In Love With Lastiver

This is a very late post but I've had this written for a while and decided it was time to share.

October means that my Facebook feed is flooded with status updates and memes concerning Pumpkin Spice Lattes (you're either for or against them), apple picking and pumpkin carving.

I wasn't missing fall in New England until this past weekend when I joined a group of fifteen Birthrighters, civilian Armenians and honorary Armenians (Go Armenia Volunteer Corps!) on a camping trip to Lastiver.

As our marshutka wound its way down into the Ijevan valley, I peered over my motion sick friends and out onto what could have been the backwoods of Connecticut.

I was excited to see trees that hadn't been planted in the last 20 years; trees that were rooted deeply in the earth and that spread their branches to the sky in a persistent effort to reach the sun. The metaphor of fall foliage resembling a fire is played out but that's only because it's an accurate description. The mountain side was ablaze with leaves that glowed from within and appeared to undulate from yellow to orange to red to russet brown and back.

"This is what my home looks like" I told my peers, most of whom are from the west coast and don't know the joy of crunching a particularly crisp leaf underfoot on their way to school.

I'm not a pumpkin spice kind of girl but my heart twanged for a moment there with the thought of home.

But really, what better place for me to be missing home than Lastiver? Nestled in the Ijevan State Sanctuary in Armenia's Tavush Province, Lastiver is really like a more dramatic New England, with bigger mountains and deeper valleys.    

Our group picked our way down a well worn path strewn with dried and shriveled skeletons of leaves. We scaled moss covered boulders and for a time I felt like I was walking that final scene of The Fellowship of the Ring where Boromir realizes too late that he has become corrupt by the one ring.

We had a few squabbles along the way but luckily nothing so serious as to require a bout of invisibility or a crossbow. Any disagreement we had was quickly resolved as one or both parties glanced around them and again realized the humbling beauty of our surroundings. You just can't stay angry when you're walking in a fairy tale forest. Even if you have been carrying several kilos of meat for khorovadz and three bottles of cognac for the fire. Yeah, we take our camping seriously.

After two hours of hiking the sound of running water reassured me that I had made the right decision by following my friends blindly into the woods.

I had been skeptical when I was told we would be sleeping in tree houses. I expected a hunting platform stuck in a tree. I was told we could rent sleeping bags, a prospect which was ominous to say the least. But I was more than pleasantly surprised to find, upon arriving at the campsite, small Keebler elf cabins perched on top of tree trunks fifteen feet in the air with sturdy, hand made ladders leading up to them. Later on in the evening I was even more pleased to find a clean and fluffy sleeping bag deposited in my cabin for me to crawl into.

Despite it being mid-October and not having brought towels or bathing suits, a few of us more adventurous hikers (or reckless depending on how you look at it) decided to take a dip in the frigid mountain stream that flowed past the campsite and pooled in areas just deep enough for us to submerge ourselves in. When I say take a "dip" that's exactly what I mean. The water was so cold that my muscles immediately seized up and the prospect of moving them quickly enough to actually stay buoyant became an impossibility. But I squeezed my friend's hand and bent my knees until I was up to my ears in ice water and then stood up and got out. I think that is officially the end of swim season for us here in Hayastan.

Upon drying off and bundling up, we set about collecting wood while others prepared the khorovadz and the rest built up the fire. There's something very satisfying about working as a group, even with the inevitable disagreements over how to execute the simplest tasks. I don't think a camp fire has ever been built without at least one person saying "No, you're doing it wrong..." And did you know that there is a wrong way to skewer meat on a stick?

If ever you get tired of your hiking buddy’s company, Lastiver is home to several affectionate and attentive dogs. They greeted us upon arrival at the campsite and didn’t leave our group until we hiked out the next day. The khorovadz we cooked may have had something to do with it, but I like to think it was loyalty that kept them by our side for the better part of twenty-four hours.

My nostalgia for home was placated by beautiful scenery, excellent company and the unconditional adoration of our canine companions.

It was unanimously agreed upon that this was the best weekend any of us had spent in Hayastan.

As much as I love Yerevan and enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city where I meet fascinating people every day, I have consistently found that I feel more at peace and connected to the country when I’m out exploring nature. Maybe it’s just easier to think when I’m hiking or maybe it’s just easier to feel confident in my abilities when I’m climbing over boulders, but I feel most Armenian when I am in the mountains.

