Two things.

I made a calzone. Two, actually. With help from a second volunteer.

Braids were a little off, but it still tasted fine.

And also, another volunteer somehow had some coffee, from Giant Eagle, Market District no less.

I have bad internet at the moment, don't know how to modify the picture and don't want to reload it. So it's sideways. Deal with it. Maybe I'll change it in the future.

Giant Eagle is a grocery store in Western PA and other states bordering there, which is located in Pittsburgh where I went to university. The flagship store in Pittsburgh is branded as the 'Market District' a sortof upscale brand (it's in the yuppiest area of Pittsburgh) to compete with the nearby Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. I lived about 10 minutes away from it, and it was on the bus route on the way to Pitt so I went there often for my groceries. I wouldn't expect anyone to have this outside of Western PA, let alone in Armenia.

So after waiting for packages to arrive, I figured I would ask a friend to check at his post office as I had in the past had some packages sent to his address because I was worried about my new one.

So my friend checks, as it turns out I have two packages, one has been there a month. Now a lot of volunteers will talk about the fish bowl we live in as volunteers, where everyone knows our business, sometimes even before we know it. While I do experience this a fair amount it's not much of a problem for me in Vanadzor and I do have some fair amount of anonymity, a whole lot compared to someone living in a village. For example, my package is here for a month and neither me nor any of the other American's have been told.

While I would have loved to have gotten my packages sooner, this does demonstrate that I do have some anonymity here, at least when it comes to the post office across town.

Now that can also make it harder to integrate, feel welcome in a city where people tend to go about their business. There's a shop down below my building that opened up a few months ago that I'll often buy eggs and bread from. Going down there a few weeks ago I went in and I heard the shopkeepers (I think it's a family) told another Armenian their that I was their American, in describing who this strange foreigner was.

It was a great feeling, not one I experience often living in a city.

I stayed with my host family for New Year's, Armenia's biggest holiday. It is a bit of a combination of Christmas and New Year's celebrations. Dmzer Papik (grandfather winter) brings presents for children, and everyone stays up until a countdown to the new year and everyone drinks champagne. But midnight is really just the beginning of the New Year Celebrations, and a large meal is eaten at midnight and countless toasts are done to celebrate the New Year.

That is a 3 liter bottle of Smirnoff. Except it's filled with homemade pair vodka. And you use a pump.

The table is set.

Then the days following are filled with visiting countless houses of relatives, being visited by countless relatives at your house, and eating and drinking at every house you are at. This goes on until about the 6th of January, which is Armenian Christmas.

Also Armenians enjoy using the Chinese zodiac for the new year, and this year, being the Year of the Dragon (Happy Chinese New Year! It was few days ago!), I saw this new year calendar:

It says 'Year of the Dragon (Vishap)'Total Maiden or Dio cover, am I right? I think there is a dragon underneath the guy or . . . I really have no idea, but it's awesome. Much better than those rabbits from last year!

I've noticed several times on buses here something you won't ever see in the US. On a crowded bus a family with a child gets on the bus and a complete stranger, usually a young woman, picks up the child, without even asking the family, and sets the child on her lap. This isn't viewed as strange and every time I've seen it has been accepted as normal by the family and the child. I think it shows an intimacy between Armenians that is fascinating to me because I have never seen anything like that in the US.

And now some pictures of Tbilisi:

I went on vacation over Christmas. To Tbilisi, the capital of the Caucasian country of Georgia. (So there, left no room for stupid jokes, comments, or quips about the US state).

Tbilisi is a beautiful capital city with an old town and a rich history. It was the center of East Armenian culture before the founding of the modern country of Armenia shortly after World War I.

We walked just about everywhere we went in the city, with a few places in mind (McDonald's, this classy bar I'd been to before but couldn't remember how to get to), but really we walked around, saw some place nearby, or in the distance and said, hey, let's go there.

With so few specific plans we just explored and made it up as we go along. On our way to find X we stumbled on Y, then decided to head for Z, giving up on ever finding X, only to find X a day later, completely by accident.

Everywhere we went, if I had to order food, or do something rather automatic, I found myself trying to constantly use my Armenian, without even realizing it. My brain was just trying to grasp for anything foreign and it just found the most readily available language, just not the right one. In McDonald's one of the cashiers actually knew Armenian, and after I apologized and used English we had a short conversation, which was nice, and a bit of surprise.

When you're on vacation one of the things I love to do is cancel plans. I'm on vacation! There is nothing I have to do. Everything is optional, and for instance, our one trip outside of the city entailed going to the birthplace of Joseph Stalin and the museum that is now there. Stalin was from Georgia and so statues are not uncommon of him there, and while I can't comment on attitudes today, historically Georgians have had a favorable view towards him as one of their own, hence, his own museum.

So that was about 45 minutes away from the capital, and we had planned on doing it, and we decided, ya know, we don't have to go. We all sortof agreed and that was that. We explored more parts of Tbilisi and even got to go on top of a fortress that overlooks the city. A really cool place. And pretty much nothing was off limits, so we climbed all around this abandoned fortress that was now a tourist attraction. I'd post pictures but I'll have to steal them from a friend because I didn't bring my camera for any of this! Amot Inz (Shame on me.)

The Peace Corps has three official goals, that they have had, from its inception:Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.Last summer my family visited me in Armenia and got to see some of what it was like when I lived in a village during training. They got to try the street food and many other Armenian foods.

My sister, who is becoming quite the cook, had an Armenian themed meal after she went back, making several traditional Armenian foods, Armenian barbeque (Khorovats), Lahmajo (pictured below), and a green bean and eggs dish.

Lahmajo, also popular around the entire region

She shared this food with her friends and family and helped them gain insight into Armenian culture through their cuisine, an enormously important part of any culture. I was glad my sister enjoyed her time in Armenia enough to recreate some of the cuisine while she was in America.

Winter is starting to set in, so there are no vegetables (the ones that are available are ten times as expensive as they were in the summer) and the lack of selection usually starts to wear on you. Though we have mandarins right now! They will be gone soon, but until then, I will be eating them every single day until they leave.

Haven't posted in a while, it's been a busy holiday season with friends.

I enjoyed Christmas in Georgia, taking a self-guided walking tour and seeing countless churches, castles, and parks, which we literally, just stumbled upon as we walked through the city.

I spent New Year's with my host family from PST.

I got my SPA grant approved!

I'll post more on this later, but right now I don't feel like writing and I can't upload any pictures at the moment.

I had my first Thanksgiving dinner in Armenia, and it was awesome. Now I have in fact been here for two Thanksgivings, but I am calling this one the first because the last one, while wonderful, I was not present at because I was the sickest I have ever been in Armenia while it happened and so I ate hardly anything and left it early.

So. My first Thanksgiving in Armenia! With a turkey FROM AMERICA. Imported. Good stuff. I've wanted to get a heritage turkey for a while, but it we couldn't pass up the idea of an American turkey. And it turned out wonderful. Yep. I cooked it. But cooking it was really just me smothering it in butter and spices and making sure I didn't overcook it. It was brined the night before so that I think did most of the work of keeping it moist. The oven we cooked it in was so small, the turkey, only about 12 pounds or so took up the entire oven. Success. My second turkey ever.

Sadly no pictures, but I have pictures of snowy Goris, which is where I was.

Snowy StreetFrom the Balcony where we had out meal.

We had stuffing, mashed potatoes, cornbread, pumpkin soup, apple pie, mulled wine and so many other things, it really felt like Thanksgiving. I had gravy on mashed potatoes, turkey, and stuffing at the same time, on the same plate! Heaven.

And also we got little name tags:

Pretty Snazzy

The next day we watched Aladdin. Don't know how it really came up and I wasn't thrilled, but after seeing it all the way through, that was a really solid, simple, good movie.

So this leads into a discussion after I return home with sitemates, talking about the movie, and then the term all-powerful genie comes up, and whether or not is an oxymoron. Then we get into a long discussion the absurdity of which I can't adequately describe. Perhaps if I was an all-powerful writer . . . . NO. Done. But rest assured that lions with telekinetic powers were brought up.

I decided to retrospecitvely title this post, 'giving thanks', instead of thanksgiving, so I feel like I have to give thanks, luckily I have plenty of things to be thankful for:

-awesome sitemates.

-awesome friends who sadly are not my sitemates

-my family, and also the package I just got yesterday with sponge candy in it

-safe travels in this early Armenian winter for myself and for my friends

-an awesome thanksgiving meal

-being told that I should try to aim while playing Goldeneye

-that I have so many things and people to be thankful for that I am surely forgetting many of them.

I got to play guitar last night. At a bar. There was some live music at a bar we were at, just two guys with a guitar, and a basic drum kit. Really just some guys jamming and having a good time, singing some covers here and there. There was a stage (I'm not sure if it was still there) that I've seen DJs at before, but they were just setup in the corner next to a piano, not even using the stage, all in all a pretty intimate and nice setup. After we were there for a while I asked if I could play, just sortof as a joke, but when I got a sure, I thought, oh crap, what do I do.

So I played a song that I only half remembered, I switched up the verses, but had a fun time just playing the basic chords on a beautiful sounding acoustic guitar. I'm used to my flee-market guitar I got for about 30 dollars in the open-air market when I first arrived, so playing out of an amplified, beautiful sounding acoustic guitar was an awesome experience. I'd sing a verse and then an Armenian would play a lead over some basic chords I would strum for a while, then signal for me to sing the next verse which I would try to remember. It was a great time.

I haven't done anything like that since high school, jamming out in friends' basements. Such a strange thing that I would find that opportunity at this stage in my life, and in Armenia no less.

I also played foosball. The end.

Yesterday was a good day.

My team teaching counterpart in my high school visited the US this summer as part of a program bringing together English teachers from Armenia and Turkey at Indiana University. It was not only a skills exchange through learning about new teaching techniques, but also a cultural exchange between two cultures that have very little contact (The border between Armenia and Turkey is closed, the Turkish Government in solidarity with the Azerbaijani Government, who has a territorial dispute with Armenia).

Several teachers that I know earned the opportunity to participate in this exchange and all of them had a very positive experience, and have many Turkish friends now. Today in class my counterpart had set up a video conference with one of her closest friends she met from the exchange in Turkey so that their students could meet one another. The connection was poor, but they were able to meet young people from a country they share a common border with, but had never had the opportunity to interact with.

As I was leaving, I saw some students working on a poster. My team teaching counterpart asks the students what it was, and I kept hearing the word 'trafficking' and I asked if they were doing a poster on human trafficking, which isn't a issue I would think Armenian high school curricula would address, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear that my students were learning about this issue.

Oh, and also I was complimented on my new green hat and handwarmers (to match my green scarf) by the local tatik down at the small store outside my building. She saw me the other night and said, oh yes, I remember seeing you walking out with your green gloves and hat. They were knitted for me by another volunteer and are perfect for typing because my thumbs are open. I have them on because I posed for some photos. I took a bunch and didn't know what to post, so I just made them into an animated GIF file. Click on it to enjoy.

Kinda fast, I know.

So a few weeks ago I took this picture of Vanadzor:

See how nice those leaves look? This shows you how long vanadzor is. It is shaped to the valley, so there isn't too much on either side of this picture, but it stretches out pretty far.

