une semaine à Paris

Bonjour, mes amis.  Excusez mon français.  Cette semaine, J'étais à Paris pour rendre visite à mes cousins.  Is parlent anglais, arménien, et français.   Avec leur amis arméniens et avec moi, ils parlent arménien principalmente.  Mais ils parlent le dialecte occidental, et je parle le dialecte oriental (que les "hayastantsis" parlent en Armenie).  Nous nous comprenons mutuellement, mais si c'est dificile.  

 J'ai participé à quelques réunions et conférences avec mes cousins.  Leur amie, Ani -une professeure de la langue arménienne aux Etats Unis et restait chez eux en même temps que moi, a fait une presentation orale que j'ai écouté.  Elle a dit qu', "apprendre une langue est ouvrir une fenêtre au monde."  (mais elle a dit cela en arménien, pas en français).   Elle a dit aussi qu'afin d'enseigner une langue aux enfants, un instituteur doit parler avec les élèves, jouer avec eux, chanter avec eux.   Les élèves doivent apprendre à aimer le langue, avante d'apprendre à la parler .

Aussi, j'ai vu la Tour Eiffel, et Le Louvre (un très grand musée ), et l'eglise du Sacre Coeur (Church of the Sacred Heart) et bien d'autres monuments.

Et... Voilà!  Des photos!

un appareil très interessant! 

la Tour Eiffel

Maral, moi, Shushan, et Vahan (de gauche à adroit)

Aram joue le kanon

If I have made any mistakes, comment and correct my grammar, and I will edit it so that it will be corrected on the blog.  Thank you!

**Update***

merci à Achod Papasian, pour ses corrections grammaticalles!  

The end of my internship

Even though i was supposed to have completed my internship at YerPhI on Tuesday (as Wednesday was a holiday and Thursday afternoon I flew out to Paris), certain bugs in my program have caused me to have to bring some of my equipment back to the house so that I could work on it from home on Wednesday.  Thursday I came in to work, so that my coworker Mikayel would be able to drive me over to the airport during his lunch break.    And now I am here in Paris.  

        It's been a fun experience again in Armenia; not only fun, but also very helpful to the people I have been working with.  Until I came, they had never considered the idea of using the language C to program microcontrollers, and had been doing it the old fashioned way, using assembly language.  For those of you with lack of experience in computers, assembler is the Latin of computers.  I came in, and taught them a new way of doing things, and using this new technique, helped them create a control system for a furnace.  

The furnace, the control-board, and power supply system.

     This is in stark contrast to my previous internship last summer in Gyumri, where I did barely any work at all (no offense to my dear friends at GITC).  This time, my work was very important to my coworkers, and I feel a sense of accomplishment worthy of being placed on my resumé.  Perhaps I may be able to come back to work at YerPhI again in the future?  I cannot say yet about that.  

And here, I shall post some pictures from the last few weeks:

I'm riding a horse!  

Mourners gather and lay down flowers at the Genocide memorial on April 24th

Candles lit in the Geghart Monastery (it's not as dark as it looks, it's just that I put the shutter speed very fast so that less light enters the camera.  it looked cooler this way)  

The opera house, and a concert taking place in front of it

Me and my extended host family, only a few nights before I left.

datev, dilijan, ejmiatsin, the past three weekend excursions

Ok, so I've been procrastinating on writing another blog entry.  I've been busy with work for the physics institute, work for my job at Jefferson Lab in the states (especially with the software review coming up), my Armenian language lessons, US federal income taxes, my thesis, very informal French lessons with my friend Allegra, and of course facebook.  So, I'll tell a little about each of the excursions that happened these past few weekends:

three weekends ago:
We went to the castle monastery Datev, which is located next to the edge of a cliff.   I had been there once before (look through my blog history; i think it was on the way back from Karabagh last summer), but it was very foggy last time and I couldn't see the view of the valley below.  The world's longest tramway leads to Datev from the other side of the valley, but we didnt use it because it was out of order, so we just drove there via bus instead.  We stayed overnight at a village, where we cooked khorovats  (barbecue) and ate it with the locals for dinner.

the fortress monastery of Datev

khorovats (barbecue)

sheep on the side of a hill near the city of Goris,

which we visited on the way back from Datev.

