In this interview, we hear from AJ Miguel. AJ is working as a Peace Corps Education volunteer in Armenia. What AJ shares gives us a better understanding of the work volunteers do. We learn about the challenges, rewards, and personal growth that happens from volunteering in a new place. AJ talks about living in a different country, working with local people, and dealing with surprise situations. Join us as we learn about AJ’s journey and see how volunteering with Peace Corps can change lives.
Table of Contents
- Volunteer Experience and Motivation
- Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
- Surprises and Challenges
- Advice and Support
- Practical Tips and Language Learning
- Final Thoughts
Volunteer Experience and Motivation
1. Tell us more about serving as an Education volunteer in Armenia
My main responsibilities as an education volunteer are twofold. During my mornings I work at a basic school co-teaching English classes for third through ninth graders. As Peace Corps volunteers we don’t work solo, instead I assist one of my school’s two English teachers in delivering lessons. For education volunteers, the time spent in the classroom is considered our primary responsibility. Our role as education volunteers is somewhat akin to a consultant. We give advice as native speakers to our counterparts to help them improve their English just as much as we help the students.
During the afternoon about three times a week, I host English clubs. Right now, I have three main ones differentiated by audience: one for students, one for the school staff, and a third for displaced women from Nagorno-Karabakh. These sessions have been getting longer and longer as the school year has progressed, with the participants (adults included!) wanting to hang on overtime to play games like Uno or Coup.
In my free time, I mostly like to walk around my site. My site is a relatively small town, so I can cross from one side to the other within a mile or two. As a creature of habit, I enjoy sticking to my usual routes. My site is a nice Goldilocks medium where I still have a lot of the amenities and creature comforts, while still being small enough that I can see the same people every day.
2. What motivated you to join the Peace Corps and choose Armenia?
In undergrad, I studied international affairs and religious studies, and I focused largely on Eastern Europe and the Middle East. I had a vague idea of doing something internationally, and the Peace Corps was one of the few clear avenues to start a career here. I also developed a fascination with Armenian Christianity in the States before coming here. I only wanted to apply to an Eastern or Oriental Orthodox country.
Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
3. Tell us more about your home situation
During the whole of my service, I have lived with a host family. My current host family consists just of an older couple, with their adult son and his family living next door from me. I find this to be a nice balance since I don’t have to live completely alone while still enjoying a relatively quiet house. My site is a small town with a population of about 10,000. My site is a popular tourist destination, which means that despite its small size I get a comparatively large selection of restaurants and cafes that I can bounce between.
4. Any memorable experiences or interactions you’ve had?
At my site, the local Armenian Apostolic deacon is an Armenian American. He has been a super engaging resource about everything Armenian and one of my closest friends at site. I stick out as a foreigner, especially with my longer hair. Many locals have told me that I resemble Jesus! Strangers will often address me in Russian, and occasionally I have to fight to continue an exchange in Armenian. As someone who is rather introverted, I typically shy away from attention, but I also appreciate that locals are just curious and ask innocent questions.
Surprises and Challenges
5. What has surprised you most about challenges in Armenia?
While it is something that I was prepared for, the level and depth of popular piety still managed to surprise me. My attraction to Armenia lies largely in reading about its centuries-long Christian tradition. Some practices are universal, such as lighting a candle in church, and most houses and cars are adorned with icons of Jesus and Mary.
I have attended Armenian Apostolic liturgies at site, and I was really surprised that halfway through the liturgy one of the eighth-grade girls at my school came to light a candle, said hi to me, and then left just a few minutes later. Here I am an outsider, having spent hours of research into official Armenian Apostolic doctrine, yet the typical Armenian understanding of their own religious tradition is radically different and more casual.
6. What challenges did you face while working on Education projects?
Picking a really specific challenge, English is the third language that the students learn in school, after Russian and Armenian. All three of these languages use completely different scripts, which creates confusion for an eight-year-old who has to learn the Latin alphabet while still not mastering the fundamentals of the other two languages.
The most common classroom frustration is trying to dictate a word letter-by-letter and the students often do not understand that each letter has its own unique name. Armenians seldom use the names of the Armenian letters when spelling words and in their Russian class I am told that new words are dictated syllable-by-syllable. Learning any new language requires reordering the way you think and acclimating to completely alien concepts.
While frustrating, it has tested my abilities as a teacher. Especially in my clubs, I have more freedom to focus on the nuances of language which do not fit neatly within the standard curriculum. For example, I have conducted many activities with the International Phonetic Alphabet, which has actually been relatively successful in helping students understand difficult sounds for them in English.
