Grants and lots of snow

So yesterday got the revisions in for the grant-so hopefully the conditional victory will turn into a full one.We got a ton of snow today, spring is a bit further away than I thought.

Got conditional approval on my grant!

So the grant for my school got conditional approval, which means that the committee that decides these things sent it back to me with a list revisions I need to make. If I make these revisions then I can get the grant. So we'll see what happens.

Closing Days of Winter?

Though there has been no snow here for 2 or three days, nearly everything is still white with snow, or it is the brown of buildings. The last few days have been overcast, the white of the sky is close to the white of the snow.

They form a massive white wall interupted only by brown spoltches- either the brown apartment buildings or the rare patch of brown has melted away. Besides the brown spots of building and ground, there are also the black streaks of road where the snow and ice have melted away. In the mornings these two are white, covered by ice , but now this layer too melts away by midmorning. A couple of weeks ago this would have been permanent. But now spring emergence makes the icy road temporary.

While the clear roads and few clear patches of ground are a sign of spring, the fact that I have to warm my hands up with a heater after half an hour of LSAT studying is another sign that we are not out of the depths.

Making Preparation for living in America

I'v still got about 6 or 7 months left in Armenia but I am making more and more preparations for returning to America. Yesterday I made an online account with the Law School Admission Council(LSAC) and registerd to take the LSAT in Septimber. I also started revising my resume for the first time September 2007, which was when I applied for Peace Corp. And I am also working for jobs to do in the year in between when I come back and start law school(Fall 2009 to Fall 2010).

But at the same time I am also getting really busy at school. I am in the midst of trying to write a grant to renovate my school's gym with much needed equipment, including lots of modern equipment that would add a lot to the school's capacity to provide health education. Things are really busy both with returning to America, and with my work in Armenia. But I like to finish strong, so I am glad that things are picking up here in Hayastan.

Great article on Obama and reading

The New York times ran this article on Obama and how books have influenced his life and work. Highly recomended read.

From the article is a list of books that have influenced him,

A Reading List That Shaped a President

Some of President-elect Barack Obama’s favored reading matter as mentioned in this article:

* The Bible
* “Parting the Waters,” Taylor Branch
* “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson
* Gandhi’s autobiography
* “Team of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin
* “The Golden Notebook,” Doris Lessing
* Lincoln’s collected writings
* “Moby-Dick,” Herman Melville
* “Song of Solomon,” Toni Morrison
* Works of Reinhold Niebuhr
* “Gilead,” Marilynne Robinson
* Shakespeare’s tragedies


I'v read "Self-Relianace", "Team of Rivals", "Gilead", lots of the Bible, and some of Lincoln's stuff. I can see how those works influenced Obama, because they all influenced me as well.

first post in a while

I havn't posted in a while. Been busy traveling and adjusting to life in Armenia. But today I was back at school, and it was good to see all the students again. Today I helped teach a group of 4th graders how to read English and helped a friend with an application to join EarthCorps, an enviromental program in Seattle. It felt great to get back into volunteering and helping people.

Back to Armenia

I am here at the Atlanta airport waiting for my flight to Paris. I had a wonderful vacation, got to spend a lot time of time with my family, friends, and girlfriend. But now it is time to go back to Armenia.

At the airport

So I am at the airport in Yerevan waiting for my flight to Moscow. Check-in was pretty easy. The airport in Yerevan is called Zvartnots, named after an ancient church. The airport is small, and being moderniized, and they have free wireless. My flight boards in about 25 minutes, next step, Moscow, then America.

Final Preparations

Well, I am making my final preparations for my trip home. Today I have been cleaning my apartment, packing, and gathering Armenian gifts. Yesterday I washed the clothes I plan to wear on my 18 hour trip. I hung them up to dry yesterday, expecting them to dry today. However today turned out to be very overcast, and very snowy. Maybe they will be dry by tonight. Today I also realized that I have forgotten how to use a washing machine because I have been handwashing my clothes for so long. One of the slightly comic realities of being a Peace Corp volunteer.

But anyways, everything looks in order for my flight. Will be in Yerevan tomorrow, waiting to get on that plane to America.

Winter weather

Although this winter is much milder than the last one, Armenia is still very cold for me espcially since I am a native Texan. The winter snow started dumping a couple weeks ago and now there is snow everywhere, and it will remain until March or April.

Almost done with this year

My third semester as being a teacher in School#1 in Jermuk, Armenia is almost over, and my time as a Peace Corp volunteers is winding down. I am proud of what I did this semester. I have taught many lessons about prevenative health, how to maintian being healthy, and have taught about the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I also did a lot of HIV/AIDS education in the capitol, Yerevan as well.

I have one more day left at school, then 4 more days before I leave for America. I am very excited to come and see everyone, and also because I know I worked hard and accomplished a lot this semester.

My other major innovation this semester

So in one of my previous posts I wrote about how teaching health to younger children through songs was an innovation that I think will improve my teaching in my next and last semester.

I have had a another inovation in my teaching thjis semester, that is the combined health and English lesson. As I have noted there is not a keen interest in health education at my school, or at least I have not been able to find that interest here. But for economic reasons there is a keen interest among some students for learning English. So I just teach English, but I teach health vocabulary and prevenative health concepts like the importance of drinking water and exercise.

This way my students get what they want and need, free English lessons from a native speaker, and I get to do what I want- teach prevanative health lessons that are very important.

