Aaaand...I'm back!

Sorry, everyone. I shudder to look at how long it's been between posts. I will try to be better about posting from now on!

Since my last posting, I have turned 23, gone back to the US, been to London, acquired a new student, and made what is looking to turn into some material progress on my research. So...a lot to report!

I went home for Christmas, luckily squeaking in right between blizzards. 20 hours of travel time and I arrived on the afternoon of the same day I left! I had an awesome time home with friends and family, which was over all too soon, and then it was back on a plane from Chicago to Dublin to London, where I had a 28 hour layover due to airline...issues. After spending far more time than I would have liked speaking with BMI employees at various counters, I finally got my hotel vouchers, and off I went into London. Conveniently, it's painted on the sidewalk which way you should look for crossing the street--in the center of the city too, not just at the airport!

So I went to the hotel and at first I just kind of crashed. But then that evening, I met up with my friend Joe who lives in London and whom I hadn't seen since college graduation we finally figured out (it doesn't seem like it's been that long!) He showed me around London, which is pretty awesome, and I definitely will have to go back during daylight hours! I must say, though...transportation is obscenely expensive! Cost me 7 pounds for my ticket for the underground...granted I used a couple times, but still! That's like $13 or something! (Not sure what the exchange rate is at, exactly, these days). But London was still awesome :) And it was lots of fun getting to see Joe!

The next day, it was back to Heathrow and back on a plane to Yerevan. New Year's on a plane is nothing exciting, just so you all know. I've experienced it so now you don't have to...because it's even more anticlimactic than sitting at home watching the ball drop. The pilot comes on at midnight and says it's midnight. The flight attendants come around with juice/soda. I don't think they even had champagne if you paid for it. Although the guys behind me drank a lot of whiskey. And then we landed in Yerevan.

Our landing was a tribute to the pilot's skill. (Although not as much skill as that pilot in New York showed!) The runway was...while perhaps not entirely unplowed, still coated with a good layer of snow! It had, in fact, been snowing all day on New Year's Eve. Despite it being New Year's, though, the airport was running smoothly (except for the snow) and I got my visa and got through everything quickly. And my suitcase which was held together by duct tape survived!!

I paid a rather obscene amount for a taxi--five times what I had paid going to the airport when I left...but on the other hand it was New Year's at 2am, and it was snowing. A lot. I am absolutely AMAZED that in this old Volga, which had windshield wipers which could barely keep the windshield tolerably clear, we managed to get all the way from the airport to my apartment without crashing, going off the road, or even fishtailing except for one brief second which was soon corrected. So it was worth the amount I paid. Because the roads were bad. And remained that way til things thawed. Sidewalks are still pretty bad because everything refreezes at night. Ice. Lots of ice.

The first couple days after getting back were primarily occupied by trying to get water and internet back, because alas! My pipes froze! And my ip was wrong so I couldn't get on the network! Eventually, though the water problem was solved, and now I just always leave my kitchen faucet on at a trickle and the pipes haven't frozen since.

In the evenings, a bunch of us from Bars went around visiting...lots of food, fun, and good company!

On the 7th, work started up again, and everything was quite busy at the studio. Gradually I've been getting everything back going--I've got two students now that I'm teaching English to (one I actually have to make lesson plans for....the other I talk to while he plays computer games.) My Armenian lessons start up again on Thursday, which is good, because it seems like some research is going to be happening soon!

I've been emailing and calling Peace Corps Volunteers, and I've got some things in the works...so it looks like I'll have some places to travel to on the coming weekends. I hope the weather stays decent!

It's been above freezing during the day lately, not that that helps much with the compressed ice on the sidewalks. At night it still gets pretty cold though. To that end, today I put up plastic on my kitchen window and on my hall window. The plastic on my hall window isn't really doing me much good, but I had the plastic, so I figured i might as well. The kitchen plastic is working better than I thought--with the kitchen door open, the kitchen has now been heated to the same temperature as the main room of my apartment--they have equalized to a temperature that is cooler than the main room would be if the kitchen were closed off, but the kitchen is exponentially warmer. No hope for my bathroom though. There is, however, one problem. Due to the temperature differential, when I open and close my hall door, the plastic on my kitchen window gets sucked in and out. I'm afraid that this is going to rip down the duct tape. I don't have enough left to redo the entire thing. And it wouldn't solve the problem. Engineers, if you have any solutions, I'm all ears!