A cave near Goris

two weekends ago:

We visited the city/town of Dilijan, saw a museum there, and went to a potters shop.  I made a mug there which I am later going to sinter using one of the furnaces at the lab.  We also stopped by a pond, where we rented paddle boats.  

my friends Natalie and Alex

i forgot the name of this monastery

Because  I messed up while using the wheel and made

a hole in the side of the mug, I continued the rest of it

free-form, and thus it looks more like a sculpture than

pottery.  

this past weekend:
We rode bikes from Yerevan to the city of Ejmiatsin, which is kind of like the equivalent in the Armenian church to the Vatican, and we visited three of the churches there.  (since I didnt have my camera with me, I'm unapologetically posting the ones from the time I did this same trip last summer)

the vestuble of St.  Gayane's church

a painting of St. Hripsime in the church named after her.

my friends who were on the ejmiatsin trip last summer.  None of them were on this trip last weekend.

Now back to work on other stuff.  

Gyumri and Marmashen

This blog entry is kind of late, but I will post the one about this weekend... later this week.

Last summer, I and a few other volunteers lived in the 58th district of the city of Gyumri.  Most of us have gone back home, to the US, Argentina, etc.  There were only 3 of us remaining of our Gyumri group who were still in Birthright two weekends ago, when we revisited this city two weekends ago.

a market area

Our friend Shoghik (who was the coordinator of Birthright in Gyumri last summer) joined us to help give us the tour.   We saw some of the familiar parts of the city, such as the Yot Verk (Seven Wounds) Church, Vardanants Hraparak, etc.  However, there were some places in Gyumri that I had never seen before this trip there. For instance, there is one park in Gyumri where they have two caged lions, a male and a female, living with barely any space to move around inside their cages.  A very unfortunate lifestyle for these creatures.   We decided to take matters into our own hands.  No, we didnt take a hack saw and cut open the cage to free them (although I had suggested it).  Instead, we pasted posters all over the wall around the park (the words on there translate to "Is this life that I'm living?  shameful!")

inside the church of the Seven Wounds (Yot Verk)

Is this life that I'm living?  

one of the lions

After lunch we went to the nearby Marmashen monastery, and relaxed by the frozen-over river just past the monastery.  As is usual on birthright excursions, we threw snowballs at one another.   I also threw some large rocks into the river to see if they would break the ice.  The ice didn't crack, but, Asqanaz, one of our coordinators told me I shouldn't attempt to walk across because he still didn't think it would be safe for me to do so.

part of the ruins at Marmashen

the remaining church at Marmashen

the river (covered in ice and snow)

Even though there were three of us on the excursion who were in last summer's "Gyumretsi group", I was the only one who stayed behind to visit my former host family from last summer in the 58th district.  It was nice to see them again.  I also visited some of my former coworkers at GITC where I had been assigned a volunteer position last summer.  A careful reader who has read my blog entries from last summer will note my careful choice of words in the previous sentence.

On sunday morning,  I attended the church service at the church, and then headed towards the bus station, and then walked the rest of the way.  As much as it felt happy to be  "home" as I walked around Gyumri, the way towards the bus station to leave the town felt sorrowful as I passed through the market area where many things were sold:  fresh fruits and vegetables, souvenirs some appliances, a few bikes built for children, etc.  Finally, I reached the bus station and took the bus to Yerevan.  Don't get me wrong.  Yerevan is a nice city, but it doesn't feel like home to me like Gyumri does.  

The sun setting at the end of the 58th district.

Oh, and on another note, some of you might be wondering about my changed relationship status on facebook.  I had first met my now-girlfriend Kiana while I was back in the US, 4 months ago, which was only two months before I left for Armenia.  Prior to my departure, she and I had talked about the idea of dating, but I told her I'd rather wait until I get back to the states (partly because I didn't want to start off the relationship long distance and 9 time zones away from one another).  We have kept up with one another, talking to each other on skype twice every week, and it became apparent to me that a long distance relationship wouldn't be nearly as bad as I had imagined it would be.  A month ago, I mentioned this to her, and she said she wasn't ready to decide.  About a week ago, she and I were talking again, and she said, if she didn't take me up on my offer now, she would regret it later, and so we decided together that to make it official and public on facebook.  It will still be 2 months till I see her in person though.

lake Sevan.

