my last post

Right now, as I post this blog entry, I am already back in Vienna VA (not Austria). I have sort of procrastinated on posting it. I will post the remaining pictures on facebook sometime within the next week (if I am not continuing to procrastinate).

I'm just going to continue from where I left off:

On Wednesday night, for our havak, we went to the Vanatur restaurant, and were encouraged to invite our host families with us. My host parents came with my, but not the kids. Others invited their host brothers or sisters or parents to come with them. This dinner was a sort of fairwell party for the volunteers in Gyumri, since all of us except for Allegra were leaving to go back home in the next week or so.

Thursday night

One of our volunteers, James, invited the rest of us to come over to his house that evening for some coffee and tea. However, I told him I'd be a little bit late, because Allegra, one of the other volunteers, had asked if she can come over to my apartment and take pictures of me with my host family in my apartment. (this was part of her volunteer work, to take pictures of the other volunteers with their host families, and tonight was my turn for this). What ended up happening was that my family insisted on having her stay with us for dinner (which was not cooked yet), and then doing the photography. (I'm probably going to be tagged in a lot of pics on facebook soon). So, then we arrived late to the party at James' place. I played the duduk there, and James's host father asked me to play not only for them but also fo his relatives in moskow, who were on skype with him

Friday:

after my duduk lesson, Gagik took me to the museum, where we saw some artwork by various artists. Paintings of Gyumri, and of several monasteries and stuff.

Saturday:

We had an excursion, first, we did a train-ride, then we did bird watching and then we went to Khor Virap, (this was my third time in Khor Virap) and then we went to a village and talked to the locals there, and then we visited a tomato farm. One of the volunteers, Mona, had invited her Swedish coworkers to come with her on the excursion. Unfortunately, our normal tour-guide, Suren, wasn't with us this time, and so instead, I helped explain the story behind Khor Virap (which I had been to twice before this) to the others on the tour.

Monday, Tuesday.

after a debriefing in Gyumri on Monday, I took a taxi to Yerevan, and met up with my friend Rafayel there. I stayed at his house Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Tuesday morning I had another debrief in Yerevan.  I will not be surprised if I will have been the last Birthright volunteer to have been placed at GITC for the volunteer position.  After their problems with not assigning me work to do for 3 consecutive weeks, it is unlikely that any future birthright participants will be placed at GITC.  

Wednesday, September 21 = Independence Day

today marked the 20^th anniversary of the independence of the republic of Armenia. There was a parade on the street in the morning, which we watched from the balcony and from the roof of the Birthright office. There were military personelle marching in the streets and riding in various types of tanks, trucks, etc. In the sky, helicopters flew in formation, and there were planes releasing sky-writing clouds of red, blue and orange, (the colors of the Armenian flag).

After the parade was over, I met up with Rafayel again, and walked around the town for a while. One of the places we saw was the Komitas Conservatory, which is dedicated to the music of Komitas, a very famous Armenian ethnomusicologist/composer/priest who in the early 20^th century went through many villages in Armenia, studied the folk music therein, and wrote these songs onto paper. Much of our folk music in Armenia would not have been preserved after the genocide had it not been for Komitas. Several of the songs that Gagik had assigned me to learn on the duduk are Komitas's compositions. Another stop in Yerevan was the vernissage, where I bought some gifts for my family.

Since I had not eaten any pomegranates yet in Armenia, and they don't grow in Virginia (since they were not in season during the summer) I asked Rafayel where I could buy some. We went from market to market looking for them. Finally we found one market where they had them, in packages of 2 for 1500 dram (about $4.50). I decided to save them for the homeward journey the next day.

Later that night the streets were very crowded. People were cheering “Hayastan! Hayastan!” (the armenian name for Armenia is “Hayastan”), and others were carrying Armenian flags. I didnt stay for the concert in the republic square, since it was too crowded and I was getting tired already. I took a taxi back to Rafayel's apartment. From there, I could see that the radio tower in the distance (which is normally changing colors every few seconds) was a steady red at the top, blue in the middle, and orange at the bottom, (the colors of the Armenian flag, to celebrate the occasion. Also, we saw some fireworks out in the distance as well.

