Saturday night, Jon, who is an A-16 who lived in my house last year came by and joined us in Solak for the July fourth thing. It was really nice meeting him. The guy that lived next door to him, Jay, also came and we three along with Zhora stayed up till about 2am talking. It was good to have Jay and Jon here because they both spoke the language pretty well after one year and I could get some conversation in with my host family. It was interesting talking to them about everything. Anyway, so I went to bed around 2:30am and the following morning which was a Sunday, I was to get up and be at the school at 10. We wanted to go up to the church that was at the top of the mountain. The picture should be included. If it isn’t then, it didn’t load. Crap. (again). The person Im with is Megan. She is from Montana. I always make fun of her because the whole state only has 800,000 people and she has spent the last couple months before Peace Corps helping move sheep. Ha, sheep. (no, Dad, I am not making fun of people from Montana or their lifestyle... just Megan). Anyway, so we told our LCFs that we wanted to do this and they said that we had to take a native with us, so we asked Armen if he wanted to go with us. Armen is a 22 year old that works at the school. Kind of like a handyman right now since it is summer and he doesn’t need to be at his university studying. Anyway, he agreed. Now, as an aside, I must add that there is regular time and then there is Armenian time. Armenian time is about an hour of 4 late. Fortunately, Armen was only an hour and ten minutes late meeting us at the school. He brought three of his friends. This was hilarious. We stopped at the store first to get some candles to light at the church. In addition to this, they each bought two bottles of beer (the 24 ounce kind). They looked at us with a funny look because they thought it was weird that we were drinking water. (In Armenia people don’t drink just water because they think it will make you fat. In a way this is correct because of the tremendous amounts of salt that they add to their meals which in turn bloats them and adds some water weight). Anyway, we were looking at them with weird looks because they were drinking beer and nothing else and they were looking at us because we were drinking water. Cultural differences.
So we start on our way after we buy our “supplies”. We start following them at a snails pace. Jeremy, if you’re reading this, you would not have been happy at how slowly they were going and how many stops they made. You would have been proud that I brought water? (I didn’t know how to finish that thought). Anyway, it took us about 2 and a half hours to hike maybe 4 miles. Maybe 5. And the terrain wasn’t too bad. We just took so many breaks because Harry, Larry, and Moe decided to drink beer while they were hiking. The best part was when we got close to the top and they started to argue with each other on which way to go. We got lost... We basically went straight up for about 100 yards. Like to the point where if I didn’t use my hands, I would have fallen backward. (Dad, don’t worry, it was a bunch of vegetation and it wasn’t dangerous). So after we hike up this thing we get to a road. Paul decides he doesn’t want to take the long route and goes straight up. The three guys with us (Harry, Larry, and Moe) started freaking out so we just left Paul to go up another steep grade. I personally would have followed Paul but didn’t want to piss of the guys leading us up there. Finally I told them politely (believe it or not Amanda), that I was going to up another steep part and told them when I got to the top whether it was a better method than going all the way around . I thought it was so they followed me and we were at the top. It was pretty funny because everyone made it to the top except for one of the three Armenia guys who was kind of rotund. The other guys were making fun of him because Megan made it up with little to no trouble and in a culture were women are supposed to be fragile, it was cool that Megan made it up and the guys had some problems. It kind of breaks that ideal. At least in their minds. We got to the top of the mountain and there was the church. I don’t remember the exact date but I think I remember mentioning before that it was built in the 8th century. It was still standing. We lit our candles and admired the view. Then we saw that some people were having a picnic. The three guys explained there was holy water so we followed them over to the picnic area. It was a nice fountain with really nice cold water flowing from a man made structure. I pretty much took a shower in the cold water because a) it felt really cool, b) I got all the sweat off my body c) what better way to make new friends then washing yourself off in front of new friends. Anyway, they invited us to sit down and eat. That was probably the best pork barbeque I have ever eaten. In Armenia, Vodka is kind of way to join a circle so we all had to drink. Again we all thought this was strange because who drinks hard liquor on top of a mountain behind a church on sunday with another 2 hours to walk down the mountain. Well, ill tell you... we did. (Dad, don’t worry I didn’t get drunk, or close to it). After a couple more bites, we walked the rest of the way down the mountain and made it down in time to get railed by really cold wind and rain. Ironically, we found refuge in the Solak church. We stayed there for a long while and then finally made it back home. I was exhausted. I ate and then pretty much went to bed.
This morning we left at 830 to go into Yerevan. We were going to go to learn about some of the NGOs mainly supported by USAID. It was really interesting. We went to one that worked to try and help Armenians see. They actually have a mobile surgery room to do the operations in the different regions of Armenia. They had a really touching documentary about their program. It was a bit of a tear jerker to see grandparents able to see their grandchildren for the first time. Or a school boy who couldn’t see finally get to see because he was given a pair of eye glasses. Again, things that we Americans take for granted, Armenians don’t have. Really interesting. Our next NGO was NOVA and basically what they do is educate women on pregnancy. I was really excited about this. They gave us a lot of information on the subject matter. Apparently, village people think that all Americans are more liberal about things (which we are compared to Village Armenians) and will come up to an American (male or female) and talk about this kind of thing because they know they can get good reliable information from us in addition, they don’t really have to worry about us gossiping to someone else because a) we don’t really know anyone to gossip to and b) our language sucks. I was pretty psyched about getting a guitar today but one of the girls got sick and we thought it would be better to get her home. She really wasn’t that bad but I was tired too.
I did laundry today. You never really know how dirty your clothes are until you wash them and look at the color of the water. When the water is a green/brown color you know you are working hard (or you’re just really gross). Probably the second.
Tomorrow is another central day and then Wednesday we meet our permanent site host families. On Thursday we go to our permanent sites with our new host family and we start to integrate. We meet our counterparts and start to figure out what the hell we are supposed to do in the next two years. Oh my. Im excited about it but know that there is a slim chance that my next family will be as good as the one that I have now. I totally lucked out, but who knows.
I guess thats it for now. Ill let you know how things go in five days. You better be prayed that my bathroom situation is not as bad as it is here. Honestly though, I would rather have a great family and a crappy (no pun intended) bathroom than a nice bathroom and a crappy family. A hot shower in the morning would be nice though...
Until next time.
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