This is a picture from last weekend:

So much for fall. But a plus is that now that I have a camera I was able to take pictures of snow-covered Vanadzor. Though I would have rather taken these pictures in January or February, instead of November.

Winter came early this year, here's to hoping it is just visiting, and I'll see it for the long haul come January.

I went on yesterday around the hills of Vanadzor. We went on a familiar path, but then veered off to try to find a trail up one of our mountains.

We started walking past the local Sanitarium, a 9-story building where only the first few floors are in use. We passed the abandoned Soviet camp, then a not-so abandoned camp that still appears to be in use. We saw a few dogs on the way, mostly just barking at us, but one in particular came running up to us, his tail wagging, circled around us, then ran ahead of us.

We didn't think much of it, but then the dog continued to follow us as we found a switchback and trekked up the the southern Vanadzor mountainside. And our dog kept following us. As we walked up we saw an Armenian hanging birds in cages just off the ground. Not sure why exactly he was doing this, but our dog saw one of the cages still on the ground and ran for it, batting it with his paw. We tried to push the dog off and yell at it, but it really wasn't our dog. Eventually the Armenian chased off the dog down the hill and we continued up.

But minutes later our loyal pup had returned. Most dogs, especially the stray ones, are afraid of humans and will bark but run away if you even pretend to pick something (like a rock) off the ground. This dog seemed very friendly and didn't even snap when we tried to pull the dog off the bird cage.

As we made it up one hill, we saw a wonderful view of the city (after many almost beautiful views obscured by the treeline. Sadly I didn't have my camera, though there was a fog rolling in and so most pictures wouldn't have shown up well most likely. I've never seen Vanadzor from this angle and it was interesting trying to pinpoint the landmarks we knew from the people's-eye view.

We continued up the mountain east and found something I didn't know we had in Vanadzor; a soccer field. It was right behind the sanitarium. Just like a practice field, no bleachers or anything, but it was interesting to find out, having assumed there wasn't one nearby, and with no previous volunteers mentioning it.

Further up the hill we saw an Armenian with a rifle. We advanced slowly at first, then said hello. He had two beautiful hunting dogs. Our dog and the other two started growling at each other but we did our best to keep them apart, and soon the hunter and his dogs left, but not after every dog marking its territory over one another on the same bush.

After we returned from the our dog finally left us once we entered the city outskirts and was chased off by another dog.

We then spent the day making a leisurely brunch of Hoppel Poppel and French Toast. Hoppel Poppel, besides being a really fun word to say, is also a really good dish that is basically German leftovers. generally we use peppers, onions, potatoes, and some pork or bacon (We have bacon in Vanadzor! Newly tested-out this weekend!) in an egg dish that we bake in the oven. But in the spirit of leftovers I have made it before with leftover Ratatouille and leftover fajita mix.

Later on my lazy Sunday I proceeded to get my first haircut by an Armenian in Armenia. I went to a place that my friend had been to and received a decent haircut. Previously I've just been buzzing my hair in the summers and letting it grow out in the winter. The hairstyles here are very different and I have seen some awful haircuts on volunteers that have gone to barbers here, so I was a little nervous. But everything seemed to turn out alright! There were pictures on the table that I was able to point to and give a reasonable approximation of what I wanted, so that helped.

All in all a lazy sunday (well sans hike, I have a stuffy nose, so that was actually quite tiring) and then I went to bed early (9pm) so I could wake up and watch the Steelers game at 5:30 AM Armenia time. Heartbreaking loss, but whatever.

The final leg of my Syunik trip took me to Goris.

This place

Upon getting there my host was still at work, so after dropping my stuff off I decided to explore. First I went to the church in Goris.

Just to the left of the door. That's from artillery shells.

From inside I could hear some chanting and so I was able to witness a small church service. I have a video of it but that is too long for me to upload so maybe I'll put that up at some point.

Then I lit some candles.

Then I went on an impromptu hike to see some really interesting mountains near the old part of the town.

The formations seem very otherworldly to me.

I started walking towards these, and eventually got very high up and got some interesting pictures of the city as the fog rolled in.

Goris from the other direction.

After an evening in Goris I went back to a nearby village called Halidzor. There was a ton of fog on the way back, and I've been told there is a beautiful gorge there, a popular tourist destination even, but I was unable to see any of it. Instead I saw this:Move along, nothing to see here. No literally.

An enjoyable time otherwise but I'll have to visit again (especially the nearby Tatev, which has a beautiful monastery) so I can actually see the place.

After another night in Goris I started the long trek back up north for a Halloween party. We woke up at 8 am and it was snowing. The roads were pretty bad, up until we got out of Syunik Marz (And no I am not kidding or exaggerating) and then we had some snow, but otherwise the roads had no snow on them.

After my trip to Meghri/Agarak I went to to Kapan, the Paris of the southern Armenia, and the Pittsburgh of Armenia in general. And it really is a lot like old Pittsburgh, it's industrial, built into the hills around it, and has two rivers that meet in the city center.

I was graciously hosted by a volunteer that was just getting over a cold so I had a relaxing day in Kapan. While hanging out we discovered some really old bottles of alcohol and maybe basalmic vinegar from the 1980s.

The apartment I was staying at hadn't been occupied for more than 10 years before this, and so there was a lot of older things just hanging out in the apartment. The bottle above says 'balsam' in Russian, and if you look to the right of Saint George you can see a CCCP label on it.

I went on a vacation to the southern region of Armenia, Syunik last weekend. I traveled from the capital down to the southernmost towns in the country, Meghri, and Agarak, right next to the border with Iran.

See. Border Sign.

The trip down took about 8 hours. It was a long trip. I actually went too far, and didn't get off in Meghri, but went all the way to Agarak which is the closest town to the border, and actually got a glimpse of the border crossing because the driver had to drop off some packages there.

The Mountains of Iran.

I was hosted by another volunteer and had a great time seeing the border, saw the old town of Meghri which looks like it grew from the rock it is nestled in.

Left side: Nestled.

Stay tuned, I'll have posts in the next few days about the rest of my trip.

So the mountains around Vanadzor have been getting snow on them on and off for the last couple weeks, but it looks like the one mountain outside my window has some snow that is here to stay.

Luckily it is snow that I can see but haven't experienced yet. It's been cold and rainy here the last few days, but that isn't so bad as I see some people in really cold parts already posting pictures with inches of snow on the street.

Also, this is for my TESOL PCMIers, I've been meaning to take this picture for months, and finally I had my camera out and about and I passed this building that had this tag:

SLA! The first thing that came to my head was of course Second Language Acquisition. I haven't been able to figure out what the original intent would be. Any guesses anyone?

So I had an enjoyable lesson today. On the way there I met two of my students, apparently their previous class had been cancelled because the teacher was sick and apparently substitute teachers aren't a thing here so they said they were free to do whatever they wanted. They might not have been telling the truth, but I think they were. So we spoke in English and I asked them about yesterday's lesson, what they liked about it etc. In general here it would be tough to have a conversation with high school students in English (with one or two exceptions, and these were not even the most exceptional students in my class, but still good students), so it was nice to engage them in a real conversation. In today's lesson I used optical illusions where you have one picture but two possible interpretations. for example:

The picture can be an old women, we can see her nose, and chin which is buried in the fur of her coat. Or you can see a young woman who is looking away from our perspective so we only see her neck and ear clearly.

The idea was that the students would have to speak about what the picture 'might' be and what it also 'could' be making use of the modals of possibility.

Then I went to the Greek bakery in town and brought some sweets to my tatik in my old building.

We had eight, but between the two of us we at 5, though I offered her one for later, and she gave me some grapes and plums that she threw right on top of those guys (removed for the picture). The stuff on the left is gata, an Armenian sweet-bread, basically dough, honey and sugar. The two on the right are a lot like gata but with powdered sugar and cream in them.

I spoke with tatik (whose name is Satik. Satik Tatik!) about the lesson I did, and then proceeded to do the activity in Armenian, though I focused on just the nouns (the modals are a bit weird, it's a suffix sortof, I don't really understand them, I might've been able to give it a shot, maybe I'll try later).

I spent a night in Yerevan before going to Areni for a wine festival. I was meeting a friend that lived in Vanadzor last year and was leaving to go back to Estonia in a few days. We played a game called Canasta which is sortof like rummy if you had it smoke some crack, with two decks and the goal is to get 7 of a kind instead of 3 or 4 of a kind. And jokers and 2's are wild. Crazy game.

Being the only one to have taught us this game, she would always win, but this time, with a little help from her boyfriend I managed to win in a very close game. Maybe the win wasn't a real win, but it is the only time she has lost in Armenia, so hopefully she will remember the game. It took us a large part of the night to play so we went out pretty late, about 11:30. Our favorite bar was too crowded to let anyone in (there was a soccer game, Armenia vs Macedonia, and Armenia won) so we went to another bar, but later on went back to Calumet, by far my favorite bar in Armenia. I always have great times there. When my family was visiting this summer I saw this guy, my mom actually pointed him out as looking like an American actor, who is an Armenian comedic actor. So I went over and got a picture with him.

His English was very good. He didn't believe me that I had seen some of his shows, and specifically a movie that was on Armenian television during New Year's, a sortof love triangle movie where he kept getting things thrown in his face by beautiful women. So to sum it up, I always have awesome times and Calumet, and last weekend was no exception.

Then I went to the Areni Wine festival. Areni is a place in Armenia known for its wine and so they have festival every year with homemade wine from the area and singing and dancing, etc. And wine tasting. We bought 1-liter plastic bottles filled with wine for about $2.5 USD (1000 AMD) and went to town. We had table, then later we crashed a party down by the river and talked to some Armenians, then we found our own spot by the river, and had just a really fun time. I went to a church and lit some candles for family and friends, then saw that the candles were wrapped in English exercises.

Oh. And I saw the video for Barbie Girl on an Armenian morning show in the teacher's lounge this morning.

Two things, real quick-like:

I saw some cyclists with the colorful spandex biking suits on my way back from the capital two weekend's ago. I was more surprised to see them than I was to see the cows bringing us to a halt on the highway later on during the trip.

I also went to a hike in Dilijan a few Sundays ago. It is an old Soviet resort town East of Vanadzor about 40 minutes away. We had a general idea of where to go, but mostly just walked up the hill and eventually got to what was more or less a path. We saw some horses grazing, and went beyond them up the mountain finally going up a steep hill to a cliff and have breakfast.

I've been going on a lot of small hikes on the weekends, and it's been refreshing and fun to see the nature in and around Vanadzor, and I finally remembered to take my camera on this one.

Got to go to the dentist, PC pays for a yearly cleaning so I decided to take advantage of that. There was already another person scheduled, so I went along with another PCV but the doctor that normally comes with you was out for the day, so we had to go it alone.

The dentist knew no English (From what I gathered he got his degree in Russia) and so we were on our own. Now grant it, I've lived here a year so have decent Armenian but I've never really had to learn the vocabulary one would need to go to the dentist. I can remember the word teeth (or the word for tooth, the plural is irregular so I don't know if I'm ever saying the singular or plural). For example, I didn't know the word for, I have a really bad gag reflex, so yeah, you are choking me a lot with your tools. (gag-reflex in Armenian, note to self . . . ). His vocabulary was kept to pretty much "open," "stay like that," and "good." That's about all I needed to know, and we got by fine.

