More thoughts on electricity...

In light of the unstable voltage here, it would seem to me that it would make sense to somehow build in a surge protector to the lightswitches, light fixtures, outlets, etc. But that's just me.

I do now, however, have working lights in all of the rooms of my apartment, as well as hot water in the bathroom, and outlets that, as far as I can tell, all work. (i.e. none of them are scorched-looking anymore.) :)

But just in case, I try not to have more than one light turned on at a time.

Wildlife, Asphalt, and Elections

On this last day in May, a few more observations about life in Yerevan...

Wildlife

The black and gray crows (or maybe they're ravens?) are out in force of late, and they are obnoxious!! During the day, it's not such a big deal, but when they wake you up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday by squawking right outside your window?

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...

That's pretty much it for the wildlife stories so now moving on to the second part of the title...asphalt! (and elections. because they're related.)

Asphalt and Elections

This weekend are the mayoral elections for the city of Yerevan, and as far as I can tell, at least from the people I interact with regularly, they're being met with a whole lot of...eh. (indifference and/or cynicism). Maybe I just don't spend enough time with the politically motivated, but as far as I can tell the sentiment seems to be that the elections are more or less rigged, it's a foregone conclusion who's going to win, and they're all just a bunch of crooks anyways so why bother. (Disclaimer--I don't have a TV and thus don't watch the Armenian news, and this observation has been formed based on an extremely unrepresentative sample of people.) But no one I've asked has really been able to tell me much about who's running or what they stand for etc etc. (So if you want actual coverage of the elections...don't look here. Try A1+ or something.)

But there does seem to be universal agreement about the fact that the roads are being paved now (as quickly as possible, it seems) due to the elections-- i.e. so the ruling party can be like "look what we're doing for you! we're paving your roads!" and then after the elections, they can just sit there and line their pockets and be like "what? we already paved your roads. we're done now til the next elections." (Thanks to Inna for those observations.)

They really are doing a pretty awful job of paving too. Essentially it looks like they're pouring a dumptruck-ful of black gravel on the road, squishing it down, and calling it paved. It'll be potholed again in the space of a few months. One argument as to why this is, is that the pavers want to do a bad job paving so that next year there will be work for them when they have to re-pave again. And on the surface this makes sense...but Yerevan is a big city. And paving roads properly takes more time. So if you do fewer jobs in a year but do them well (thus taking longer, so still getting paid), and then the next year do some more roads, the next year some others...by the time you finish with all the roads in the city it'll be time to repave the first ones again. Thus ensuring the workers a perpetual source of income and the residents a decent set of roads. Is there any reason why it doesn't make sense to do this?

Bank Survey

HSBC may be the best bank in Armenia, but I still can't use their ATMs! The CEO does get points for personally responding to his email though. (and quickly!)

"Every horrifying situation will be destroyed."

Arman was trying out some new vocabulary words while reassuring me that somehow or another they'll solve everything. :) And it's true...

I already have light again in my bathroom--yesterday Arman came down and managed to get out the broken stub of the old lightbulb, and then spent a good half hour trying to rig things so that the lightbulb wouldn't touch the metal frame of the drop ceiling (the lightbulb is above the drop ceiling). And hopefully today Mher will be down to rewire my bathroom (since the outlet is totally fried) and then I'll have hot running water again too!

On the bright side, the (unseasonably?) hot weather means that at least the first five minutes or so of water that comes out of my faucet is not completely ice water, so it has been possible to shower (quickly!)

* * *

We're supposed to get thunderstorms tonight...and every night hereafter for the next 10 days at least. I'm excited...and hoping that there will be more than one clap of thunder. Thus far I have not been overly impressed by the thunderstorms here, but I have high hopes for these!

Like flipping a switch...

...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 Show
Moving 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!

Remembering the Armenian Genocide

Today is the 94th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide--for those of you unfamiliar with the history this was the event which took place in 1915, where nearly 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Turks.

I'm not really going to get into the current politics of this issue--there are plenty of places to read about that, but suffice it to say that for Armenians, the Genocide is still a very deep and close memory. Thousands of people turned out to lay flowers near the eternal flame at the Genocide memorial--from the very elderly to parents carrying toddlers and babies. The crowd was massive; the police only let a certain number of people through at a time (a new feature instituted last year after the unrest following the elections).

I met my Armenian teacher and his class from the university around noon today to join the crowd as it made its way up to the memorial. We walked down Kievyan, and near the bridge we each bought a bunch of flowers to carry to the memorial. Across the bridge was where the crowd really started to thicken...


Eventually, we made it to a bigger open area where everyone just...stopped. At this point, I realized that Christine was very smart for having brought water with her...it was hot! Despite the weather forecast and everyone's assurances to the contrary, the weather was warm and sunny, and standing there in a big crowd with no shade, it was downright hot outside.

Luckily, many people, myself included, had umbrellas with them, because we were all expecting rain (every April 24th, so the story goes, it rains or snows because the sky is crying for the victims of the Genocide.) But though there were some ominous clouds in the distance, the sky overhead was filled with bright sunlight. (Yes, I am sunburned now.)


Eventually, the crowd began to move, and we slowly made our way up the long path to the memorial. The long walk up symbolizes the forced march which many Armenians were forced to endure (and which many did not survive.)


People were pressing in from all sides...you can see in this picture just how huge the crowds were.






As we got closer, you could see the spire, which is actually two points coming together, the larger one symbolizing the Armenians in Armenia, and the smaller symbolizing the Armenian Diaspora around the world.

In the distance you could make out the mountains which surround the city, but they were mostly shrouded by clouds. Just before this, a few drops of rain had fallen, but by this point it was clearing up again.

To the left of the spire, you can see concrete blocks arranged in a circle and angled in towards the center. There is one block for each Marz (district) lost. The blocks surround an eternal flame, which is our eventual goal on this pilgrimage.

Christine, ever prepared, had also brought along a bag of dried apricots, which she proceeded to hand out to anyone within arm's reach who wants them. A little boy, who couldn't have been more than three years old, took one and then his mom made him say thank you....it was the cutest "shnorhakalutyun" I've ever heard!

As we reached the outside of the circle, we saw all of the TV cameras and vans there to cover the event, as well as a couple of famous Armenian singers. (Sorry, I didn't get a photo.) Then we pressed our way down the steps and into the middle...


It was extremely crowded in here as well, though they were pretty efficient at moving people through. As soon as you had laid your flowers, large bouncer-type men shouted at you to leave. The amount of flowers surrounding the flame was absolutely incredible. Thousands and thousands of flowers. (Which makes sense given the number of people and the number of flower sellers out on the streets! But still, it was a sight to see!)

Then we made our way out the other side, and down the steps, where the pilgrimage continued, though at a faster pace and with a looser crowd because there was more space to move.


Afterwards, we all went over to Christine's place (which was nearby) for an early dinner of delicious homemade pizza. (I always did think that ajika would make good pizza sauce!)

Earth Hour

It is Earth Hour in Yerevan right now, and so I'm sitting here typing by candlelight, my computer running on battery. All my lights are off, and all my electronic devices are unplugged except for my refrigerator. I wonder if anyone else in Yerevan is participating?