So funny story, two nights after I had my bout of sickness, my host mom said that she was leaving to go to see her daughter in a city two hours away. My host brother went with her. She left me at home all alone. Oh sweet. So, they left around 2 o’clock and gave me a chance to just totally relax. First thing I did was I turned on my music and played them through my speakers compliments of Mr. Dickerson. I called my site mate, Terri, and told her that I was alone and the first thing she said was, “you should dance around your living room naked.” Interesting. Pat called me and told me he was walking to my village to get something from Terri and asked if I could bring over his harddrive, so while I was out that way, I went to get some tomato sauce to make some spaghetti. I got home and realized I didn’t know how to open the top to this jar. It is a cap for a jar that I have never seen before, so the first thing I did was call Terri, but she didn’t answer, so I called Cassie who is about 6 hours away from me. She has been here for a year, and I offered my query. This is how the conversation went:
Me: I can’t get the lid of this jar
Cassie: You should just get your Mom to do it
Me: Actually, my mom and brother left for two days
Cassie: You should totally dance around your house naked...
Anyway, I figured out how to open the jar and made myself the most awful plate of spaghetti I have ever made. Brandon knows that I cook pretty good spaghetti. I think it was the Russian tomato paste. Anyway, after I pondered for a while, I figured out that I had a really good opportunity here. I decided that I was going to take a shower and while the house was empty and I was naked already, why not turn up the music. Thats right, I danced around in the nude while listening to the pure and brilliant voice of none other than Sheryl Crow. Honestly though, I don’t really understand what all the hype was about. Really wasn’t that great.
So I went to school on Friday and did what I could. My stomach still hurt but figured I could make it to school. I got home around 2 and between the time of 2 and 9 I got no less than 8 visitors. All the neighbors knew that I was home alone and when you live in a village, you don’t leave a man down. I had people coming over cooking for me, telling me what I should be wearing, telling me that spaghetti isn’t good because it has tomatoes in it (which is true, my stomach did not feel very good after eating that crap), and making sure everything was all right. At first, I got really irritated by this because I just couldn’t enjoy my alone time and people kept coming over telling me (someone successfully lived alone-or with roommates-for 5 years, and alone for 6 months in Korea) that I needed to do things another way. Then the more I thought about it, I didn’t really know why I was getting irritated. My neighbors were coming over to help me. They were coming over to make sure their American hadn’t died of starvation. After my mindset changed, I really appreciated what they were doing for me. I mean, they would come over and have awkward conversation with me because they thought I was bored. This was fantastic. It is a great feeling to know that you are being looked after. So I want to say thank you to my neighbors who will probably not ever read this (which is good because they might never come and help me if they saw some guy jumping around naked in the living room).
This morning I decided that I needed to go into Martuni and get some stuff done. I took the 10:30 bus in and knocked out a good amount of stuff and made the 12:00 bus back. This was the first time I have gone and come from Martuni, so I felt a sense of accomplishment. I talked with this guy on the bus there and back (same guy). He is one of my aunt’s friends or something like that. He was really friendly. I always feel bad because everyone knows me and calls me by my name, but I have no clue who they are. I’ll work on that. After I got back, I didn’t do anything. I mean I didn’t do a single thing. I just sat around, took a nap, watched some shows, read, and that’s about it.
Tomorrow, I am going back to my first village to see my host family there. Im really excited about it. Im nervous too because its been over a month now. Nah, i’ll be fine. This upcoming week should go by pretty quickly. We have Monday off again because its Independence Day. Don’t really know what that means. I certainly don’t think its going to be beer, hotdogs, hamburgers, and fireworks... Ill get back to you on that.
On last note, it snowed on the mountains behind our house. Now we have snow capped mountains. Its pretty cool. Also, since I wrote the blog “Its always sunny in...Armenia” it has rained about every day which makes for walking around wonderful because all the water creates a nice cow poop/mud paste. Great.
Oh, I attempted to cut my own hair. I got this 2 foot by 1 1/2 foot mirror off the wall and put it across from another wall mirror and cut my hair. Oh man is the back of my head really uneven. I have been wearing a toboggan...
Until next time...
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