The dentist took breaks in between each patient to have a cigarette, which I thought was a bit amusing. I can now say I have been to a medical clinic (while in Thailand a few years back) and a dentist's office where they no one spoke English. What am I missing to go ahead and make this an awkward foreign medical examination trifecta?

Just the other day I was at work and had a conversation with some co-workers I haven't talked to as I've been in and out of the office most of the summer.

They invited me for coffee later. The conversation started normally with them using some English, which I decided to respond to with a simple "What? I don't understand?" in Armenian. This usually brings the conversation to focus on Armenian, because I can understand all the things they are trying to say in English.

So we drink coffee and I eat some gata. The topic of my masters comes up and I explain that it is linguistics and teaching English, but to people who speak English as their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, language etc. and that I have one more semester when I return to the U.S.

I am then asked what interests me about Armenian history and Armenia. Now I am legitimately interested in all things history-related, and while I didn't know a lot about Armenia's history, but since finding out I was coming to Armenia I have read a fair amount and have become interested in a lot of events and aspects of it. So I was presently surprised by the question. The first thing I tell them about it Cilicia Armenia and that the general time period around that era (namely, the Crusades) is a very complicated and interesting time period.

Secondly I mention Sayat-Nova, a famous Armenian poet who lived several hundred years ago. What I find interesting was that he was ethnically Armenian, born in Tbilisi, Georgia (a traditional center of Armenian culture), wrote his poetry and songs using the Georgian alphabet, in Azeri, the lingua franca of the time. My co-workers explained that he played in royal courts for Persian and Turkish princes, and that he was of course an Armenian, which I did not doubt. I then compared him writing in Azeri to someone in the Caucasus writing in Russian today, or perhaps during the Soviet Union. So when asked what I thought was so interesting about Sayat-Nova (also his name in Persian means 'king of songs' so that's a fourth culture) I said that at that time the cultures of the Caucasus were mixed (խառնել kharnel I had to ask for the word, which I surprisingly remembered correctly. Good cooking word.) in that era, and compared to now all the cultures are very separate and do not communicate.

My co-worker looked at me knowingly, and said ah you are an internationaaleest. I laughed and said yes, then later I said, most Americans are internationalists, at least in some degree, because so many of us are from other cultures or other nations to begin with. I clarified that certainly not all Americans are like that, but perhaps more than some other countries. (Okay I wasn't that eloquent but that is what I meant!)

And lastly I brought up a picture I had seen of guys in ski masks holding ak-47s. I had asked about it a while ago and I had an idea what it was, so I pulled up the ASALA webpage which is the abbreviation for the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, and showed him the name in Armenian and he confirmed that the picture was in fact of the ASALA. I asked if they were in the picture, and they laughed, and said another co-worker, one that worked there earlier had had the picture, so that was a good laugh.

I went on a hike with some other volunteers. We had a goal, a ruined fortress on a river that they had seen from a previous hike.

We went in from a river, the opposite way from the previous hike, and instead of going on a road above the river we went right along the river, often having to cross it several times on rocks as one side of the river or the other would be impassable.

The water level was quite low, so we traveled upriver until we saw our eventual destination . . .

The fortress is on the other side, though I think you can see some of the ruined wall on the far left of the cliff.

The climb up to the first part was a bit rough, and my shirt had a forest of seeds sticking to it once we got to the lower fortress wall.

Inside some caves we found what I am going to call the dungeon, but really we have no idea what these were used for.

This is the view of a damn in the gorge below from the top of the fortress.

This is the view of the gorge and river we came along to the get to the fortress

These are my two hiking companions as we enjoy lunch at the top of the cave.

This is the view on the way down, probably at the most precarious part of the climb (See my knee there? I'm sitting on a rock as we climbed back down)

We also realized we could see my friends village from the top of the fortress and on our way out trekked that way then down from the village, rather than trying to make it back through the gorge we came from. It was a wonderful hike, and it was amazing all the different scenery we saw on our travels.

I saw, for the first time ever, a woman driving in my city of Vanadzor. Actually this may be the second time, but I didn't write about it on my blog, or I did and I forgot, but then, this might actually just be the first time. I have seen women driving in Yerevan before, but outside of there, in Yerevan, it's almost exclusively males that drive. It's interesting, my grandmother never had a driver's license, and didn't drive either.

There's an amazing first line from a book I've never read that goes something like, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Today I was asked about my least favorite Armenian food. I mentioned that I had never eaten khash, cow hoof soup, but I think that will probably be the worst thing I could eat, but said that I do plan on trying it before I leave Armenia. I was then told I must choose a food I have eaten, so I picked a soup, Spas a soup with yogurt and barley in it. My co-workers didn't sound to surprised but one said her son likes this soup very much.

I was then told an old Armenian saying, that tells you the rules, or prohibitions, for eating khash.

Khash Rules

1. No toasts (at least no long toasts, you need to eat the soup while it is hot)2. No cognac (but plenty of vodka)3. No women should be present (they eat their own khash elsewhere, this is a man-only/sex segregated ritual)

Then walking back from work I saw the lid of a casket outside one of the apartment stairwells, letting everyone know that someone had died there. This is the first such funeral I have seen in my apartment complex. I have seen them elsewhere, other towns, or other places in Vanadzor, but never my own complex. No one (thankfully) close to me in Armenia has passed away so I am not familiar with the rest of the customs, but I believe that for a day or two the casket lid is outside and people come to visit the family in their home, and the burial happens after a day or two of this.

I haven't posted in a while.

Kinda fell off the wagon. Isn't that used for AA? If alcoholism means 'not posting' and posting consistently means 'recovered alcoholic.'

Have I lost you already?

Okay so I've been in Armenia for over a year now! My family visited last month, it was great, we got to meet my first host family who we had a giant dinner with (called a khorovats which is the Armenian word for barbecue), see some old churches and monasteries, and I got to relax and be a tourist (mainly at the pool in our hotel. It was great, but the trip was just too short.

The other night I was signed into Steam, a software distribution platform I've used since I moved to Armenia. Another friend of mine was on I saw, and I just got the idea to try to play a game online. I was pretty sure it wouldn't work, but I figured I'd give it a try. We loaded up a mutual multi-player game we both owned and, what do you know, it works!

So I get to play an online game and talk to an old friend who is on the other side of the world, while I'm in Armenia. Oh and I didn't have water that night. That's Armenia in a nutshell. Contradictions.

The summer has come and gone here, school starts up in a little over a week. This summer I was able to teach the new English volunteers, which was a great experience and one that helped me gain more appreciation for just what the staff goes through every Spring preparing for the training of new volunteers. It's a lot of work, and very little will go according to your original plan/intentions.

Lastly, this summer has been beautiful. This spring was horrible with its two months straight of rain, but once that was over everything was soooo green! Like Ireland green. of course by July, and now, it's all brown, because it hasn't rained much since then, but for that month of June, there were wild flowers, and the greenest rolling hills and mountains.

It seems like the Yerevan is changing all around me. In a few days there I see the metro double in price (50 to 100 AMD), and it's still not expensive, it now makes it equivalent to a Marshutka (mini-bus) ticket in price. Really this wasn't a big deal, though I kept telling everyone I knew. I found out by throwing down a 50 dram coin, then the lady shaking her head and pointing to the sign just above my head.

But then a day later I find that the marshutka stops for the northern regions are all changing. I luckily had some very helpful hostel workers that helped me figure out which buses go to where (I have just gotten down the ones that went from my bus station to most important areas I needed to get to!).

After reading several news articles I tracked down the station I would need to get to.

So I head out to catch my bus, and I make it to the central station. It is the last stop so that helps.

It's called the central bus station (or Kilikia) but it really isn't anywhere near the center. The point of moving the buses was to move the inter-city transportation out of the center, because of the traffic. So now instead of 18 people in one mini-bus, you will have 18 people with almost as many taxis, driving to the center. I will let you do that math.

So at the buse station I ask around about Vanadzor and they send me to the other side of the street. I have a guy who tells me no, there isn't any transportation to Vanadzor, but doesn't tell me why. I confirm that they have moved the public transportation from the previous spot.

So I go and ask more people and they say they only have buses going to Stepanavan, a town farther than Vanadzor, but in the same general direction. I find several other people talking about trying to find the Vanadzor marshutka's and I get a ride with them. Originally I think it is a share taxi, but this guy knew one of the people and he actually took us to a different bus station, which did have the Vanadzor transportation.

I finally ask, is this permanent and they said only for two weeks, then Vanadzor transportation will be moved to the central bus station. So now I have to learn a new area for when my parents come on Tuesday and then have to go and figure out this other station when they eventually do move there.

Armenia is interesting. Where else can you see hail the size of marbles and a rainbow at the same time? It hailed for at least 20 minutes and by the end it actually looked like it had snowed in some places, and a flash flood in others.

The hail was some of the biggest I've ever seen and probably the longest. The stuff that landed on the road quickly turned into a river, but the stuff on the grass near the apartments that were shaded the whole day looked like a spring snow. And this was on July 5th.

Thinking about it, I've seen hail here at least once or twice a month since March.

And also the wild flowers here. Those are amazing. First we had reds a few weeks ago, with some yellows, and now we have purple ones on my way back to from Yerevan.

I was staying near the new training site where new volunteers are learning Armenian and also English teaching skills last week. One thing I have picked up here is wearing slippers in the house at all times. In the older houses the wood floors can be either uneven and impossible to clean, so people normally wear slippers or sandals of some sort inside.

So I am staying in this apartment while doing my teaching and I wasn't sure where I'd be staying, I was assuming I would get a hostel in the capital and take the bus to the training site every morning. But we had an apartment for trainers, so that was nice. But! But I didn't bring any slippers. And the apartment was nice, clean, but even so, it was so strange, walking in a house without any slippers! It was so strange, and one of those things that I'll probably keep doing in the US. I did that a bit in college, living in crappy places, but here it has become a whole new thing.

Another thing is light switches for restrooms on the outside of the room. There was a newly renovated restroom, and I kept forgetting to turn the light off when I would exit the bathroom because I'm so used to turning it off once I'm out of the restroom. I did this multiple times.

Another interesting thing about this apartment was that it was very much lived in. They had bookshelves filled with books, pictures, paintings.

My second night there I was looking through the books and noticed some books in Russian that read: MAPK TBEN. which is russian for mark twain! Mark Tven is how they say it as they don't have the 'w' sound.

Oh! And I got to mention the term stag 'n drag in my tech classes with the new volunteers! We were talking about activating schema, and also to be wary of concepts that don't exist, or are represented differently in Armenian culture.

So if you're reading this and you're not from Erie Pennsylvania you are probably asking, "What the hell is a stag 'n drag?"

It's basically a big party for the bride and groom-to-be which involves drinking, gambling, raffles, etc., all to raise money for the wedding. Oh and it's on Urban Dictionary.

goodnight

I visited my pst host fam the other weekend, and it was great. I also watched loads of Armenian television. Got to see my favorite show Anna, which actually isn't a good show, but it's my favorite, I can usually understand the characters on that one more than others.

But then I saw this other show that I watched around New Year's which I never figured out the name of, or understood at all, but I do know that it is one of the worst shows in the world (from an American perspective. I realize comedy is culturally defined and varies widely from culture to culture). It has a logo that looks like it could be for two and a half men (not that I've seen that show but I'm pretty sure you can guess what the logo would be from the title).