Lake Sevan:

On Saturday, we went on an excursion to Lake Sevan.  Our first stop was Sevanavank, a monastery built on an island (now a peninsula, due to the draining of the lake in Soviet times in a failed attempt to increase farmable land.  Gosh, freaking idiots!).   While in Yerevan the snow has mostly melted away (hopefully no more snow in Yerevan until next summer), this is not the case throughout much of the rest of Armenia.  There are steps leading up the hill to get up to the monastery, which I have hiked up twice before (once on a previous excursion with Birthright, and the time before was with LCO).  However, you may have guessed why this was more difficult than before.  Yep, snow was covering the steps up to the monastery, making it more dangerous to climb up there.  I went inside briefly, lit a candle, prayed, and left the building.

the way up to Sevanavank

the view from the top of the monastery

 
While some of our other friends were throwing snowballs outside the monastery, my friend Arpine and I went past the monastery, through some areas which were in some places about 2 feet deep with snow to go to the end of the peninsula.  This was her first time taking that trail along the ridge, so I led the way since I had been there before.  On both sides of us was the lake, and if we were to slip, we would probably either die of the sudden break at the end of the fall, or freeze to death from the lake.  At the end of the peninsula is some kind of abandoned house where part of the roof is missing.  We then proceeded to climb onto the roof and take pictures from there, and then trudged back through the deep snow to meet back up with the rest of the group.

snowball fight outside Sevanavank

me on the roof of the building at the top of the peninsula

my friend Arpine also at the top of the peninsula.  

Later on the excursion, we visited the Noraduz cemetery, the Hayravank monastery (which also overlooks the lake) and a nearby hospital, and then had lunch at the house of a family that our coordinator Sevan (who has the same name as the lake)  had only 48 hours earlier asked if we could crash at their place and eat there.  After eating and plenty of drinking (in my case, juice), the family led us to start dancing inside of their dining room with only about two meters of space between the wall and the chairs at the table.  We later got on the bus and rode back to Yerevan, and (this is kind of a Birthright tradition) we were dancing in place in the aisle of the bus while it's moving on the highway.

Some khatchkars at Hayravank

the Noraduz cemetery

Traditional dancing of Armenia

On wednesday night, Birthright held a forum where we learned about the history of Armenian traditional dances, and then got to learn how to do some of these dance moves.  Unlike in America where people dance to have fun, celebrate, or to entertain others, the dancing in Armenia traditionally has very ritualistic and symbolic purposes to it.  There are dances for many types of occasions, some of which may sound unusual to one who is not brought up in that culture.  There are dances that are done for weddings, as well as ones for funerals, dances done by soldiers to prepare for battle, dances done after battle, as well as dances for the whole community to participate in.
Also, there are several taboos on who is allowed to dance certain dances.  Only soldiers are allowed to dance military dances; while at weddings, the guests who are divorced or widowed are not allowed to dance.  Only the "community" dances are everyone allowed to dance.

Also, according to the guy giving the lecture, there has been a historic correlation between dancing before battles, and victories at the battles.   The Roman and Greek empires declined when music and dance lost their meaning and turned towards entertainment purposes.  The soviet union introduced ballet into the Armenian repetoir to break the fighting spirit of the fighting dances.

Completely ignoring the taboos of the dances that he had just given us about who was allowed to dance what sorts of dances, the instructor taught us how to do a military dance, a wedding dance, and a community dance.  Let's see, I don't think there were any soldier among us, so I don't think any of us were supposed to be allowed to dance that dance, but he had us learn it anyways. I don't think there were any among us who are divorced or widowed in our group (this group consists of people who are mostly in our early to mid 20's), so nobody that I know of would have been excluded from that dance. ANd the community dance, of course, everyone was allowed to dance that anyways.

the move

Yesterday at work, my boss Suren told me that he and his family had agreed to let me move in with them, and that they had talked to birthright about this, and all they needed now was my approval.  So I said yes.  Internet at the house + allowed to borrow his son's guitar (I didnt bring my own) + I had met Suren's family before and they are nice.  And so, this morning I moved in to their house, located 15 km from where I was staying at before (I think this is how far it was; if I remember correctly, it's 100 dram per km via taxi).  Ok, yes, it's not close to anything, but I can hopefully carpool with Suren to/from work, and use a marshutka (very cheap mini-bus) to go to the birthright office and other places.  Or I could buy a bike, if I can find somewhere that sells bikes.  

