"an umbrella!"

there is so much to say...


i guess i'll start with work. i'm working at shoghakat, a tv station, and also at the women's ressource center. shoghakat is actually a religious television station, financed by the etchmiadzin. i had absolutely no clue. so it's not really related to the media. apparently no other station wanted to take in a "non-armenian" and i can see why. the stations are definitely government-regulated. it's too bad, though... my first day at shoghakat i was shown around, and on the second day i was asked what i want to do. basically i think i'll just do some editing, because to be honest they haven't prepared any work for me. i actually felt as though they had no idea who i was when i got there, or what i was supposed to do. so i might do some editing...


i actually fell asleep on my second day. i went to the bathroom just to be able to sleep, and i fell asleep for 45 minutes in one of the control rooms. the night before i'd slept for about three hours. adrina and i went to bed but couldn't stop talking, and then at 4.30am jirair came in saying he had bed bugs and didn't know what to do. he slept on our couch, but then adrina and i got paranoid that there were bugs crawling all over us, so we got up and inspected our beds to make sure we were fine. i slept from five to eight.


ahem, back to work. the women's ressource center is amazing. i'm very impressed. adrina and i are both working here two or three times a week. she will be giving a dance/yoga class to women over 40, and i will be giving a french class. we're also going to be working on a magazine they have called feminist. i love this place. they are a lot more progressive than i expected, and in a country that won't even fund them. oddly enough they get fudning through norwegian and swedish companies who fetched them out! i'm going to be interviewing the der hair (priest) at shoghakat and probably the head director about women in the country and so on and so forth for the magazine. this should be really interesting, there is a lot to do here, unlike shoghakat.


so far we've had a traditional dance class (which is once a week), an armenian class (twice a week), and a history lecture. the language class was great - we are separated into two groups, one for retards and one for geniuses such as myself, and even the genius class is challenging. the history lecture was interesting, to say the least. armen ayvazyan is a well-known armenian historian and we got into a very heated discussion about what it takes to be armenian. he's got a bunch of criteria, and he doesn't have the balls to come out and say it out loud but basically 3/4 of our 18-person group is not armenian in his opinion. he's kind of offensive, arrogant, and attacking, and kept telling us we were wrong. we have another lecture in a few weeks. that should be damn interesting.


we've been going to restaurants but i'm sick of it because we always end up eating non-traditional food. so a couple of us have "complained." also, the traditional food here is not the same as what we have at home. what we eat at home is considered to be influenced by the turks. what they have here is influenced by the russians. so there's a lot of boring salads and coleslaw and chicken... coleslaw. in armenia. seriously. last night a couple of us went to shushi, a dance group, and it was cheesy so we left.


a lot of people have told me to stay away from the water, because i might get sick. however i've been drinking tap water and i'm fine, it actually tastes good. in fact, excuse me for being so graphic but it's the complete opposite of diarrhoea, and i'm not alone. i feel like i'm getting poisoned or something.


we've also been encountering problems with curfew. yes, we have curfew, midnight, because we are such a big group and they need to know where we are. if we're five minutes late they are supposed to close the gate and have us spend the night outside. so far this hasn't happened (although some have been late) and it's a source of conflict because we want a later curfew at least on friday and saturday.


enough about what we've been doing. about yerevan... i have to admit that i am not that impressed. despite the mountains and hills, the abundant greenery and the architecture composed of pink rock (which is typical armenian), there is something lacking. yerevan itself is not charming. i have not had an illuminating "oh my god my ancestors were here" moment, not yet at least. i'm actually really looking forward to getting out of yerevan. the way people dress here... it pains me to see it, and pains me even more to say it, but it's just not classy at all. the girls wear make-up and heels at all times and it just doesn't look good. the boys are guido's. the obvious explanation to me is that they had been so repressed by communism that they just went the other way completely. i don't even know if they think westerners dress like that, or what, but it's just not pleasant to see. i can't wait to get into the mountains and just elsewhere.



the first few days were much more intense. now everyone wants to have fun and recreate what we had so bad that it's just a dud. i haven't really spent a moment alone since i got here... i wonder when it'll get to me.

"come on, baby!"

bari yegak!


the flight from prague to yerevan was so short. i slept most of it, and i arrived at 4am. hasmik, our coordinator, was waiting for me with andrew, an australian armenian who got there about the same time. he'd been travelling for three days! azniv stays with us at all times at the dorm, which is gorgeous. we've got three floors, and a view. the main floor, the sexy ladies' floor and the sexy dudes' floor. i'm saying sexy because we are probably the best-looking bunch of armenians ever. actually scratch that, we're probably the best-looking bunch ever, anywhere. kohar takes care of the food and stuff, she's got a super short mullet and it's fire-engine red. I KNOW.


yesterday was vartavants, an armenian holiday i'd never heard of. i'm going to say it's religious to be safe but to be honest we never even made it to the church. basically it involves pouring water over yourself (i'm assuming to wash away your sins? useless for me, obviously). so you can imagine how happy the kids get. they were in groups with reserves of water and would run after us with buckets of water. we were all drenched head to toe. the best part is having to walk it all back, and the same crazy kids run after you. they wait in alleyways and when they see a dry person walk by they yell "YEGEK!!!!" ("come!!") and go nuts. it felt like a mutiny. the best part was when someone dropped water from a balcony onto us, and instead of it being a seven-year-old boy, it was an old lady.


when we got back, kohar had prepared some stuffing for dolma and to quote jirair "misse khotetsink" (we shoved the meat). mam i'm sorry but your dolma is whatever. the president of AGBU came over and we had supper, and we went out to a really crappy club called opear, but had an amazing time. we got to bed at four-ish. we danced at home, played poker, joked around and met adrina, an indian-armenian who is my roomie.


the only glitch is the veeps. there is a group of four that just doesn't hang out with us, and no one knows why. we started calling them the v.i.p.'s, but i seenk zey are verree impoohrtant peeeple and so zey are veeps. there's always this dilemma of "do we tell the veeps," "are the veeps joining us," and going through the veep lounge which is actually a common space on the girls' floor with a telly, but the veeps are always in there. they have a designated speaker whose name i forget and when he speaks, he speaks for them all.


i think i might be the only one to have had the honour of experiencing the apricots so far. i swear, dziran is the fruit of the gods. you have never tasted anything so ... it's a different fruit, it's not even apricots. they don't necessarily look as appetizing but once you start you don't want to stop. mam, remember how i was freaking out over the figs in egypt compared to the ones we get in montreal? that is nothing. not even the same ballpark. armenian dziran is where it's at, and i will die trying to smuggle some back.

we have orientation today, the welcome dinner, and tomorrow we start work. our next day off is july 24th. til then we have work every day, dance, history and language classes, and trips out of yerevan. it's only been a day and i'm having the best time, we're like one big, happy family and everyone gets along 'a merveille.