The Landslide

Recently, maybe two weeks ago, Nicole and I heard about a “mudslide” that had happened just outside of our town. Some friends were telling us that the road headed into the capital had become temporarily impassable as a result. We had a trip to Yerevan scheduled for the upcoming weekend, so we waited to see how the whole thing played out. In a few days time we learned that the “mudslide” was really a major landslide that literally pickup a huge section of the road and carried it down into the river below. Fortunately, by this time, arrangements had been made for buses to take passengers out to the landslide where they could walk across a path to the other side and get on another bus that would continue the trip into Yerevan. We decided to give it a shot and here’s what we saw…

Here’s the spot where the buses let you off to begin your hike over the landslide. You can see that the road is completely covered by a huge amount of earth. The trees and bushes are all still alive and well. It’s like a huge piece of earth just moved down the mountain and decided to settle in a new spot just as it was before.


This is where the passengers begin their ascent over the landslide. You can see the little path that has formed from foot traffic.

Here are two pictures of the pieces of the road that were just picked up and sent down to the river.


As you walk along the path, you can see really large cracks in the earth that are quite deep. This is a picture of Nicole standing over one. Throughout the walk, all the passengers help each other to get over these cracks and the other more difficult parts of the path. The ledge where the whole thing just broke off from the mountain is behind Nicole to the left.

This last picture was taken from around the mid-point of the path. The other side of the landslide where the buses wait for passengers to continue the trip is off in the distance. Overall, it’s about a 10 minute hike from one side to the other. I suppose it’s a little longer for the older women carrying 20 kilos of potatoes.


Luckily, this was a nice day to take a walk. It was actually a fun experience. I’m sure we won’t be as excited when it’s pouring down rain and covered in mud. We were both pretty impressed with the sheer size of this thing. -Andy

The Thaw

Even though we’ve been told that it’s been a pretty mild winter, it has still seemed long and gloomy like we expected. Nevertheless, spring is finally here. Although I’ve been pretty inactive on the blog, Nicole and I have been very busy in terms of work in the community. February, March, and April were a far cry from months of hibernation.

I would like to overcome my habit of waiting 2 or 3 months in between blog posts and instead post smaller, more frequent entries that delve a little deeper into the intricacies of life in Armenia, but as always, I’m prone to procrastination and now I have a list of updates that I’d like to write about. So, in an effort to catch up, I’ve posted a bunch of pictures in this entry that are winter-related. I’ve also posted some other entries about a few interesting things that have happened recently.

We hope that everyone is staying healthy and enjoying life. Please send us an email, post some comments, or even try to catch us on Skype. The last few weeks have been a tough time for us and we appreciate all the support we’ve been getting. Nicole and I both agree that we have some of the best friends and family that one could ask for. We love you all. - Andy

First, the human sledding chain. It’s all fun and games until someone goes down head-first and hits their head off of the rusty metal track of an old sled. He was taken to the capital where he got at least a few stitches. I’ve heard this happens at least once or twice per year.

Next, we have the Armenian cure for the average cold…cognac, muraba (a kind of preserve), and tea. I was skeptical at first, but after a few doses, I began to see some improvement.


Here are some great pictures of our town taken from the area around my school, which is located on the opposite side of the valley from where we live.


These pictures deserve a brief explanation. The first is a picture of our gas-powered, tankless water heater. As long as the flow of water into the heater has the right pressure, it usually provides us with decent showers. However, during the months of January and February, we had significant problems with water availability. When it was available, the pressure was too low to activate the heater. We adjusted to this problem like most people do in Armenia, by collecting our water in large buckets during times when we had it and then heating it on the stove as needed. I’m describing all this mainly because the situation led to a month or two of bucket baths in an unheated bathroom that were some of the coldest experiences of my life…definitely spiritual. In the second picture, I’m cracking the layer of ice that regularly accumulated on our alternative source of water just outside our place, used mainly for flushing the toilet. Let me apologize in advance to those volunteers who have no water heater at all or even running water for that matter…I shouldn’t be complaining.


Here are some random pictures that don’t really need explanation. The first was taken on a hike during the early winter; the next two were taken around town; and the last is a picture of our host family’s dog wondering if we have any food scraps to give him. He is kind of like an all-natural garbage disposal.




The next two pictures were both taken recently. Nicole organized a trip to Yerevan for my birthday to see two hockey games…North Korea v. South Africa, and Armenia v. Mongolia. North Korea and South Africa played a really close game, but Armenia annihilated Mongolia. Armenia and North Korea played the following night for the Division III championship. We couldn’t stay for that game, but I heard North Korea won.


This last picture was taken very recently. It shows the typical rainy April weather that we’ve been getting lately. The streets are a muddy mess, but spring flowers and blossoming trees have been giving the gloominess a nice facelift. We’re not experiencing the full bloom of spring quite yet, but it’s right around the corner.

