Week 3 part 1

Sunday:

This sunday was a special holiday involving water.  (I forgot what it's name is).  On this holiday, kids take buckets of water and splash it on cars that are driving by, and people pour water on each other and use squirt guns and stuff.  While we were in the van, with the permission of the driver, Mark spilled bottles of water on pedestrians twice.  The driver, told him which ones to do it to.  I heard him say, "spasek!", which means "wait", in this context, for a better victim to pour it on.

  So, in honor of this holiday,  we did the most natural thing to do and went to Lake Sevan, the largest body of water in Armenia.  On a steep hill on a peninsula overlooking the lake are two churches right next to each other.  Up on the trail to the churches are people selling stuff, such as obsidian sculptures, mini-khachkhars, and other trinkets.  One man was selling a duduk for like 100 $US, but I didn't buy it because it was probably overpriced (I plan on buying one either the next time I visit Yerevan, or while I am staying in Gyumri (and I still don't know what I'm going to be doing in Gyumri yet.)).  After visiting the churches, we had lunch and then went swimming in the lake.  It wasn't too cold in there, fortunately.

Monday:

Because all but one of our pickaxes were broken, we got off work early today.  We visited the village's preschool and had some snacks there.  This is the first time I've ever eaten honeycombs.  The honey is good, but I don't really care for the taste nor texture of beeswax.  Caleb, one of the Canadian participants, commented (not-exact-quote), "I love how we are screwing over the bees by eating the place where they live in".  After eating these snacks, and later eating lunch, I napped most of the afternoon.

Another thing:  up until today, I was wearing protective gloves whenever touching the cat.  Now, I've decided to give up doing so.   Also, I have attempted to teach the cat 0008ytttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt8gptgh6iiiiiiiiipppppppppp how to use the computer.   (the 0008…ppp is where the cat was sitting on my keyboard.  She has a long ways to go before becoming a true hacker).  It's also a good thing that this computer has a trackpad instead of a mouse.  Otherwise the little kitty would attempt to eat the computer mouse, which is not healthy for it. 

Tuesday: 

work continued, now with the pick-axes replaced and/or repaired.  Now all our efforts are focused on digging trenches next to the worksite to make the courtyard wider.  It looks like we won't be able to finish this task by the end of the week, which is unfortunate, because we will be leaving the village Sunday, finished or not.  Also, while checking my email today I discovered that my Flickr account will only allow for 200 pictures unless I pay to upgrade my account.  I guess I'll just wait two weeks and then upload pics to facebook.  Or delete some of the pictures from Flickr that I don't care as much about to make room for good ones.  I think I'm more likely to do the former.