Well, it's my 4th day in Armenia...

Yes indeed. I am in a country that is not Russia. Although once upon a time Armenia and Russia were both part of the Soviet Union. And most people here speak some Russian. Which is good, because I don't speak any Armenian. But for those of you who may be wondering where precisely in the world I am, I am in the south Caucasus, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Alternatively, my location could be described as in between Georgia and Iran. Also between Turkey and Azerbaijan. And no, I'm not in danger of being blown up by a Russian bombing attack any time soon. For one thing, the Russians and Armenians have pretty decent relations. Actually, in terms of international relations things are getting a bit better here of late--today is the big Armenia-Turkey soccer match, and the President of Turkey is coming to watch. There's talk that the border might even open up soon. So relations seem to be improving in that respect.

So anyways, I got here on Wednesday, at 5 in the morning. An hour and a half later, after standing in line to change money, standing in line to get a visa, and standing in line to get my passport stamped (and a very confused exchange with the passport control guy who tried to speak to me in Armenian, I tried to answer in English, and neither of us understood one another, but we smiled anyways), I was in a taxi with Vahe, one of the guys from the studio, on my way to my apartment.
The road from the airport is lined with neon lights and casinos--there's a law prohibiting them from being in the center of the city. I didn't see much else, since it was still totally dark out, but soon we arrived at my apartment. I was given a quick tour, and then Vahe left and I stood around aimlessly for a while, in a stupor brought on by lack of sleep.

My apartment is bigger than I was expecting--there's a good sized main room, a small kitchen, a bathroom, and another back room that I think is supposed to be the bedroom, but my bed's in the main room, which suits me well enough as the back room doesn't have windows and I found a big furry brown spider in there on the first morning. (Luckily not a fast spider--I got it easily with my shoe.) I don't actually use the back room for anything since I don't really have anything to furnish it with (there are a couple of wooden chairs in there, and a built in wardrobe thing, but the drawers are kinda sketchy.) The shower in my bathroom is new, as is the faucet, which is nice. The shower's the only thing that I've managed to get hot water out of so far (it has its own water heater). There's a water heater in the kitchen too, but I'm not sure if it's broken or just off and as it's much older than the one in the bathroom, I'm not really sure how to work it and don't want to break anything. There's not actually a tub in the bathroom, but there's a drain in the floor, and the tiles dry pretty quickly.
In the main room I've got a desk, a couple of chairs with cushions which are actually quite comfortable, and a bed which is not. But while I was out today I discovered a couple of stores which seem promising in terms of buying something squishy to make my bed more comfortable.
The electric wiring seems all new, which is also nice.

Despite the heat outside (and it gets hot!) it's quite a pleasant temperature in my apartment, which I attribute to being on the first floor, having a porch with a roof, which is also shielded by the grape vines which grow above it. (Yes, with actual tasty grapes).

So...enough about my apartment for now. I'll post pictures later. Maybe this evening, maybe tomorrow because (and this is the best part!) there's free wireless internet in my apartment!!! High speed!!! Because my apartment is literally two steps away from the studio, which has high speed wireless. :)

Onwards now to the studio, which is where I've spent the vast majority of my time so far. In addition to my research, I'm working (volunteering, really) in the Bars Media Documentary Film Studio. I have my own desk and everything :) Everybody there is great, and it's a fun place to work. Every day we have lunch at the studio, followed by highly competitive games of ping pong (one wonders why Armenia doesn't have a gold medal winning ping pong team!) Vardan is trying to teach me how to play. So far I'm still pretty awful, but I'm getting better I think!

The conversations at the studio are in a total mixture of Armenian, Russian, and English. Everyone speaks at least a few words of English, and several of the people are fluent. So far I've spent most of my time reading through books of proposals and treatments for documentary projects, to get the idea of how to write one, although I've also been put to work editing letters in English, and I'm also doing research for one of the new projects about the North Pole.

Last night I got my first real look at Yerevan. (The previous two nights I was still so tired that I just went home). Magnus (a Greek-Icelandic guy who used to work at Northwestern and who now works at the studio) and I went to this cafe by the opera for dinner, and then met up with another of his friends, a French-Armenian guy, and then we went to this jazz club/restaurant and met up with two other girls and hung out for a while.

Today I slept in a bit (got home late last night) and then I went on a quest to find the supermarket as I'm nearly out of food. I definitely need to learn to read Armenian for figuring out streets and marshrutkas, but luckily the grocery store has most of its signage written in Russian. I got pretty much everything I was looking for, and discovered that if I can't get rid of my ant problem by scrubbing the apartment really well, the do in fact sell Raid here. It was kind of exciting. And this brings me to where I am now, sitting in my apartment again. I was really hot after the trip to the supermarket (it's a bit of a hike) so I sat down to blog for a bit. But now I'm going to get on cleaning my apartment and hopefully getting rid of the ants.

Oh, and if you're wondering, Karine is my name here, because Karen is actually a guy's name in Armenian.