week one in the village

so, I have arrived at the village of Shirakamut last tuesday, and there is an internet cafe here, which i havent gotten around to using until tonight, which is the following monday.  Here is a snapshot of what's been happening around here:

Tuesday:
We set off for the village from Yerevan.  It took several hours in the bus/van to reach there, and when we got there we had a tour thereof.  Our group is staying in 2 houses, which the villagers had rented out to us.  In our house, there is a sink, several beds (enough for each person in the house, and more comfortable than those in the hostel), and no toilet.  <gross details>The outhouse has merely a hole in the ground, and no toilet seat.</gross details>

At another house is where we eat our meals, and one of the villagers cooks the meals for us.  Further down the road is a market, to obtain more supplies.  It turns out that there is indeed an internet cafe here, so I will be able to communicate through the internet, however, it costs dram (money) so I will be using it sparingly for email, blog and picture uploads on flickr purposes only.  No, i will not be using Facebook.  (Obviously).  I probably wont be able to ssh into JLab systems either (I cannot find SSH or Putty on here).

Even further down the road, about a half mile, is the ruins of an ancient vank (monastery complex), on the side of a hill.  This is where our work is to be done.  The LCO group last year built a retaining wall around it, to cause water to flow around it rather than into it.  Inside the sanctuary is an image of the Virgin Mary and the Lord Jesus, stuck behind which is a small 3-month prayerbook/devotional book titled Z'Hats Mer Hanabazort (our daily bread).  I could tell this was from a few years ago, since it had the days of the week and the days of the month in it, and a devotional for each day in it, and the days of the month/days of the week don't line up this year.  We were told that he sanctuary is actively used by the villagers for lighting candles in there, and for praying, but they don't yet do badarak (mass) in there.  

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday:
Our typical day went as follows:  wake up, eat breakfast, ride in the back of the truck to the worksite, do some work, eat lunch, return to village, free time/take nap, eat dinner, free time, go to sleep, etc.  

work:
Our task is to restore the ruined church/vank, in the style of when it was first built.  Our architect, Arman, determined this to be originally built in the 7th century AD, and then destroyed and rebuilt several times since then.  

First we removed the weeds from the courtyard and sanctuary.  Then, we started the task of removing rocks and dirt from there.  Arman, our architect, told us, medz kar [aysdegh], pokr [yev geti] kar [ayddegh] (big rocks [here], little [and river] rocks [there]).  The big rocks will be used for constructions later on.  Smooth river rocks (geti kar) are not good for construction, except as filler if they are small.  

There are tombs surrounding the sanctuary, the bones in which we are gathering to be buried in another location.  It is a weird feeling, digging up bones of people who may, many generations ago, have been my ancestors.   We have to sift through all of the dirt that we find for bones (vosgo in Armenian), and ceramic (khetsaghan).  The bones are for reburial (as a sign of respect to the dead) and the ceramic shards are taken for research purposes.  

This past weekend:

On saturday, we rode about 40 miles in the back of a truck from the village to see a waterfall, and have a picnic there.  Sunday, we visited several vanks (monasteries) and there was a mass at one of them.  When the mass was over, I decided it would be a good idea to play Hayr Mer (Our Father) on my ocarina inside of the sanctuary, since there was such great reverb.  It sounded awesome.  Unfortunately, there is (to my knowledge, and I have tried to find this online) no word in the armenian language for "ocarina", so several times people asked "inch e?" (what is that?)   to which I had to answer "mi okarina e, mi chinestantsi yerazhdakan gordzik", (it's an ocarina; a Chinese musical instrument).  

I plan on adding more photos to the flickr account, maybe later this week, when I come back to the internet cafe to check if certain people have responded to my emails.  As for right now, gisher bari!  (good night!)