The show basically is this guy with a big nose and a pained, awful, fake voice that is meant to be stupid of funny (you see this on a lot of Armenian comedies) and then another smaller guy, who always has his back/shoulders hunched, and a sideways-looking 'I'm constipated' face, and also speaks in a stupid fake voice. And the little kid, I see him sometimes, don't really know what he does, it's a child actor, I'm not gonna get on him.

And how do I know that they are using fake voices and what not because I saw interviews with them at New Year's during commercials and they have normal voices.

And finally the name, which is also the theme song is Kargin Serial. Kargin is a word that is essentially meaningless, but just means good, or nice. I have seen it do describe various types of stores. And serial is just, serial. Serial tv show. And the theme song is those two words repeated. Le sigh.

And also, this is a topic I have discussed before, that of the music used in Armenian television. First of all it's taken from other sources (I didn't say stolen and used without permission, but it probably is).

This is a given, they steal from movie soundtracks, lots of orchestral stuff, okay, whatever. Well then I was surprised when first, I heard a country song. I can't remember what it was about but it was happy sounding, so it was like, happy montage sortof scene from something. I told my parents that the song is in English, and it's American bar-bar (bar-bar is the Armenian word for dialect/accent). I think they understood me.

Then I was floored when I heard this ominous sounding thing on another serial which took a moment for me to recognize . . . It was from a video game. World of Goo. A really cute, simple, physics game. And they stole from it! It was really cool.

It's this ominous song, and they used it for just the random parts, and I saw it multiple times because the new show from the night before is played 3 or 4 times during the day. So I saw it again and again. And again it is used so inappropriately! Nothing is happening! And it's this very ominous song.

It's so annoying for me. I want some subtlety to the music in my shows. For example, I'm watching this show Game of Thrones on HBO (I recommend it to anyone, amazing show!) and you have a king and queen talking, they had a political marriage, the king loved someone who was killed when he was fighting to become king.

The conversation starts pretty light, they both hate each other but are comfortable enough to talk openly. No music.

Then they start talking about the women he loved, and then some slight orchestral music comes in with "you wanna know the horrible truth . . . " and he says some things, and the music is played, with still some background noise coming from birds and such outside. The queen says she felt something for him once. The music continues.

Then she asks if their happiness could have ever been possible. Then the music cuts out to just the outside noise, as the king answers. Genius. Subtle. (And also still, culturally bound to my American expectations of music in tv/movies).

I traveled to the western border of Armenia this weekend to help with an English camp.

I traveled to Gyumri, in order to take the train (Yay!) to my final destination in the Arragatsotn region. It was strange going on the highway to the Gyumri-Yerevan fork in the road, and instead of going towards Spitak and Yerevan, we just kept traveling straight towards Gyumri.

Gyumri is the second largest city, even larger than Vanadzor, and is located on a mostly flat plain, with some mountains in the distance (though being this far west in Armenia usually means, you're looking at Turkey).

I got in and got a very eager taxi driver wanted to take me to my destination, the train station. Only I didn't know the word for train. (I've never used it before! Give me a break!). So I call a PCV in Gyumri, get my info, then go back to the guy, and ask how much. It's still 100 dram more than what I was told to pay, but I was fine, and another guy said 300 more than the price I got.

At the train station--damn, this is why I hate not having a camera. I used the bathroom in the train station, which is downstairs, in a totally shady looking area. Probably, whenever it was built, it looked amazing and wonderful. But, it probably hasn't been repaired or renovated for several decades, and it really looked quite scary. They had a light bulb hanging from the ceiling, and flies buzzed back and forth casting eerie split-second shadows. So I started this paragraph talking about how I wish I had a camera. This wasn't what I wanted to takes pictures of really badly, though I'd bet I could get some interesting pictures.

But what I really wanted to take a picture of, I didn't even notice at first. Right when you walk into the train station, if you look up, you see this amazing structure hanging from the ceiling. I didn't notice it at first, the day was overcast, so I'm not sure what the structure would look like with sun filling it out. I keep dumbly calling it a 'structure' because I'm not really sure what I'd call it, or even if I can describe it correctly (No pictures! This blog must look so bare. And I'm sorry for that. I guess I want to try my best describe as much as I can. The word for 'describe' is նկարագրել is derived from the words for picture/painting and the verb 'to write').

So here it goes: There is a large dome in the ceiling, several stories up, and some bronze metal structure hanging down from it, for some reason I keep thinking sort of vaguely modern art. The structure doesn't look new, or even kept up, but that was part of its charm for me. It was an old cobwebby cloudy bronze skeleton, massive compared to what you'd expect to see in a train station that size, and just captivated me.

So then I wait around for me train, and it's one time, but once I get on the actual train, it takes about 40 minutes until we actually start to move. It moves faster than I thought it would, and I get there a few hours before sunset.

I got to teach kids English and play games the next few days, and see a lot of volunteers that were already here for a year, and are actually on their way out. It was nice to hear some of them wax nostalgic about Armenia, talk about their post-Armenia travel plans, and really just hang out.

We had amazing food. We had BBQ chicken with rice, burritos, and even egg rolls! These egg rolls were amazing. Apparently fried lavash is a good substitute for the fried dough.

On the last day of the camp, we're teaching some vocabulary that deals with foods. One of the fruits we taught was mulberry, and when we were using it, a kid says, huh, herahos,which means telephone. We're talking about foods, why on earth . . . have you ever heard of blackberry? Well apparently this kid has. I talked with him and confirmed my suspicions. Maybe we should be teaching kids about cell phone names!

Oh and today:

Jesus H. Christ! Cheap produce! Tomatoes were 450 dram a kilo today (about $1.25) whereas before they were 800-1000 (and even 1500, this winter). And then I saw that everything was cheap so I just bought up everything I could think of without even thinking. Sweet sweet summer is finally here.

It's so warm out! Wow. It finally feels like . . . spring? Which is good, the summer can be way to hot here, but Vanadzor generally stays pretty mild compared to some of the hotter places around here. So it feels like summer in Vanadzor. Finally. it's only, oh I dunno . . . JUNE.

Saw some kids playing paper-scissors-rock. They were sitting cross legged, on the roof of a partially underground building I think is used for cooking, maybe baking bread, on account of the metal chimneys that jut out of the roof. Whichever boy won that round got to flick the other one on the head.

I lost my voice exactly one year ago today! and I'm losing it now! I have honey. And tea. But the water is off right now. I think they're replacing some pipes. Would have been nice to know ahead of time that it'd be today.

I bought some honey for a friend the other day, but once I was in the store I had forgotten the word in Armenia (it's մեղր, transliterated meghr, though basically the /gh/ sound is a weird guttural r type sound, often equated with the French r and then it's followed by another r. So two /r/ type sounds in a row. Thanks). So I didn't know this word, so I go into let's describe what we can't say mode. So I start with, I don't know how to say the thing in Armenian, but it is sweet. It is made by a bug that is black and yellow. It is sweet, and yellow.

After a few minutes like that, the shopkeeper pointing at things, and I'm saying no no, then she has one of those eureka moments and has me come behind the counter and look in this big metal tin and keeps repeating meghr, meghri. jackpot! Home made honey. I got what I wanted without evening knowing what it was (what the word was, if you want to get technical but it sounds better if I don't say it this way).

What do you say? That's a bingo!

One year. A bit over. I looked at my blog post, the first one to see the date, because I really can't remember when I first got here. Apparently I left Pittsburgh on May 27th, in DC until the 28th, then maybe to Armenia on the 29th? There was a long layover in Vienna, it's all sort of a blur.

So the earth has fully rotated around the sun once, and the earth is in more or less the same spot it was in when I arrived here. Freaky.

so first, some things I saw recently, then I'll get on to the whole what-this-means-for-my-life part. I was in Yerevan the other week, and I saw something sad and happy at the same time.

There was a sign posted for a lost dog. It was a white poodle, small, looked like the one my dad has. So I was obviously sad, this poor person/family has lost their dog. But to see a sign posted, a homemade sign, with a picture and contact info, all that work to try to find your lost dog. These people really cared about this dog. That isn't the typical view of dogs in Armenia, and pets in general. Dogs aren't viewed as pets at all really, though there are exceptions, and in Vanadzor I see more and more people with dogs (well the same 3 people out with their dogs).

Then . . . there was something else but I forgot what it was. Maybe I'll think of it later.

Oh yeah. (it's later) I had the most amazing conversation with some translators who translate books from English into Armenian. I met this person through some staff at the Peace Corps office and he worked for Peace Corps in the past. We have dinner and his father's friend and also a translator is there, and the first thing he asks me is, do you think Armenia is a failed state.

I don't know how to say that in Armenian, so it's never really came up in most of my interactions with Armenians. So we talked about that. He mentioned the lack of strong democratic institutions here, even after 20 years of independence.

For me I disagreed that Armenia was a failed state. Armenia has a lot of ways to go in regards to strengthening democratic institutions, and they are making these changes slower than other countries in similar situations, but for me, when someone says 'failed state' I think of countries without adequate electricity or consistent water supplies to the people that live there. While most volunteers are on water schedules, we more or less have electricity on-demand. When I think of a failed state I think of places where the government can't protect their populace. I feel safe in Armenia. Really, Armenia has a long way to go, but people forget that they have come a long way already. During the 90s people were cutting down wood for heat in the winter, and had power for perhaps an hour or two a day, if at all. So Armenia has really come a long way from what you might have called a 'failed state' during the 90s (and I really don't know enough about the situation or how you actually go about defining failed states so who knows).

So reflection? Here's a bit describing my general feelings a year in. It's been nice. There. Done.

No okay, just a little bit more. Winter wasn't so bad, except when it decided to never end, and then it just rained instead of having a spring. So the rain has been the roughest part this spring/winter. But now everything is really green, and recently things have started to look up, and it's been going well, and I find myself becoming very fond of Armenia.

Lately things have been looking up. The winter was pretty rough, it wasn't until the end, when it would never end, with the constant rain, that I think I was really starting to wear thin, but now it seems like with the weather, lots of things have picked up.

I'm starting to meet the people in my apartment complex. Several volunteers have lived around here previously, so I met a woman who, after saying I was from America, she asked where I was from. I told her America. She said yes but where are you originally from? Serbia? Strange assumption. I give her my background (Polish, French, Irish, forgot to mention German). Then she says she lived in the same building as another volunteer, who was originally from Serbia. A volunteer I met once as he was finishing his service as I was beginning mine. She said she missed him, and really liked him.

* * *A little girl said, hello, what is your name as I was walking on an unfamiliar street. I told her my name, asked hers, in English, she responds, so I tell her Apres which in Armenian is used to sort of say, good job, but which literally means "live."

One street later a stranger behind me asks "What's up?" using really informal Armenian, and he is surprised when I respond. He asks if I know Armenian, and I tell him I am studying, and he says good, very good.

* * *

Earlier while teaching my TOEFL class, the first day that I really need us to use computers (scratch that, there was once before, two lessons ago where we used them briefly) and as we're about to start class the power goes out. So we improvise and talk more about the writing portion of the TOEFL. Then the power comes back on and we restart the computers. Then we get ready to practice a full on simulation of the writing section, timed and everything, we've loaded the program . . . and the power goes out again. So we postponed class and will have two classes next week to make up for it.

