Jody's Letters from the Road

Thursday December 4, I went to visit an English teacher’s classes at the Noyemberyan Secondary school.  A week before, the student my co-worker Ruzan’s tutors after my class asked me if I would consider visiting her school so they could hear a native speaker.  I gave her my phone number and her teacher was calling me the next day.   The teacher called me several times when I was teaching my adults class. I kept hitting ignore and she kept calling.  She finally sent a text message telling me who she was.   I replied that I was in class but would call her back as soon as I could.   She texted back an apology for interrupting, I returned her call as I walked home after class. She told me that she would like for me to visit and talk to students in English as a native speaker and perhaps read to them. She told me her first name was Hripsime.  She asked me to come to school at 9:30 to meet with her and then her students. I agreed to the idea and was looking forward to being in a high sch

Sometime this summer, my good friend, tutor, work counterpart and guardian angel, Narine told me that she participated in a group that played intellectual games at the library.   She said she would invite me sometime if I would like.   Now, as someone whose brain is clogged with an infinite amount of trivial information and a lover of the American game, Trivial pursuit, I wanted to see what this was like. Weeks went by and the game was not mentioned again.   I do not know if Narine forgot she had mentioned it, worried that my terrible skills would make it too much of a burden on her to translate, or that I would not like it because of the language problems. It really does not matter why but we did not talk about the idea for some time. A couple of weeks ago, Narine showed me the game being played in Russia on YouTube.   She had to translate for me, of course.   This young woman is quite gifted with languages, speaking, Armenian, Russian, French, and English. Me, I can barely spe