The Dust Bowl

The good news: I will have heat--possibly as soon as Monday!
The bad news: this required an approximately 2-in. diameter hole to be drilled into my wall. Drilled and then further chiseled. This activity caused my apartment to become absolutely coated in a thick layer of wall dust. Not drywall, I think...grayish plaster or whatever it is that walls are made of. Instant concrete? Cinderblock? Beats me. I'm a little clueless when it comes to such things. But now there is a new black pipe on the wall next to my window, that heads out to my porch, is connected to the meter thingy (I think) and then further somehow connected to the gasline. On Monday, they'll check to see if the gas works, and I'll get a gas heater in here. I'm slightly paranoid about carbon monoxide poisoning, but on the other hand, my windows don't close all the way...so shouldn't be a problem I think.

So I spent most of my day cleaning. And cleaning and cleaning. There's still a lot of dust around, but I don't think there's much else I can do about it. I should still take my sheets outside and shake them off though. I also hope there's no asbestos in the dust, but not knowing what asbestos looks like, I wouldn't know if there was...

Ah well. In a few days I'll have heat. Which will be really nice.

The massive cleaning also led to a bit of furniture rearranging, which I think has improved the look of my apartment--made it a bit less jail-cell-like. The desk is now on the same wall as the bed instead of underneath the windows. Now I should just put some pictures up on the walls and I'll be all set :)

On Thursday night the whole crew set off for Kenya. I stayed up to see them off...they were worried about the weight of their baggage (nine checked bags for five people including camera equiqment and a motorized paraglider) but Inna talked to them at around 4am right before their flight left, and everything went fine in terms of getting through check-in so that's good! They should be in Nairobi right now...tomorrow morning they leave for Lamu!

This makes everything very weird around the office--for one thing there are hardly any guys left. Magnus is still around for the time being, but he's leaving Nov. 1 to go to Greece. Other than that, Tigran and Mher are still here, but Tigran isn't always there, and Mher, being the security guard, is generally not there during the day unless he's asleep. So the girls are currently ruling the office. I'm going to be in the office a lot less in the coming weeks, since there's much less to do. Instead I'll be off doing my own research. On that front I had a bit of a breakthrough last night--I met a bunch of the current Peace Corps volunteers, who are scattered in villages throughout the Armenian countryside. So now I have people I can call/stay with, who know the villages, know who I should talk to, etc. This is good! :)

Other than that, not a whole lot going on at the moment...still plugging away at my Armenian. I put my introducing oneself vocab to good use on Thursday night when everyone was leaving--Arman's girlfriend was there and I introduced myself, she introduced herself, and I managed to say nice to meet you, all in Armenian...but then she thought that I knew Armenian and started talking more and I had to switch to Russian and establish that no, we had already reached the extent of my ability to converse in Armenian. The next lesson is verbs though so soon I'll be able to make sentences other than pronoun + to be + adjective!
There are still some sounds I can't differentiate/pronounce, though. And I'm still essentially illiterate...but I've decided not to bother too much with literacy...speaking and listening are far more important.

And now I should be off--need to wash my dishes and finish cleaning up my apartment, and then I should go shake the dust off my sheets...

Garni + Gehard

I didn't want to mess up the formatting of the last post by uploading more pictures to it, so I decided to make a second post for the photos from the end of the conference trip to Garni and Geghard. I know I've already posted some Garni photos in here, but a few more can't hurt! Here's a view of the Garni Temple from the back--my camera does well on bright sunny days.






Overlooking the cliffs and canyons at Garni [this photo and the next one]


























The Geghard Monastery--one of the most stunningly beautiful places I've ever seen in my life. the photographs can't do it justice. You'll have to come see it for yourself.










Vahagn took this photo--he thought the light looked cool--I agree!

















For the full collection of photos, check out my albums on Facebook!

Conference Photos!

Here are some long-overdue photos from the conference!
This is the resort where we stayed--Arthur's Aghveran Resort. Very new and swanky with one small problem--mice! Really not a fan of waking up in the middle of the night to see a mouse staring back at me...and not a tiny little mouse like the ones we used to sell at Petco...this was a big mouse...chipmunk sized, maybe.