* * *

I've been complaining about the rain, but really, it's so incredibly green here, the mountains look gorgeous. Everything looks beautiful. It will be sad to see it all wither by the end of summer, but I guess I should enjoy it while I can, regardless of the weather.

I see the most beautiful blue sky and fluffy, white, cotton candy clouds. And it's hailing above. And it's been thundering. Just off to the side you can see the storm clouds that extend above my apartment complex towards. The cloud looks like a painting that some kid saw and smeared the edges with gray mud.

While there's been about two full days without rain the last 30, the sun has been showing itself more often (on the half of the day it doesn't decide to rain).

* * *

The other day I got in a taxi, there was a guy sitting in the passenger side. I went over and asked if that was his taxi, he said yes, then I looked and saw the steering wheel in front of him. Here in the middle of Armenia is a car with the steering wheel on the left, British style. Go figure. I didn't even bother to ask why. He had a good reason.

* * *

I was at this nice liquor store I had never seen before. They had some foreign wines I never really noticed, never even thought to look for, and so later on I check out the store near my place which is pretty new looking, and sure enough, they've got some of the same wines from France and Chile. I picked up a Chilean rose wine that I'm pretty excited about. A lot of cheap Armenian wine tastes very sweet, and rather un-wine like. The really cheap stuff is made from pomegranates, and really this stuff doesn't taste like wine, and as long as you don't go in expecting wine, it's really fine to drink. There is one brand here, a relatively new one, that makes some quality wine. The brand is just called "Armenia" and what makes that a bit strange is that in Armenian, they don't say Armenia, but rather Hayastan (hay is the name for Armenians and stan is the Armenian, originally from Persian, word for land).

But now the question that needs to be asked, has that store always had these wines? They weren't too expensive, and I feel like I would have seen them before, but when I asked if they were new, they said no. I asked them if they were there last month and they said yes. So perhaps they've been here this whole time, I'm not sure. But seeing as we have had several European volunteers living in Vanadzor, and they even bought the Armenian wine, I would think that they would have splurged and bought the slightly more expensive wine if given the opportunity.

Then I saw the new Kilikia bottle. Kilikia is the cheap reliable beer of Armenia that really isn't good. It's reliable because if a restaurant or cafe is out of all kinds of beer but one, they will almost always still have Kilikia. There are actually other types of beer they put out but which are harder to find and I only occasionally see in my city. Those are good. So I see this brand new bottle, Kilikia usually comes in green bottles, but this one is in a dark bottle. And instead of the normal Kilikia design, it just had the numbers 1952 down the side of the bottle. So I picked one up and I think it was a bit better than normal Kilikia. It wasn't great but it was decent. I don't know how long this beer will be made, if it's a limited thing, or if the store will only order it one time, but either way I'm happy that Armenian companies are innovating, at least in some way.

At the same store I, as I'm walking out I guy starts speaking to me in Russian, so I fire back in Armenian, and we go back and forth, and I give my speech about how I am living here and a teacher, and a volunteer etc. And so he asks is it better here or there, meaning Armenia, or America. And I was in a particularly good move, so I responded with, "of course, Armenia." and that seemed to go over well, and I think that will be my go-to answer for that question from now on.

Seriously.

To get to the capital, I go on a major highway (really more like the state/provincial highways highways. the hyphen depending on whether your country has states or provinces)

And yes, I have seen cows, on the road, being herded along or across it. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before on this blog, back in my earlier days. We've had to stop or slow down for a bit here and there, and yeah, sure it was interesting the first couple times, and living in a village I had to dodge cows (and cow shit) on dirt roads all the time. The worst was if I was on the roads after dark, then my amazing Nokia phone, which has a flashlight, would light my way.

But now I'm off-topic. Two occurrences made me want to post about this, it was a week ago, and I can't remember they were two separate trips or the same one. I went to a wonderful poetry recitation competition organized by a volunteer, it was the final, national competition, in the previous months various volunteers have had regional competitions and the winners were present at each. So I was coming up with the finalists from my town, and we slow down a bit, I look out and see a couple cows, and one of the student taps my arm and points at the cows. Now believe me, if this was my first months in Armenia, I would of course, been like whoa, ha, interesting, cool. But I've seen plenty of cows here.

You know, I have to remember, Armenians don't travel much. I visited Kapan last fall, the largest city in southern Armenia. I have never met anyone from Vanadzor who has visited Kapan. And really it's understandable, it takes about 8 hours to get there, up and down multiple mountains. This, coupled with the fact that my students are all from Armenia's third largest city, Vanadzor, might make for an interesting site for them. So perhaps my student was just as surprised as he expected me to be.

So then on the way back (I think that's what has to have happened because I haven't made any trips before or since then) we hit a giant gaggle of cows that bring us and the car ahead of us to a complete standstill. The car in front of us is trying to inch forward, occasionally honking his horn. Our driver knew what the hell he was doing and immediately guns it into the left lane, goes around the car stopped in front of us and lays on the horn non-stop until the cows move and we are back again on our merry way.

Oh the blog has fallen off the tracks a bit. Going to try to keep posting more regularly guess we'll see what happens.

I've moved into a new apartment, much closer to my work. It's nice, I know (normally) have water all the time, have actual kitchen counters, and even a nice kitchen table.

Vanadzor rains all the time. Every day for the last 15 I would say, it has rained. Maybe not the whole day, but always in the evening, sometimes in the morning. I'll get some sunny days, but then in the afternoon or evening it will always rain. I used my new (laundry machine? Clothes washer? ) washing machine! (I can never remember this word! Jesus, my English is going to hell in a handbasket). Right, I used my washing machine, and hung out my clothes to dry, a beautiful sunny morning, but then at 2 pm, I'm sitting at work and it starts to hail then rain. Stupid clothes.

Oh and I live about 4 floors up, and I'm afraid of heights, so reaching out the window to hang my clothes is actually kinda scary. I'll get used to it eventually I'm sure.

So the constant rain I was warned about, it's probably one of the few bad parts about living here. everything is becoming green pretty fast though, and having green hills and forests covering our mountains is nice. There are places that are more semi-arid and don't have much of anything that is green, so I guess I should be thankful for the rain (at least somewhat).

And with spring comes the fixing of potholes! I'm actually quite surprised, most of the streets here look like they haven't been repaired in years. I complain about potholes in Erie, it's quite a common complaint there. (I remember an email from the 90s that had a list of things like "You know you are from Erie if . . ." and one of them was 'if you like when it snows because the snow fills in all the pot holes). Well here the potholes (in general in the country, my city isn't too bad) are huge and will destroy your car if you hit one. The worst part is that even the sidewalks have them, and while if you step in one your foot will be okay, when it rains they just become tiny lakes that you have to dodge as you walk. Some sidewalks have been fixed, redone, they're brand new really. But those are only piece-meal and in front of new buildings that have also been renovated, so you'll be on a brand new even street, but then run into a street that hasn't been fixed since the early 90s.

Like I said, they're going around filling it pot holes. So what they've done so far is go through the main street of our city, and use a jackhammer to tear up the area around the potholes so they're a nice rectangular shape. And that's it. They first went through the whole street and did that. So now instead of slight small pot holes with a few big ones, we have many many large, huge, enormous, massive ones. Luckily our main street is also about 3 times too large for the amount of cars on it, so the drivers have plenty of room to weave and dodge through the potholes.

I assume they're going to fill them in eventually, but right now we just got loads of holes.

Armenian Language Corner

Yay. Maybe this will turn into a recurring segment, as I talk a bit about language, Armenian probably, cuz that's my reality right now, and what I do when learning/not-learning/butchering it.

Okay, so Armenian has the same word for 'foot' and 'leg.' It's the word votk. Now some people might point out that because they don't differentiate, they don't understand the concept, or that their language isn't as accurate or precise as language X (usually X is whatever the person's native language is). I believe there is a name for 'heel' but it escapes me at the moment. Now I am sure Armenian doctors have all sorts of names for the bones in your feet and feet and calf, and thigh, but really, in general situations, why does it matter. you say votk then point to what you're talking about.

Another example of this I found out recently with my language tutor. We were talking about the rain (and really what else is there ti talk about in this place, that's all that ever seems to happen these days) and I asked, her why she didn't have an umbrella, and she said she had her glkhark (oh and my transliteration might not be perfect with the k and g sounds, but that is how they will sound 8 times out of 10 to an English speakers ear) but then pointed to her jacket.

"What? Your hood?"

I had learned glkhark as the word for hat. So yes, Armenian has the same word for hat and hood. Or rather, the word shouldn't be translated as either one, and should really be translated as 'head covering' which is satisfying to me, and I believe that all Armenian-English dictionaries should be changed to reflect this.

So I guess I did have some things to say. Hopefully I'll be posting more often this month, try to keep everyone updated.

Hajogh

It snowed Wednesday morning, the most we've gotten in a single night. And today, Saturday, it's Gorgeous, at least 70 degrees. Now usually I write about things that are unfamiliar or that you might find interesting, being an American and living in Armenia. But this could easily have been any week in Spring in my hometown of Erie, PA. The weather was always like this in spring. Snow one day, shorts the next. The eerie similarity is remarkable, at least it is to me now, but I'm beginning to think this might be another sign of integration/a coping mechanism for living in Armenia.

In my previous post, the sidebar mentioned a similarity between the two public transportation systems in Vanadzor and in Pittsburgh. Now if you looked at them when I first got here, you'd laugh, and say there's nothing in common at all. And for the most part you'd be right. But these little similarities that only show themselves every so often are what interest me. Have I been here so long that I am actually misremembering things so that I convince myself that it's actually just like home?

I had wanted to do something in my class for a while, and so I finally asked them about the idea of playing the game Werewolves (or Mafia, as it is also known).

For those who don't know either version of the game, it is a psychological role-playing game. Everyone gets a role, but no one knows what role other people are playing. The roles are villagers, which do nothing special, werewolves, which kill a villager each night, and the wizard, who can secretly find out the role of one person each round. The round consists of a night part, where the werewolves choose someone to kill, then a day part where the village can choose someone to kill that is hopefully a werewolf. But remember no one knows who anyone else actually is, everyone is trying to convince everyone else they are a villager. There are many other additional roles and rules you can add to the game, but this is the basic game.

The reason I wanted my students to play was because of the natural way it lends to authentic language interaction, and specifically with using degrees of certainty. We brainstormed a list of ones we knew and went over modal verbs and how they were formed and organized them on the board according to not sure, maybe, and certain. Then I explained the rules of the game as above, my student had played their version and I had them explain in English their version so most of the rules were the same.

One rule I did add, and really this was the point of playing the game, not just for the sake of playing a game in class, was that if you spoke Armenian (or Russian) you were out of the game. Werewolves speak Russian and Armenian.

During our first game, one of the rules I took for granted was broken. The wizard had identified a werewolf and was very forceful in condemning the werewolf, which other people (not knowing her role) thought might be a sign of a werewolf. So she showed them her card, indicating she was a wizard. She said this was okay in Armenian games, but I'm not so sure, because the uncertainty of the roles is the crux of the game, and without them, everyone just shows their cards, and it's no longer a game.

