Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Machismo

For the first time last week I saw a woman driving a car. So after four months I saw my first female driver in Armenia but for the second time I saw a boy under the age of twelve driving a car by himself, so as you can guess from the first two sentences and the title Armenia is a male dominated society. My host father who is a nice guy sits on the couch and calls his wife from the other room to bring him his cigarettes which are just out of reach or a cup of coffee etc. which she does every time so I like to stir things up a bit by cleaning off the table or doing my own laundry and this week I’m even going to cook dinner for the family all this so that at least I can remember that woman aren’t meant to be the only ones in the kitchen.
This morning I woke up to a thin layer of sleet and ice on the ground. I was not expecting this so at first I was excited but then I realized its only September and that means this is going to be a long winter! Then I put on my gloves and the rest of my work cloths and headed off to school. Now I was wearing normal brown gloves. They didn’t stand out or look garish they were just gloves, but for some reason everybody, EVERYBODY thought they were hilarious so I don’t know if people don’t wear gloves here or if September is too early to be wearing them, but better warm then cold, right?
This past weekend I visited other Peace Corps friends at Lake Sevan. It was a lot of fun and we were in a beautiful place right on the lakes edge which was surrounded with mountains and about one hundred yards away was one of Armenia’s more famous tourist sites which if you Google Armenia or Lake Sevan right now and click images I’ll bet on the first page you can see a picture of these two church’s over looking the lake below. We visited the churches and I even bought a painting and got a free water color thrown in, and we saw lots of tourists for the first time since we’ve been here. So I thought since there were so many other people from around the world to stare at that we wouldn’t get the stink eye quite as much, wrong! One guy drove around our campsite probably thirty times just gawking at us which would usually be creepy and inspire a person to call the police but in Armenia it is the ever-present and inevitable so we didn’t give it much attention. On the way back to my site I stopped in Yerevan for lunch and had excellent Indian food which was such a nice change to the potato’s and soup I’ve been eating. And the week before last I visited my friend Dave in Vanadzor which was fun but I missed the bus getting there so I had to take a taxi. The taxi wasn’t very expensive but still you’re the customer which means something right? Wrong. We stopped and bought gas which took about thirty minutes then the driver stopped and bought lunch about ten minutes from our final destination. And when we would go down a hill he would actually turn the car off and we would coast down the hill which isn’t poor customer service I just didn’t know you could do that. Then on the way back from Vanadzor I did catch the bus but there weren’t any seats so I had to stand up in a bus that looks like those yellow DHL busses so I couldn’t actually stand completely up. I made new friends though and was even dumb enough to give my phone number out to a stranger who wants to move to America so I guess the best way to get him there is if any single ladies reading this want to marry a hard working Armenian guy then help him with his paper work to get to the states he would really appreciate it. Well that’s all I hope everybody’s good. All you single ladies let me know if your in the market for a husband.
Love, Me