Wait... what's in that bag?

I have been trying to get pictures loaded but its just not happening. Once I figure out the problem, I will post about 100 of them. Not really...

About two weeks has gone by, but surprisingly, it has been a really busy two weeks. Lots to talk about. I have been trying to load about ten pictures but for one reason or another it won’t load, so tomorrow I will try and load some more pictures. Pictures are fun.

Anyway, soon after my last posting, Kamran came to Armenia. We are long time friends from high school. I met him in India last year when I went there with Mike and this past February I went to meet him in Spain. On his way home he decided to stop by Armenia because as he states it “I wouldn’t have another reason to come.” My concept of time has gone out the window. Khashi gets irritated because I keep forgetting what day it is and need to constantly ask him what the day is. Also, since I have nothing but time on my hands, I don’t do anything unless I have to. Its weird because the last two years has been super busy with work at school, projects, traveling, etc. Being a has-been is hard.

The reason I am going into expansive detail about this is because on Tuesday I went out to the airport. I was so thrilled because I took a bus out there. Kamran’s flight was supposed to come in at 8:55 so I took the last bus out there. Since I was the last one to get off, the bus driver took me all the way to the arrivals area. I got inside the, temperature-wise, cool terminal. I was about thirty minutes early. I was still proud of myself for taking the bus to the airport (which was great because I saw a side of Yerevan I had never seen before). Anyway, I went to the arrivals board. His flight wasn’t up there. I was a day early. Idiot.

I took the taxi back…

The following day since I am supposed to let PC know where I am at all times, I emailed my Program Manager to let her know my new plans. My email subject line said “I’m an idiot”. Her response “yes.” She laughed after that because as an Armenian, she understands the pain it is to get out to the airport.

Anyway, good practice. The following day I made my way out there. His flight, three hours delayed. Sweet. So I just waited there, reading my book and listening to some music.

Kamran and I made a scene as he came out of the arrivals area. Everyone was looking at me because I was taping him coming out of the doors. This will be included in my next documentary because he is the first non-PCV American to come and visit me.

We had a good time. The first night we stayed at Khashi’s house. The next morning we woke up early and headed out to Martuni. As soon as we got there, I made grilled cheeses and then went to the village. There we went to Vardan’s house and also to some other people’s homes. He got to see a glimpse of my life there. We were only there for two hours. We went back to Martuni and met Hector there. Kamran and Hector had met in India the previous year when we were there. There we just hung out. The following morning, we went back to Yerevan and stayed at Jason’s house. The following day was July 2nd and I had planned for us to go down to Yeghegnadzor where Emily lives. Jason had just bought a Lada which is a Russian car and wanted to take it out. So, I talked to Elvira and Jason and they were really nice enough to give us a ride down south. We went to Jermuk. Jermuk is also a well known sparkling water company here. Jermuk, the city, is just amazing. It is like a city from a story. You have to drive on desolate roads for what seems to be about 8 miles before going over a crest to see a modern looking city sitting around a beautiful lake. The city is surrounded by mountains. Really nice.

There we met with some other PCVs and hung out for a couple hours. Jason and Elvira wanted to stay in Jermuk so Kamran and I went with the other PCVs back to Yeghegnadzor. The way we got back. Coincidentally, one of the PCV’s schools was having a teacher retreat and gave us a ride to the road. The whole eight miles back. It was a great help because if we had taken a taxi from Jermuk it would have been really expensive. We got back to Emily’s house where we hung out a bit before having the worst night of sleep I had ever had. Mike and I ended up sleeping on a thin blanket on the floor of Emily’s kitchen. Ha. Peace Corps memories.

The next day we took out time getting up and made our way to the river. We hung out by the river the whole day. We would walk up a ways and float down and do it again a couple times. On their way back to Yerevan, Jason and Elvira stopped to hang out a bit. That was cool. I should really give a lot of thanks because they were really cool taking us around. They even took us to Noravank, a church several miles off the main road, and let us join them for lunch at this interesting cave restaurant.
So, Jason and Elvira, again, many many thank yous.

The last day Kamran was here we came back to Yerevan and hung out with Khashi and some of his friends. Later on Jason came to join us. We stayed up a while since July 5th is a holiday here. We talked about several things until about 3am when Jason went back home. Really a good time. Kamran and I went to bed around 5am and then woke back up at 7am so that I could take Kamran back to the airport.

At the airport, Kamran drove me crazy. Basically, he had two bags and packed one bag to be 37kg and the other 13kg. His limit 23kg for one bag. Since he has some kind of status with Delta because he flew to Salt Lake when he had a real job, he said that he could take 2 bags. He flashed his status card. This card meant nothing to the Armenian check-in counter lady. She just said “what is this?” I tried to explain it but then she called her supervisor over. She came and got it sorted out and explained that he just gets a second bag for free. Regardless, his 37kg bag was way over the allotted weight limit.

So there were in the middle of the airport floor repacking his bag. He took a couple shirts out and put them in the other bag and asked me to take the bag up to the front again and have it weighed. Clearly not under or remotely close to the 23kg limit. I did it anyway. We weighed the bag. It was 29kg. The lady was being super patient and I said “please ma’am, please just let me friend go, I want him to leave.” Her response “I want him to leave too.” She said if we could get the bag under 25kg, that it was fine. So, there we were going through all this things, Kamran’s things flying everything. Whatever, I just wanted to go back and sleep. Anyway, finally we got the bag to be suitable enough to appease everyone. With 50 minutes left before the flight left and after all the hassle and the cool lady working with us, Kamran wanted his lounge access. Again Kamran showed another card which they had no idea what it meant. Her supervisor just said “give him whatever he wants.” So we waited there another five minutes for them to fill out some kind of lounge ticket. At this point, probably 20 minutes before boarding time. Sweet. He left, I went home and slept. Whatever.

