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.