Peace Corps trainee confronts adult life, culture shock in Armenia

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By Admin1 (admin) on Saturday, June 23, 2001 - 7:20 am: Edit Post

Peace Corps trainee confronts adult life, culture shock in Armenia



Peace Corps trainee confronts adult life, culture shock in Armenia

Peace Corps trainee confronts adult life, culture shock in Armenia

Peace Corps trainee confronts adult life, culture shock in Armenia

EDITOR'S NOTE: Heatherly Lewis, a 1991 Los Altos High School graduate and Los Altos resident, is spending two years with the Peace Corps in Armenia. Lewis, the daughter of Glenda Lewis of Los Altos and Joe Lewis of Menlo Park, left for Armenia at the end of May after graduating with honors from the University of California at San Diego. Following is her first installment in a series of accounts of her stay written exclusively for the Town Crier.

By Heatherly Lewis

Special to the Town Crier

Six weeks after graduating from college and saying goodbye to my family and friends, I am halfway through my Peace Corps training in Armenia's capital city, Yerevan. They have been the most intensely overwhelming six weeks of my life. "Culture shock" has been compounded by the transition from a student to an autonomous (responsible) adult; from an accomplished graduate to the resident of a country where I cannot order a meal or ask for directions.

Most of my time here has been spent in training on the ninth floor of a university building. For three and a half hours each morning we have intensive language classes, and the afternoons air spent in teacher training (for me) or business classes. Saturdays we take picnics of bread, cheese, eggs, cucumbers and apricots to Armenia's natural and historic sites. Evenings and Sundays we spend exploring the city, or at home with our Armenian host families, teaming how to survive in the midst of severe economic depression and energy crisis. We have learned how to wash clothes by hand, how to take a bucket bath, do our studying by candlelight and watch our host mothers prepare dinner on a kerosene stove. In the midst of the hardship, though, we experience tremendous hospitality, stuffed constantly with dolma, cognac and fresh fruit.

Venturing out into the city invites stares and sometimes harassment, but offers rewards from grinning natives who hear us stumbling over their ancient tongue. Yerevan in the summer is a city of hot dusty streets, fruit markets, overgrown parks frequented by fanatical nardi (backgammon) players, and sparse fountains brimming with little boys in their underwear. From our ninth floor classrooms I gaze out on the opera house, tall rickety apartment buildings, cranes and unfinished structures. It is a city that does not hide its history or its problems. Mangy, hungry dogs sniff at monuments, majestic buildings show peeling paint and broken windows behind their columns. Hunched over women that look old beyond their years sweep the sidewalks before teen-age boys in baggy pants and aviator glasses wake up and demand their breakfast.

Above it all looms Mount Ararat. Even sweating on the ninth floor I can see its snow-capped peaks; at sunset light bathes its foothills. I think of all that has happened in its shadow and all that has yet to happen: in this country and in my life. For the next two years we will happen together.

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Story Source: Los Altos Town Crier

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