I was overall happy with how the game went because I have had trouble getting this class to speak and use English in class during our discussions, and this class was the first one where they all spoke almost entirely in English. There were a few minor breaks into Armenian, and I wasn't good in uniformly kicking them out of the game, but they all stopped immediately and continued in English so that was okay.

Totally unrelated:

I was reminded of Pittsburgh today, specifically their public transportation system. I was waiting for the marshutni to go to work (I don't always take it but I was running late and I had my computer with me, and work is about a mile away) and I waited for a good while, not seeing any buses at all, until there is 4 that come all at the same time, one after another.

Just like Pittsburgh. You'd be waiting, then all the buses would come in a row. If you could see right now, I'm shaking my head, but you can't see me, so that's why I typed it.

I had this crazy one-day trip to Tbilisi. I went there to help some friends get into Armenia. It's much cheaper to fly to Tbilisi then take the trip to Armenia from there than to fly to Yerevan normally.

So everything gets off to a normal start, I made sure I put my phone on roaming, got a seat on the Marshutni in the morning, let them know what time I planned on getting there.

So far so good, I was worried about arriving late, but really there is no trouble at the border, and we're through in about five minutes. I actually get there a few minutes early.

I get in a taxi with a guy who knows Armenian, and he says he'll take me to a currency exchange, and from there take me to the McDonald's where we're set to meet. I get out and find out they don't take Armenian dram. The last time I was here I had no trouble exchanging my Armenian money so this comes as a surprise.

So we argue over prices in dram and he insists of 3,000 dram, which is way too much, but what can I do? So I get to McDonald's and I wait. I had set to meet at 1:30 wait until 2:10 then I get worried. I can't call because, despite putting my phone on roaming it doesn't work in Tbilisi. There is more than one McDonald's in Tbilisi and I am now worried I wasn't specific enough and they went to a different one.

So then after trying to find a place where I could find something like a pay-phone I go to the nearest cell phone carrier and decide to get a Georgian SIM card. I'm quite worried right now because it's 3:30 and I was told the evening Marshutni to Yerevan leaves at 3 pm, and I still have no idea where they could be. The first SIM card I get doesn't work, so then I have to go up and get another one. Finally I do that and the call goes through and I am able to meet up and everything seems fine.

We get to the bus station and I ask when the next bus leaves and I'm told it's in an hour, at 4:00 pm. I look at my watch, it's 3:50. I tell him, no that's not right, you mean it leaves in ten minutes. That's when I found out that while Armenia turned their clocks forward Georgia hasn't yet and so therefore I was waiting at 12:30 -1:10, not 1:30 - 2:10 and that's why we didn't see one another. So we have some coffee and wait. But then we're told that a taxi is leaving, and it's the same price as the bus, and we can leave now. So we finish our coffee and then get on the road sooner than expected.

The ride is uneventful until we get to the border. The line is massive and there is a group of Iranians coming back from New Year's celebrations (see previous post) and they're all trying to get Visas.

We wait there for about an hour before my friends get visas, and I meet some truckers that speak Armenian, and go from Turkey to Georgia to Armenia with various goods. The border between Armenia and Turkey isn't open, but trade and transport still happens via Georgia (And possibly Iran, but I'm not sure). I'm not sure he was Armenian, he might have been Turkish, but I didn't ask specifically. Because the line was so long he gave the border workers a 100 dollar bill. At first there was a problem, they weren't accepting it, I wasn't sure why, but then he pulled out three twenties and handed them instead, I'm guessing because the three workers in the building couldn't split a hundred easily.

Finally on our way through the customs I have a conversation with the Armenian border guard, I tell him I live in Vanadzor. He says, oh you know this word, Aziz? He calls it a Vanadzor word, because he has a friend from there, and he uses this word all the time. I had heard this word once, and I'm pretty sure I had heard another volunteer from the south mention its use there, so I didn't associate it with my city. I had only heard it once, and that was from the Vanadzor bus station who organizes the marshutnis to Yerevan, so I wasn't even sure if he was from Vanadzor.

But here's the thing: Now that the border guard mentioned the word, I hear it everywhere. Everyone uses it here! So I guess he was right. I guess I should explain aziz. It doesn't really have any meaning other than as a word of endearment, or a diminutive, sortof like, friend or brother, or the Armenian -jan suffix.

And so that's brings us to the title. I know that people have been saying aziz the whole time that I've been here, it was just a matter of me noticing them saying it. Before, I didn't hear it as much because it wasn't something important in conversations I've overheard, and so my focus was on just getting the meaning, and ignoring the things I didn't understand. But now, as it's vanadzor-ness, has been brought to my attention, and as my Armenian improves, I am able to pick up on this word more than I did before. Neat, eh?

I went to a soccer match with some other volunteers, there was over 30 of us. Yerevan was pretty crazy this week because this was the first football game of the year in Armenia, and it was against Russia. (Reasonably close country, strong ties, lots of Armenians speak Russian as a second language) There were about 1,000 or 1,500 tickets sold to Russians and even more came trying to buy tickets from whoever was scalping them. On top of that you had a lot of Iranians in Yerevan for the Persian New Year which took place on March 20th.

Basically a ton of Russians running around speaking Russian, expecting every Armenian to know it, and a bunch of Iranians that know some English, and then you have us, the big group of Americans that all speak Armenian.

I needed to get to the Peace Corps office to meet up with some people before the game and it's about a 30 minute walk from where I was near the opera. I tell the cab driver where I want to go, get in, and he starts driving. Then he says the road I want is closed, it's near the football stadium and they had closed off some streets, but then he keeps driving. he tries a few intersections, they are blocked off, and I tell him, go to Sayat Nova Street. He insists it is closed, I have to get off at another point across the city, about a half hour walk from where I wanted to go. Great. Absolutely no help. Oh and then I walk up to the PC office, and sure enough Sayat Nova is open. Worthless cab drivers. I actually just got angry writing that.

But anyways, we walk up to the stadium, as we work our way in we've got police, some with riot gear, firemen, the military has got people there--you might be able to call it, a little much. We go through one little fenced in area getting pushed by people behind us, really, it felt like we were cattle. And then we get to another checkpoint. We go through that. And then there's another checkpoint. They didn't really do much, they asked what was in your bag, maybe they looked inside real quick and then let you pass. And so we finally up the steps to go to our seats . . . and the gate is closed, and people are yelling and screaming about trying to get in. Nothing really makes sense, we're out there for 40 minutes, miss the first half hour of the game. I think what eventually was the problem is you had Russians that were trying to get in, and the problem was, this wasn't the Russian section. So finally some very diligent volunteers in front kept talking to the guards and then they finally let us in.

After I sat down someone pointed the Russian section out to me. It was a small little corner section with a blue fence around it. There were military guys out in front of it, and they kept everything in order so nothing exciting there, but it was interesting to see caged Russians.

The game ended in a 0-0 tie, and just reinforced the idea that soccer is an extremely boring sport. It was still fun to be there, chanting, and I'll probably go again. The stadium was so tiny. Big high schools probably have larger stadiums.

I'm a bit tired so I'm going to end this post abruptly

See, I didn't even use a period

It's snowing. I pulled out my blazery thing/spring jacket and wear it the last three days and I think, hey, it's the end of March, out like a lamb, right? Well no, it's not. Just about all the ice and snow had finally melted here and I didn't have to wear my boots. But then I wake up today and we've got 4-5 inches of snow all from last night/this morning. Really, if I was back home, I wouldn't be surprised by this at all, but seriously, Armenia--I thought you were gonna be different.

Oh well. Here's a rather old picture from this little bakery in a town that is exactly the halfway point between Vanadzor and Yerevan where the Marshutni often stops. A sort of rest stop of sorts has opened up there with bakeries and little stores lining the street.

In this picture you see a tandoor oven. This is right in the middle of the store when you walk in and you can actually see them cook the bread, and then buy the bread as they pull it out of the oven. If you are hungry on the trip up and the Marshutni stops, you need to get bread to munch on, if only because other people will get it and the smell will make you want some, so it's just better to have some. And if you're visiting me, then bring me some too!

In my language class yesterday I brought in a story I have seen several times in various classes/workshops/seminars on cultural differences, negotiating with people, etc.

I don't know what it's officially called, but I found it by the name "Alligator River Story." Pretty vague, I know, for something rather specific that I was looking for but I found it. Below you'll see the story:

The Alligator River Story There lived a woman named Abigail who was in love with a man named Gregory. Gregory lived on the shore of a river. Abigail lived on the opposite shore of the same river. The river that separated the two lovers was teeming with dangerous alligators. Abigail wanted to cross the river to be with Gregory. Unfortunately, the bridge had been washed out by a heavy flood the previous week. So she went to ask Sinbad, a riverboat captain, to take her across. He said he would be glad to if she would consent to go to bed with him prior to the voyage. She promptly refused and went to a friend named Ivan to explain her plight. Ivan did not want to get involved at all in the situation. Abigail felt her only alternative was to accept Sinbad’s terms. Sinbad fulfilled his promise to Abigail and delivered her into the arms of Gregory. When Abigail told Gregory about her amorous escapade in order to cross the river, Gregory cast her aside with disdain. Heartsick and rejected, Abigail turned to Slug with her tale of woe. Slug, feeling compassion for Abigail, sought out Gregory and beat him brutally. Abigail was overjoyed at the sight of Gregory getting his due. As the sun set on the horizon, people heard Abigail laughing at Gregory. Least Reprehensible 1 -------------------------------- Most Reprehensible 5___ Abigail ___ Gregory ___ Sinbad ___ Ivan ___ Slug So what the students must do is read through the story then rank each character from most to least reprehensible. They first do this individually. Then they join a small group, which must discuss and come up with one list for the entire group. Whenever anyone does this, put them in a group or 4-5 other people and they will not have the same order. So then the group must negotiate the order they want. Then after each small group has done this, the whole class must come up with a single ranking for the whole class.I had two worries while trying this exercise. Armenia is a very homogeneous society, and I was worried that they would all actually come up with the same ranking and there would be no discussion. I was also worried that my students just wouldn't be up to speaking and arguing about this in English and would resort to Armenian. I am happy to say that my students all had different answers, and they spent the entire time speaking English. I am going to try it today with another group of students at a slightly lower level than my first group, and hopefully it turns out well.Oh and here is another picture from my Georgia trip. I really enjoy when you see the coca cola written with the script of a foreign country. I have seen it only once or twice with Armenian and it looks really cool. And also it can help you learn a new alphabet!

So I'm on my way out of work, it's pretty late, I return the key to the security office. It's pitch black in there, and the radio is on, but no one is there. I then look at the front door and there's a bar across the handles locking it.

I walk back to the kitchen to ask for them to unlock the door, or rather come with me so that once I unlock, they can lock the place back up. They're sitting around a table eating and drinking so of course they ask me to sit down. I try to resist, but then, why not, I was hungry. So we did some toasts, and they gave me some bread, potatoes, and this dish called Harissa which is an interesting dish made up of chicken and barley-stuff to make this sort of porridge/soup.

I actually just looked it up online for that handy dandy link to and as is common here in this part of the world, there are all sorts of harissa equivalents throughout the Middle East. The article is even marked that it should be merged with two other articles that deal with the same type of food.

