Where'd the mosquito come from?

I caught it just now attempting to bite my arm. I haven't actually seen many mosquitoes here--for all the CDC warns you that Armenia is a malarial zone, it's so dry in Yerevan (at this time of year at any rate) that you really don't see many. So I'm not sure where it came from, but I disapprove. I suppose I wouldn't have them if I'd close my windows. Oh well. As long as it goes away and doesn't try to bite me again, whatever.

As long as we're on the topic of bugs, the ants have come under control--I rarely see them anymore...regular sweeping has done the trick. Oh they still appear from time to time, but again, the open, screenless windows could be to blame. But it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the breeze =P

I'm starting to learn a bit more Armenian lately--road trips out of the city are highly useful, since many of the roadsigns are written both in Armenian and English, or Armenian and Russian, so I can match up letters (on place names). So I'm getting better and faster. Still no good at cursive letters, though, and I still don't really know which of the five or so different letters which look like the number 2 is which, but I'll get there. I've also managed to learn the word for "right" (the direction). I was also told the words for left and straight, but those I don't so much remember. Once I'm literate I suspect the learning will go rather faster. My dictionary will be more helpful, for one thing.

But today proved to me that I have a loooooong way to go before I can even manage a basic conversation. I went today with Vahe, Magnus, and Magnus's friend who's visiting from Greece went to the Garni Temple so that Magnus could film his proposal for the documentary he wants to make. Magnus and Vahe went off to start filming, leaving me and Magnus's friend to wander around and be tourists. So we sat down on a bench to read in his guidebook about the temple before checking it out. It turns out that while conventional wisdom holds it to be a temple of Mithras, it could possibly have been a tomb instead. Nobody is sure. Also, it was destroyed in an earthquake in 1679, but it was reconstructed in the 1960s and 70s. You can tell which pieces are original and which are reconstructed, so it's pretty cool. Inside there's an altar and sacrifice pit, which according to the guidebook, were most likely not in the original version of the temple.

So anyways, while we were reading the guidebook, there was a girl also sitting on the bench who looked to be about 12 or 13 years old. At one point she tried to talk to us, but neither of us speaks Armenian, so we didn't really communicate anything. But then she wanted me to go with her, so I figured, what the heck, and followed her. She proceeded to give me a quite thorough tour of all the places with the best views. She took a bunch of pictures of me--she's quite a good photographer, as a matter of fact. We mostly communicated through hand gestures--She didn't speak English or Russian (although she understood a little Russian I think), and of course, my Armenian vocabulary consists primarily of the numbers 1-20, and a few nouns. I can't even make a sentence yet. Nevertheless, we had fun. At one point she tossed some stones up into a walnut tree to knock down walnuts. I ate a couple, but some of them just didn't seem ripe...they tasted funny, so I spit them out. Eventually we did establish that she wanted me to pay her (I figured that was probably the case--it's not like I didn't know what I was getting into), so I gave her what seemed fair based on the prices of things around here. It was kind of funny--she tried to teach me Armenian numbers by making me count the coins and add them up in different orders. I know there are moral arguments about this sort of thing, but I'm not going to go into them here.

Anyways, we eventually made our way back over to where Magnus and Vahe were filming, at which point the girl said she had to go home. (I do know the Armenian word for house!) After they got done, we went off to find some lunch. Or dinner. Or whatever you call a meal that starts somewhere between 3 and 4pm and ends somewhere around 5pm is called. At the tavern (actually a sort of porch that overlooked the canyon), we met up with the Swedish pediatrician whom we had met on our way to the temple. We had what turned out to be an exceedingly expensive meal, but then what do you expect when you're next door to a tourist attraction? The food was pretty good, but there were definitely a lot of flies and bees around. The bees are similar to yellowjackets, and they're everywhere. For whatever reason, they really like meat. As long as they don't fly too close to me I don't have too much of a problem with my bee phobia.

Hmm...must take a brief break to check that the cat I can hear quite close to my window isn't about to come in and pay me a visit...okay, it's not. Cats are absolutely everywhere around here--there are some very cute kittens! It's almost enough to change me into a cat person...almost.

So here you can see some of my pictures of the area around the temple. In the second one, you can also see the remains of where an old church once stood. At the bottom of the canyon, there's a river. It really is a beautiful place there.

Going back in time, yesterday was, for the most part, a very domestic day. I did my first serious load of laundry (i.e. two pairs of jeans). Jeans are rather tricky to wash, particularly when it comes to the rinsing and wringing out. I'm afraid I ended up nearly as wet as my jeans. But on the bright side, the dryness of the climate here means that my jeans were almost totally dry after about two hours of hanging outside on the clothesline on my porch--I was highly impressed, because when I hung them out there they were literally dripping wet. I did discover the need to purchase a rug for my back hall, though. It's a bit mucky from me traipsing in and out with wet flip flops.

In the evening, I went to an apartment-warming party for one of the Fulbright scholars (i.e. professors). She's here with her whole family (husband and two kids). I was the only other Fulbrighter to show up, but there was another American guy who teaches at AUA. Their apartment is really nice--newly renovated, nice modern furniture, etc. And they have a super big patio! The kids go to the same school as the kids of the embassy staff, which turns out to be located in the town that's cut in half by a canyon that's on the way to the place where we've gone paragliding.

[aside: there are fireworks going off right now--it's Independence Day today]

Edit: 9/22/2008
[I was told to censor myself a bit on the McMansion front. If you want my full opinion, email me. But I maintain my disgust about McMansions. Not just here, but also in the US, and wherever else they might be found. They're unnecessary.]
End Edit.

[hehe...there's a little kid outside shouting "firework!" I'm guessing the word's the same...]

So yeah. I'm at a bit of a high ebb of disgust with my country at the moment. McMansions are the least of it, but y'know.
I honestly can't imagine what I'd do if McCain won the presidency. It's a future too appalling to contemplate. And the usual standby of running away to Canada doesn't look so good anymore because apparently Canada's kind of falling apart. But my absentee ballot is on the way. So I shall do my part at least.

So anyways, moving further back in time to Friday, we find Karen going along on yet another paragliding trip, this one in the company of Vardan, Anush (Bars Media's intern who's my age), two British archeologists, Harut (the pilot), and Harut's friend and assistant. We spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for there to be wind. We were in the middle of a field, as this trip was a motorized paragliding trip, not the ordinary kind where you jump off a mountain. Eventually, after about two hours, there was enough wind to take off, and Harut managed to fly for about 20 seconds before the motor died and he parachuted back down to earth. Turns out, there was air in the fuel line. This was followed by repairs and more waiting for wind, but eventually he got high up into the air and circled over the potential archeological site, filming it. (This was the point of the excursion). Then the motor died again, but he was high enough that he could control his landing. So he landed at the bottom of the hill and we drove over to pick him up. Then we went around to the other side and climbed up the hill to check out the site in person. We found concentric rings of what were once presumably stone walls. I also found some cool bits of rock that are most likely nothing more than pretty bits of rock (the archeologists confirm this) but which to my eyes look a little like stone tools. So I kept them. But see the thing is that obsidian flakes really easily, so even if you find things that are sharp and pointy, they most likely just flaked off a bigger piece when it was being blown out of the volcano. So no actual artifacts...just pretty rocks.

Here are a few pictures from the day:




<- The archeologists Waiting for wind: