The Moon

I guess its getting to the point now that missing people is starting to become inevitable. Of course I still love it here, but it gets harder and harder to say goodbye to my parents during our weekly conversation on the phone. The people here always ask me if I miss my friends and family back and home and I always say “no” just because, although I do, saying “yes” wouldn’t help anything. They also say that for my parents, its a lot harder for them, than it is for me. (I can see my Dad reading this and rolling his eyes). At the same time, while I do miss my friends and family back home, I still don’t want to go back. I have established my life here. I have a job to do and that makes life here really easy. Time literally flies by. November 2nd. It is already November 2nd. It is hard to believe that. My neighbor next door said, “wow, you only have 21 months left.” Thanksgiving is only three weeks away and I can remember my Thanksgiving last year like it was yesterday. I could give you a minute by minute play back of what I did. I was in South Korea teaching English and after classes finished at 8. Damien and I went to “GartenBier,” The newest bar in the area and we ate “fajitas” and we drank some beer. That was my Thanksgiving last year but I guarentee that I won’t forget it.

Looking out my window, I can see a lot. The plants in the garden have been cut down and I can see to the road. I can also see the stars like I have never seen before, except maybe when I was in New Mexico at Philmont, a Scout Ranch where you backpack around the area... Anyway, tonight we have a full Moon and you can’t help but think about the Moon and what its been through. All the people that have seen the Moon. The same Moon that I see, is the same Moon that you see and in that respect, people are always connected, in a way, to everyone else who stares at the Moon. Its an interestingly simple idea.

Halloween was interesting this year. A lot of other volunteers went up to Berd in the north country to go to a party. I didn’t want to spend the money or the time to get up there because travel here is not like just hoping in a car and going where you want to go. So, instead, I went to Martuni and met some of my friends there. Hector, Pat, Terri, and Ashley from Yerevan came out to meet us. Earlier that day, my friend Vahram called me and said that his parents were in Yerevan for the night so we went to his house to just eat dinner. He cooked us dinner. It was great. We hung out with him and talked for a bit and then we came back home. It was a good night. I’m not a huge Halloween person so I was ok keeping things low key.

This week, nothing new is going to happen, which is nice. Nice and low-key. I have some work I need to keep up with, but other than that, things are good. My Armenian teacher’s husband came back from Russia. He has been away from home for 6 months so they were very happy to have him back. He is really nice and tonight I went over to their house to hang out for a bit. The whole family, including him speaks English rather well so one way or another, we understand each other.

There is this really interesting article that I read by the Washington Post if you are interested in reading it. Its called “Pearls Before Breakfast” written by Gene Weingarten, April 8, 2007. It is about being too busy in life to take notice of one in a lifetime experiences. Just wanted to throw that out there.

I guess that is it for now. Nothing really new to report. It is cold and windy here and my host mom finally decided to turn on the heater and now its warm. My host sister came down from her city to show my grandma her baby that she had in July.

Hope things are going well in the states. You jackasses that haven’t emailed me (you know who you are), write me back...

Until next time...