Pish, I’m not going through culture shock

This week marks the halfway point of PST, so there’s only 6 weeks left of training! And next Wednesday, I’ll find out my permanent site placement, aka the village/town where I’ll be living and working for two years starting in November. Ahhhhhh so crazy and so soon!! I’m starting to feel both super excited and a bit anxious. The little bit of anxiety I feel stems from thinking about leaving my PST host family and the other A23s. I definitely lucked out with my PST host family; they’re the best host family I could ever ask for, so fingers crossed my permanent site host family is just as awesome. The A23 group is also amazing, with people coming from all different walks of life. There are so many different ages (ranging from 21 years old to 70-something years old!!), states, ethnicities, and life experiences represented in our group. These people aren’t just my co-trainees and colleagues anymore. I already count many of them as my friends and family, even though we’ve only known each other for less than 2 months.

Today, for our cultural training session, we discussed culture shock and its stages: honeymoon phase, culture shock, regression, recovery, and adaptation. Prior to this training session, I was in denial that I was going through culture shock. I thought that culture shock only happened when you’re bothered or annoyed by something in your new country and culture, for example, the food, bathrooms, weather, insects, gender roles, etc. But this training session taught me that people experience culture shock differently. For PST, I really did not and do not have any issues with my new Armenian surroundings and culture, but I have been frustrated with my language learning. At first, I didn’t consider that frustration to be culture shock, as I didn’t blame the Armenian language at all. Rather, I just attributed my frustration to my language-learning shortcomings and blamed myself. I also have been experiencing some serious homesickness and FOMO (fear of missing out). I’m used to talking to my mom everyday, but I’ve been weaning myself off of phone calls to her. My FOMO has also been heightened this week knowing that this weekend many of my Davidson friends are reuniting for Homecoming Weekend and my DCSD teammates are competing in their first swim meet of the season (V-I-C-T-O-R-Y). I now know that language frustration and homesickness/FOMO are a normal part of the regression stage of culture shock. But my Peace Corps friends have been a great support system, as we are all experiencing some sort of culture shock and are going through it together. It’s sad to think about not having these people around all the time once we move to our permanent sites.

On a happier note, last weekend was a blast! On Friday night, the PC staff took the whole A23 group out to a nice dinner in Yerevan. The restaurant was fantastic and I ate so much Armenian food! Afterwards, we went dancing, traditional Armenian style!! Traditional Armenian dancing reminds me a little of Greek dancing. You dance, step, jump while holding the hands or shoulders of the people next to you in the circle. What’s even cooler is that this dancing took place at the Cascades, the beautiful stairway in Yerevan. Dancing at the Cascades happens on the last Friday of every month during the summer and is open to the public. This was the last dance of the summer so there were so many people! The circles of Armenians dancing were amazing to watch. Then you’d see this circle of bumbling Americans trying to follow a dance instructor and mimic the correct dance steps. It was hysterical and tons of fun! I got a good workout too! One friend who has an Apple Watch was actually told by his watch that he reached his exercise goal for the day, which he hadn’t planned on doing. So if you need some good workouts, take up Armenian dancing.

On Saturday, the PC staff took us to Noravank monastery, so I went again! It was just as beautiful as the first time I went, and this time, I climbed the side of a mountain for a bit and got a good photo of Noravank from further out. On our way back, we stopped at Areni Winery and got to do a wine tasting (blackberry and peach wines for the win!). And just a random tidbit: this coming Sunday, I’m running my first 10k!! Woohoo!! Next blog post to come after I find out my permanent site, meet my counterpart teacher(s), and go to my site for a 3-day visit. It’s crazy to think that that’s all happening in less than 2 weeks! Things are about to get very real.

Training training training

Happy one-month in-country anniversary, A23s!! A23 is the name of my group of Peace Corps Armenia volunteers, as we are the 23rd group of Peace Corps volunteers to serve in Armenia (Peace Corps has been serving here since 1992). We have now officially been in Armenia one month!

Yep. I know. It’s been a while. I haven’t been very diligent about writing new blog posts. Every time I think, “Oh, I should probably write another blog post,” I end up inventing excuses for myself to actually avoid writing one. Obviously, I’m continuing to hone my cache of procrastination skills I developed at Davidson; my professors would be so proud. But in my defense, I haven’t had much down time. PST is exhausting!! I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired in my life, not even in college when I would juggle doubles (two swim practices a day) and all-nighters or during finals. But even though I’m exhausted, it’s a good kind of exhaustion. The rewarding kind.

A typical day for me starts off with 4 hours of Armenian language class in the morning, followed by 3 hours of technical teacher training in the afternoon. Then I go home to my host family and hang out with them in the evening. But “hanging out” also requires a lot of hard and honest effort, because not only am I attempting to communicate in a language that I’ve only been studying for one month, but I’m also trying to integrate into my host family and their culture. Before I go to bed, I also do my language homework for the next day, as well as a little bit of extra studying. Depending on the day, I might have some variation. Some days, I lesson prep for my practicum English class of Armenian 5th graders. On certain days, I have technical training all day, with sessions on safety & security, medical care, Peace Corps foundations, and Armenian culture.

Long story short, I’m tired a lot. The recurring question I receive from my host family (which I now recognize and understand with 100% accuracy because they ask it so often) is “Hognats es?” which is the Armenian equivalent of “You tired?” So I must also look pretty tired. But like I said earlier, it’s a rewarding tiredness. I know it sounds cheesy, but I’m honestly learning something new and applicable everyday. I love being able to actually apply what I learn in teacher training to my practicum classroom. I love learning a new word, phrase, or even grammar structure in language class everyday, then coming home to my host family and trying it out. I love discovering more and more about Armenian culture from technical training every week, as well as directly from my host family. Hence, regardless of how tired I am, I feel so #blessed to be doing what I’m doing.

And don’t get me started on my host family. I could talk about them forever; I’ll probably end up writing an entire blog post about them later. Up to this point, they have definitely been the main highlight of my time in Armenia. So to wrap up this blog post, there are two particular adventures I’ve had so far with my host fam that I’m going to share.

First adventure: Today, my host family took me to the beautiful Noravank monastery (which I’ll actually be visiting again in a week with my Peace Corps group). Afterwards, we had a picnic along the Arpa River! My host dad made a fire and we had a mini barbecue, roasting vegetables over the fire and cooking khorovats (Armenian barbecue). It was so great! I originally had no idea that we were picnicking and got super confused when we kept driving slowly along the shoulder of the road and looking down at the riverbank. I didn’t figure out what we were doing until everyone started getting out of the car and my host grandma turned over to me and said, “Peekneek.” That’s when I finally got clued-in.

Second adventure: one time when we were going to visit extended members of my host family, my host dad got pulled over by a cop for speeding. My host dad proceeded to get OUT OF THE CAR before the cop had even come to a complete stop behind us, went to the cop’s driver-side window, and just talked to the cop for like 10-15 seconds and THAT’S IT. He came back to the car and just drove off. NOTHING. NADA. Armenia’s rules of road travel sure are something else.