Here's a photo from the conference itself...it was freezing in that room most of the time...












This is the view from the deck of the main building--that was where everyone would go for smoke/coffee breaks. Down below was an artificial pond that you could pay to fish in if you wanted to.

As you can see, this is one of Armenia's few forested areas. Very pretty!






On the last day, Vahagn and I hiked down to the river...it was a very photogenic location so we took lots of pictures, although I'm sure his turned out better than mine since he's a photographer and I just go for quantity in the hope that a few will turn out halfway decent!








On the last night we had a ping pong tournament. Professional sized tables are in fact smaller. And harder to play on. And some of these people were really good!

Epilogue to the Egg Tale

If your eggs are a funny color, don't eat them. Even if they smell/taste okay.

Otherwise you will be in for 2-3+ days of misery.

Not all eggs are created equal!

For weeks now I have been mystified by the numerous varieties of eggs available for purchase at SAS--"Elite" eggs, "Corn" eggs, "Village" eggs, eggs from birds other than chickens, eggs which come in plastic packages as opposed to cardboard...and by the way, eggs come in 10s, not dozens. But you can get half dozens. Go figure.
But anyways, I had had the plastic package kind, the Elite kind, and the Corn kind, and they were all pretty much the same. This time I bought the village ones, because that was what they happened to have...I assumed, owing to the large picture of a chicken on the top that they were normal eggs.
Well, they are chicken eggs...but...they're weird.
Dirty for one thing, but that's not a big deal--I just rinsed them off. But then I cracked them into my frying pan. The yolks broke on contact, and were a curious shade of red-orange. Can't say that I've ever seen eggs that particular shade before. I'm a little weirded out. But they tasted normal, so I guess they must be all right. You just never know what you're going to get when you can't read packaging.

Nothing too earthshattering has been going on lately. This weekend I spent some time in the office helping with the Kenya preparations...Vardan leaves in the morning tomorrow, and everyone else goes on Friday.

Then yesterday was the most glorious fall day--I hadn't really noticed that it was becoming fall until all of a sudden yesterday, there it was! Leaves changing color, falling from the trees, completely lovely weather. I went and wandered around downtown Yerevan for a while, discovered an art show which had some pretty nice paintings at it--if I could afford art I would totally buy some! Some day....

Then I went to this park on Baghramyan which just opened--It's a super-landscaped garden style park--lots of artificial waterfalls, but it's really pretty, especially with the fall leaves and everything. It was also really crowded--lots of people with their kids since it was a Sunday afternoon. This couple asked me (in Armenian) to take their picture. I did, and even managed to recall the Armenian word for "You're welcome".

I'm getting better at my Armenian--I even managed some complete sentences today. (For instance, "I am not sick." Because I'm one of the very few people in the office who isn't...)

Well, I was going to post pictures from the conference weekend in here, but my internet connection is sadly not cooperating. So pictures will have to wait for another time. In the meantime, if you're on Facebook you can check out all my photos on there--I've uploaded all of them.

Domestic Chores

I finally got around to mopping my apartment today...I'd been meaning to ever since I moved in, but just never got around to it. Surprisingly, mopping really doesn't take that long, nor is it nearly as backbreaking as sweeping (which is by far my least favorite chore). And if you're wondering, no, my mop has no automatic wringing-out type feature or anything even close to being that fancy. No, my mop consists of a wooden pole with a flat wooden piece on the end, and a floor cloth that I bought b/c I figured it would probably do a better job than the bit of old t-shirt that also serves more or less as my bath mat. And of course a plastic bucket. So yes...wringing out by hand, and you don't really want to think of what's in the water that you're sticking your hands into, but it's actually not that bad. And my apartment feels so much cleaner!

Also doing lots of laundry this weekend...doing one's laundry by hand isn't a problem if you do it every week, but last weekend was eaten up by the conference so I didn't so much get my laundry done...hence two days worth of loads (I have enough clothespins/clothesline space for about two loads at a time, depending what I'm washing). In the summer I suspect I could do a lot more loads in a day since things would dry faster, but now laundry takes the full day to dry.

