...summer has arrived. All of a sudden, the weather changed from being in the upper 60s and rainy to the mid 80s and sunny. I wish it would stay like this, but I know the 90s and 100s are coming...just not sure when!
I realize that I've been neglecting my blog again...but I shall attempt to give you an update on my latest activities.
Floods and Explosions!
Most recently, these activities seem to almost entirely involve bouncing from one apartment-related mini-crisis to another. The problems all started on the day when my landlord's son came to remove the water heater from my kitchen. It has never worked, so I didn't really care that he took it (apparently they have two broken ones and want to make one working one...). He made less of a mess than I was expecting, though more than I would have liked (well I mean, what do you expect when taking down an exhaust pipe that hasn't been touched in years?) But that, I figured, was that.
That evening, I had the joys of food poisoning once more, and late that night I discovered that for inexplicable reasons of plumbing, my shower no longer worked! (i.e. no hot running water, no convenient way to do laundry, etc.) So the next morning I had Vardan tell Abo (landlord's son) about the problem and he came to fix it. It seems the problem is that I have two pipes...and when they're not connected to one another, the water doesn't make it to the shower. I don't really quite get *why* the water runs that way, but apparently it does. So you'd think this would be a simple matter of a connector piece and then all would be well
Which it would have been. If the connector piece hadn't been defective. Upon turning the water back on, we discovered a giant fountain of water flooding my kitchen.
But the issue has since been dealt with--a new connector piece is in place--and all was well. I thought.
Then on Thursday night, the power went out. For about four hours or so. At some point in those four hours, it came back for about five minutes, but very unsteadily. This in itself is not a huge issue. Candles work well enough, and it stays light out til after 9pm now, so I at least got my lesson planning done, and when my computer's battery died and there was still no light, I just went to bed early. But then on Friday, we discovered that the unstable electricity had fried the hub at the studio (aka: no internet). Again, a solvable issue. We went out and bought a new one. Meanwhile, I had been off teaching, and when I got back, I stopped at my apartment to grab my stuff before running up to the studio. Though I had had power when I had woken up that morning...the power in my apartment was out again!
When I went outside, I noticed a long wire heading from my electricity meter across the street to regions unknown. It seems that the ice cream stand across the street still had no power, and were therefore borrowing mine! Now while I am all in favor of keeping ice cream from melting, I also prefer that the contents of my refrigerator stay refrigerated!
Eventually, this issue was solved by resetting the circuit breaker and then presumably we both had power.
But I should have known that the power issues of Thursday night presaged another incident Saturday morning....
I got up, and headed for the bathroom, flipped on the lightswitch.....and nearly had a heart attack as the lightbulb exploded! (not shattered, though, mind you--the glass bulb part blew completely off of the metal part, which is presumably still screwed in.) So, I figured, I was going to have to do something about that, but not until later in the day when the store would be open and I could buy a new lightbulb...and a flashlight! Because it's very dark in my bathroom, and the lightbulb is located somewhere above the ceiling tiles, and I'm not entirely sure behind which ceiling tile it is!
I continued on with my day. But then while rinsing laundry (with warm water) all of a sudden a popping noise came from my water heater and it stopped working. I flipped the switch off and on, (to no avail) and then noticed a peculiar burning smell. I immediately flipped it off, and waited anxiously for a bit til I was sure that no electrical fire was in the offing Then I went upstairs to tell Vardan, who was in his office. It seems an electrician will have to be called on Monday...I suspect my water heater will have to be replaced (too bad--the thing was new when I moved in!) I'm thinking the outlets here really need to all be equipped with surge protectors....because giant power surges seem to be increasing in frequency!
So that's the most recent news of my week. Also I bought strawberries, a summer squash, and green garlic! Fresh fruits and veggies have reappeared!
* * *
A School Talent ShowMoving backwards in time now, earlier this month, my two students (who are in the same class) invited me to come see their school show. Never one to pass up an interesting opportunity such as this, I accepted the invitation and headed over to their school.
After briefly visiting the utter chaos in the classroom (40 or so students, their parents, some siblings, several teachers...in a small and crowded room!) We headed up to sit in the auditorium and wait for the show to start. As it turns out, the show was scheduled to start at 2, but as the kids had to be there at 1, so was I! After sitting down, I looked up, and saw...this -->
An absolutely
gigantic portrait of Pushkin. You really don't get a sense of the scale from this picture, but that room was two stories in height, and the bottom of the portrait was at about shoulder level for me. While I've seen paintings this large before (Surikov, anyone?) I do believe this is one of the largest portraits I've ever seen. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out
why there was a giant portrait of Pushkin on the wall, but eventually I did recall that the school was named after him. Still though. Huuuuuge portrait.
Eventually, after much waiting, (and seeing some truly
spectacular parental fashion choices--my personal favorite was the woman in a tight-fitting pantsuit made out of light blue fabric with some sort of Hawaiian/palm tree print on it) it was time for the show to start. The kids, all in uniform, came in, and stood in an arc across the stage, singing a song (in Russian!). This was followed by various skits, recitations, individual performances (dance, piano, singing, rhythmic gymnastics), etc. The vast majority of the show (much to my delight) was in Russian so I could actually follow what they were saying. There was a small part in Armenian, which I did not so much follow, but most of it was in Russian. Later I learned that during Soviet times this particular school had been a Russian school, not an Armenian one, hence the good Russian program.
I'll post photos (and maybe some video) from the show on Facebook, but since these are kids, I'm not going to broadcast them all over the internet.
* * *
I guess that's about it for now...the research and the Armenian language lessons are progressing...not exactly swiftly, but progressing. We started reported speech last week in my Armenian lessons. It's almost exactly the same as it is in English. You'd think therefore that it would be quite easy. And it is...if I'm writing and have time to translate the sentence and think. But orally? Ha. Soooooo hard. And this is coming from English. Where we have reported speech like that. I can only imagine how much worse it must have been for my students in Russia trying to learn it.
And now off I go to continue cleaning my apartment. Mopping and laundry await! The chores are never done!
Also, the cats seem to have given birth and kittens abound! Two of them were sitting right on my porch for most of the day yesterday, and for a little while one was hanging out on my windowsill! They're really cute and were I staying here for another year I'd be so tempted to adopt them...but...then again as cute as kittens are, I'm not really a cat person...
After briefly visiting the utter chaos in the classroom (40 or so students, their parents, some siblings, several teachers...in a small and crowded room!) We headed up to sit in the auditorium and wait for the show to start. As it turns out, the show was scheduled to start at 2, but as the kids had to be there at 1, so was I! After sitting down, I looked up, and saw...this -->
