Interview with my Grandmother-Satenik Akopyan

Satenik was sitting in her kitchen looking through the window and daydreaming. She lives in Hollywood alone in a single house. She is a sixty-five year old women and she looks very young for her age. She was thinking about how her life has changed ever since she has entered the United States. She lived in Aknashen which is a small town in Armenia. Aknashen has approximately 1,400 people living there, but the amount of people are decreasing every day because people are moving to live in cities rather than villages or towns. She says that life was difficult back then, but rather interesting and fun. Even though it was a harsh life that she lived in, her life was happy than it is here. Life in Aknashen was filled with torture, everything was done with hand. If the people wanted to go somewhere they had to go with their own feet because they had no cars. Satenik lived in a bad condition in Aknashen with little money in a little house, but her life was fun than it is here for her.

I lived in Armenia during the Soviet Union. The name of my village is Aknashen. Aknashen was very nice, very in some places, but in other places it was in a horrible condition. The nice places had beautiful views. It was a small village, with fewer people living there. Approximately 1,400 people lived there. Compared to the people here there was a little. We did know everyone in Aknashen, we lived there for a long time, so we did know each other.

I went to school there also. The schools were very nice and pretty, the teachers were friendly, and everything was very pretty, the students were friendly and kind too. I went to school until tenth grade. In school we learned other languages, in French and Russian, Mathematics, Physics, Geography, everything. We also learned reading, and writing. The classrooms were made from twenty to twenty-five people. You were in the same class with the same group of students until the end of the year. You only went to one school until you graduated. For most times until eight grade classes were made from thirty students, but after eight grade some students went to learn in other places, but until eight grade every class had twenty to twenty-five students and sometimes until twenty-seven.

The classrooms were a regular size, every class included maps, and in a chemistry of physics class there were charts about the subjects that helped you more on the subject. For example in history class there were a variety of maps and globes and in biology class there were examples of parts of the human body and animals like the humans heart brain, we were aware of everything in every way and we always had after school programs about current events that were happening, but we didn’t know about.

We wore uniforms to school, unique clothes that everyone in my school had to wear. The girls wore you know dresses until their knees. Besides that they also wore white mittens on their hands, white socks with high heels. The guys wore blue or black color pants with a white dress shirt. We never used yum lipstick or lip gloss or other kinds of makeup used here in schools. It wasn’t nice and every kid should dress for their age, so they won’t look older than their age, so that’s why you could tell the teachers apart from the students. We went to school six days a week and we also went on Saturdays which is different from here. The school started at eight and ended at two. We had two fifteen minutes breaks and one half an hour break.

In Armenia they gave a lot of homework because they taught six classes at the same time. Every teacher gave not just one paragraph, but two to three paragraphs. We did not have the computers here back then, so we went to libraries or looked at books to find information and then we put the information on paper and on boards and took them to class to present in front of the class. We had more than enough of homework and the subjects were very difficult to understand, so we needed a lot of practice.

The difference from the childhood here is that we had a great childhood, we lived in a small village, but all the neighbors kids got together and we played hide-and- seek, basketball, volleyball, seven rocks besides that our families were very together we helped one another in every question, so from helping each other we all became familiar with each other. When we played at night our neighbors never would told us that there is noise and it is bothering me like the people do here in America.

Our lives were very fun, compared to the life here. Of course we did not have as much privileges as there is here, but the kids here do not have the same childhood as the kids in our village. Because we were calm and friendly. It was great. Now what I remember is that when I lie down to sleep I remember my childhood, which are sweet and mean a lot to me.

In August the time came for the grapes and for two months we went to collect grapes between that we had breaks. We each had our own plan We had to collect two-hundred kilograms of grapes and we took them to measure their weight and then put them in special plates. Then after two months we returned to our school and everyone was thankful to us. Sometimes we even got a little extra money when we collected more than enough of grapes. It was from the fourth grade where the students could do the work.

I would not say our life was that hard, but it was fun and interesting at the same time. We did not have much to think about back then, we only thought about school and having fun. We as kids did not work until we graduated and some people did not even work when they graduated. The only reason was that we did not get paid and also it was hard for us to find a job with no experience.

Interviewed by Meri Metsoyan