Dusting is another highly necessary chore...not sure where all the dust comes from, but there's a lot!

Speaking of dust, I swept my porch yesterday...I swept like half an inch of dust off of it! I had no idea it was even there til I started sweeping!

So yeah...it's really not that hard to do chores without conveniences such as a washing machine or a vacuum...but appreciate your appliances if you've got 'em!

It's October already?

Hi everyone! Sorry for the long hiatus between posts--I've been fairly busy lately. It all started last week Wednesday, when I headed off for my very first academic conference.*

We drove out through the mountains to get to Arthur's Aghveran Resort--a pretty swanky new place in one of the few forested areas of Armenia. The landscape is really beautiful, but I didn't see a whole lot of it until Friday. On Wednesday after lunch, we had the first conference sessions. I won't give you the full play by play, because I suspect it would be interesting to very few if any of my readers. Suffice it to say that on the first day, the translation was only into Russian, and I understood maybe 1/3-1/2 of what was said. But I did get that the conference was being held in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of an Armenian statistician.

That evening, Gohar (the CRRC's librarian), Vahagn (the son of one of the conference organizers) and went for a walk, hung out, and played charades. (We were the youngest people there so we bonded). The next day, was my talk--I had, by this point discovered that pretty much everybody reads their presentation off a piece of paper. Even when presenting in their native language. This worked out well for me since I was giving my presentation in Russian, and I read Russian out loud pretty well...I just tend towards the incoherent when I have to talk about my work and worry about grammar, etc. My Russian grammar is rather horrendous, unfortunately. I will remedy this fact when I hit grad school. But anyways, my presentation went well, and I met a professor who was interested in my work and wanted copies of all of my papers, etc :) :) So combine that with the fact that I now have an actual legitimate publication to my name, and the conference was worth my time and money :)

Also on Thursday, a pair of demographers from France arrived, thus giving us English translation! Everything made much more sense then.

On Friday we had the whole afternoon free so we checked out the swimming pool and hiked down to the river. That evening, we all had a ping pong tournament--some of the conference attendees were really talented! Armenia so has the potential for a gold medal winning ping pong team...

And yes, as it turns out, regulation ping pong tables are in fact smaller than normal ones. Makes it rather harder to keep the ball on the table...

Then on Saturday we left Aghveran and headed over to Garni. I had been there already of course, but it's still pretty awesome. And I discovered some bits I hadn't seen before too. After Garni, we drove over to nearby Geghard, which is an ancient monastery and still functioning church. It is also one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my life. My pictures do not even come close to doing it justice. We hiked around there for a while, and saw a baptism happen in the church. I'm uploading all my photos to facebook, so you can check them out there--my internet is being too slow at the moment for me to upload to both places. Maybe I'll upload some to here tomorrow.

Anyways, we eventually returned to Yerevan. This week has been a bit of insanity at the studio because everyone is getting ready for the Lamu trip which is rapidly approaching. I actually haven't had that much to do during the bulk of the day, but the last couple of evenings I've been employing my native-english-speaker skills to write numerous letters to Kenya Airways and various hotels.

Speaking of airlines and how I hate them, British Midland changed my flight back after Christmas. I was supposed to arrive at 1am on Dec. 31, thus having all of New Year's eve to hang out with friends, etc. Now I'll be arriving at 1am on Jan. 1, meaning that a) I'll have a 28 hour layover in London and b) I'll be spending New Year's on an airplane. So boo on that.
And there are no other flights to switch to. Transatlantic airfare is only $300! But you hit Europe and the prices go through the roof!

In other news, I bought a teach yourself Armenian book this week :) I now know how to say "How are you?" and understand three different answers--I'm well, I'm not well, and I'm so-so.
Still largely illiterate, though.

My research also seems to be on its way to getting started--I met with someone today who's going to help me find families to talk to...Gohar also said she'd help, as did the professor I met at the conference...so yay for that!

And now I'm going to go caption my photos on facebook. Stop by and check them out! :)

*Yes, I went to talks that were parts of conferences at NU, but at this conference I was actually an invited participant and gave a talk.