The picture I put up is of my water filter after one year and the new one I just put in the other day. That water looks good right? Actually it doesn’t taste bad or anything it just doesn’t look all that refreshing but by the time it has been filtered its clear and not too bad. It can be hard to come by though. I am one of the few people I know in the whole country including the capital, Yerevan, that has twenty-four hour running water everyday. It’s a nice thing to have but the other day it was turned off for a week while the city put in new pipes. It would have been easy to store water had I known that the water would be turned off. I would have filled my bathtub and buckets but I didn’t realize it would be turned off until the tap ran dry. So instead I woke up one morning with a pile of dishes and no water to clean them with. I had to walk to the neighboring apartment building where they have a community water spicket that everybody was collecting water from. It took a lot of trips but finally I got my bathtub filled. The week the water was turned off was also a really hot week so I had all of the windows open to let the air blow through but with the pipes being dug out and reburied there was a lot of dust in the air which means I now have a apartment nicely coated in dust.
The water filter is also a reminder that I’ve been here for a year. We had our mid-service conference in Tsakadzor. It was a fun time and the hotel we stayed at was really nice by anybodies standards. It was called the Sports Complex and as the name would envision where were a lot of athletes there. So here were us scrawny Peace Corps Volunteers on one half of the cafeteria and on the other half were body builders from all over the former USSR. It was a funny contradiction to see. We played the new group of volunteers in country at kick ball and we won and I got to go swimming in a pool for the second time this year. I even had a couple of races and judging from my shortness of breath I guess I’m pretty out of shape.
I’m now back at site trying to stay busy for the next week before I leave for my vacation on Friday and trying not to get washed away by the tremendous down pour of rain we are getting everyday. Send me an email soon!