Thank You

At first glance, the arrangement you see below may seem like a normal selection of food you might find in any American cupboard. However, to the trained eye (or maybe to the deprived eye that has not seen such a volume of goodness in 8 months), it is an amazingly tasty collection of American awesomeness! Nicole and I would like to thank everyone who was kind enough to make this miracle happen. We are extremely fortunate to have such extraordinary friends and family.


We equally appreciate the warm thoughts and greetings contained in the many cards and letters that were sent to us over the holidays. If this post seems a bit late, it’s because we didn’t receive much of these things until recently. Armenians celebrate the New Year for weeks and weeks, so I think the whole postal system must’ve been shut down for a while.


Thanks again to everyone. We never expected such graciousness. I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season. Happy New Year.

-Andy

A Winter Shout-Out

As of January 31, we will have been in Armenia for 8 months. Sometimes it seems like it’s been much longer, sometimes it seems like it’s been much shorter. Time passes by much the same here as it does anywhere else. Before you know it, days, weeks, and months have elapsed. I didn’t realize how long it’s been since I’d updated the blog until recently when I decided that I’d better write something before I start to forget much of what has happened. So, I guess this is kind of a summary entry, highlighting our last few months here. I’ve posted some pictures below, since I think they better describe our experience than my writing alone.

The first picture is a little old now. It’s from a soccer game that we went to back in the fall…Spain v. Armenia. I thought I’d include it because it was my first international soccer game, and because we had a great time. The game was a World Cup qualifier. Everyone expected that Spain would play its less known players since Armenia does not have a strong team, but to our surprise, we got to see some of the biggest names in soccer like Torres and Fabregas. Obviously Armenia lost the game, and almost every other game in their qualifying group. Needless to say, they will not be going to the World Cup.


Around the same time of year, Nicole and I were invited to help some friends pick and prepare grapes for making wine. We went to their house a few more times to see how the process is carried out. It was very interesting.


Since nearly two hundred kids were interested in attending our after school English clubs, we had to organize an interviewing/selection process. This picture was taken right before some of the interviews at Nicole’s school. It took us two weeks to select a total of 80 kids, 40 from my school and 40 from Nicole’s. It was a major headache, but it was also a good way to demonstrate fairness and objectivity, something that is not often practiced here. Now, we’ve got 4 English clubs that meet weekly after school, Monday through Thursday.


The next series of pictures were taken in Tbilisi, Georgia. We decided take a small vacation there since we had such a long winter break this year. The Ministry of Education cancelled school for three additional weeks due to outbreaks of seasonal flu and H1N1, giving us much more time off than usual.

- Nicole near the oldest church in the city…6th century.


- The sign for the KGB bar/nightclub…funny or terrifying? I’m not sure yet.


- Probably the highlight of our trip. This picture was taken in the Abanotubani region of Old Town Tbilisi. The dome-shaped structures are subterranean sulphur bath houses. Tbilisi has been famous for them since the city’s founding in the 5th century. The word Tbilisi actually means “warm spring”. For centuries, people have travelled to Tbilisi just to bath in the sulphur springs which are rumored to have healing properties. I don’t know about all that, but we did feel pretty good after spending some time here.


- Not much explanation needed. This is me reunited with western fast food…a picture that I would not have been proud of before moving to Armenia where no such things exist. McDonald’s never tasted so good…or maybe it was just some association with familiarity.


- The next two pictures were taken at Narikala Fortress, another highlight of the trip. Located in a strategic defensive position on a steep hill above the city, the fortress has been occupied by the Persians, the Arabs, the Turks, the Russians, and of course the Georgians. The earliest walls of the fortress date back to the 4th century. Unlike most western historical sites, you are free to fully explore the fortress without supervision…for better or for worse, the same is true for most sites in Armenia as well.



Overall, Tbilisi is an amazing city. Unlike Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, it has a very western feel to it. We spent a lot of our time in cafés that seemed much more like home than anything I’ve experienced in Armenia. It’s highly likely that we’ll be going back at some point during our service.

To keep busy over such a long break, Nicole spent a lot of time crocheting. She made a bunch of scarves to give as presents for the New Year. In the next picture, she is doing her best to perfect a recipe for baklava that our first host mother showed her. After several attempts over the holidays, she got very good at it.



I’m not sure why I included the following picture. I guess I was pretty proud of the massive frittata we made for about 10 other volunteers after our Christmas celebration. Since Armenians do not celebrate Christmas like we do, or on the same date, we travelled to another town where some friends decided to get together. The morning after our gathering, Nicole unexpectedly suggested to everyone that I prepare a breakfast/lunch…she’s so cute. The volunteer we were staying with had just moved into his house, so buying all the ingredients and putting the whole thing together was definitely interesting.