The same can be said for a lot of foods throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, whether it comes to the coffee, or the desserts like Baklava these dishes are from a time before nation states and nationalism. Many dishes exist across many different cultures within whatever empire was in ascendancy at the time, and before any of the modern states that exist today. It's probably more complicated than that, but I'm not a food historian, or even a historian at all for that matter.

Another thing that struck me while talking with the security guards was that they kept bringing up Japan, and the horrible tragedy that as happened there recently with the earthquake. It seemed like typical small talk at first, but then I realized, this is something very real for them. Armenia had a horrible earthquake in 1988 that leveled the town of Spitak, a half hour drive from Vanadzor, and severely damaged Gyumri Armenia's 2nd largest city. Vanadzor had some earthquake damage but was largely spared. So earthquakes are something very real to my co-workers and so when hearing about the earthquake in Japan they could relate, and were telling me that they really felt for the Japanese right now.

We're a quarter of the way through March, and despite a glimmer of hope, snow rapidly melting, it seems that winter is here to stay, at least for a few more weeks.

It looked like the last snow would be melting here during the first week of March and it would be (relatively) smooth sailing (in this landlocked country) from here on out. March looked like it came in like a lion with no teeth, but apparently, even without teeth, its paws (cats have paws, right?) can still kill you.

In general though, the winter here, wasn't as bad as I expected. Assuming this doesn't carry on through April, though I've been told that farmers here start planting some time in April so hopefully the weather breaks by then. I was told horror stories about the winters here, but a combination of volunteers much higher in elevation than me (I'm only about 4,700 feet, no point is below 1,300 feet), and volunteers coming from warm climates not used to lake-effect snow, meant I expected a Snowpocalypse until May. I then ended up in a valley, that doesn't get the worst of the Armenian winter, so I have been presently surprised by the weather.

What is awful is that the snow here very quickly turns to ice. Salt isn't used and the sidewalks very soon become sheets of pure ice. No one has snow shovels here either. I have seen some people using brooms to sweep powder off their store front steps, and I saw a shovel being used today as well. Occasionally you'll see what looks like a legitimate snow shovel, but when you get closer it's just a piece of sheet metal attached to a piece of wood. Gets the job done.

So really I woke up this morning and saw yet another new coat of snow, after yesterday so much of it had melted, and I thought, dammit: The whole rest of this week I'm going to be walking on sidewalks covered in ice.

Some other things:

I ordered a kabob, and they cook the meat over coals they have going the whole day. The goals the guy had pulled out where starting to smolder and weren't producing enough heat, so I see him get out a blow-dryer. Just a normal blow dryer you'd use on your hair after a shower. He then proceeds to use that on the coals and it works, they relight and are burning bright again.

This use of a blow dryer is such an obvious use but it would probably never occur to an American who is just using plates and newspapers to give a fire oxygen (albeit you have to do this without any electric outlet nearby, but if there was one, I don't think I would have thought of it anyway). There's a sort of mental block that one can have when you've grown up with these appliances and take them for granted, their uses are already agreed upon, and it's not even worth thinking about what other ways this device or that could be used for.

I'm at work today and my co-worker comes in and asks about my hair. I'm not really sure why or what at first, but then she asks if I'm trying to be a hippie, using the English word. I laughed as I understood. I haven't cut my hair since the end of September, and I tell her it's cold here so I will cut my hair once it is warmer.

Last weekend I read Doctor Seuss Books to Children at a YMCA at another volunteer's site. It was great fun and I was able to read Green Eggs and Ham, the first book I ever read as a child. It was great fun and the students were interested and engaged for the most part. But one thing about Green Eggs and Ham: It is very, very repetitive. It is a children's book, and it's great for learning to read because it repeats and repeats itself as it goes over all the places that he would not eat Green Eggs and Ham. At the end I asked if any of the students would like to try green eggs and ham. One girl in the front started to raise her hand, but then all the other students said they wouldn't like to try it so she stopped raising her hand and said she wouldn't like to try it either.

And I have a goal: Before I leave Armenia, I want to track down the coat of arms of the Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Federative Republic. It existed from 1922-1936 before Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan where made independent republics. It's a really unique image that combines elements from all three republics, as well as Soviet and Islamic imagery. I don't know if I'll be able to find one, if any symbols were actually even made, but hopefully I'll be able to track one down.

3 things I wanted to accomplish in Georgia

1. Get a picture next to a statue/bust of Stalin.

2. Go to Mcdonald's

3. KGbs

I was able to get a picture, with a statue that was, at least Stalin-esque. I'm pretty sure he was Stalin. Stalin was Georgian and from what I've read viewed positively in Georgia. I didn't ask if that was indeed the case from the Georgians I did meet, so I can't say for sure.

And speaking of the people, I stayed at a friend of a friend's place in the old town close to the city center. Our first night there was a birthday party for these two twin Georgian guys, two really cool guys, and then a lot of people from all over as well. Georgia has a legion of English teachers (and other languages as well) brought from abroad by the government as part of a program to focus less on Russian and more on English and other EU languages.

The lack of Russian there was also striking, as compared to Armenia. In Armenia you will see signs with Armenian, Russian, and occasionally English. I actually read the signs in Russian because I've learned the Cyrillic alphabet while studying Ukrainian, and Serbo-Croatian. I actually still find it harder to read signs in Armenian, than it is to read them in Cyrillic. I think the main reason is that Armenian has upper- and lowercase letters, whereas Cyrillic only has one set. Armenian is also vastly different from any Latin-based alphabet. English has some strange uppercase and lowercase letters as well, but I just wanted to give you some examples of letters and their two forms, going from lowercase, to uppercase:

ց Ց /ts/հ Հ /h/շ Շ /sh/չ Չ /ch/տ Տ /t/

Signs will often be written in all uppercase letters and makes it quite hard to read. The h-looking letter is indeed a /h/ sound, though those other ones are not the same. And i posted a most of the letters that are the same to certain letters in English. Whereas Cyrillic might look just as strange to someone who has never studied either alphabet and knows a Latin-based one (highly doubtful, though) it only has one set of letters.

Okay so enough about this language stuff, I know I'm boring you. Actually one more thing, which was the point of that whole tangent: You can read many signs in Russian in Armenia, but in Georgia, at least in the center of Tbilisi, the signs are all in Georgian or English. There is no Russian in sight. One example is a bank next to my apartment building. In Armenia it's called: ВТБ using the Russian abbreviation (I assume it's a Russian bank, but I could be wrong). In Georgia, I saw the same bank but it was called VTB, the English equivalent for the Russian sounds. You can still speak and use Russian there, and anyone of the older generation will be able to communicate with you, but it has been largely eradicated from the public signs.

It was cold and raining the weekend I was in Tbilisi, but it was amazing anyways. It is very different from Yerevan. Yerevan is one of the oldest, continuously inhabited places in the world. It's at the beginning of the Silk Road, but it was never a major city. So while you can say Yerevan is an old place, the actual city aspects of it were all built during the Soviet era. So all the streets, all the buildings in Yerevan are mainly soviet style apartment complexes and streets.

Tbilisi on the other hand, has been a large city for a much longer time than Yerevan, and so had more European-style aspects to its old city. It still has some of the Soviet-style architecture, but that is largely relegated to suburbs outside of Tbilisi and the actual city center has a lot of smaller streets, paved with bricks.

I would highly recommend anyone visiting the area to visit Tbilisi if they have time.

p.s. I did go to McDonald's, I barely go there in the US, but I need to go, and it was amazing, and we passed by, but didn't go in to KGB's. I should explain, KGB's is an ironic, sorta hipster-esque cafe in Tbilisi that has the motto "We're still watching you."

This is a cute little guy

This is a scary Hyena!

This is light as it shines through a hole at the zoo.

We came to a mutual understanding.

I made a joke in Armenian. Sort of. It wasn't really an Armenian joke or anything. But it was just me making an awful sort of pun in Armenian, just like I'd do in American. I made it one of my goals to be able to tell a good joke in Armenian, like set up, punchline and everything, though I really think that will be out of my grasp, and partly because I don't want to tell Armenian jokes. I want to tell one that I heard before, it's a joke that is told as a toast. It goes like this:

A man says a woman without a man is like a fish without water. An old woman replies, that isn't true, I have lived my entire life fine without a man. The man then replies, I wasn't talking about smoked fish.

Oh, Armenia . . .

So anyways back to this joke. I had to tell my director about a short weekend vacation I'd be taking to Tbilisi and say I'd be missing work on Friday while I traveled. I don't speak much Armenian at work because my counterpart can translate anything I need to say, and my work there with the English teachers and with English pedagogy so I don't have to use Armenian for my job either. So I go to tell my director about it, and when I come back my co-worker asksvonts asetsir? which literally means 'How you said?' or 'How did you say?' basically asking, how did it go or what did you say to him? So going with the literal Armenian one I said "Lezvov"which means "with [my] tongue." Lezu means tongue, and the -ov suffix is how you say 'with' or 'by' when talking about the instrument by which you do something. So she said, How did you say? And I said, with my tongue.

I actually made another joke, just today, it wasn't original, but, I guess I'm just on a roll with these bad jokes. So the door to my tatik in my building is cracked open, so I go and knock, and she invites me in. She gives me some boiled potatoes and her last piece of bread, her daughter forgot to bring some back today. The hospitality of Armenians are so amazing. I had a bunch of groceries with me, and she said, why oh why did you buy garlic, I have lots, and she held up a plastic bag full of garlic. She then made some coffee, with a lot of sugar in it. She kept asking if it was sweet and I told her it was very sweet. I told her I liked it, but that I usually prefer coffee without much sugar, and that I even prefer if darae which means bitter (you can ask if you want your coffee sweet or darae so I assume it means bitter, but I don't really know exactly how to translate it). She then immediately says Chigareli! which means "that isn't allowed!"

So I tell her, but grandma, you are so sweet already (Du es shat kakzer arten) why do you need to drink sweet coffee. She laughed, I'm not sure exactly how it translated, but in my mind it made perfect sense, and in America that's a common thing to say, oh you are so sweet (or bitter, or sour) so I don't need X sweet/bitter/sour thing.

And lastly, there's been a lot of snow lately, and something I've been seeing a lot is that Armenians whip out their umbrellas when it snows. So I see a lot of women walking around with umbrellas in the snow. So that's different. When I asked my co-worker about it, she said that Armenians don't like to wear hats. Yep.

So I spent a fair amount of time in the capital last week as I was attending a workshop on mentoring, and just in general during January and this first half of February I've had various meetings that have required me going to Yerevan for a day here and there.

Yerevan is the closest thing volunteers can access that is remotely normal. There are restaurants, cafes, bars (in the American or Western sense), and anonymity. That last one is key for many volunteers as at our sites reputation matters, especially in villages of 300-1,000 people (and you'd be surprised how much it matters in towns of 20 or even 30 thousand). It's a place where we can relax, drink or smoke in public (not possible for women) in an atmosphere that can't be found anywhere else in Armenia.

A fair amount of people I know complain about the architecture, the smallness of it, or other such things, and really it's not pretty. There are abandoned buildings the farther you get from the center, and even in the center you'll find a few tucked away on side streets.

