My, how time flies!
I’ve been so busy the last two weeks, that I haven’t had time to write
hardly anyone. This weekend I do have
Sunday off, so I’m hoping to do some catching up. Lesson plans take up quite a bit of time,
because I’m always exploring some new way to teach something in English. Like in my Linguistics class, they have asked
to learn medical, law, and technology terms for their exams. Fortunately for me when the law request came
through, I had planned a mock trial to help them understand how democracy and
the court system work in America . The trial was about Curly Pig and how B.B.
wolf tried to poach him. I picked a
story I knew everyone would be familiar with.
I found out in the meantime, that they do not have jury trials in Armenia . All trials are by judges who are often
corrupt and susceptible to bribes.
Although we used a script from the Illinois Court System website for
teaching law, we added quite a few things like picking a jury and giving a
sentence. My best class had me bending
over laughing by the time they were finished and the parts they wrote
themselves were the best parts. In jury
selection they asked questions like: Do you like to eat pig? No, I’m a vegetarian. Do you think all wolves are scary? No, I like all animals. Have you heard about the wolves coming into
the villages and eating animals? Of
course I have, but these stories are for children, and I am an adult! Is it
true that you are the pig’s lover? They
were quite inventive and understood what questions and responses they should
give in very little time. By the time
our trial was completed the students could identify all important vocabulary in
English for trials and all were involved!
In the meantime I started an Action Research project with
another colleague in the hopes of getting funds to buy materials and novels for
our university. I have three beginner
classes of high school and college students who are being taught English
through memorization of dialogs. Ruzanna
and I are starting an English Lab that we will use to teach our students and to
give workshops on how we use these materials.
This includes graphic organizers the students are making, Word Walls,
posters, etc. It will be interesting to
see the response from all. We started
with the students on Thursday and they were totally engaged in the project with
the subject matter being on their level and they could finally understand what
was going on. I’m reading them a story
and while reading, they fill in their graphic organizers for animals, family,
holidays, colors, etc. After they
complete these, they will write about the story using the graphic organizers
and the Word Wall. They are having fun
and learning.
I cannot teach English grammar here or punctuation, because
their students have been trained using British grammar which would only confuse
them. I would also have to be an expert
in teaching British grammar to explain the differences, and if they start using
the American forms, they will fail because their teachers don’t understand the
difference. For example in America , we put
a comma before a conjunction in a compound sentence. In British grammar they don’t! They also learn to pronounce words using
diacritical marks like we used to see in old British dictionaries, but I don’t
think are used in America
now. They are soooo complicated, and we
often have discussions about how I pronounce things, but then part of this is
because I’m from the South! I have to be
careful and pronounce the “th” in words like clothes. The Kazakhs told me clothes had two syllables
and we never agreed!
Today is my first workshop for Elementary teachers at the
Armenian Teachers Ass. It will be
interesting to see how many come and how they will perceive this lesson on
Brain Based Learning. Everything here is
about 25 to 50 years behind!
Okay for all you people totally bored with teaching. This is an interesting country with many
facets. While riding to Yerevan we pass through the highest area of Armenia in the
mountains where many Kurds live. Our
university’s director explained that these people combine paganism and
Christianity and have some strange habits.
You can’t tell them from anyone else, but they live in a farming
community. The Armenians have been so
discriminated against that the last thing they want to do is discriminate
against another group. They leave each
other alone.
I went to the Armenian Church in the hopes of sitting and
reading my Bible for an hour. I don’t
understand any of the service. Much of
the service looks similar to the Catholic service but there are some things
quite different. They make the sign of
the cross with their opposite hand and touch the ground sometimes. I don’t know what this means and no one can
tell me. As the priests walk around the
altar sometimes covered with a curtain like the Holy of Holies, they shake
large disk on poles that have beads on them and sound like rattles. The priest wears a gold habit with a hat that
looks similar to a crown. The other members on the altar wear black hoods that
look similar to something the Klu Klux Klan would wear. I know it sounds sacrilegious, but it’s the
most similar thing I can think of. Every time they touched the ground I sat
down only to find they were still standing.
