Jan 10 First Day of Teaching

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Today was the first day of teaching, and when I met the students, they seemed quite shy, but they later opened up. Lena, the manager, told me that it is typical for Gyumri children to be shy at first. They also spoke much less English than I anticipated. Although they start learning it from third grade, they basically only learn to read and write, but not communicate, as Lena told me. Since Google translate is not very accurate, I relied a lot on the interpreter, Yuliana. Regardless, I enjoyed teaching the students, as they were eager to participate and quite cooperative for a class of 16.

My meal schedule was thrown off, so I only had some lavash for breakfast. For dinner, we went to Gyumri Hacatun, which had a variety of dishes from the region.

  • Meat lahmajun - cracker-like (unleavened) flatbread, close to lavash but a bit thicker (at least the lavash I had) topped with ground meat and onions. Meat was quite flavorful
  • Ostri - actually a Georgian dish, traditionally a beef stew with tomatoes, onions, garlic, tomato paste, adjika (pepper paste), herbs, spices, and bay leaves. What they gave me didn't seem like a stew, as the meat was shredded as opposed to large chunks. Still it was quite flavorful
  • Salad
To try: Kashlama (Armenian stew), khurjin (Armenian beef dumpling made with lavash), pitti (Armenian/Azerbaijani soup of lamb and chickpeas), bozbash (Armenian/Azerbaijani soup of beef and beans), chanakh (Armenian soup with lamb, eggplant, tomato)

Christmas tree decorated with khinkali, Georgian dumplings


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