Thursday:

I only got three hours of sleep that night, before I went back to the states. I ate one of the pomegranates in the Yerevan airport for breakfast. Since I didn't want any complications with the US customs office, I decided to eat the other one at the Moskow airport for lunch. During the flight, they showed a world map, showing where there is daylight and where it is night. Because it was so close to the equinox, the separation between night and day was almost a straight line. (the 23^rd of september is the equinox, and I was flying on the 22^nd).

Etchmiatsin, etc.

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Thursday Afternoon:

After my duduk lesson (which was moved from friday to thursday this week, since Gagik was out of town on Friday), I went to the arts and crafts festival in the hraparak (town square). There were performances of the youth playing musical instruments and dancing, and people were showing off different types of arts and crafts in booths.

Saturday:

For our excursion, we rode bicyles (provided by Birthright) from Yerevan to the holy city of Etchmiatsin. Our first stop in Etchmiatsin was St. Hripsime's church. A bit of history about this church's name sake:

Hripsime was a beautiful virgin from Rome, but she fled from Rome to Armenia because she had refused the Roman Emperor Diocletian's marriage proposal. She refused because he was a pagan, and she had devoted her life to God. In Armenia, she faced a similar problem: King Drtad also wanted her to be his wife. (this is the same Drtad who had imprisoned Gregory in the pit at Khor Virap. Gregory was still in the pit at this time) Hripsime refused to marry Drtad for the same reason. So, the king asked Kayane, the leader of the group of nuns that Hripsime belonged to, to convince Hripsime to marry him. Kayane refused to convince Hripsime to marry the king, and instead encouraged her to resist him. Therefore, Drtad tortured both of them to death, along with their companions. First, he had their tounges cut off and eyes gouged out, and then had them stone to death. That is, heavy stones were placed on top of them until they died.

The church that bears Hripsime's name is built on the spot where it was believed that Hripsime had died. There are stairs leading down to the spot directly below the altar, where Hripsime's tombstone is located. On the right hand side of the main sanctuary is a very curious painting. It shows in the foreground, a young woman, Hripsime, standing on top of a king, Drtad, and she's holding a full-sized cross. There is an angel holding a crown over her head. Behind her in the background, are on the left, and image of a woman being stoned to death, and on the right, a soldier who is about to cut a woman's tongue off with a sword.

Here's my interpretation of this painting: The crown above her head given by the angel appears to be even more glorious than the crown upon Drtad's head. This represents that the crown of life given to those who are faithful even to the point of death (Revelation 2:10). While Hripsime would have received a queen's crown had she married Drtad, what she had received for her faith was the crown of life from God, which is much more glorious and lasts forever. The images of her being tortured in the background are behind the image of her victorious of Drtad, because those things happened in the past. She is victorious over Drtad in the image, because historically, she was victorious over him, not in a physical manner (as is shown) but in a spiritual manner. He failed to convert her to paganism, and after she had died, her death haunted him to the point of insanity, which could only be cured once Gregory was set free from Khor Virap and converted him to Christianity.

Our second stop was the main church/seminary complex of Etchmiatsin. There is a large cathedral there, with many paintings therein. It was said that after Gregory had converted King Drtad, Gregory had a vision in which Christ had told him where to build this church, as well as where to build the other chapels to honor Kayane and Hripsime. We had only a short time to visit it though, because Vahan, one of the BR coordinators, told us to come out so that we could meet the Catholicos, who is the equivalent of the pope to the Armenian church. What is interesting is that he was dressed all in black robes, indistinguishable from any common derhayr (Armenian priest). I would not have known he was the Catholicos if nobody had told me. None of us had expected to actually meet him. He had only one remark to say to us: “If you were to meet the president, or the leader of the parliament, would you be wearing those clothes you are wearing?” (most of us were wearing shorts and comfortable outfits, since we had just biked there from Yerevan).

Afterwards, we visited St. Kayane's Church, named after the leader of the aforementioned group of nuns. We had to leave early, because there was a wedding about to take place there. In some of these famous churches, there are multiple weddings per day at the same church. This was definitely the case the day we were there, because we saw one bride, and then not too long thereafter, another one.

