So after a very short drive through the first streets of Chambarack, my first impression was seeing lots of pretty run down houses, wild animals running around and a pretty bad infrastructure , except for the city center. Now we first stopped at the No.1 school where I would be working for the next year.

After coming through the drive through to the school, while not trying to drive over some of the chickens running around, i got out of the car getting greeted by the cool mountainous Armenian air.  Now the impression form the outside was a pretty solid one. A school complex with 3 main building, two teaching complexes on either side with a hallway and a sport-hall connecting all of them in the middle. But while we walked through the school, the more “ solid“ appearance degraded a bit by the more rural and raw outfitting of the interior.  Having arrived at the Teachers room, we get into a small conversation with the vice/principle, German teacher and my landlord Emma, who is this very short but sympathetic happy person. WE talked about the usual jazz, what ill do there, my impressions and a little small talk for a while until she called in two of the best German speaking students Mamicon and Nazahlie ( I hope thats how you spell the names) and they took the intern and me for a small walk around the city. Below, pictures of the school :

We walked down a small hill , crossed the „Getik“ river and walked around to the city center while visiting a small commemoration dedicated to fallen Armenians in wars before mamicon invited us to visit the house of a old Molokan woman. The Molokans being a religious minority group which settled in Armenia at the end of the 20th century. While the actual conversation was a little awkward since we coudnt speak any Armenian, the house it self was very pretty and unique. It turned out that she lived in that house her complete life, from birth to now, around 70  years. We did feel a bit bad through because we showed up out of the blue and kind of intruded haha.

Right so after we had our little mini/tour our whole group went back to Emmas place where i got to see my room and was treated to a group brunch.

Long story short, I ended up in my new home and arrived in Chambarack while the rest left for Yerevan.

So basically what happened i the following week  ( wow I really need to keep these short haha )  I managed to get myself a little comfortable in the school administrations life,  visited some  3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th grade classes to get a little feel for the teaching and started thinking about projects and workshops i could do for the Kids. Here are some of the thoughts:

1.  A book club, maybe separate ones for different age/ level groups.
2.  A Movie evening
3.  A workshop connected with arts ( architecture , painting, contemporary)
4.  A track workshop

Now It turned out that Emma needed to leave for 10 days with a group of students for a Cultural seminar on Georgia so i got the chance to take over her 7th and 9th grade German classes, which were from Tuesday to Friday. Of course the first lessons where a little rocky due to my inexperience and not being really able to communicate with the students but at the end of the week I was really having fun teaching the students and well it was cool haha. I also tried implementing the above mentioned movie evening on Thursday but due to the media player being a little weird , the film always reset every 5 minutes or so that sucked.

Number 1 thing i forgot : I was walking around the school premise with mamicon one day so i can get some reference pictures for my “ Blender “ Project and we arrived at the back of the big main building and we walk past this hole leading into the dirt, covered with like metal sheets, dirt and rubber tires and I ask him “ whats that ?“ and he was like : „Oh thats a Bunker “ and i was like “ Okeeeyy“ . Below a picture:

While im sure i missed to write a lot, if i remember it again ill definitely edit the post so y all wont even notice 😉 until next week my millions of readers,

Andrej

Dear readers,

So I have decided to write a little weekly update to keep memories for myself and record my developments here, since i doubt that many people will read this.  I know it been 10 days,but like i think the first time can be a little exception , so please forgive me O` humble visitors of this blog ( help me).

Looking back, my first paranoia which was partially instigated onto me about my parents at the check in counter regarding the weight of my carry on luggage ( it was more than 6 kg) and they thought the airport would check the weight of the hand luggage again before boarding the plane, and of course, it did not happen. during the flight i accidentally sat in the „Extra Leg-space“ area and i was questioned about it by one of the stewardesses and in a little panic I kinda saved myself . Now arrival at the airport was fine, only the line at immigration took about 45 minutes because two machines from Moscow had landed before us.

Coming to meet me were my Goethe institute partner and contact Dana, and the Institute employee Arthur at 4 am. Very thankful for that. After a drive through the dark capital of Yerewan i was dropped of at a Hostel which probably used to be a large family apartment turned into a Air BnB-isch hing. I got a room with three beds, one of them mine. The rest where empty during my stay. So exhausted after being awake for about 22 hours, i quickly got myself settled in before.

Now on the top is a picture of my messy room. I ended up using the second bed for a little table and spread all my things on that. Now In the next two days , i got to do a big variety of thing.

1.I helped with planning a school project which would happen in the Goethe Center, which would happen until the end of the year, and got to know the friendly staff of the Center

2. Went around town , seeing all the small things that make Yerevan a pretty interesting place. Especially the fact that armenians have probably invented the concept of going on walks since you can see the city being literally full with people at night! Another interesting and funny thing, especially since i live in a bigger city is the Metro system. While being similar in the monstrosity and the sound volume to the underground to Moscow , one gets tiny plastic chips to drop into the machines to get down low, which i found very cute and hilarious.

3. Got to do small errands for the DAAD ( Deutscher Akademische Austauschdienst ) and visit the German embassy where we coincidentally bumped into the german ambassador on the walk out which was funny.

Now after 3 days in Yerewan, my Goethe partner, a Intern, Arthur our friend from the center and I, set off to Chambarak for my final destination xD. One hour into our drive there, we stopped at a small Peninsula at the beaches of Lake Sevan so we can visit a small touristic site . After climbing a small mountain with the intern we stumbled upon a old religious site which was first established around if i can recall correctly, 300 b.c which is very impressive.

After our decent, we continued our trip and after taking a side road of the coast and driving throw a few valleys and up the side of a hill, we first got the sight of the town Chambarak. It was very idyllic, it reminded me very much like scenes from Studio Ghibli films if i think about it now .

Well, having that said, the actual arrival and the first week will be contents of a whole different Post. See you in a Jiffy,

Andrej

First of all dear readers, I would like to draw attention to the level of Incompetence the developers of this blogging site have put into structuring and organizing the way content creators are introduced to this. I have literally not seen one helpful text while trying to figure out all the features and options I cant implement into this Blog and thus, would like to raise awareness to this problem since this platform has been used by the last 2 thousand or so volunteers and probably will be by the future generations. I will be struggling with the layout probably until the end of my service.

Having that said, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you all to my Blog. Posting will commence shortly , when I find out the basics of this platform.