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.