On the way back, the tire on my bike went flat, (I was not the only one this happened to), and so I signaled the people running the bike tour. Rather than fixing it or replacing it with another bike (which is what I wanted them to do), they put the bike in the back of their truck and told me to get into the van (which was moving next to the bikers). I assumed this was because they didnt have any bikes in the truck that they could switch out my bike with. I later found out that there were indeed bikes that were good in there. So, after a riding in the van for a little while, at one of the stops, I got out of the van and asked if they could give me a different bike so I wouldn't have to sit in the van. And so they gave me another bike to ride for the remainder of the trip.

Sunday:

At GITC, I was been assigned the task of “teaching assistant”. However, the only class that I could be of any help is the Java class, which is taught only on sundays. All the other classes are on things I don't know anything about. So, after church, I went to GITC to help out. I was actually able to help the other students. Mainly with very simple problems such as syntactical errors in Hello World programs, and with errors caused by being in the wrong directory and therefore the JVM cannot find the right file. This is their first time ever coding anything in Java, so this was very easy to help out with it.   

Monday:

we had a special forum in the kitchen behind the birthright office.  learning how lavash is made.  Lavash is sort of like a tortilla, except flatter, Armenian and not Mexican, larger area, and made of like wheat or something instead of corn.  Anyways, they roll out the dough, throw it onto this like rounded thing to make it even flatter, stick it onto the wall of a cylindrical oven, and then do the same for the next piece of lavash, and when a piece of lavash has been in there long enough, they take it out.  They do this really fast, pipelining the entire process.  

Odzun, Kobayr, etc.

Since last post:

Wednesday:
(after posting my previous entry) We had a forum about the architecture in Gyumri.  We have a forum every wednesday, but I haven't mentioned the previous ones in this blog because they weren't very noteworthy.  Week 1:  human rights issues.  basically, the point is that laws protecting human rights aren't very well enforced here in Armenia.  Week 2:  crazy long-winded soviet-nostalgic feminist lady tells about how much better it was back in Soviet times, and only rarely stops talking in Armenian to allow Shoghik to translate for her.  Now, for week 3, we learn about something much more exciting: Architecture.  This time, we didn't need any translator, since the woman who was lecturing us is an American and speaks perfect English.  She showed us pictures of architecture and gave us physics-based reasons for why people built things the way they did.  Also, she talked about how poorly built the soviet buildings were (most of which fell down in the '88 earthquake).  She explained why it's actually a good thing that the ugly bank in the central square exists; because it makes people aware of how much better the other buildings are.

Saturday:
Excursion.  First we visited the Odzun monastery, which is located inside of a village.  I had already been there, with LCO.  Then afterwards, we went down to our second location called Kobayr.  In this location, we climbed down a cliff into a valley to reach the ruins of a small monastery, which was built into the side of the cliff.  The monks who worked there lived in cave-houses.  Actually, from an architectural standpoint, this is a very useful trick for what my professor, Dr. Siochi, would refer to as appropriate laziness.  Why build 4 walls, when you only have to make one wall around the opening of the cave, and then install a door?  Then, we climbed down even further into the river valley.  At the bottom of the valley is Deveri Get, the "river of the dragons" (this river is so called because the river is shaped like a dragon.

Sunday:
This time, I made sure to bring my liturgy book to the church service.  Last week, i didn't go to the service because I was with my host family in their parents village, and the previous week, I was in Yerevan.  So, halfway through the service I was able to find where in the liturgy book we were at, and after the service, I went with a few of my BR friends to visit a museum, and then to another monastery.
At the main exhibit of the museum were maps of historic Gyumri, as well as everyday items traditionally found in households in Gyumri.  In another exhibit were sculptures of heads of deceased people.  Some person whose name I do not remember carved sculptures of heads of people after they die, and this exhibit shows these sculptures.  The eyes are closed, and they appear to have a solemn dead expression on their faces.

Monday and Tuesday:
I'm still awaiting being transferred by Birthright to another volunteer position, other than GITC.  I had talked to Shoghik on Thursday about my problem with there being no work for me to do there, and she said she would try to transfer me elsewhere if they cannot find any work for me to do there.