 15-17 years old. We did activities for the majority of each 45 minute class. Our main objective was to get the girls up and talking and working together. We focused on this each day using activities like having the girls come up to the front and write down their "dream job" on the board, as well as a listening activity, where we took out specific words from John Lennon's song "Imagine" and had them fill in the blank words using the word bank we put on the board. We got mostly positive feedback from our peers with a few helpful tips, that we were sure to implement the next day. We have the 10-12 year old age group tomorrow, we are excited and nervous! But lesson planning for us has been relatively quick and painless so far, but as PST is winding down, we are definitely feeling the fatigue from the last two months.

I am so happy that each day I get the opportunity to try something new, something excited, and something that I have never done before. This Peace Corps thing is headed in the right direction!

---Chad

Seven Weeks In

Hey everyone,

It's been a really long time since I updated this. So much has happened since I have arrived in country, I have no idea where to begin. But I guess I'll start somewhere in the middle, a little while after I arrived in Qarashamb.

Qarashamb, is my pre-service training village. It is located about ten kilometers from Charentsevan, the nearest city. Qarashamb has a population of 750 people, it goes without saying that everyone knows everyone. Living in my village are six other Americans. There was one other, Diana, a 75 year old retired school teacher from Iowa, but she terminated early and went back to her old life in the states. There are three other people my age, Scott (from Cleveland), Shayna (an NYU graduate from Houston), and Ashley (who graduated from Kansas University only a few days before departing for Armenia). There is also a married couple from Cambridge Massachusetts as well as a 68 year old retired TEFL teacher who lived in France for 35 years before recently moving back to the states.

The village has been a great experience, the conditions very very nice, which has made adjusting to the country just a little bit easier than it would have been if we would have had to face extreme poverty right away. PST has been a very busy time for everyone, most days we have language in the morning and then some sort of English teacher training in the afternoon. It's really nice to be on a schedule like this.

Two weeks ago, the Peace Corps told us where our permanent stations will be for the next two years, and last weekend I had the chance to visit my new village. It's called Milishka, and has a population of just over 5500. It is the second biggest village in the country, and is in (from what I'm told) the most beautiful area of the country. I am surrounded by mountains, and live within fifteen minutes of two different towns, Vayk and Yereghnzador (I'm still having trouble pronouncing this).
There is one currently serving volunteer in Yereghnzador who will be with my arriving group for the next year. Stationed in my village and the two surrounding towns are Greg, a business volunteer from Washington State, a school teacher from New York named Becky, and another business volunteer named Meg, who I obviously need to get to know better because I do not know where she is from. My fellow Qarashambers are spread throughout the country, most notably Shayna, who is stationed only five kilometers from the Iranian border. She can actually see the barbed wire fence from her porch!

I have managed to make quite the experience out of this thing they call PST though. We have had a few great nights, a few good nights, and well of course a few nights that started out really great, then became amazing, which of course always leads to trouble the next day! Life's great, though, don't worry people. I still can not think of anything else I would rather be doing right now, although I am sure I'll have some doubts when Winter rolls around! I hated it in the States, and I'm sure I'll despise it when I'm walking to school in the Winter!

I should have my new address soon enough, in a couple of weeks, and I will be able to give it to those of you who have been asking for it.

---Chad

Forever Young, Let's Try Something New!

This morning at 7am, After four years of hard work, great friendships, and new experiences I left Miami, Florida and Johnson and Wales University to start something new in a city somewhere on the other side of the world in a country called Armenia.

Sitting alone in this hotel room in Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., my staging city for the Peace Corps, is giving my time to reflect on what I have accomplished in the last four years. So much has happened, I wonder if the me before college would recognize the person I have become.

I can still remember walking through the Detroit Metropolitan Airport in the Fall of 2006 excited about all of the possibilities that lay in front of me. I wanted to change the world, I wanted to join the Peace Corps and travel to foreign and exotic places bringing skills, knowledge, and hope. It was scary and exciting at the same time. Walking through that airport, I had one thing that I knew a lot of kids my age did not have, I had a plan and a plane ticket to somewhere new. No commitments, no obligations, just myself and a strong desire to succeed.

Flash forward to May 2010. Everything I dreamed about has materialized in front of my eyes.

I just received my Bachelors of Science Degree from Johnson and Wales University where I graduated from the Honors College Magna Cum Laude with my degree in Management and a concentration in International Relations. I have worked in a management position for the last three years, acquiring experience at Levy Restaurants and the Fairmont Turnberry Isle as a Restaurant Supervisor and Assistant Outlet Manager, respectively.

