Wednesday, September 30, 2009

This is my city!! This was taken next to my house from the cemetery.


Here's another one, this one with names of some notable places around my city. If you click on the image you can view it larger.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

This was after my last dinner with my host family.

My host sister, Emma, me, Janet, my host sister Anna, and Janet's host sister Rema.

Me, my host mom, Janet's host mom, Janet, Janet's host sister, and my host sister.

Me and my host momma.

Me, my family and my two LCFs.

Me and my host family at swearing in.

The EE group.

Karenis people and our two tech trainers, Piruza and Liz.

A lady selling sweet bread just outside of Geghart.
Its pretty!

Inside the church, Geghart. This churh is carved out of the mountain. This is my favorite church I've seen so far.




Janet holding a little carving of Armenia. She later dropped it and it shattered on the floor. The vendor said something to the effect of "damn tourists"

Some volunteers on the steps of Garni, the only Pagan temple in Armenia. It is a monument to the sun, and was used as a summer house.


Janet and Brian near the canyon at Garni.

A Khatchkar at Garni.

The Garni temple.

Me and my host momma.

Community Project

Loading up all the trash we picked up for our community project.




Our dump truck.

Look how much we picked up! Sorry to say, there was A LOT we didn't get to because it was so far down the gorge.


Anoush, a Karenis village, who came every day to help us. We also painted a gazebo a little farther down the gorge.


Noyemi and Anoush, very hard working volunteers!

A sign the mayor got for us to ask people not to throw their trash in the gorge. Unfortunately it was stolen only a few hours later.

We used old cement bags to collect our trash. Notice they say "Portland Cement!"

One of our LCFs (language teacher) Anna on the left, and Noyemi.

Rani and some sweet trash.

Armen, the mayor of Karenis.

Vincent and Beth picking up trash.

Katie excavating some steps.

The before picture.

My new site

So trying to post some new stuff among my major photo dump of all the stuff I've taken during PST, here is a panorama I made of the gorge just on the other side of Yeghegnadzor.

Click on the photo to see it larger. This is looking down toward a village called Getap. I sit up here sometimes to watch my favorite birds, the European Bee Eater.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Teaching practica

Eggplant ready to be horovatsed (bbqed)

Vinny with the tomato spears. This was an EE party after our practicum to celebrate surviving our lessons.

Beth showing children how to build a bird. I also did this lesson, it was super fun!

Vinny did a chemistry class where he made invisible ink. You basically write with lemon juice, let it dry then heat it over a flame and it appears. Well, not everyone's paper dried, so when they dried to make the writing appear, the paper just caught on fire. Mine was the first one to work, and what a great message I had!

Trying to make our invisible ink appear.

Vincent describing how a potato is like a battery. I love this guy.

Our tech trainer, Piruza, AKA the "Ruz" being made into a bird.

Janet as a bird.

Me as a bird.

And Beth as a bird, we really needed some way to calm our nerves!

Some children making environmental protection posters. These boys only used pictures of women's clothing on their poster. I didn't catch what their message was...

This one was about not throwing trash in the wrong places.


This was a lesson about observing insects.

Cute little butterfly.


Don showing the kids where to find the best insects.

Imagining insects.

Observing the insects.

Observing and drawing insects, the kids really enjoyed this lesson.

Showing me some kind of creepy crawler.

This is David, he was my favorite student!

Janet and Katie talking about insects.

The high school class listening to Don talk about indicator species.

This is a game Don and I made up for our pollution/indicator species lesson. There was a healthy frog (two kids tied together), a sick frog (three kids tied together), and a really sick frog (4 kids tied together). They had to run from their home, to get food at another location, the run to get water at another location and then run back home. The purpose was to show how pollution (or more people) made it harder to live. For the most part the high schoolers were pretty shy and reserved, but they really liked this lesson and were more willing to participate.

Brian, doing his usual thing, pouring over the dictionary.

I have the best view possible from a bedroom. This is just as I woke up one morning.