And so now here I sit, recovered from a rather spectacular bout of rapid-onset food poisoning, which luckily departed almost as soon as it arrived. So yes...just so you all know, I didn't die!

And I will try to post more frequently!

Shakh i Mat!

The title of this post translates to "Checkmate!" --there was great excitement here on Wednesday, because Armenia won gold in the Chess Olympiad for the second year running. Chess is kind of a big deal in this part of the world--kids study it in school, for example. The winning Armenian team was met by a crowd at the airport, covered live on TV, and led on a victory parade throughout the city. (Luckily I was taking the metro home that night so I didn't get caught in the traffic!)
So congratulations to the victorious Armenian team!!

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, so I'd just like to take a second to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving! The U.S. Embassy hosted a Thanksgiving dinner here, so I got to celebrate Thanksgiving for the first time in three years :) There was turkey and mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce in the shape of the can and everything! And of course, pumpkin pie. Yum!
Sorry, no pictures to share though--cameras aren't so much allowed.

One week from today all of the guys will finally be back from Kenya!! The office will once again be a lively place :)

Other random updates:

I start Armenian lessons today :)

I just checked the forecast again, and snow has disappeared from it--it's supposed to be in the 50s for the next 10 days.

I am temporarily sans heat again--in the interest of not dying, I turned off my gas heater when it started burning with orange flames. Need to get Mher to come fix it.

I will be very happy when I'm done with my grad school applications. I kind of detest writing application essays. But for better or worse I'm almost done--deadlines coming up fast!

Guess that's about it. Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!!!

Sorry for the long hiatus between posts...

I didn't realize it had been so long since I last posted! Time has been going faster and faster here, and when you combine that with an internet connection that has been becoming steadily less reliable and the fact that I've been fairly busy...well...the blog entries form in my head and never quite make it to publication.

I promise I'll try to be better about blogging in the future!!

So...let's see...when I last left you, I had just acquired a new pipe for gas, and was hoping to soon have heating. Well, I have since acquired a gas heater, and though I am still rather concerned about the prospect of dying of carbon monoxide poisoning, at least hypothermia is less of a danger.

I've acquired some other new household objects as well--just this evening, I bought a drying rack and saucepan (well, I find these items exciting anyways). This means that I can do laundry whenever I want, and that I can cook more complex dishes...including attempting to replicate the extremely delicious mushroom soup Nelly made for lunch today. I should probably buy some sort of mat or something that I can put under the drying rack though...otherwise I'm going to end up with a flood. So yeah...my list of domestic objects yet to buy now just includes a dishpan, the mat for under my drying rack, a kitchen lighter, and another rug for my back hall, because my floor just gets way dirty from my shoes. I might make another shopping trip tomorrow.

Now on to the more interesting stuff. At the studio, things have been super-quiet--a lot of the time it's just me, Nelly, Inna, and Tigran. It's been cold lately (although this week has been warmer, thank goodness), so to save energy, I (and Adrineh when she's there) have moved into Inna's office. Besides which it's just more fun that way--it's kind of pointless to have one person per office after all.

Today this German guy and his Slovenian friend/cameraman were here--they came on the 19th, and Anush went with them to Kharabagh (I swear I've started spelling it differently every time I write it...once upon a time I used to spell it Karabakh...I think Kharabagh is more accurate...but I'm not sure.) Today they were back and filming in Yerevan. They're nice guys, and their presence meant we had an extra good lunch which included the super-awesome mushroom soup.

The guys in Kenya are doing well--their trip is almost complete. The two Harut's leave tomorrow...everyone else leaves the 29th. Vardan and Arman will then be coming straight back, but Vahe and Vahagn will be staying in Dubai for a couple more days. From all the pictures they've sent back, Lamu really does look like paradise...I think I'd like to go some day...