Had a really good day yesterday

So yesterday I tried out a new strategy for teaching health and it worked out really well. I taught them a song about the importance of brushing your teeth. I think the reason this worked so well is that Armenian children enjoy singing,and Armenian teachers like to teach songs, and use song to control the kid's attention begins to slip. So I took an important and useful cultural practiced and used it to accomplish my goal of community health education. I was really proud of myself.

Since the teacher's are used to teaching to songs to the younger children they enjoyed teaching, and the content of the song led them to talk about the content, which was the importance of brushing your teeth everyday. So the teacher enjoyed co-teaching with me, they talk about health, and the kids had fun too. It was an all around winner.

And today they even sang the song without me being there! Sustainible too! It days like this that make me really happy to be a Peace Corp volunteer.

World AIDS Day is done

So, we finished up World AIDS Day 2008 in Armenia. I think it went great. I walked all over Yerevan handing out pamplets with the essential facts about HIV/AIDS, and has several great conversations about HIV/AIDS with people on the streets of Yerevan. All these conversations where in Armenian, and that combined with the walking made me very tired. But it was worth. The conversations we had were good, and I say alot of people intently reading the pamplets after we handed them out. I feel really good about what we did, and I feel like this is one of the best things we did.

I teamed up with my good friend Steve, and a groups of Armenain volunteers to hand out the pamplets. We had about 7 or 8 Peace Corp volunteers to canvass the city and a large group of Armenian volunteers that were rounded up by APEC, the NGO that we partnered with. The Armenian volunteers did great, we had a good time with them.

After handing our flyers all over the city, we did a showing of a movie called Transit which showed that HIV is spread through sexual intercourse, which I think was effective.

Overall, a good day to be a Peace Corp volunteers, I feel that we did a really good job in getting the facts out about HIV/AIDS, which in a region where people tend not to know all the facts about this pandemic, is very important.

College Football Drama

So this crazy system we have in college football has caused me, a Texas fan who bleeds burnt orange to have have hoped for OU victories two weeks in a row. Last week it happened, and amazingly Texas hopes for winding up in a national championship were reignited. This week we need a small victory over Ok State, just enough to keep the three way tie, but not enough to push OU ahead of Texas in the BCS rankings. Half time score- 21 to 13, OU in the lead. Keeping my fingers crossed.

In Yerevan

So tomorrow is World AIDS Day and today myself and other volunteers will be putting up posters and folding brochures to hand out to people, final preparations.

Tonight I will stay with some friends in the nearby city of Sevan, and then tomorrow will be back in for the big day.

Before I left for Yerevan on Friday, my counterpart at school mentioned working on a grant to help my school out with some new sports equipment, so I am really excited to take this project to the next step.

Will update after World AIDS Day.

Conference finished

Today we wrapped up our yearly All Volunteer conference. We had a great Thanksgiving dinner. I learned how to cut turkeys! The meal was excellant cooked by a team of Peace Corp volunteers who are excellant cooks. My small role was helping carve the delicious turkey.

Today I, and some other volunteers who are intersted in HIV/AIDS awarness, are going to hand out flyers for our World AIDS Day event which will actually be on World AIDS Day, Dec.1st.

Worlds AIDS Day progress

The last couple of days I have been in Yerevan working on getting ready for World AIDS Day in Armenia. Things are coming together with a few hitches. We got funding to rent one of the two movie theaters in the country to show a film about HIV/AIDS and to make and print a bunch of informative pamplets with the most important facts about HIV/AIDS, but the funding won't here for a couple more weeks. So we will probably delay our event. But the entire month of December is World AIDS Month so we still have plenty to of time to do our event.

Also volunteers all over Armenia are doing HIV/AIDS contests. I have one submission, which is less than I hoped for but one is better and than none. And I did do lessons to make sure that my students have accurate information about HIV AIDS, which is the most important part.

Sunday I will be going to Yerevan for our yearly ALL VOL conference. We will have a nice Thanksgiving meal and all the volunteers which will be great.

AIDS Lessons

This saterday I did a couple AIDS lessons at my school, and I was very impressed by my students. I went and spoke about the World AIDS Day writing contest for 10th and 11th grades. The 10 and 11th grades were very knowledgable about the basic, and most important, AIDS issues. They were aware that there is no cure and that AIDS is spread through body fluids, primarily via sexual intercourse and drug use. Now hopefully they will apply their knowledge and put together some great essays about HIV/AIDS/

Book Recomendation

I recently finished William Easterly's "White Man's Burden", an incsive critique of Western foreign aid and intervention. Easterly, for many years a World Bank economist, tears apart much of what he did as a working development economist. Easterly, now a professor of economics at NYU, uses his considerable economic acumen to pick apart the current state of foreign aid and the philosophy behind it.

"White Man's Burden" is buoyed by Easterly's extensive on the ground experience working in developing countries, as well as his already metioned economic expertise. I also found Easterly's writing style outstanding. I have enjoyed a lot of good nonfiction by journalists who have a knack for narrative and put that together with great research to write a great book. Michael Pollan is a prime example. But Easterly happens to be an economist with a knack for narrative. Devlopmental economics is not a topic that Easterly researched, or something that his publisher suggested because it is en vougue with the American public. He combines a lifetime of work in the feild of development economics with his great narrative voice. That is what made the book so outstanding for me. In Easterly we are lucky to have a great writer and erudite expert in one person.

I do not agree with everything Easterly argues or all of his conclusions. But the writing and thinking in this book are clear and convincing. If you disagree it will be at the least an entertaining and thought provoking read. If you do agree it will change how think about foreign aid. I was in the middle. And I recomend you find out where you stand for yourself.