The next three pictures are kind of random. The first was taken on a hike that we recently went on. We are sitting on an unfinished gondola lift station overlooking our town. My guess is that it was a project begun during soviet times and never completed, abandoned and left to decay like many of the buildings and structures from that era. The next is of the church that I pass as I go to school every day, and the third was taken in the morning from the house where we are staying. If you cannot tell from the picture, it has become very cold here.




Other updates...hmmmm. Well, Nicole and I will be working on some secondary projects in the next few months that should be interesting. We are both trying to write grant applications for English language rooms in our respective schools, and we are trying to organize a regional poetry competition to be held sometime in the spring. Also, I may begin working with an environmental NGO to help secure funding for a series of educational camps that they organize over the summer. As for our primary work in the classroom, we have our successes and our setbacks. Sometimes I feel like I am making a difference, sometimes I just feel overrun by a bunch of out of control kids who don’t listen to anything I say. I will say however that I think my command of the language in the classroom has improved, which has helped out greatly, especially in our after school clubs. Socially, in a non-technical, less predictable setting, communication is still quite difficult for both of us.

Anyway, things are good overall. We were lucky to survive the near two-week long marathon of eating and drinking referred to as Armenian New Year, and now I feel like we are starting to become productive volunteers. New Year definitely deserves its own post.

As always, we miss you all very much. I hope that everyone is well and enjoying life. Please let us know how you are when you get the chance.

-Andy

Khash

The pictures that you see above are the standard ingredients of a traditional Armenian food dish called khash. I took them today at the market near our house. Here’s a pretty good description of the cooking process brought to you by the always informative Wikipedia.org…

“The main ingredient in khash is cow's feet, although other cow parts, such as the head and stomach (tripe) may also be used. The feet are depilated, cleaned, kept in cold water in order to get rid of bad smell, and boiled in water all night long, until the water has become a thick broth and the meat has separated from the bones. No salt or spices are added during the boiling process. The dish is served hot…dried lavash is often crumbled into the broth to add substance…the meal is almost always accompanied by vodka (preferably mulberry vodka) and mineral water.”

So, I had my first experience with khash back in October and I would like to add some interesting details to the above description. The “thick broth” mentioned is more like a kind of glue, which is understandable considering that many types of glue are made of animal hooves. Boiling the feet until “the meat has separated from the bones” is kind of a misleading description too. As you can tell by the pictures, there really isn’t much “meat” on the feet. Instead, I would’ve probably chosen to say, “until the tendon and thick layer of skin have separated from the bone”, which will become the tasty highlight of the dish later on. And as you might guess, the passing mention of “the meal is almost always accompanied by vodka” should be more heavily emphasized.

Here are some other interesting facts about khash from the equally informative Armeniapedia.org…

“Usually Armenians go for khash in the morning on weekends, because after a khash party, participants are happy, but also heavy with sleep; and, typically not smelling so sociably acceptable. It may not be the cows feet that make a person sleepy; rather the vodka, which, real khash professionals assure is good for digestion…hardcore khash eaters use only their fingers for consuming the odd meal.”

Let’s see, what else can I add? Oh yeah, it’s very common to cover khash with a salty minced garlic and butter mixture right before eating it. Also, you will see from the first picture that it is sometimes common to throw in other random parts of a cow, especially from the head and digestive system, which should explain the nose, ear, tongue, and intestinal parts that are being displayed for sale.

Now, I’ve had some strange encounters with exotic foods in the past and I think I can reasonably say that I’ve always come out on top…until I met khash. It is the only time I can remember that I could not finish my plate. I did my best to explain my unfamiliarity with the dish, but I’m not sure how well it translated. To be fair, I think the batch of khash that I ate may have been a little off since it was on its third day and the feet and stomach lining may not have been cleaned properly; however, even at its best, I think it poses a challenge.

On a lighter note, when people eat khash, they usually throw a party. I’m not really sure why, but I usually don’t question the motives of a good party, even when it occurs at seven in the morning and is accompanied by massive amounts of garlic, vodka, and khash.

Well, I’m sure that I will cross paths with khash again in the near future since it is a typical winter dish here in Armenia. Khash may have one the first battle, but the war is far from over.

-Andy

New Name

Well, I finally did…I changed my blog address. The Peace Corps asked me to do this a couple months ago. It had something to do with the blog containing the word “Armenia” in the address. Anyway, I procrastinated for a while, but now it has been changed. The blog address is…

meetingmashtots.blogspot.com

…which is probably obvious to you if you are reading this post.

