A Home of My Own

I moved out of my host family’s house on April 1st and into my own place. The rules regarding how long a Peace Corps volunteer varies by country – all volunteers in Armenia are required to live with a host family for the first four months they are at site, but my friend in El Salvador only lived with the mayor of here community for a few days before moving into her own place. I decided to stay with my host family through the winter because they were already prepared and because I had been warned that the first winter is usually a hard time for volunteers here. I was really lucky because my host family is amazing, but in the end I was ready to move out and have a little more control over my daily routine and my own space. As much as I love my host family and I was at a point in my life before I left for Peace Corps when I was ready to live alone so living with a family of five could be overwhelming at times.


My Living Room


My Kitchen

Because I live in a village there aren’t any apartment buildings so my only option for finding my own place was to look for an empty house. The mayor helped me find a couple of places to look at and when I picked the one I liked best he helped with all the details before I moved in. He even helped me move my things in his car. The family who owns the house live in Belgium now and their relatives have been looking after the house and they are my landlords. My house has one really large main room that is the dining room and living room, two bed rooms, and a kitchen. It’s really big, but that because a normal Armenian family usually consists of 6-8 people not just one! I’m only using one of the bedrooms and the extra bedroom will be like my bunk house for when I have visitors. Off the kitchen I have a little balcony that over looks the backyard, which will be great to sit on in the summer and read. The backyard is a big garden full of trees and plants, which my landlords care for, but I get to eat from which is awesome. There’s a walnut tree, pear trees, cherry trees, and peach trees. Right now the only thing that’s ready is the green onions and greens.


My Bedroom


My Dining Room

I love that my house is big because that means I have plenty of room for visitors. In fact, I had my first visitors last Friday. Four other volunteers came to my site to help me finish moving in and to celebrate my new place. I made a great dinner and had a great time hanging out. One of the hardest things about living with a host family was that I couldn’t have friends come visit my site and if I wanted to see people I either had to go to Yerevan (which means spending a lot of money) and traveling to other people’s sites, so I’m excited to finally be able to have people come visit me.


My Extra Bedroom


The View of My Backyard from the Balcony

New Project

I’m starting a new project at work, well actually I started back in February after I went to a project development and management conference with my counterpart, but we haven’t made much progress in the last two months. The project is to renovate an unused auditorium in the village hall to create a cultural house for the community. To finance the renovation my counterpart and I are writing a Peace Corps Small Project Assistance (SPA) grant. The way the grant works is that 25% of the budget must come from a community contribution, which can be a financial contribution or a labor contribution. My village is going to provide the labor for the renovation as their community contribution. I have about a month and a half until I have to turn in the completed grant proposal so I’m really trying to kick start the process, which is quite difficult. The work culture here is very different and much more laid-back here than in the U.S. and I feel like I have to remind people of things multiple times before they actually happen. I mean if I was writing this project in the U.S. it would be done by now, but in the last two months all we have been able to accomplish is one community interest meeting and many discussions about what we need to do, but with little of it actually accomplished. If all goes according to plan and I get the grant money, work will start in July and hopefully the renovation will be complete by October so that it can coincide with the harvest and we can hold another harvest festival, but this time in the brand-new cultural house.