The following day, I went out to Nor Hachyn, the new training center for the soon-to-be volunteers. It was site announcement day. It was weird being there because I remember when I got my site placement and remember last year when the A-18s got theirs. Actually quite a few memories came back from my time here.

Between site announcement and site visit, I went over to the US Embassy to help out with the re-entry seminar for the FLEX kids whom I taught last year that had already returned from their ten month study abroad. That was really crazy to see how much the kids had changed. They looked so different and were so much more confident. Some of the kids I couldn’t even recognize. I had this great sense of being so proud of these kids. I am excited to see what they get accomplished now that they are back. Elvira made it clear that just because they did their FLEX stint overseas, their obligations are not finished yet.

So I just hung out Martuni for a while and then when the new volunteer came, I waited and went straight to Madina, Hector’s village. There I hung out with him and his family as that was the second to last night he would be there. He leaves Armenia on June 13th. Its weird thinking about that. So we went around and hung out with his neighbors. One neighbor, his name which escapes me, is an artist (painting and wood carving). Really nice guy. Then we went over to his other neighbor’s house. After enough drinking to take down an elephant, we went back and passed out.

That evening I had also called Grandma. It is so nice talking to her because no one tells her that it is me calling. So when she answers the phone she starts screaming and I can hear the excitement in her voice. We chatted for a while and then she told me that her house had burned down in Madina. No one was living there but since the village people were storing hay and because of the intense heat, the hay had caught on fire. She didn’t seem that irritated by it because there was really nothing inside. It was just sad for her because that was where she had raised her children.

The next morning, I took the walk from his village to mine, maybe for the last time. I took pictures along the way. It still amazes me how beautiful this place is. I went to the school where I met the new volunteer, Noah, my director, Arpine, Vartan, and Arpine’s daughter. We talked about the new volunteer. Having only been here for one month, he was pretty clueless as to what was going on.

Go ahead and take a break because there is still a lot more you have to read. Matt, take Kelly out to get a cookout milkshake. Brandon, go ahead and keep reading because Im sure you are just waiting in an airport for your next flight. Mom and Dad, you should go and order Papa John’s Pizza and have that for dinner. I think that covers all the people that read this blog now…

That day I went around the village telling different people I was leaving and saying my last goodbyes. It was a lot easier than I thought. Probably because I broke up the goodbyes into segments.

I went to go see my host aunt and she said that she wanted me to meet someone. I met my host Dad’s brother. As a refresher, my host Dad was murdered when he was working in Moscow. It was like meeting a ghost. He didn’t even shake my hand but just hugged me thanking me for taking care of his brother’s family. Apparently I had missed something. I wish someone was there filming this event. I am a bit curious to know what my facial expression was like…

I picked certain people to see. There are so many people that I would like to say goodbye too but there are just too many. I picked those that did something to change, or better my experience in Armenia. Although I didn’t really get to know Alpert, I went over to his house. He was the man that really encouraged me and helped me when I was about to shoot someone over the bathroom project. He said that he had quit drinking which is a pretty huge deal here. He told me he was off the stuff for about 4 weeks. He used to be perpetually hammered and one day he said he woke up and realized that’s not how he wanted his grandchildren to remember him.

I continued my walk around the village stopping into several houses and saying goodbye. I called up Manok. He is one of the teachers at the school and we never got to hang out but he was always great from the beginning. When I didn’t know the language, he was really patient with me, trying to learn English words. He also told kids to behave themselves around me and to use simple words at first. He really went out of his way to help me out. I called him and said that I needed to see him. I met with him by the river. He was toting a bottle of vodka and three half-liter beers. Not what I needed. I was just thankful that Marine fed me before we met.

It was really nice though because we sat by the river and just talked about random things here and there. After a while a storm came so we had to go, but then the heavens opened and we just ran to Manok’s house. Vardan was worried about me so he sent his son to pick me up in his car since that was the first time I had been to Manok’s. It was really tough saying goodbye to him. He had been a good friend.

I went back to Vardan’s house. The new volunteer was already asleep so Vardan and I talked for a while. Its weird knowing that one more time I will be coming back to the village as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I don’t know when I will be back to Armenia next.

The next morning I woke up early and got on the bus with Hector. It was his last night in the village. He is going home. We went to Yerevan together and that’s when he said “I guess this is the last time I’ll be on this road.” It’s hard saying goodbye to a place, mainly the people. Hector was my closest sitemate and a good friend and its weird seeing him leave.

It has been great though spending more time with Khashi. Last night we just hung out, sitting around, talking about random things. Dad, I told him the story of when you were a student at Carolina and told him about the night you took your friends to a movie theatre and saw on of them as a shadow on the movie screen. Khashi really laughed about that.

Today, I went to get my toe X-rayed. Incredible. Twenty dollars for the whole thing. The US taxpayers (thank you) paid the twenty dollars, but I was thinking “wow, how fantastic”. That same X-ray in the States would have been about 500 dollars with about 500 sheets of paper to fill out. From the time I walked into the hospital I was out in less than 20 minutes with X-ray in hand. Amazing. Don’t worry everything is fine Dad. I just wanted to make sure my toe had healed correctly from when I hurt it a while back.

So from now on out, I will be down in Kapan hanging out in the south seeing some AIDS seminars. I am looking forward to that. After that, I will finish my PC paperwork, go stay with my training village family for a couple days, make a run out to my village one more time, and then get ready to hit the road. Looking forward to it.

Update on schools. I submitted all my applications and have now gotten back three secondaries. Really excited about starting school the following fall.

Sorry this update was a bit longer than the others but it has been more hectic than I thought it would be. Armenia as a whole is uncomfortably hot now… Geez.

Until next time…