Garbage Day, and Other Musings

Sadly, I don't have anything to report to you about Trndez, the holiday with newlywed couples jumping over fire, because I ended up staying in Yerevan last weekend. And this weekend. But next weekend I'll be back on the road doing more interviews...

The other day here in Yerevan (or at least on my street) was apparently garbage day. A couple of guys with shovels and a dump truck came and shoveled up all the trash that had accumulated along the sides of the roads, next to the lamp post, on the sidewalk at the bottom of the hill, etc. Thankfully, this also included the disposal of the cat corpse which had been laying there on the corner for quite some time. (Magnus says it's been there since January, I say only a couple weeks, but either way.......)
So yes...for the time being at least, the sidewalks are much cleaner. And they'd stay that way if people would just throw their trash away in dumpsters.....

Sadly, today winter made a comeback. I woke up to discover that it was snowing outside. Now the temperature has gone up above freezing again, so everything is covered in slush. It's gross. Needless to say, even if I weren't trying to stave off getting actually sick, I would not be going out anywhere today. Luckily I got my grocery shopping done yesterday.

Speaking of groceries, I managed to conduct an entire transaction in Armenian the other day! (And earned an "Apres!" (Bravo!) from the girl to boot) Yes indeed, I successfully requested, received, and paid for 10 apples without resorting to Russian or having to say "chem haskanum" (I don't understand). This of course, was aided by apple being one of the few food words I know. My vocabulary of nouns is still fairly pathetic....although randomly, I now know the word for "linguistic family". It's long. And hard to read.

I do still suck at reading. I don't know if my brain will ever manage to make the transition from reading one letter at a time, sounding words out, to actually reading whole words. (We're not even going to talk about writing here except to simply say--I can't.) But at least I'm getting a little better at speaking and understanding.

And that, I guess, is pretty much it for now. More interesting (hopefully!) stories to come next week after I do some more traveling outside of Yerevan. And for now, off I go!