Old friends have gone, and new ones have arrived. Some friendships from home have endured, while some have not. The people I thought I would always talk too are not necessarily the people that I currently do while some who were just acquaintances in High School have now become lifelong friends.

Friendships from the last four years have been the key to my success. I have met some amazing people in Miami, some of the greatest people I will ever have the joy to know.

Life is great people, enjoy it to the fullest.

Adios Miami, you have shown me some of the greatest times I will ever have. Thank you.

---Chad

Aspiration Statement

After acceptance into the Peace Corps, all invitees must write an aspiration statement detailing their reasons for joining and what they hope to learn while overseas. This is mine. Enjoy :)

Aspiration Statement
Name: Chad EricksonCountry of Service: Armenia
Departure Date: May 27, 2010

A. The professional attributes that you plan to use, and what aspirations you hope to fulfill, during your Peace Corps service.

Growing up in a small Midwestern town in Michigan and then moving to attend college in Miami, Florida has shown me two very distinct and different lifestyles. The cultural diversity, heterogeneous blend of people from all over the world, and heavy Latin American and Caribbean influence in Miami taught me to appreciate the differences that make us unique and the commonalities that bind us together. Working in a Four Diamond Hotel that stresses being authentically local, embracing travelers from all over the world, and working together in teams helped build some of the skills needed to succeed in the Peace Corps. Outside of my professional experience, I have also spent ample time tutoring middle school students who do not speak English as a first language. Working with ESL (English as a Second Language) students, some of which speak no English, helped me gain a level of patience that I did not believe possible. Patience, understanding, cultural sensitivity and appreciation are the traits that I believe will help me succeed in the Peace Corps.Since I have begun talking about the Peace Corps to my friends and family, I have inevitably been asked, “Why the Peace Corps?” I simply state, “I want to do something positive for the world and I can not think of a better way to do that than by giving myself completely to a third world country and helping someone there become better equipped to fulfill their dreams. I understand that change will be slow, and that I will probably not accomplish everything I set out to do. In the least, however, I know I will have tried my hardest to create an everlasting change.

B. Your strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs.

Working with people of different cultural backgrounds was one of the most appealing aspects of Peace Corps service. When I moved to Miami, I faced a lot of the same obstacles I will be facing when moving to Armenia. Though I am not an expert, I am no longer a rookie when it comes to embracing a new culture. Listening to the advice given to me by my host country partners will show that I respect them and their culture. I will ask questions, be inquisitive, and attentive. I have always worked well in groups, adapting my personality and leadership style to suit the group. I am not the kind of person who expects anyone to conform strictly to suit me, but I am the one who will always acclimate myself to the needs of the group.

C. Your strategies for adapting to a new culture with respect to your own cultural background.

Maintaining my self-identity while adapting to the Armenian culture will be a fun and challenging experience. I plan on emerging myself in everything Armenian from the instant I arrive. Tasting Armenian foods, speaking Eastern Armenian, and interacting with Armenians will help me gain a strong appreciation for the land where I will be living for the next 27 months. Respecting my own cultural background and teaching my Armenian counterparts about American culture be enjoyable because I will be able to share who I am and where I have came from with people who have never been to America.

D. The skills and knowledge you hope to gain during pre-service training to best serve your community and project.

During pre-service training in Armenia, I am looking forward to learning the local language. Through my research I have learned that the Peace Corps provides one of the best language learning programs in the world. Total immersion in the Armenian culture along with three months of comprehensive language training will be the most beneficial part of pre-service training. As I have almost no experience with the Eastern Armenian language, other than what the Peace Corps provided online once I received my invitation, I feel that I will be able to grasp it fairly well because I know that so much of what I will do in Armenia depends on learning the language. I also hope to gain a better understanding of what it takes to teach English to a group of people that might not speak English at all. Because I will be teaching English as a foreign language, I will need to place heavy emphasis on anything language related throughout my pre-service training.

E. How you think Peace Corps service will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends.

When I return from the Peace Corps, I hope to continue to be a public servant. Money and fame do not interest me as much as helping others and giving them the hope that they can be great. In the materialistic culture of America, so much of who we are as individuals is judged by what we own and how much income we earn. I have never been comfortable with this and I hope the Peace Corps will show me another side of the world where this is not the case. Since the beginning of college, it has been my goal to join the Peace Corps. I did not believe that I would have attained my goal so early in life. The Peace Corps will be the transition to the rest of my life. I hope that my Peace Corps service will show me what I want in life and who I need to become to achieve that unrealized dream of mine.