Also, Gevork (Suren's son) told me that I should post pictures inside my blog, so I'm doing that right now.  

my new room

the view from the back porch

 On a clear day, you may be able to see mt Ararat more clearly than you can see it here.  (it is easier to see with the naked eye than with the camera today.  You may have to use a few filters on photoshop to make it more visible)

what I actually do at work: shovelling snow off the roof

Yesterday at work, we had a little meeting about "interrupts" and their usage in microprocessors.  During the meeting, there was an unintentional demonstration of an in-real-life interrupt: somebody came in and told us that the roof had started leaking water into one of the rooms where our important equipment was located.  So, we had to stop the meeting and cover the machinery with protective plastic sheets.  We had determined that this water was from the snow that was melting on the roof, so Suren, Mikayel, Gevork and I went up on the roof to shovel the snow off of there.  We took turns because there was only one rope (one person could be tied to each end of it), and two shovels.  Finally, Suren attached a sheet of metal under the roof to divert the flow of the water, preventing further leakage into the building.  He told me afterwards "the rope is just for decoration, it wouldnt have supported any of our weights".  Hopefully he was just joking about that.

at last, an excursion out of the city

Since I arrived in Yerevan, I hadn't left the city until this past weekend.  Mainly because the excursions had been cancelled two weekends in a row.  Even though it cost me about the equivalent of 10$ to go to three places I had been to thrice before (Khor Virap, where St. Gregory had been imprisoned (I'm not writing Gregory's story again, read my previous posts from last summer) ; Noravank "the monastery with the stairs"; and Areni village which is famous for its wine and for a cave wherein was found the oldest shoe ever discovered), I still considered it worth it to go on the excursion.  I had never seen the hills of Armenian country side so covered with snow.  Our friend Achod, who was staying in Karabagh, joined us for the excursion.  Throughout the excursion, we all threw snowballs at one another.

On Sunday night, I was invited to my boss Suren's house for dinner, and I met his family.  His son-in-law, Mikayel, I already knew, since he also worked with us at the lab.  I also met Suren's daughter, Anahid (who is married to Mikayel), his son Gevork, his grandson who is also named Gevork, his mother, his wife, and his son's girlfriend Armineh.  Hopefully I got the geneology all correct.  The older Gevork, Anahid, Armineh and I were all playing songs on the guitar together, jamming out to "knocking on heaven's door" and other songs.  

tour of the orphanage, etc.

in 1999, my aunt Pam and my uncle Charlie went to Armenia to adopt two twin girls who were only a few months old, named Karineh and Narineh, from an orphanage just outside of Yerevan.  Since they didnt know much Armenian, they got some help with their translations from a lady named Siranoush who worked for the adoption agency.  They have kept in contact with her since then.
.  
Now skip over to the present:  2012.  When I told my aunt and uncle that I was going to Armenia and staying in Yerevan, they told me that they wanted me to meet up with their friend Siranoush, and give her a gift.

This past sunday I met up with her, and she gave me a tour of the orphanage where my cousins were adopted from.  She told me that a lot had changed there since they were adopted.  (I took a few pictures that I will post on facebook at a later point in time.)  This particular orphanage was meant for kids 0-5 years old; once a child is above 5 years of age, he/she is moved to another orphanage elsewhere in Armenia.  Afterwards, we met up with her 15 year old son, Andranik, and the three of us went to dinner at The Club. I ordered a type of soup called manti, which contains small pieces of meat wrapped in dough.

Later on that evening, I went with some of my friends to a concert where my friend Alin from Argentina was singing and playing songs on the guitar in Spanish, Armenian and English.  I invited Siranoush and Andranik to come to the concert, but they wouldnt let Andranik come because he's only 15 years old and the concert was at a bar.

