Armenian presentation and Halloween: Week of new meetings

Association of Akwedukt always undertakes interesting activities, combining education and pleasure. It became a kind of tradition, when current year’s volunteers present their countries. Making a presentation of their country is not about speaking wars and historical movements. We share dance, food, culture, funny stories, interesting facts and etc. The most important thing is that we encourage volunteers not to use google, but share their own experiences and stores, even showing the photos that they had done themselves.

On 27th of October, it was the day of Armenia. A little country, full of nice traditions and interesting facts. Two Armenian ladies from Akwedukt presented Armenia, which was a big success. Approximately 60 people were listening to Gayane’s and Elina’s speech. They started with a video about the places of interest of Armenia, then continued it with interesting facts, which they had separated beforehand.

The atmosphere was really warm with questions and answers. The guests were from 16-50 ages and all were interested in. The participants tasted Armenian dishes, cooked by Armenian ladies. Here we tasted 3 different tapes of dolma with its own sauces, traditional gata, Armenian bread calling lavash and shudzukh.

After all, everybody agreed that the food is amazing in Armenia, so it could be one of the reasons to go there. Armenian girls, with the help of other volunteers and friends’ encouragement danced one of the traditional dances of Armenia.

The presentation finished in amazing atmosphere, when everyone wanted their names written in Armenian, because Armenian is another branch of indo European language tree, so it has completely different and interesting letters. Volunteers did it with great pleasure.

Although the life in Akwedukt has not stopped after it either.

On Tuesday volunteers held All Saints day, which we also call as Halloween. This meeting-workshop meant to be the first workshop for kids and youth.

About 45 children and youngsters attended in this event. Some of the parents also gave interest to take part in the party. This meeting-party was amazing opportunity for kids and parents, as well, because they had a chance to meet almost all volunteers in Kwidzyn. Of course, this was not just a meeting, but children also had fun with them.

The volunteers had prepared and separated different games and adapted them for different ages. With the mentoring of volunteers the children played some games of course in Halloween style.

Another interesting and motivating thing was that after games the children were invited for some handicrafts as well. At the end of the meeting volunteers, organizers, parents and participants said good bye by singing an English song.

Taking into consideration, that first meeting was even better than we expected, the next workshop is going to be on Wednesday (08/11/2017).

In this stage, we have already divided the children into groups up to their age and knowledge of English.

Our volunteers will work in different groups combing fun and language information transfer, which is called non-formal education and considers to be one of the best ways of studying a language.

This is effective for both sides: volunteers and children. Children study English without any homework and commitment meanwhile having fun with foreigners and gaining new friends from different countries and for volunteers- they gain new teaching skills, also study new ways of games and practice already had abilities.