I suppose I should provide some explanation. Mesrop Mashtots was an Armenian monk and linguist who lived during the fourth and fifth centuries. He was tasked with the responsibility of creating the Armenian alphabet, which remains intact to this day. Many people say that the alphabet enabled the Armenians to establish a distinct identity…a kind of unifying, national spirit. Being rooted in Christian theology and connected to the Armenian Church itself, it is believed that the alphabet undoubtedly contributed to the preservation of Armenian culture in an area of the world dominated by invading empires. So, in a way, Armenia survives today in large part because of Mesrop Mashtots. The Armenian people know this and love him for it. There are statues of him all over the country and his picture is hanging in the classrooms of many Armenian schools.

Since we are trying to understand and integrate into Armenia, I thought “meetingmashtots” would be a nice title.

Finding Rhythm

I love the fall; I think it is probably my favorite season. I like the crisp feeling in the air, the vibrant color of the trees, and the foods that are ripe for harvest. Fall is here in Armenia. In fact, a few nights ago, we almost skipped fall and went straight on to winter. After the sun went down, it rained for hours. It was one of those rains that sends a coldness straight to your bones, a coldness that you just can’t shake even with the warmest blanket. When we woke up in the morning, the surrounding mountains were covered in snow. It continued to rain the next day and the streets became a mess of mud and lake-sized ponds. I have a feeling it was a prelude of what’s to come.

Things are going fairly well so far. For me, school has been quite slow until just recently. As I think I’ve mentioned before, neither of my teaching counterparts speak much English, so it has been difficult to communicate, let alone plan lessons together. However, slowly but surely, I am nudging my way into the classroom. I now have scheduled planning hours with both my counterparts and I have begun to lead a few activities with the children. Fortunately, both my counterparts seem to be open to the idea of team teaching with me. I am not an experienced teacher, so I fear that I will make many mistakes. But, I’m trying to be an optimist and consider the whole process a kind of on-the-job training opportunity. The fact that neither of my counterparts speaks English very well also makes me feel like maybe I am really needed there too.

Nicole’s counterpart speaks very well, so she has been active in the classroom since the second or third week. The challenges that she faces have not had so much to do with communication, but instead with classroom behavior. The Armenian school system is much different than the American school system and I think some of these differences contribute to the misbehavior of the students. There’s a lot I could say about that, but it’s probably best not to elaborate. Besides, American schools have their share of behavioral problems and I think part of Nicole’s difficulties in dealing with them may come from her familiarity with early education, where social standing and peer pressure are in their infancy.

We both have plans to start extracurricular English clubs at our schools. We’ve decided the ideal situation is that we run the clubs together. There are some logistical issues with this idea, but I think we can make it work. We’re planning on getting started soon, probably sometime this month.

Hmmm…what else is there to report? The language is still a cause for much frustration. I feel like my speaking abilities are improving, but I just cannot hear. Armenian word order is so different from English. Here’s an example…if I want to say “I am from Syracuse, fall is very beautiful there”, I would say “I Syracuse from am, there fall very beautiful is”. To make matters worse, there are many sentence structures that really have no definite rules, so people can say the words in whatever order they want. Many of the people I speak to are not used to communicating with foreigners, so they don’t really know how to speak to me, they don’t know how to use simple words and speak slowly. But, like everything else, it is coming along.

There’s much more to tell about, especially because I haven’t written in a while, but I don’t want this post to get too long. I’ll just say that things have been interesting. We’ve had many different experiences at school, at home, at the market, and in the various other places we’ve been spending our time.

Here are some pictures to go along with the update. As always, thank you all so much for supporting us and keeping us in your thoughts. Shout out to Mimi and RJ…good luck guys, we can’t wait to see Mason…thanks for getting hooked up on Skype.

Here is Nicole returning home from school a couple weeks ago. I’d say there were probably a hundred bees flying around the flowers and bushes next to the stairs before the weather got cold.

Since the cold set in a little sooner than expected, Nicole has been worried that her winter gear won’t arrive from the U.S. in time. So, she has been crocheting a hat for herself.

This was probably one of the highlights of the month. Josh and Christen sent us a package with peanut butter and chicko-sticks in it...well, there were other things too…it wasn’t just chicko-sticks and peanut butter. The first picture captures my uncontrollable excitement over being reunited with peanut butter, and the second captures the after-math of our chicko-stick binge…they were all gone in a matter of days. A special thanks to Josh and Christen, we can’t tell you how happy that made us…good stuff.

Nicole and I went back to the village where we lived for our first 3 months in the country just last weekend to see our first host family. The marshutni (like a bus) doesn’t stop in the village, so we hopped off on the highway, walked some of the way there, and then took a taxi to the village from another town…the first picture is of me walking into town. Once we got there, we did some apple picking in my family’s backyard…that’s the second picture.

The next two pictures are from earlier this week. The town where we are living sits in a valley and these are pictures of the mountains that surround us. They were taken on the day that I described at the beginning of this post.

Finally, here is Nicole making apple sauce. When we went to visit our host family last weekend, they gave us a ton of apples. We’re still trying to figure out what to do with them before they go bad.