The Gathering of Youth Creative Clubs in Gandzasar: Our English Guest

        From October 21 to 26 our English speaking club members and me were taking part in the gathering of the annual youth creative clubs in     Gandzasar, an extraordinarily beautiful place in  Artsakh. This is a description of one day in this wonderful youth camp.    

The 23^rd of October was an exceptionally interesting day for the English speaking club members. Early in the morning an English tourist walked up to Gandzasar, and the most interesting was that he wasn’t hurrying anywhere. That was the happiest surprise that I could possibly get during the club gathering at 7:30 am, when I was thinking over how to organize the English speaking club lesson-meeting that day. The English are said to be reserved and not willing to mix with foreigners but that Englishman didn’t match the characteristic features of the English which are even written in textbooks. Keith Gregory, a young owner of a firm from Leeds, was a lively, sociable person with subtle English humour,  who willingly conversed with us, and furthermore, could direct and conduct conversation. The members of the English speaking club and a few learners from Stepanakert High School 11 talked to Keith for about an hour. Narek Sahakyan, Diana Zoryan and Seda Minasyan, a member of the English speaking club of Art High School, also took part in the conversation, and then we had breakfast together. Later at 11 o’clock Keith joined us in the village of Vank and we had a most effective club work together for about 4 hours. We couldn’t even have dreamed of it in Yerevan. Everybody is in a hurry in big cities. We set up a discussion about the topic of choosing a future specialty, spoke about the advantages and disadvantages of continuing education abroad, played a few language games, and at the end Nare Hovhannisyan, Anna Mkrtchyan and Yeva Markosyan sang English songs to the accompaniment of the piano. Keith was shooting this unexpected concert with his tablet and every now and then turning to me and saying. “What wonderful girls they are!”

We saw Keith off at 3 pm and came back to Gandzasar. After dinner our club had guests from Germany and Poland. Actually the guests of Gandzasar were also our guests. Anna Mkrtchyan, Yeva Markosyan and Ani Manukyan spoke to those Germans. They were an old married couple, and it turned out that the wife was a teacher and was teaching children with special educational needs. When I said that our school also pays a special interest to inclusive education, it obviously made her happy.                          She was a woman of sixty and she had worked with such children for nearly all her life and loved her job ver so much.

In the Evening the English speaking club participated in a debate organized by Arman Yeranosyan.