Good morning, good afternoon and good evening readers,

I thought it was about time that I did another blog post on the work that I actually do out here. After our training in Georgia, Amy and I decided to have a meeting with our supervisor as we weren’t sure of our role in the Youth Department. The meeting was really productive and we were able to fill our days more with meaningful work.

Prior to Georgia, we were visiting the Soup Kitchen in Massis every Friday and it was honestly my favourite day of the week. The people in that Soup Kitchen are incredible. We don’t speak one another’s language, but for some strange reason we never notice it. Every week Amy and I go along, serve soup to the beneficiaries and then spend an hour with the others who work there. Sometimes we point at random things and say it in English and then they say it in Armenian, sometimes we play with the children in the local community and other times we sit in the simple uncommunicated presence of one another. We heard that the funding was being cut for the Soup Kitchen and we were gutted to say the least. So now, it will only be open for three days a week. It is such a shame that the hours have had to be restricted. It is a credit to the Red Cross and an incredible example of how smoothly a project can run with the right people. The sense of love is undeniable and the beneficiaries have a safe place to eat warm food and socialise with one another.

It turns out that they wanted us to visit more than one day a week. I was so flattered. So now at their request, we visit on Monday’s to teach English and visit on Thursday’s to do a Summer Club for the children. We just had our first Summer Club and it went SO well. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! Move over “Pride and Prejudice”, I’m releasing a novel titled “Pride and Productivity” because this feeling needs to be bottled.

A few children arrived at first and we started to make fish from paper plates. Please see my stunning example below. I would like to mention at this point that a child told me she made it and then took it home with her.

Our colleague KJ (her name is Karen but that is a boy’s name here, who would’ve thought) took the fish and went around to the local park to see if the children wanted to join us. Only in Armenia could you away with that. In England you would 100% be arrested as a pervert fishing for children. The Pied Piper delivered though and a school of children joined us. We then played a water and bucket game where the children had to carry the buckets on their heads and fill the bucket on another child’s head at the other side, kind of like a relay race. They loved that game and so did I. I was having such an enjoyable time that I had no time to take photographs and that’s the way it should be for me. So, please see these snaps taken by Amy and our pal KJ. Now to start planning for next week.

In contented kindness,
C x