This past weekend, I finally got my research really underway and went on a three day roadtrip to Sisian. (I have been corresponding with Peace Corps volunteers for a while, and I had planned this trip earlier, but circumstances beyond my control postponed it to last weekend) I really lucked out with the weather--managed to get in my trip between snowstorms, and the weather there was actually unseasonably warm, which was nice. I stayed with a Peace Corps volunteer in her house and hung out with a number of other volunteers. I also managed two interviews, and realized that this project would go much better if I spoke Armenian. It was funny sometimes, when we would be with some of the villagers, because if everyone was speaking Armenian, I couldn't understand, but if I spoke Russian with them, the Peace Corps volunteers couldn't understand, and if we spoke English together, the villagers couldn't understand. So I really need to learn some Armenian so that I can at least follow a basic conversation.

I'm actually improving on that front...depending on what the conversation is about, if it uses verbs from my list of like 10 verbs that I know, I can sometimes figure out what's going on. But I'm going to hire a private teacher, I think, because I would be learning much faster if I did.

But back to the weekend in Sisian--the first night, we had spaghetti and carrot cake (from scratch!) which was highly delicious. We also just generally had a good time hanging out. The next day, we went to a nearby village where one of the volunteers is stationed. He introduced me to his counterpart there, who is a really awesome guy who is planting a forest. The whole area is amazingly beautiful, and after the interview and a delicious lunch with many toasts in both Armenian and Russian (the latter was just for my benefit), we went with him to see this monastery. And now before I tell you about the monastery, I have to back up and tell about something which happened a few weeks ago...

A few weeks ago, I was asked if I would be willing to do the English voiceover for a film about Garni Geghard. Not knowing what I was getting myself into, I agreed. After all, I speak English, and do a pretty decent job of reading aloud. How hard could it be? Ha!

So it turned out to be an 18 page single spaced text, translated word for word from Armenian. It made very little sense. And it is very difficult to read something poetically when you don't understand it and it's not written poetically. Granted it's much harder to be poetic in English than languages with noun declensions because rhyming is so much easier when your words all have the same ending...

But anyways, after much discussion and argument, we convinced the guy that he needed to get the thing retranslated...he eventually found someone to do this, and that same person agreed to narrate the film, freeing me of the obligation.

Now the reason I tell you this, is that the beginning of the text related the story of this Armenian queen who was being pursued by bandits or some such and crossed herself and jumped with her horse down into the canyon and survived, and then out of thankfulness became a hermit of sorts in this cave that had three springs, after which she wrote poetry and taught classes from behind a curtain. She also had a hand in founding a monastery.

Well, by complete chance, the monastery I visited just happened to be the one that this queen is tied with. There was a plaque placed there by the British Council that explained it all in English. What are the odds that I would randomly end up at that monastery?

Anyways....

On my way to Sisian, I took a group taxi--more expensive, but a faster mode of transport. On the way back, I decided to take a marshrutka and save the 1000 dram. Although...in the end the cost is about the same because I then had to pay 1000 dram for a taxi from the bus station to my apartment. But whatever.

The marshrutka back to Yerevan is supposed to leave around 9am. I was told that it fills up quickly and I should get there by 8. Well...I was the first one there. By a lot. After I had been there for a bit, the taxi driver who had driven me and the Peace Corps volunteer to the village the day before opened up the door to the marshrutka and told me that I should go sit and wait in his taxi instead because it was warm, and in the marshrutka was cold. Having no reason to refuse, I went over and sat in his taxi, which was in fact much warmer than the marshrutka as its engine had just been running. And so I sat there and watched the people go by. For quite some time. At one point, the taxi driver came and turned the car on again for a while to warm it back up. I talked to him for a while...in addition to being a taxi driver he's a journalist for a major Armenian paper, and the Russian Аргументы и Факты. Then his daughter came by and needed a ride somewhere. I made to get out and go sit in the marshrutka, but he gestured for me to stay where I was...so I went along on a brief road trip to another part of Sisian. I was starting to worry that the marshrutka might leave without me but with my backpack which was saving my seat, but we made it back in time.

And I guess that's about it for the news from here. Going to Thanksgiving at the Embassy next week...and on Sunday I'm going to church with Nelly at Etchmiadzin, so that should be pretty cool! But for now I'm going to wrap up. I promise I'll try to be better about posting in the future! But if I don't post again before Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!!!

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.