7. Could you share some of the secondary projects you have been involved?
One of my favorite secondary projects that I have been privileged to be a part of is my club with displaced women from Nagorno-Karabakh. Within the last year, many families from this region have relocated to my site. One of the local NGOs hosts activities with them, and I was asked by them to assist some of the women who were interested in learning English. What we cover is
very elementary material, although working with adults has introduced some novelty into my work. I enjoy the different dynamics between the smaller children, teenagers, and displaced women. It has also surprised me though how much a lot of the same tactics often work for any demographic.
Advice and Support
8. What advice would you give to someone considering serving as an Education volunteer in Armenia?
Everyone comes from a different experience level going into service. This is my first teaching position with children, and I definitely underestimated it at first. Especially my first summer I was throwing things against a wall to see what worked. I think that it is common for volunteers to experience imposter syndrome, especially if your otherwise carefully thought-out ideas do not execute themselves the way you expect. I learned to accept it though and have a sense of humor. Even if it feels from the teacher’s end that the lesson devolves into just “playing games”, even then there are still opportunities to teach the material, or to at least earn their goodwill.
9. How has the Peace Corps training helped you during your service?
My first host family during our pre-service training was vital to acclimating me to Armenia. This first host family is very different from the one which I currently live with. The first host family had three teenagers with grandparents in the household. It was the smallest of the training villages, and the pace of life was very different from what I was used to. It will be a random Thursday, and my family would still bring in guests at 11 PM and everyone would drink coffee.
The sense of time in a small Armenian village is very different, it feels like simultaneously nobody is in a hurry but also nobody sleeps! Although overwhelming at first, I still remember that first village with nostalgia. It prepared me for the three-, four-, and five-hour khorovats (BBQ) parties that my community members hold here at my current site.
Practical Tips and Language Learning
10. Anything that you packed or didn’t pack that you’d like to tell future Armenia volunteers?
Everyone made fun of me for packing the lightest! I fit everything into two suitcases and a medium-sized backpack. About half of my wares were books. I intentionally went light on clothes for a couple of reasons.
Coming from a sub-tropical climate, I did not have (what later became) essential winter apparel for Armenia. My community members were extremely generous. When the temperature started to drop, my counterpart supplied me with her son’s old winter gear. The mental calculus told me that I would prefer traveling lighter and just securing new clothes once I got to the country. Cohorts who have already been in the country once you arrive are typically pretty generous, and especially those who are leaving soon will distribute their goodies amongst the rookies.
11. How has learning the language been?
The Peace Corps gives us training in Modern Eastern Armenian, which is what we volunteers speak with locals on a daily basis. On my own though I am also studying Classical Armenian. This is the ancient and pre-modern variety of the language, which today is only used in Christian liturgical services. Every week I attend Armenian Catholic Mass and do my best to follow along with the liturgy, which is almost entirely in classical Armenian. I joke with other volunteers that I know classical Armenian better than modern Armenian by now!
I did buy three different textbooks (one of which was classical Armenian) before staging and did try really hard to learn the language in the States. I certainly do recommend learning the local language for any future Peace Corps volunteers in order to integrate. I hold the rather unpopular opinion that a volunteer could learn the entire grammar of modern Eastern Armenian within two months. Grammar is linguistic math; the most logical and consistent part of language. The same strategies that we use to teach as English teachers also apply to learning Armenian.
Each site will have its own dialect and idiomatic subtleties, although most of these a new volunteer will grasp within their first summer. Vocabulary is the biggest slog to get through. Every other aspect of language learning one can streamline, although the only way to get through the thousands of unique terms that a human being needs to converse fluently is through pure memorization. The biggest barrier holding me back is my shyness, although I often just enjoy listening to dinner conversations. My host family complains that I am too quiet at home!
Final Thoughts
12. Any last comments or observations you’d like to pass on to future Armenia volunteers?
Peace Corps Armenia does bring its own unique challenges. There have been slumps in my service where I did not always feel confident in my work, and where I questioned why I came to Armenia. That said, looking back on my first year of service, I am proud of the accomplishments I have made it so far. Every single volunteer has had to dramatically reset their expectations within the first months of service. The experiences vary wildly and are volunteer- and site-dependent. The informal work that I have done has been the most rewarding and my community has really supported and welcomed me. If you can survive the first Armenian winter, then you’ll be good to go!
What are you waiting for? Opportunities like this don’t come often. If you have a passion for service and an adventurous spirit like AJ’s, apply to the Peace Corps today. Expand your horizons, push your limits, and create positive impact as a volunteer. You never know how serving as a Peace Corps volunteer could change your life.
The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or Armenia Government.