The soviet architecture is ever-present, but it gives it a charming, post-apocalypse, feel to it. (Yeah, that's right, I just said the apocalypse, well the aftermath, can look charming.) I really enjoy it. I think part of it has to be growing up in the Rust Belt of the US. (Erie, and later University in Pittsburgh). Yerevan certainly has some of that feel to it, and perhaps that what I find delightful, even nostalgic. It's hard to describe it, but once I get a camera I will try to get lots of pictures of the capital (and Vanadzor!) for everyone.

While in Yerevan these past few weeks I got to visit the Yerevan Zoo. (I will have pictures in the next post, I promise!) I got to see a hyena, that ran back and forth in a tiny little cage, which was freaky, because hyenas scare me. And then I got to see a lion play with a tire, and some bears attacking each other. A bunch of different types of wolf or fox-like things (I will get there Latin name translated from the pictures). I then got to see a cat get chased off a fence by a camel, which then proceeded to stare the cat down until it slinked off. Saw some porcupines, and deer. I'll post a bunch of pictures, it's a lot better than me just listing off a bunch of things I saw.

Bam! Whap! Pow! Whack! Crash! Wham!

Seeya

I was sitting in my sleeping bag, watching a movie in my apartment the other night, when suddenly the power goes out. Really no big deal, this happens every so often, usually it's only a few minutes and it comes back on, or otherwise no more than an hour.

I continue to watch my movie using the computer's internal battery. I finish the movie just before my computer shuts down. The power stays off.

The main problem with this is that, the only heating I use in my apartment is my electric heater. So no electricity means no heat. So as each hour passed it kept getting colder and colder. With my computer on my lap helps keep me warm in my sleeping bag, but I can feel the temperature slowly dropping. I get in for bed and throughout the night continue zipping up my mummy sleeping bag more and more throughout the night until it's up all the way so all you can see is my head peeking out of my red and grey sarcophagus.

I woke up and still didn't have electricity, so I went to work as soon as possible because it was freezing in my place.

After work I met with my landlord and we went to my place to check it out. The only way I've learned to say 'the power is out' is by saying Lujs Chka, literally, "there is no light." so I keep saying this in my explanation. I get there and have power. Hooray! So we talk, I show him the fuse box, which is fine, he keeps asking me if I used my electric water heater and room heater at the same time and I tell him no, I showered the night before but it was hours later that the power went out. The breaker for my apartment didn't trip so that wasn't the problem.

So we talk for a bit more, an electricity guy came up and looked at my fusebox, and then they both left.

And I go to plug in my heater . . . no electricity.

I call my landlord and he comes back up, and they eventually take a look at the wiring. It runs all along the hall down the stairs. If there ever was internal wiring it doesn't work or just isn't used anymore. So he takes the tape off two pieces of wire, apparently the only thing connecting my house to the electricity grid. He twists the wires around each other again, and wraps it with some new tape, and that seems to get it to work, at least so far I haven't had any problems with the electricity since.

I had come straight home when I met my landlord and had no time to eat so I left my apartment to go to the nearest shop to buy some bread. On my way out the tatik on the first floor greets me. It's almost scary how happy she is. She is in her 80s but is so full of energy, and sounds so happy to me. I can see the exclamation points when she speaks. There was post on facebook by a volunteer recently showing the top 10 most unhappiest countries in the world and Armenia ranked #2. If we assume that this top 10 was accurate, I am almost sure that this tatik is the reason Armenia is ranked #2 and not #1.

She asked if I wanted some sour cucumbers and carrots. Pickled cucumbers and carrots. I told her I needed to get bread, and I would be back.

When I came back she was feeding bread to the birds outside her window. She invites me in, and uses a long two-pronged serving fork to pull out a pickle from a jar of cloudy water. I tell her thank you. Then she pulls out another. And another. Then some pickled carrots. And some more pickles, until almost the whole jar is in a plastic bag, for me. I tell her too much, thank you. And she stops just short of giving me all of them, while telling me that I am her son. She then asks if I have potatoes, I tell her I do even though I don't have any at the moment.

The day before a conference near Armenia's only ski resort we finally got some pretty decent snowfall. It was pretty warm before that, incredibly warm, and sunny, but now the real winter here has started it seems.

One interesting thing I've noticed here are the micro-climates. I'm driving from Vanadzor with it's modest 2-3 inches of snow, then I got up some mountain passes, driving through Aragatsotn Marz with Armenia's largest mountain, the snowfall rises into a foot or two of snow. Snow covered Mount Aragats so that as it reached towards the clouds it was hard to tell when the snow ended and the sky began. The snow continued until about 20 minutes outside of Yerevan, where there is no snow.

On the way back Yerevan did now have snow. Snow continued to fall, and I saw Armenians walking around with umbrellas for the snow.

Outside of shops there are always women who sweep their storefront of dust and debris every morning with brooms, that are really just the actual broom-head, without the wooden pole. Sometimes they will use some water (never soap, or soap that doesn't work) to help clean. They always wear furry slippers, commonly worn inside the house, which makes sense, but not when you wear them outside all the time.

In winter, instead of sweeping away debris I saw some storefronts in Yerevan being swept of snow with the same brooms. Which, initially comical, it's actually quite useful. The snow falls, no one plows or shovels the snow, no one uses salt on the snow, so it eventually all turns to ice and is quite dangerous and slippery. So sweeping the snow away while it's still powder is actually pretty useful.

Lastly, I was in face able to watch the super bowl! Steelers lost, whatever, it was a good, mostly close, game, and really, Rodgers didn't make any mistakes, and played a much better game. It was really a great time watching the game, I was in the north of the country with some other volunteers who have an Armenian friend who has a satellite dish. We all took naps at 10 pm so we could wake up at 2 am to catch the game at 3:30 am. It lasted until about 7:00 in the morning. The announcers were giving Russian commentary, which didn't really matter, but then there were no commercials at all. Not even Russian commercials. So we did miss out on the super bowl commercials, famous for the amount of work and time put into them (the most expensive time slots for US media than at any other time).

So all in all it was pretty surreal and fun. I was seated on a couch slightly under a stairwell, and I bumped my head as I stood up when the Steelers made a big play. It hurt so I just took a swig of vodka, chased it with some beer and everything was all better after that.

I made falafel this weekend. Soaked the chickpeas 18 hours before hand, then brought to a boil and simmered for an hour.

Then comes the hard part. I had to mash the chickpeas, by hand. I started off with my potato masher, and that worked for a bit, but the holes were too big, so I eventually switched to my wooden soup spoon. It took a while, then I added a bunch of spices and then flour to help it hold together in the frying pan.

I was actually pleasantly surprised that it turned out pretty good. It was a lot of work, in preparing it, especially mashing the chickpeas by hand, but it was well worth it. So dinner was falafel, wrapped in lavash, with some Parmesan cheese (I didn't have anything else to put on it).

I'm sitting at work, it's about 2:30, and the security guard comes into my room and just says "Come come!" Ari ari! So I get up and follow. I ask him why as we walk out the door and he says to eat. He prepared some spaghetti and hot dogs. I was actually about to leave and was starving, I planned on picking up some baked goods on the way to a photo exhibition, so this was an amazing meal and I feasted on chicken, salty cheese, and a hard boiled egg. This of course made me late for the exhibition, but that was okay, I had a full stomach.

This isn't the first time I've been asked to eat with the security guards. Whenever I'm working late they usually make dinner and they will invite me to eat and drink with them. It's moments like these that you really see the hospitality of Armenians. They invite in a foreigner that can barely speak their language, I can speak about typical things, but once you get an unfamiliar topic, my lack of depth in Armenian really shows. But we get on nonetheless, food is always piled on your plate, even if you say you've finished and that you're full.

I have a new water heater, that is electric, and shuts off after one or two minutes so that the fuse doesn't blow. Whenever I turn it on the lights dim. While this is okay for when I do dishes, it's not okay when I want to take a shower. When I first got the place I said I wanted a new water heater, the old one is gas, which is fine, but you have to turn on the gas switch then light it, and I don't want to blow myself up. So I said I wanted an electric heater, but what I really meant to say was a gas heater with an electric, or automatic, starter. So eventually I got up the courage to ask my landlord for a new heater, a new gas one. My landlord has been really great with getting me anything that I asked for and I felt bad asking for yet another thing. I asked him for a wardrobe and he brought me two. This was after I thought we had decided I didn't need one and could use the closet space. And he brought me a new bed, which I needed, but didn't even ask for.

So I finally ask him and he sends over one of his cousins to expect my heater now. I show him how it works (or doesn't work) and then he asks about the gas on I have now. I haven't had an Armenian lesson in a while (I'm between tutors) and I really have no idea how to say "I want a new heater, that is automatic, so that I don't have to light it, because I am afraid I will blow myself up if I use this old soviet one," so I spoke with lots of gestures and props (my lighter for the stove) and liberal use of the word ban which just means 'thing' (Hooray for circumlocution!) and eventually, after 2 phone calls between my landlord, a call from my landlord's daughter in Russia who speaks English we get to an understanding about the water heaters. The last conversation between the daughter and the guy inspecting my heater situation is a bunch of I knows and he already told me this which I would like to attribute to my awesome pantomime skills, though I may have just been misunderstanding the last conversation.

Lastly, I just saw this thing in passing online, about Rush Limbaugh. I want to address a small part, that wasn't even cited as controversial, among something else that was cited as controversial. So the headline says Limbaugh mocks Chinese president's language or something like that. And so he's complaining that there weren't subtitles for a broadcast of a live statement by the Hu Jintao on Fox News. And then he went on to describe what his Chinese sounded like, using all sorts of random noises, pretty typical third grader stuff. This is largely irrelevant and I don't much care if this is controversial, or insensitive, I think he was sincerely trying to be funny, and the only sad part is that it wasn't funny, he dragged it on way too long, and really just sortof childish.

So then there's this throwaway line, he says that President Obama is sitting there listening acting like he understands, and then Limbaugh says "what would you expect from the ruling class."

First of all, I'm almost certain Barack Obama does not speak or understand Chinese. But what I want to focus on is this concept of, the 'ruling class' having knowledge of foreign language. Monolingualism isn't a reality for a majority of the world population. It is the opposite. The majority of people know and use more than one language (to varying degrees) as merely the reality of their daily lives. Monolingualism is a luxury that Americans and other native English speakers have that the rest of the world doesn't. So bilingualism as a characteristic of the 'ruling class' doesn't make any sense, because the majority of the world isn't monolingual, the majority will use more than one language throughout their lives.

Aside from Americans being largely monolingual, that can at least part be attributed to our language policy. Namely, we don't have an official one. But instead what we do have is a large cultural stigma attached to languages learned in the home, say as first generation immigrants might learn from their parents and family. The worry, by the same people like Limbaugh is that these immigrants, by learning these home languages, they will not learn English. This is not the case, but it is the common perception by many. And so then you have this learning of foreign languages, only when the person has grown up nice and monolingual, without the benefit of having learned two languages from birth. So then you have something approaching this 'ruling class' idea of learning a foreign language when you've only been anglicized and made into a 'proper' American, ie one who is monolingual. Imagine if this stigma didn't exist and you had German Americans, 17% of the US population all knowing German. I highly doubt we wouldhear anyone say that those 51 million people are all part of the 'ruling class' for their knowledge of two languages.

Le sigh.