On Creative Writing Club

Sometime after the first week of club meetings I stopped telling people that I “taught” creative writing in the villages. The truth is that you can’t really teach someone to be creative. All you can do is create an environment which fosters the growth of their creativity.

Every time we met, the kids would spend the first 10 minutes writing based off of a prompt I provided for them. Sometimes I would write with them, partially out of selfish motivations because I like to write, but also because I found that it encouraged them to do the same. Seeing me write, and often struggle, would give them some sort of push to put pen to paper.

They grappled with the idea that the text they produced wasn’t to be handed in to me. I wasn’t going to grade it or edit it. It was an exercise designed to get them in the mood to write. Even when I told them not to worry about grammar and just write whatever came to mind, they would still get hung up on the rules. I could see them agonizing over how to conjugate “to run” in the past tense (English is a bitch of a language at times, I really feel for them).

I found that beginning each club like this was a good way to get them to start thinking in English again and also to boost their confidence a bit. There’s something very satisfying about seeing yourself produce text in a foreign language. Even if it’s mainly nonsense, at least seeing the words come together to form sentences feels good. And that’s the first step to writing in any language, your own or someone else’s: just sit down and write.

The next ten minutes would be spent “Checking In” (thanks Public Allies).

We go around in a circle and everyone says how they are feeling in that moment. I encouraged them to be honest because if they’re having a shitty day, I want to know. Not because there’s something I can do about it, but because it lets me gauge their mood. Especially when working with teenagers, being aware of feelings is important.

The typical answer was “good” and it was often difficult to get them to think of a different way to express themselves. In a foreign language is easy to go to the words that you feel confident in, even if they don’t exactly express what you mean. I could be bleeding out of my eyes but in French I would probably just say “my eyes are red”. 

During Check In, everyone also must answer a question that I have posed. I usually tried to make it relevant to the subject at hand so if we’re talking about sensory detail I ask “What’s your favorite fruit?” Later I’ll have them describe the fruit using all of the senses. If the subject is characterization I ask “What’s your best quality?” Later I’ll have them point out the qualities of their protagonist and if they can’t that means they have a flat character. It’s a sneaky way of getting them to think about what I want to talk about before we even get there.

These were the two constants in every club meeting: Free Write and Check In. I still don’t consider myself a teacher exactly, but I had a lot of fun finding ways to incorporate lessons into seemingly insignificant exercises. Basically I liked to trick them into learning.

Last week I said goodbye to the kids I have been working with for the past two months. I bought them each one of those pens that can write in three different colors and a mini Twix bar. I bought the pen because it’s cool (and good for editing) and the Twix because I like Twix. I wanted to give them a parting gift but living on a volunteer salary is tough, hence: pen and candy.

I arrived early and arranged the treats on their desks along with a printed copy of our literary magazine; a basic compilation of all of their stories. I expected to have to talk over the sound of candy wrappers and munching. I was sure there would be sugar-fueled shenanigans.

What I experienced instead was two hours of them sitting in their seats, as usual, carefully reading the stories they had written and providing feedback for one another. Listening to my questions and offering insightful answers.

The Twix remained untouched.

“Eat!” I said, sounding more like my host-tatik than I ever expected I could. “Really, it’s okay, I brought them for you.”

They just smiled and said “We will Ms. Maral, later.”

I have never seen such self-control exhibited by high schoolers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such self-control exhibited by adults.

I was reminded of the Stanford Marshmallow Test. For those of you who aren’t familiar, the very brief explanation is that toddlers who were able to practice self-control and avoid eating a marshmallow for the longest (with the promise of receiving two later) grew up to have “better life outcomes”  in adulthood than the children who couldn’t help it and just gobbled up the sweet treat within seconds.

In truth, I was a bit mad that my students were so well behaved because that meant that I couldn’t indulge and eat chocolate in class. Only joking. Well, partially joking. I love chocolate.

The point being that even though my students weren’t toddlers, and have had much more time to learn self-control, I still find it incredibly impressive that they could sit for two hours while being stared down by a cookie covered in caramel and chocolate. I mean what are they, made of steel?

This being the last day of over two months of meeting with these kids, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I should have known they’d be better behaved than me. I should’ve known I’d be the toddler to bread down and sneak a bite when I thought no one was looking.