I never got to read the Bible except for the 15 minute sermon of the 2
hour mass!
About three weeks ago I started taking Yoga. I go two to three times a week and surprise
to me, my instructor speaks English quite well.
He learned it in India
where he was being trained as a Yoga instructor. He teaches quite differently and is very
good. He’s also a very religious person
and explained some things about Armenia
to me. He said no one understands the
church service, because it is in old Armenian which no one speaks. He said during the Soviet era many Armenians
became atheists and don’t practice any religion any more. He also said that
there are now many different sects or religions in Armenians which have taken
more people from the church. While we were taking Yoga, he used his prayer
beads, and I asked him about them. I
have been surprised to find that Greeks, Catholics, Armenians, and Muslims all
use prayer beads, and they all look similar.
Georgiou is very interesting though because he can tell you when you use
the right fingers; the finger is connected with your heart and helps you in
many ways. I call him my Guru, which he likes.
I will take a picture later and send it.
He looks like someone the Beatles met while in India , rather
wild looking! He also told me it was okay to sit and read the Bible or meditate
and not get up and down. I’m so
relieved. I will get more just reading!
Two weeks ago we had our Broadway Night although it was at 2 p.m. 96 teachers and students came from two
universities, and five high schools and colleges. Everyone really enjoyed it
and had American punch for the first time also.
They were all involved in answering the questions on their programs and
asked if we could have more events like this.
Last week 25 of our students attended the Armenian Teachers
Conference in Yerevan
where I presented Games and Drama to teach English. None of the ideas were new to me but helpful
to others especially the students. The
teachers and students enjoyed the games and don’t do things like this
here. The game I used takes almost an
hour and was based on an idea I found in a book that I expanded greatly
on. There was an online author there who
asked if he could use my idea for his website.
I really should publish and get paid for these ideas! After the conference Kristina who was my
guest at the hotel, Alex, the Fellow from Gumyri and I, went to dinner at
Dolmama’s. It was quite good but also
quite expensive. We had a really good
time and I’ve never seen Kristina smile so much. After dinner we found a photo machine like
you used to see all over America
and took silly pictures. The next day,
Kristina and I visited the Armenian
Genocide Museum Mount Ararat ,
can only be seen from Yerevan
in the distance in Turkey . They have almost no territory now or natural
resources as most of it was given to Azerbaijan or Turkey when the
Soviets were in power.
A word about the Armenian language, this is the most unusual
language I have ever heard. It is part
of a language system which is called Indo-European which I am told no other language
is part of. It sounds like an old
Biblical language and has sounds like those in Arabic or Hebrew. Some words are from the Hebrew language like
Shabat which is Saturday or Sabbath; I believe the same in Hebrew. Other words come from old Sanskrit, and
Aramaic. It is very difficult to
pronounce, and I was told the Armenians in America have a different
dialect. I found last night that I could
learn Armenian on YouTube. YouTube has
been a life saver for me here. I watch shows
and all kinds of things on it. I watch
the news on my computer. T.V. is really
no use to me here because no stations are in English. They are very unfamiliar with many things
that are common knowledge in American like the Muppets, Sesame Street , the Three Stooges, so quite
often they miss humor about things Americans would understand.
They are basically grim people, and it is in their nature to
be pessimistic and not smile. This
probably is a result of being persecuted, starved, killed, not having any jobs
when they get a lot of education, having no hope for the future, and being
poor. What do you think? Of course they think I’m quite curious! When I enter the University, the custodians
say, “Good Morning, I love you!” My
classmates at Yoga ask why I have such a young soul! The ladies at the supermarket now wave and
say, “hi” like many other familiar faces in town. This is not something they are used to, and
they giggle about it, but find it interesting and uplifting. It hurts my heart to see people so downtrodden
and not to be able to improve their situations, but I know smiles help and they
appreciate it.
