More specifically concerning: peace corps
going to…
4 April 2008, around 13.11.
I’m holding the envelope in my hand, the envelope which says where I’m going to spend the next few years. It feels like I’m holding my future, that it’s fragile and if I look at it incorrectly it will spontaneously combust or dissolve into dust. I know this is not true. I know that it […]
at a loss
21 June 2008, around 2.18.
There is something outrageous in a person’s misdirecting a traveller who has lost his way and then leaving him to himself in error, yet what is that compared with causing someone to go astray in himself? The lost traveller, after all, has a consolation that the country around him is constantly changing, and with every […]
seconds
24 June 2008, around 22.52.
The rooster runs across the bare uneven ground towards the barn like a samurai from some black and white film you can half remember seeing, sunlight pooling on his rusty black feathers. In the kitchen there is hope for another cup of coffee, thick with sugar, and lavash with a hard-boiled egg, yolk apricot-colored, and […]
tskhot
18 December 2008, around 0.06.
The room is warm and smells of expatriates, a peculiar blend of locally unavailable spices and foreign laundry detergent. There is a pile of completed books by the door, dwarfed by the stacks still unread beneath the window in the opposite wall. I am finishing up a few things I’ve been meaning to do for […]
winter’s dragon-voiced storms
7 March 2009, around 4.03.
We make the rounds, going from house to office to house to office, from tea to coffee to tea again with fruit and runny syrup. Mostly we talk about the weather. It is a never-ending source of conversation. The weather and health are the sacred fonts of social feeling. One is always cold, or has […]
teacher’s house
30 April 2009, around 0.17.
flight
1 May 2009, around 0.17.
When the sun is shining in the morning it is warm enough to drink coffee on the balcony with a book, perhaps something on regional politics, and listen to the swifts cross the sky. I had thought at first they were starlings, because the starlings paused on the wire linking the apartment building to the […]
looking out
6 November 2009, around 19.48.
PF took this picture looking out over Goris. The test included an essay question: ‘write about your fall holidays.’. Although I correctly translated ‘vacation’ into ‘holiday’, I forgot to change ‘fall’ into ‘autumn’. One of the students asked about it. Made me think about what a ‘fall holiday’ would be: bungee-jumping – or Halloween.
A view (29)
15 May 2010, around 23.23.
graves in old Goris.
elision
2 December 2010, around 8.42.
Watch the sunrise. Up and coffee, mending the lining of a jacket,1, attend sessions at conference, re-pack bags,2 knit on the fuzzy short-sleeve pullover, go out to coffee and read, finally finish all the tagging & categorizing on this very site that I have put off for two years already.3The fabric is almost rotten, and […]
the local library
11 March 2011, around 17.39.
NB: This entry was initially published as a page to solicit donations to fund a project supporting the library; the campaign was successful. Goris is a small town located in the rugged mountains of Syuniq marz, which is the southernmost region in Armenia. Once the cultural center of the region, its situation on the road […]
remarks on teaching
11 April 2013, around 10.40.
Students in the English club. After five years of teaching and team-teaching and teacher-training and observing lessons, I look at this picture and still cringe that one of the students is texting. It’s a club, sure, but do me the favor of paying attention.1 Students paying attention isn’t the point of English classes or clubs, […]