Intermediate High

I had to take my final language assessment.

I was DREADING it.

If we can go back to PST (where the problems really began), we will remember that I was so excited about learning Armenian.  We can also remember that I was really hard on myself.  I felt like I had to get everything right away.  Not only did I have this pressure on myself, but my incredible host family also put this pressure on me.

The moment that I peaked in my language during PST was…embarrassing but TOTALLY needed.  Just as a reminder, Trainees get 4 hours of intensive language instruction from very capable Language and Cultural Facilitators (LCFs) 6 days a week.  On top of that, most Trainees live with host families where very little to no English is spoken (of course there are exceptions).  So, we were constantly immersed in language. 

Like my real family, my host family during PST was competitive, and they were constantly comparing and ranking the trainees in my community based on their language skills.  They talked to other villagers and got their input too.  Now, when you’re outside of that, then it all seems rather amusing.  But, while you’re in it, it’s actually really overwhelming.  One night, they wanted me to make this really difficult sound that I can’t differentiate from another really difficult sound.  Both sound like phlegm to me.  Every time I thought I was making the sound, I would get an impatient “tuh” and have to do it again.  The kids thought it was funny.  I thought it was cruel, even though I know that’s not what the intent was.  But I ended up walking out, that ended up with the WHOLE family following me and becoming really ashamed because they thought they offended me in some way that they didn’t understand.  I wasn’t offended, I was just so frustrated because I just couldn’t get it.  The whole fiasco ended up with uncontrollable tears, candy, and a walk around the village with my host family and a splotchy face and a snotty nose.

After that moment, my host family felt no need to maintain this intense pressure, and I felt no need to live up to their (or my own) expectations of language. 

AND THEN I WENT FOR MY SITE VISIT.

By the time of my site visit, I had expressed the fear of “what if my new host family doesn’t speak any English.”  My beautiful host mom and aunt looked at each other with a fleeting worrying look and said that they would.  They were sure of it.

Well, my host family here in Surenavan doesn’t speak English.  In fact, there are only 3 people in my community that I can have conversations in English with.  Of course, there are people who understand a couple of words and who have made attempts to engage with me in a combination of Armenian, Russian (I don’t speak that either), and the few English/French/German/Spanish words they may know.

After my site visit, I had my official Language Proficiency Index (LPI).  The LPI is a recorded interview where the interviewer asks you questions in Armenian, gives you a scenario to act out, and chats with you for 30 minutes.  The interviewer then provides notes on where you did well and what could be improved upon, and then you’re scored.  For PC Armenia, you have to come out of that first LPI with a Novice High at the very least.  You have to be able to form basic sentences.

I got nervous and completely forgot what “inchpes ek?” meant.  It’s the formal way to say “How are you?” People had stopped using that form with me, and I completely lost my cool. Needless to say, I came out of that LPI with an Intermediate Low, which further made me feel inadequate in my language ability.

To recap, I left PST feeling worse about language than I did going in.  And, it made going into my community with this arbitrary rating hanging over me seem impossible.

How could I possibly impact my school and community if I couldn’t even engage anyone in conversation?  I felt like a colonizer and a fraud; I didn’t want people to think that I was actively not trying to learn Armenian because I felt like English was the best language ever.

For the majority of my first year I didn’t have a tutor to work with, so I’ve had to take learning this language back into my own hands and make it work for me.  That’s looked like having coffee with other Armenians, watching television in Armenian with my Papik, pulling out the dictionary or google translate to look up words, reading newspapers, and copying down new words that I pick out of conversations.  It has meant asking my counterpart questions, interrupting conversations to ask what things mean, admitting not understanding something.

It has also really seen generosity play out in the part of people in my community.  It has meant store owners being patient with me as I look up words for things I don’t know (for the record, look up corn starch in Russian, and make sure there’s a Russian teacher around while you do this).  It has meant letting my younger students explain things to me without feeling embarrassed.  It has meant listening…a lot.

While I did manage to find a lovely tutor back in September, who I learned a lot from as far as why things are the way they are, most of my language learning has been forcing myself to lean into situations that are really uncomfortable.  It’s meant being confused (confusion is probably the true hallmark of my service), and asking for people to repeat themselves. 

It’s been being forgiving with myself—a lot. 

