Gishta! (Correct!)
August 20 - Today I began my third day of work, and we are all ready traveling around our marz. This is very nice because the marz itself is quite beautiful with some forest, some cliffs, nice mountains and the gorgeous lake. We have spent the past two days in one particular town teaching 12 people with "business ideas" how to conduct marketing research and create a business plan, make surveys. The business ideas created by these attendees are as follows: an internet café, a second hand thrift store, a cake shop, another clothing store, a café stop along the highway, and sales of toys hand made by school-aged children. So one of the workers at my organization translated what was going on, I gave a little input, but mostly observed the class. I am going to be spending the next few months mostly observing the process and formulating ideas about potential projects, as has been advised by all of the PCVs. The great thing is, none of the class was new to me at all - everything they covered, I have studied very thoroughly in college already. The class only had two men, and the ladies were very bright.
I had some very interesting conversations with the ladies there, and they were telling me the importance of getting married later in life to them - they are very unconventional in terms of Armenian culture.
My host family is going well too. Alita likes to give me a cold beer at the end of the work day! And in terms of the kitchen, she is enjoying watching and helping me prepare American food, and the kids seem to be liking it too. I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (the best I possibly could) today and they loved it. Liana (14) and Hovic (11) are the kids, and they are preparing for school to begin September 1. Liana's new school clothes are a leather skirt, a leather vest, and a white button down collared shirt, with patent leather flats that have a large gold buckle on the toe - and she got a new haircut today. This family has jet black glossy hair, it's very pretty. The style here is pretty cool, kind of punk-y, dark, but I think it suits the culture very well. So anyways, the food situation is improving. Alita and I went to the store today and purchased olive oil and oatmeal. She is preparing lots of veggies for dinner (half of the time they don't have too much oil), and we had really good beets yesterday.
Also, one of her friends came to the apartment today and was demanding I put on socks because it is cold outside, and I said I know what I want and I don't want to wear socks right now. Alita laughed and said "Gishta!" which means, Correct!
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