A typical day in Yerevan:

I get out of bed, and my host mother gives me bread and jam to eat for breakfast, as well as tea.  No cucumbers, no tomatoes; those things were plentiful last time I was in Armenia and served every meal.  I put on my inner jacket, my coat, my scarf, my gloves and my boots.  Ready to walk out the door.
The snow falls down, covering the ground to half a meter in height (and counting), except where some brave soul has shoveled it out of the way.  My jacket also gathers snow as I walk to the bus stop, and from where i get off the bus to my building at the institute. A crazy dog barks at me along the way, on the inside of the institute's gateway.  There is a heater inside my office, but it is not very powerful, and I have to keep my coat and scarf on inside.  Welcome to the winter of Armenia.
My boss, Suren, had assigned me to program a chip so that it makes numbers appear on an LED display.  This, being part of a bigger project that I'd be working on for the next 3 months.  I had prior experience with micro-controller programming, so this didn't seem like a hard task.  Suren and his colleagues seem to take an old-school approach to their programming (by using assembly language exclusively) however, with a simple google search, I was able to find the C compiler plugin for the IDE that they had been using, and Suren asked me how to do the same.
After work, I take the bus back to my neighborhood and walk to the birthright office for Armenian language lessons.  Again, getting covered with snow.  During lessons, I discover just how much I have forgotten since the last time I was in Armenia, and how my grammar has degraded.
After that, I get on my computer and, using the birthright office's internet, I Skype with my friend back in the states.  Then, I have dinner with a few of my fellow birthright volunteers and walk back home, walk up to the fourth floor, knock, and my host mother opens the door, and i get ready for bed.  The cycle continues…

The past few days

A lot has happened over the past few days:

Thursday:

Sue and I found the entrance to Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross station (it actually exists, see facebook pics).  After writing the Harry Potter books, Kings Cross station created a tribute to the HP series:  a solid wall with a sign that says "Platform 9 3/4" on it, with a luggage cart that is attached to it (to give the illusion that it is going through the wall.  

Friday:

I took the 5:40 AM chunnel train under the English Channel, to reach Paris, where Sue's sister, Ginny lives along with her husband Aram, their daughters Maral and Shushan, and their son Vahan.  (This is the same cousin Vahan whom I had not recognized on my first morning in Yerevan on my previous trip to Armenia).  I only spent one night in Paris (since I would be spending a whole week in Paris on the way back), but it was a fun visit, although it was unusually cold for Paris.  The city is not used to subfreezing temperatures.  Ginny ended up giving me one a scarf for me to keep and to bring with me to Yerevan, where it would only get colder.  We attended a concert of Anatolian music on a docked boat in the canal where Vahan works.  Vahan normally lives in a small bedroom inside the boat, however the night I was staying there, he stayed with us at his parents house, because the pipes inside the boat were frozen and he couldn't take a shower onboard the boat.

Saturday:

after lunch with the family, Ginny drove me to the airport to fly out to the airport.  Flew out to the moscow airport ...

Sunday 

... and from there to the Yerevan airport, arriving at my homestay at around 5:30 AM.  Slept almost all day on sunday (getting up only to eat).  Found out that the next day I would be moving to a different homestay, and failed to sleep most of the night.  

Monday:

orientation, paperwork, blah blah, blah.  Then had dinner with my friend Allegra at the tashir pizza downstairs from the birthright office.  afterwards, i brought my stuff to my new homestay, and then went to another volunteer's house to meet with the rest of the group for a film night.  

Tuesday = Today:

nothing really happening today.  Tomorrow I start work at the Yerevan Physics Institute.  

Got into W&M!, (and update on London

Ok, I had mentioned that I will post when I get into William and Mary, and today, they have sent me the acceptance letter via email.

Updates from London:
Since my last blog update, I have been to three museums (the Horniman museum, the British museum and science museum).  On Sunday, I to the church with Sue, and then afterwards played ping pong with a hayastantsi* guy named Tigran who is about the same age as me.  Two days ago, I went with Sue to her workplace, where she works as an anthropologist, researching the Armenian people.  Last nigth I ate take-out from a fish and chips store, which is basically like a fast food place except that they don't have seats in there and they only have carry out.  I'm going to post the pictures from my adventures in London on facebook soon.  As in before I arrive in Armenia.  I'll let you, the readers, keep me accountable to that.


*hayastantsi = Armenian person born in Armenia, as opposed to spyurkahay, which is what I am:  an Armenian of the diaspora.  

first two days in london

Day 0:  arrived at my cousin Sue's house in London at almost midnight.  Her  16 year old son Stepan was already asleep, as he had school the next day.  My other cousin, Maral, who is Sue's sister Ginny's daughter, was there at the house, but she was going to leave the next morning to return to Paris.  Day 1: slept until around 3:30 PM (due to jetlag), and nothing blogworthy happened.