According to my third and final LPI score, I’m an Intermediate High.  But that means nothing to me.  I would say that my language is actually still…looking for opportunities to improve.  I’m not where I’d like to be, but I would say that learning this language has been rewarding and has made parts of my service richer for the struggle. 

Rather than giving up, or only seeking out English speakers, I have been given this really incredible experience to connect with other people within my community using the language that they call theirs. 

You’re Speaking Too Much English

Even though I have been in Armenia for almost a month, it really only feels like  I’ve been here for much longer.  Everyday seems to melt into the next and I can’t really give any concrete feedback for anything that happened the day before.  It’s kind of bad actually.  But it is what it is.

Anyways, I know that I’m kind of bombarding you with placing my posts up all at once, but that really is due to lack of Wi-Fi.  I totally have access to the internet, but that is only from 2PM to about 5:30PM my time.  And that’s only because I’m at our training location in Artashat.  So there only really ends up being about a 30-minute gap to post anything, and that is if I have everything together, which I never do, and if the Wi-Fi working for me (remember, anything that can go wrong with technology will go wrong while I’m trying to use it).  Other volunteer’s might have Wi-Fi with their host families, but I’d feel weird going to someone else’s house for the soul purpose of using the internet.  I mean, every once in a while I might be okay doing that, but for the most part I’d feel like I was using that volunteer and their host family.  And, right now, I’m really okay with not being in touch with everyone from home every single day.  I’m just convinced that having that constant contact with my people back at home would make me miss them even more than I already do.  And even though I know homesickness is going to hit, I don’t want it to hit now and affect me during PST.

Another thing, I think having extra contact with English-speaking folks may hinder me in my quest to speak Armenian.  I mean, I spend a good majority of my day attempting to speak Armenian, listening to Armenian, and being surrounded by Armenian speakers, so I’m sure 1 hour a day speaking to my mom or my best friends wouldn’t hurt all that much, but that is one hour less that I could be using to ask questions and work on my memorization (which is way worse than I expected).  I also think that we’ve generally been really spoiled by how much English we can actually use.    I mean, the first week in country, we were taken to a resort/tourist area that is only really busy in the summer.  So it was off-season when we went and as a group, we had limited contact with Armenian people.  Other than hotel staff and Peace Corps staff, there really wasn’t anyone there AND everyone was super accommodating about the language barrier. The only people it was hard to communicate with was the hotel staff, and the need to communicate with them really wasn’t pressing.  That isn’t to say we didn’t communicate at all, we definitely did (and I have to say, I never thought I would have to resort to my college-level Español in a tiny, foreign, land-locked country, but it happened).  And even though we have 4 hours of language lessons a day, if we really have a pressing question, our LCF’s are more than happy to explain it in English so we understand.  Even at my house, I have been fortunate that my host mom has a decent understanding of English (which she claims is really bad, but that’s such an understatement), and my host-aunt has less English knowledge, but she wants to learn so bad and she is picking up a lot (even though she also claims she is bad).  And if I really don’t understand something, we pull out the dictionary and Google translate.  And if it needed to come to it, our neighbor (who is my host mom’s aunt, and also has a volunteer living with her) has a daughter who speaks extremely good English.  Even though I am surrounded by English, I have so so many opportunities to speak Armenian at home, especially because my host family wants me to understand and they want to have those in-depth conversations with me (which we’ve still somehow managed to have and I’ll tell you about some of them some other time).   

I actually had a suspicion that the host families in my village have a mini-competition going on about whose volunteer can speak the best Armenian.  Like, I am constantly being asked about where everyone’s language level is and what our LCF’s are saying about our language, followed by “well, Alicia-jan, you are doing very very well and we think you speak good Armenian.”  And, depending on the day, or my response, it is followed with a “well, you’ve gotten much better than when you first arrived 2 weeks ago, and you understand us really well.”  It’s just interesting to see their perspective of what it means to have a volunteer living with them and hearing what they think of Americans, in general.  In a way, it’s also a confidence booster.  Like, every day I feel like I’m surrounded by people who are picking up words and concepts way faster than I am, and maybe they are. 

That being said, I’m totally convinced that by the time I leave my village, I will be comfortable enough with switching into Armenian.