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