Day 2 was when things became kind of exciting.

I went downtown with Sue and Stepan.  Stepan and I went to the London Dungeon, which is a sort of a combination between a haunted house and a history museum.  Basically, there are people in costumes telling you about the creepiest, bloodiest, and grossest things that happened in the history of London, but they would also try to scare you as well.  One of the actresses was teaching us about how she tortures people, and showing us the tools she uses for that.  Featured in this tour were the plague, some stuff about the 1666 London Fire, Bloody Mary, and of course, Jack the Ripper.  While being full of things that startle people, it was also very interesting from a historical perspective as well.  Props to Kiana for having suggested that I go there.

That evening, Sue and I went to a viewing of a short film.  I forget the name of the film, but it was about an Armenian oud player named Armenak who goes to Istanbul to search for a lost piece of his family history.  Initially he hates the city, for what it reminds him of in his family history (for what happened there to his grandfather in the genocide).  In the city, he finds the house which used to be his grandfather's oud shop, (his grandfather was a master oud-maker), and becomes friends with the Turkish woman and her daughter who live there.
After the film, we had a discussion panel about the film, and what it represents.  The audience consisted of both Armenians and Turks alike.  The director, and the lead actor were both there.  Sue was leading the discussion panel.  Many topics were brought up about relations between the Turkish and Armenian people.  The film, which was made by a mix of Armenian and Turkish people, required the crew, including the director himself, to come to terms with both sides of the issue at hand.  I learned some very interesting things from this.  First, all of the most respected Turkish scholars agree that the Genocide did take place.
Secondly, there was a lot I didn't know about the late Hrant Dink, an Armenian journalist who was a citizen of Turkey, who was an advocate of reconciliation of the Armenian and Turkish people, and was assassinated in 2007 by a nationalist.   What I didn't know was that while he advocated Turkish recognition of the genocide, he opposed the movements of the diaspora trying to make other countries such as the US and France recognizing the genocide.  His views on the foreign recognition of the genocide alienated him from other Armenians.  His reasoning resounds what Tip O'Neill said about how "All politics is local"*.  It's Turkey's responsibility to recognize what they had done.  Not America's.  Not the UK's.  Not France's**.  No, it is Turkey's responsibility.

*What Tip O'Neill meant to say was "All politics is loco".  just kidding
**Rant about the recent French legislation pending since it is 3:34 AM here and i need some sleep.  Tomorrow I'll probably post the rant about the french legislation as a comment to this entry.  

the blogging resumes/return to Armenia

When I returned from Armenia, I claimed that that would be my last blog entry.  However, I have decided to go back to Armenia again this spring semester.  I am currently in the Dulles Airport in DC, 1 hour exactly from departure, on my way to London, where I will be visiting my relatives for a week on the way to Armenia.  This time in Armenia, I will be there for a little over 3 months, (adding  the time in London on the way there, and the time in Paris on the way back, and a conference in NYC immediately after returning to the states, it totals to being gone for 4 months).  I am going to try to figure out a way to change the title of the blog to something more general than "Hayastan: summer 2011" to something more general like "my journeys across the world," except less cliché, while keeping the same URL on blogspot that I currently have.  I will post more at a later point in time.

What has happened since my last journey?
1)  I have applied to the college of William and Mary, and will find out first week of February if i get in.
2)  I continued my work at Jefferson Lab.
3)  I found out that my masters thesis requires more revisions than could be done prior to leaving for this trip, and therefore I will have to work on revisions while in Armenia, and then defend it when I get back.
4)  I became very good friends with a very nice young lady named Kiana, whom my aunt had introduced me to (or, to borrow the colloquialism, "hooked me up with".  lol.)
5)  I went to New York City on a mission trip last weekend to hand out food and clothes for the homeless.
6) J'ai appris un peu du français avec une livre que j'ai acheté de mon vasin à une vente de garage pour deux dollars.

#6 was a very good investment, and it will come in handy when I am à Paris.  Noctis Wolf, whom I haven't met in person in a little over a year, claims there is a conspiracy behind #6.  I will make mention on this blog as well as on facebook as soon as get into W&M.

And I am posting this right before I get on the plane.